The contrast of liberty with despotism is a central theme of the Histories, underlying Herodotus’ grand subject of the conflict between Greece and the barbarian East. The historian presents the war between the Greek confederacy and the Persian empire as a struggle to preserve Hellenic autonomy, individualism, and equality before the law (isonomia) from slavery to an autocrat. The Greeks fight for their own freedom, while the Persians and their vassal states are coerced into participating in the wars by their fear of the Great King. In contrast to the free Greek communities, which value the norms of custom and law, individual responsibility, and deliberation and debate in political affairs, the subjects of the barbarian empires are prey to the arbitrary whims of absolute despots who operate above legal restraint.

Herodotus’ treatment of eastern autocracy is complex, subtle and avoids crude chauvinism. That said, the contrast of Greek values versus oriental despotism is powerfully articulated in Demaratus’ speeches to Xerxes. The Persian king is incapable of understanding the Spartans’ willingness to fight against overwhelming odds without being spurred by the whip. Demaratus emphasizes that for the Lacedaemonians, honor and valor is law, which they fear more than Xerxes’ subjects fear him.