More to the point, Greece was not the birthplace of liberty as we understand it today. Liberty in the modern world is first and fore- most the freedom of the individual from arbitrary authority, which has meant, for most of history, from the brute power of the state. It implies certain basic human rights: freedom of expression, of associ ation, and of worship, and rights of due process. But ancient liberty, as the enlightenment philosopher Benjamin Constant explained, meant something different: that everyone (actually, every male citizen) had the right to participate in the governance of the community. Usually all citizens served in the legislature or, if this was impractical, legislators were chosen by lottery, as with American juries today. The people's assemblies of ancient Greece had unlimited powers. An individual's rights were neither sacred in theory nor protected in fact. Greek democracy often meant, in Constant's phrase, "the subjection of the individual to the authority of the community." Recall that in the fourth century B.C. in Athens, where Greek democracy is said to have found its truest expression, the popular assembly-by democratic vote-put to death the greatest philosopher of the age because of his teachings. The execution of Socrates was democratic but not liberal.