The Culture of Athens
(Columbia History of the World, 1973)

The cultural development of Athens transformed Western history. Athens became the center of the philosophical thought of the Western world.  Socrates, the idle stonemason, made it so. He got respectable citizens in arguments about justice, bravery, piety and the like.  He changed the main concern of philosophy from physics to ethics. He developed the question-and-answer method of treating problems and so contributed to the discovery of logic.

The word 'democracy' comes from two Greek words, demos (the people) and Kratos (strength or authority) - rule by the people.  Grecian democracy - the true essence of liberal democracy - is linked with the ideals of freedom in private life, equality in opportunity to hold public office and an education which sought to produce adaptability rather than to perpetuate a pattern.