Now what did they mean by that?
They meant the Reign of Law. Aeschylus says of them in The Persians:
Atossa. Who is their shepherd over them and lord of their host?
Chorus. Of no man are they called the slaves or subjects.
Now hear Herodotus amplifying and explaining Aeschylus. For though they are free, yet are they not free in all things. For they have a lord over them, even Law, whom they fear far more than thy people fear thee. At least they do what that lord biddeth them, and what he biddeth is still the same, to wit that they flee not before the face of any multitude [(Note 83)]in battle, but keep their order and either conquer or die. It is Demaratos that speaks of the Spartans to King Xerxes.
Eleutheria the Reign of Law or Nomos. The word Nomos begins with the meaning “custom” or “convention,” and ends by signifying that which embodies as far as possible the universal and eternal principles of justice. To write the history of it is to write the history of Greek civilization. The best we can do is to listen to the Greeks themselves explaining what they were fighting for in fighting for Eleutheria. They will not put us off with abstractions.
No one who has read The Persians forgets the live and leaping voice that suddenly cries out before the meeting of the ships at Salamis: Onward, Sons of the Hellenes! Free your country, free your children, your wives, your fathers’ tombs and seats of your fathers’ gods! All hangs now on your fighting! This, then, when it came to action, is what the Greeks meant by the Reign of Law. It will not seem so puzzling if you put it in this way: that what they fought for was the right to govern themselves. Here as elsewhere we may observe how the struggle of Greek and Barbarian fills with palpitating life such words as Freedom, which to dull men have been apt to seem abstract and to sheltered people faded. For the Barbarians had not truly laws at all. How are laws possible where “all are slaves save one,” and he responsible to nobody? So the fight for Freedom becomes a fight for Law, that no man may become another’s master, but all be subject equally to the Law, “whose service is perfect freedom.”
That conception was wrought out in the stress of conflict with the Barbarians, culminating in the Persian danger. On that point it is well to prepare our minds by an admission. The quarrel was never a simple one of right and wrong. Persia at least was in some respects in advance of the Greece she fought at Salamis; and not only in material splendour. That is now clear to every historian; it never was otherwise to the Greeks themselves. Possessing or possessed by the kind of imagination which compels a man to understand his enemy, they saw much to admire in the Persians—their hardihood, their chivalry, their munificence, their talent for government. The Greeks heard with enthusiasm (which was part at least literary) the scheme of education for young nobles—“to ride a horse, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth!” In fact the two peoples, although they never realized it, were neither in race nor in speech very remote from one another. But it was the destiny of the Persians to succeed to an empire essentially Asiatic and so to become the leaders and champions of a culture alien to Greece and to us. In such a cause their very virtues made them the more dangerous. Here was no possible compromise. Persia and Greece stood for something more than two political systems; the European mind, the European way of thinking and feeling about things, the soul of Europe was at stake. There is no help for it; in such a quarrel we must take sides.
Let us look first at the Persian side. The phrase I quoted about all men in Persia being slaves save one is not a piece of Greek rhetoric; it was the official language of the empire. The greatest officer [(Note 85)]of state next to the King was still his “slave” and was so addressed by him. The King was lord and absolute. An inscription at Persepolis reads I am Xerxes the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of many-tongued countries, the King of this great universe, the Son of Darius the King, the Achaemenid. Xerxes the Great King saith: “By grace of Ahuramazda I have made this portal whereon are depicted all the countries.” The Greek orator Aeschines says, “He writes himself Lord of men from the rising to the setting sun.” The letter of Darius to Gadatas—it exists to-day—is addressed by “Darius the son of Hystaspes, King of Kings.” That, as we know, was a favourite title. The law of the land was summed up in the sentence: The King may do what he pleases. Greece saved us from that.