Freedom or death has always been a battle cry and virtue for the Greeks throughout their history. From the battles against the Persians, the Greek Revolution of 1821, and the heroic resistance to the Axis powers, Greeks have consistently demonstrated unwavering courage and a deep commitment to liberty in the face of overwhelming odds.
By Evaggelos Vallianatos
Athenians and their Greek allies defeated the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC. Greeks, especially Spartans and Athenians, were aware of the Persian danger. They saw the Persian invasion of Hellas / Greece as existential threat. In 480 BC, during the second invasion of Greece by Persians, Athenians and Spartans and other Greeks formed the Hellenic League and took an oath to fight the Persians to the last man: freedom or death.
Sparta was the leader of the Hellenic League. Athens had a formidable fleet of triremes and Sparta an unbeatable hoplite force. Working together, and with troops from other Greek states, they defeated the much larger Persian fleet in the narrow straits of the island of Salamis in 480 BC. A year later, in 479 BC, the Greeks defeated a large Persian land force at Plataea in Central Greece. The Persian threat was dealt a decisive blow.
These victories against the Persians saved the freedom and civilization of Greece. The Greeks were ready to die in order to defend their families and country. In 1821, the same virtue of love for freedom dominated the Greeks’ fight against the Turks who occupied their country.
In his 1821 poem, Hellas, the young British Philhellene poet Percy Bysshe Shelley said the Greek Revolution of 1821 was “Freedom’s splendor burst and shone!” He admitted he was astonished by the indifference of European leaders towards the struggle for freedom of the descendants of ancient Greeks – the people who gave their civilization to the Europeans. “We are all Greeks,” he said. “Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece.”
In 1823, Dionysios Solomos, 1798-1857, the national poet of Greece, wrote his most famous poem, Hymn to Freedom, which became the national anthem of Greece. “Freedom came from the sacred bones of the Hellenes,” he said, “and, like in ancient times the Greeks’ passion for freedom is full of courage and daring; hail, freedom, freedom forever!”
In 1940-1941, the Greeks won the first victory of WWII against the Italian allies of Nazi Germany. Once again, they fought and won against great odds.
Love for political freedom is the backbone of Hellenic civilization: democracy, art, science, theater, the Olympics, philosophy, and political theory were born in freedom. In the Odyssey (17.322-323), Homer said that without freedom a man becomes half-man. Indeed, Greek culture is inconceivable in the absence of freedom.
Commitment to freedom and reason and the Greek invention of science explain why educated people the world over admire the Greeks. When the Europeans were fighting each other in the Crimean War in the 1850s, the English newspaper, Manchester Guardian (Dec. 19, 1855), connected the Greek achievement to the Greeks’ passion for freedom. And that, the newspaper editorial said, is why the Greeks matter:
“Why do we still read with undying interest the annals of that small Athenian state whose whole free population never equaled that of the least of our metropolitan boroughs?” asked the editor. “Is it for the graceful verse of its tragedians, the rollicking wit of its comedians, or the glowing eloquence of its orators? Not a bit of it. All these treasures of literature are precious to us because they are the legacy, and the inheritance of a freedom gained at fearful odds from mighty hosts. It is because each choric song and each tragic lay breathes of the spirit, which drew the sword at Marathon, and baffled the invader at Salamis. Each page of history tells us that it is only so long as a people retain the power of self-defense and the spirit of military resolution, that they can do these things for which the world will rank them among peaceful benefactors.”
This editorial highlights the inestimable political achievements of the Greeks. Democratic Athens led the fight for freedom. Even goddess Athena confirmed democracy by setting up the high court of Areios Pagos. Greek history is particularly relevant to Americans threatened with loss of their democratic freedoms.
Western civilized countries and America exist only because the Greeks defeated the Persians. That victory gave birth to a golden age of science and democracy in Athens and most Greek city-states throughout the Mediterranean.
In the fourth century, Alexander the Great conquered Persia and built an ecumenical empire of the rule of law and Hellenic virtues of theater, the Olympics, schools and libraries. Alexander and his successors spread Hellenic culture the world over. Alexandria in Egypt became the capital of Alexander’s empire of knowledge and science. The Alexandrian Library-university became the repository of books and the institute for the scholarly study of Greek civilization.
Greek books that survived the fires of Christianity sparked the Renaissance of the fifteenth century in the Italian city-states of Florence, Padua and Venice. The achievements of the Renaissance set the science and the rule of law foundations of the modern world. Educated people seek inspiration and clear thinking from the writings of Greek philosophers, lawgivers, historians, poets, and scientists.
Philosopher and scientist Democritus, c. 460 – c. 370 BC, invented the Atomic Theory of matter. In the fourth century BC, the great philosopher Aristotle invented the science of zoology. In the third century BC, Aristarchos of Samos challenged the prevailing Geocentric theory of the Cosmos and proposed the Heliocentric Theory governing cosmology to this day. The third century was also the time of Archimedes, the mathematical and engineering genius. Science is Aristotelean and Archimedean. Freedom was behind these advances in civilization.
Greek scientists invented and built an astronomical computer 2,000 years ahead of its time. Known as the Antikythera Mechanism, that computer worked with bronze toothed gears that predicted the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon, including the Panhellenic athletic games like the Olympics. Nothing compared to the Antikythera computer technology before the eighteenth century.
Moreover, museum treasures from ancient Greece add admiration and affection for our Greek ancestors. In other words, Greeks have been paradigms of examined lives lived well, based on science, freedom and the rule of law.
Evaggelos Vallianatos, Ph.D., is a historian and ecopolitical theorist. He did postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard. He worked on Capitol Hill, the US EPA, taught at several universities, and authored hundreds of articles and several books, including Freedom: Clear Thinking and Inspiration from 5,000 Years of Greek History (Universal Publishers, 2025)
