all men,
eternal, not to be set aside by human enactment.

And now turn to this passage from the traveller and historian Herodotus,
an almost exact contemporary of Sophocles. He has been telling how
Cambyses, king of the Persians, has been wantonly insulting the
religion and customs of the Egyptians. 'The man must have been mad,' he
says:

'For if one was to set men of all nations to make a choice of the
best laws out of all the laws there are, each one upon
consideration would choose those of his own country: so far do
men go in thinking their own laws the best. Therefore it is not
likely that any but a madman would cast ridicule on such things.
And that all men do think thus about their laws may be shown by
many proofs, and above all by this story. For when Darius was
king he called to him the Greeks who were at his court and asked
them, 'How much money would you take to eat your fathers when
they die?' And they answered that they would not do this at any
price. After this Darius called the men of an Indian tribe called
the Kallatiai, who eat their parents, and asked them in the
presence of the Greeks, who were told by an interpreter what was
said, 'How much money would you take to burn with fire your
fathers when they die?' And they cried with a great voice that he
should speak no such blasphemy. Thus it is that men think, and I
hold that Pindar spoke rightly in his poem when he said that law
was king over all.'[23]

There you have law, king over men and gods, but a capricious monarch
commanding here this, there that.

This capricious arbitrary aspect of law was a thing which much impressed
the Greeks. They contrasted the varying, artificial arrangements made by
mankind with the constancy and simplicity of nature. We speak of nature
and convention; they contrasted things that are by nature with things
that are by law. It was a contrast that bore fruit later on.

Now law, whose arbitrariness and variety so much impressed the Greeks
was the law not so much of this place or that, as of this or that
community and its members. This is a conception quite different from
that of the modern world. We may paraphrase 'English law' by saying the
law of England, because it is the law which will be applied (with, it
may be, some exceptions or modifications) by the English courts to all
persons, be they English or aliens, who come before