Along with culture and learning seated in Athens, both democracy and trade flourished.
As first citizen Pericles was architect of this transformation of a magnitude that marked western civilization. But Pericles fell victim to his ambitions, as he used the Delian league, to bolster his own conception of Athenian hegemony. It led to rivalry with military Sparta and this conflict reignited when Sparta revolted against Athens's savage treatment of the Melians.
"You are for us or against us" became the unacceptable cry of hegemony to Socrates's ears. Whereas Thucydides in his historic account of the Peloponnesian war sides with Athens's justification of natural justice meted out by victors, Socrates maintains in the accounts of Plato that justice must be same for victors and vanquished for it to be human justice. It will constitute the beginnings of political philosophy, iconic discovery of that age.
Plato's Republic as his dialogues which use as persona Socrates and Socratic dialectics to highlight the philosopher's own views on ideal society, will be considered as the first treatises of political and social science in history.
What Plato wrote and taught to future generations at his Academy, will be considered as the seat of all learning in future civilization. Western Man is Greek in his thinking; totally.
As a corollary it is interesting to note that whereas Greek culture and philosophy would create in Western civilization the secular beginnings of a democratic social construct during the fifth/sixth century BC, around that same time frame the birth of continental religiosity by luminaries like Confucius and Buddha would create social networks based on religious philosophy in China and India. The trend to social networking of universal values began all over the world in seemingly endogenous manner at around the same time. It is an indication that anthropological and social evolution of Man was occurring in similar fashion on different continents.
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