Imagine you could go back in time tens of thousands of years, to a time that represents the vast majority of human existence as a species. You find yourself alone in the wilderness, self-sufficient, when a band of hunter-gatherers spots you. What happens next?
Assuming they don’t kill you, they are likely to offer you a gift.
This seems paradoxical. To a modern person like you, a gift is a gesture of genuine hospitality—something you can accept and then continue living your independent life, perhaps trading with these people occasionally. However, in this ancient world, nothing could be further from the truth. For this world is ruled by kinship, and to engage peacefully with you means that you must be their relative somehow. The gift is an expression of ‘love,’ traditionally understood: to refuse it is to insult your brothers and sisters; to accept it is to enter into debt for the love received.
Indeed, in this world, there is no such thing as freedom as you understand it. You are either kin—bound by reciprocal debt and stories of blood relation—or you are something else entirely—a god or an evil spirit. So, naturally, you accept the gift. And then they begin to search for who your relatives might be, or invent some for you. Perhaps they invite you to a ritual dance, where you will be initiated and given a proper identity. You will be a brother, a daughter, or perhaps a husband and father. But you will not be ‘free.’ There is not even a word for it.
The Unloved
Fast forward to about 4,000 years ago. You land in a place no longer populated by nomadic bands, but by larger tribes of farmers and herders. Now, you can refuse the gift—and live—but at the cost of becoming another exploited animal.
This Indo-European context is where the root pri- arises, which forms the etymological foundation of words like ‘free.’ As before, pri- means to be loved and tied to your kin, not independence. However, now it becomes necessary to name this condition, because for the first time, there is something to compare it with: slavery.
With slavery, a new category of human emerged: the unloved—those not belonging to a tribe or family, but captured in war or by conquest. Slavery was not an unfortunate byproduct of civilization, but the other way around: it was the condition that enabled the growth of cities and empires. It allowed societies to expand beyond the limits of love, to extract labor from those who did not require respect or reciprocity. People like you.
Hence, as a slave, you helped build an empire, such as Egypt or Persia, where the concept of freedom began to evolve into something more transactional, something you might achieve one day. By becoming ‘free,’ you were restored to a place of belonging. You could accept the gift of marriage and start a family within one of the local tribes that paid tribute to the Emperor or the Pharaoh. And so you remained in debt—both to your relatives and to your symbolic Father.
The Unloved, Loved
In Ancient Greece, the concept of freedom took a definitive turn. Consider what two Spartans—Sperthias and Bulis—told a Persian general who offered them comfort and favor under the Great King:
You know well how to be a slave, but you, who have never tasted freedom (eleutheria), do not know whether it is sweet or not. Were you to taste it, you would not advise us to fight for it with spears—but with axes.
(Herodotus, Histories 7.135)
There is so much new in this passage. First, the Spartans are refusing a gift and telling the general—not an actual slave—that he is, effectively, a slave for accepting it. Second, they are inviting him to taste something different, which they call eleutheria. This is a gesture of recognition: if the general felt as they do, he would act differently. And third, this feeling is defined precisely as not being ruled.
This defiance of traditional authority changes how your Greek masters relate to you. Imagine you end up serving a father alongside his wife, children, and other slaves. This man is eleutheros, a freeborn Athenian. Again, this means he belongs in the city: he is able to speak and vote because he was born legitimately to Athenian parents. But it also means that no other man rules over him like a father.
So, one day, this man decides to free you. Now, you are not returning to a state of belonging—to being ‘loved.’ That kind of belonging is as degrading as the Persian general’s condition. Instead, there is a recognised state of individuality, however imperfect. You remain bound in some ways to your master, but as a freedman, you are someone Athenian men identify with. You are valued and given a place in Athenian society.
The same is true for the metic—a freeborn Hellene who does not belong in Athens, but who is accepted for their contributions, perhaps as a tradesman or craftsman. The polis is not an extended household or a tribe. It is a public space where lineage begins to dissolve, where citizens are held together not by descent but by law, debate, and mutual visibility. Something fundamental has shifted. For the first time in human experience, freedom as liberation no longer excludes you from the circle of love and recognition. You can now be unbound without being cast out.