Note 95.1 — Chapter IV · THE THIRD PERIOD, 500-338 B.C.

Another cult belonging to the same range as this was that of Zeus Eleutherios, the God of Hellenic freedom. “Having driven out the Persian they raised an altar to Zeus, the God of the free, a fair monument of freedom for Hellas.”95.1 These lines of Simonides commemorate the dedication of the Greeks after the victory at Platæa, when they had purified the land and its shrines from the polluting presence of the barbarian by means of sacred fire brought from Delphi. The significance of this has been pointed out elsewhere95.2 by the present writer; the fight for liberty was prompted by more than a mere secular passion, but by an idea inherent in the civic religion. The title Ελευθέριος is only known before the Persian wars in the Zeus-worship of Laconia; henceforth it was widely diffused, commemorating not only the deliverance of Greece from the barbarian, but, in Sicily for instance, emancipation from the domestic tyrant.