Many people today
consider Greece in the age of Pericles as an
ideal to be lived up to. Perhaps no other
country, city or culture in the history of
humanity has enjoyed a period of genius and
brilliance as Greece has. In philosophy, Greece
produced Socrates, Anaxagoras and Plato; in
history, Herodotus and Thucydides; in
literature, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Greek citizens achieved brilliance in the arts,
medicine, mathematics, and philosophy.
On Democracy
Our form of government
is called a democracy because its administration is in
the hands, not of a few, but of the whole people.
We do not simply regard
a man who does not participate in the city's life as one
who just minds his own business, but one that has no
business here at all. Pericles
