Greek (Western) liberty vs. Persian (Eastern) servitude according to Edith Hamiliton, in The Greek Way.

"A tyrant disturbs ancient laws," Herodotus writes, 'violates women, kills men without trial. But a people ruling - first, the very name of it is so beautiful; and secondly, a people does none of these things." Only the tyrant was known throughout the East. When the Great (Persian) King was on his march to Greece a very rich noble of Lydia entertained not only him and his courtiers, but his multitudinous host of soldiers as well. He set sumptuous feasts before all, Herodotus says, and in return begged humbly that one of his five sons, all in the army, might remain with him. "You make such a request?" said the king. "You who are my slave and bound to give me all that is yours, even to your wife?" He ordered the body of the eldest youth to be cut in two and placed on either side of the road where the army was to pass. The Persians were slaves, so called and so treated; the richest and most powerful claimed nothing as their right; they were completely at the disposal of the king.

Herodotus tells another story. A noble, who had for years enjoyed the royal favor and then had lost it, was invited to dine with the king. After he had feasted on the meat placed before him. He was presented with a covered basket. Lifting the lid he saw the head and hands and feet of his only son. "Do you know now," the king asked pleasantly, "the kind of animal you have been eating?" The father had learned the lesson slaves must master, self-control. He answered with perfect composure, "I do know, indeed - and whatever the king is pleased to do pleases me." That was the spirit of the East from time immemorial, first clearly recorded for the world in Herodotus' book. Little, poor, barren Greece was free. "You know perfectly what it is to be a slave," Herodotus reports some Greeks as saying to a Persian official who was urging them to submit to Xerxes. "Freedom you have never tried, to know how sweet it is. If you had you would urge us to fight for it not with our spears only, but even with hatchets." As the war with the Persians draws nearer in Herodotus, it is seen more and more clearly as a contest not of flesh and blood only, but of spiritual forces which are incompatible.

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A comparison of Hebrew and Greek writing styles:

One parallel, however, must be given in full. A familiar and completely characteristic example of the Hebrew way is the description of wisdom in Job:

But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold. Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding? - Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.

The thought behind these sonorous sentences is simple: wisdom cannot be bought; it is the reward of righteousness. The effectiveness of the statement consists entirely in the repetition. The idea is repeated again and again with only slight variations in the imagery, and the cumulative effect is in the end great and impressive. It happens that a direct comparison with the Greek way is possible, for Aeschylus too had his conception of the price of wisdom:

God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

This passage is as characteristically Greek as the quotation from Job is Hebrew. There is little repetition, little enhancement, in the statement. The thought that wisdom's price is suffering and that it is always paid unwillingly although sent in truth as a gift from God, is stated almost as briefly and almost as plainly as is possible to language. The poet is preoccupied with his thought. He is concerned to let his idea across, not to emotionalize it. His sense for beauty is as unerring as the - Hebrew poet's, but it is a different sense for beauty.

The same difference between the two methods is marked in another parallel where the wicked man is shown praying to deaf ears. In the Bible it runs:

When distress and anguish cometh then shall they call upon me but I will not answer; then they shall seek me but they shall not find me.

The Greek expresses the bare idea, not a word more:

And does he pray, no one hears.