HISTORIANS AND PLAYWRIGHTS
SOCRATES
SOPHOCLES
HERETODUS
T
he plawrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens during this time, as
did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the philoso-
pher Socrates. Guided by Pericles, who promoted the arts and fostered democracy, Athens em-
barked on an ambitious building program that saw the construction of the Acropolis of Athens
(including the Parthenon), as well as empire-building via the Delian League.
HEREDOTUS AND GOVERNMENT
51
Herodotus was a Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Em-
pire and lived in the fifth century BC.
He is often referred to as "The Father of History", a title first conferred by Cicero, he
was the first historian known to have broken from the Homeric.
Herodotus identifies two main forms of government: a democracy such as Athens, and
a monarchy/tyranny throughout the Histories, sometimes in a positive light, other
times in a negative light.
For Herodotus, it was not the Athenian constitution or democratic values that made
freedom, but the absence of tyranny and inequality.
For Herodotus, equality was the most important characteristic of democracy and the
foundation for good government.
In a democracy, all men are equal and there is no single ruler who is above the popu-
lation.