Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all inhabitants thereof – what was it that made the West great and enriched the entire world as a consequence? It was freedom. Out of the failed attempt by the mighty Persian Empire, to conquer the impoverished farming land of Greece, the Greeks gave the world a lasting gift. The abstract idea of freedom – which a successful Persian invasion of Greece would have crushed.
A quarter million of Xerxes' troops perished in his vain attempt to take away this mysterious abstract thing called freedom which was enjoyed uniquely in all of the world by this tiny Balkan country of less than 130,000 square kilometres.
Tag words: Persian Empire; Xerxes; Persians; Achaemenid; Persian Wars; God; Hebrews; Pharoah; Herodotus; The Histories; Victor Davis Hanson; Carnage and Culture; Freedom; hoplite; landowners; Demaratus; Divine Salamis; the rise of the West; Aeschylus; Hellenic civilization; Themistocles; Eurybiades; Athenians; free citizens; Marathon; Battle of Plataea; free men; Athens; Thermopylae; Spartans; Georg Hegel; democracy; Aristotle; Plato; Alexander the Great; Abraham Lincoln; Gettysburg Address; decisive battles of the Western world;
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