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Why Were The Handful Of Classic Greeks So Great? – Subscriber Topic Episode 3


Ancient Greece, namely classical Athens, was arguably the most magnificent genius cluster in history.
While not all of the innovations associated with ancient Greece originate there, many were, and all influenced western culture today.
All of the city-states in ancient Greece played its role, notably Sparta, that was instrumental for keeping Greece safe from the Persian Empire.
But the majority of the credit for the cultural and scientific innovations go to Athens.
It boggles my mind that such a rich and sophisticated culture could have existed so long ago.
First off, the brilliance of the architecture and engineering goes without saying.
There were obviously philosophy and science in classical Athens, which were one in the same back then.
However, there were many great philosophers outside of the classical period, such as Thales and Pythagoras.
But some historians believe the classical period had the most significant philosophers, including the famous succession of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
At one point, the city had two academies, Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum.
Indeed, Athenian Culture seemed way ahead of its time, but what made the culture possible?
Was it merely because Athens had been around for a long time and had time to develop?
That is a part of it the answer, but there are indeed many more elements involved.
For a civilization in antiquity to support accessory professions like philosophers and playwrights, it requires the division of labor and a specific social structure.
In other words, Athens had enough wealthy citizens to finance art and scholars.
There were around 250,000 people in classical Athens.
At the top was the upper class, commonly referred to as the leisure class.
Historians believe there were 30,000 people in this class.
Individuals in this class performed little to no mundane tasks and devoted their time to civilized leisurely endeavors.
And then there was a middle class, a lower class and finally a large population of slaves.
Slaves mainly worked on agriculture, but pretty much anything the higher classes did not want to do; they had slaves do it for them.
Even poor farmers had one or two slaves.


Now, this kind of social structure played an essential role in Athenian culture, but it was not unique by any means in ancient times.
So, what separated classical Athens from other civilizations in the past?
The answer is its underlying culture, its ideologies, social norms, and values.
First, the classical Athenian citizens, the upper class, despised work, and embraced leisure.
But leisure had a different meaning back then, compared to today, based on the philosophy of Aristotle.
Leisure did not necessarily mean relaxing idly on the beach but more often meant spending time doing intrinsically valuable activities.
And Aristotle's definition of leisure also excluded any activities done for the pursuit of wealth or power.
Surely artists were compensated for their work.
But as soon as the artist created or performed art for the purpose of making money, it was no longer viewed as leisurely.
Athenian culture also valued participation and discussions concerning politics, philosophy, and public affairs.
They, in turn, looked down on citizens who refused to participate in public affairs and referred to them as "idiotes" haha.
Another aspect was the openness of Athenian culture.
Not only was Athens a global city, but it also welcomed foreigners and allowed outsiders to roam around the city freely.
However, it’s important to note foreigners were not able to become citizens, but it was the Athenian's openness that was key.
Because they were open to different ideas, open to learning from the experiences of foreigners, and they applied the good in what they learned.
Now, if we take a step back, we can see a clear picture.
Ancient Athenians were far from perfect, considering their way of life was made possible by slavery.
It had a large leisure class numbering in the tens of thousands that valued spending time doing activities with intrinsic value, such as the pursuit of knowledge and art.
Much of their time was spent exchanging ideas and debating, not only with each other but foreigners too.
So with all of these elements combined, Athens became a social soup of critical thinkers, of artists and philosophers.
Classical Athens was indeed, a cluster of geniuses.