Same entry in Photius and other lexica; see further below. The headword phrase in this precise form is otherwise unattested, but compare e.g. the plurals in Polybius 21.22.10 and Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 14.147.
[1] For no/mois xrwme/nh, compare Herodotus 1.173, 216, etc.; and alpha 4656.
[2] For the verb u(pakou/ein (and its cognate u(ph/koos) of "subject" or dependent cities, compare Thucydides 2.62, 4.56, 6.82, 7.57.3ff.; Xenophon, Hellenica 4.1.36, etc.; see Meritt/Wade-Gery/McGregor, The Athenian Tribute Lists III.155f.
[3] Besides the lexica, compare the scholia to Thucydides 2.29.2; also IG I(3) 127.15f. = Meiggs/Lewis, Greek Historical Inscriptions 94.15f. (405 BCE).
The lexicographers echo the language of the First Athenian Empire, in which autonomia is commonly distinguished from eleutheria. By contrast with eleutheroi, who were entirely independent, autonomia assured the rights of an allied city to conduct most of its own internal affairs (courts, magistracies, etc.) without restriction, though it was constrained in the free exercise of foreign/military policy by conditions imposed upon it by political alliances, i.e., by the hegemonic powers (Bickerman). In contrast with "subject" or dependent states ('hypekooi'), which were denied all military capabilities, autonomous states were obliged to maintain or provision military forces for the alliance, and were free from most if not all tribute assessments (Figueira, 1993, 260f.; also 1998, 249f.). Gomme thought that the term was "conveniently elastic" (HCT I:385); that it was used in the extant sources to cover complete independence (Thuc. 1.113.4), independence within the confines of a military alliance, and even nominal independence (as, e.g., Aigina [Myth, Place]; contrast Figueira, 1993). Early literary references (e.g. Sophocles, Antigone 821f.) pose no difficulty, and attempts to explain these passages as somehow derived from an original, "political" sense (Ostwald, 10-12) are not persuasive.