Greece National Anthem — Hymn to Liberty

The "Hymn to Liberty" addresses Freedom directly, as though she were a living heroine. The famous opening — "I recognise you by the fearsome edge of your sword" — pictures Liberty by the sword that won her and the piercing gaze with which she measures the world.

The second stanza declares her "risen from the sacred bones of the Greeks" and "valiant as of old", greeting her with the cry "hail, oh hail, Liberty!". Written during the war against Ottoman rule, it fuses the memory of ancient Greece with the newborn freedom of the 1820s revolution.

Dionysios Solomos, regarded as Greece's national poet, wrote the 158-stanza "Ýmnos is tin Eleftherían" in 1823 on the island of Zakynthos, at the height of the Greek War of Independence. The composer Nikolaos Mantzaros set it to music in 1828. In 1865 King George I made the first two stanzas, with Mantzaros's setting, the official national anthem of Greece; Cyprus later adopted the same anthem.

Solomos and his hymn are cornerstones of modern Greek identity, and the poet and his opening lines have appeared on Greek coins and banknotes. The "Hymn to Liberty" is the only anthem shared by two independent nations, Greece and Cyprus, and its full poem is often cited as the longest national-anthem text in the world.

The "Hymn to Liberty" is the national anthem of Greece — and also of Cyprus — one of the most storied of the world's national anthems. The poem is by Dionysios Solomos (1823) and the music by Nikolaos Mantzaros (1828).

Greece adopted it in 1865. The complete poem runs to 158 stanzas, of which the anthem uses the first two. Both text and music are in the public domain.