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Ryan asked:
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I need help with the following question: What made Greece's golden age "golden"? What important
standards and principles were set that are still admired today?
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The hegemony of Athens in Greece during the 'golden age' contributed greatly to why we look back at
Greece the way we do. From roughly 594 BCE, under a variety of great leaders (Solon, Peisitratos,
Kleisthenes and eventually Pericles) the form of government known as democracy evolved and
developed in Athens, and Athens exported it to the far reaches of her empire. Compared with the
despotism of Xerxes in Persia, say, or the system in Sparta, the Athenian system was clearly
enlightened (although they used democracy for their own ruthless imperial ends, not because they
gave it a value like we do today). But that is nonetheless one thing that we look back at and admire. I
have read that the development of democracy in Athens was crucial to other cultural developments
there before and during the 'golden age'.
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From democracy (and specifically Athens' ruthlessness in using it as an imperial tool) came money.
With money the Athenians were able to build great monuments which we can still visit. On the other
hand pre-Socratic philosophers Democritus and Leucippus postulated that the fundamental
constituents of matter were atoms, which is not completely antithetical to the modern view. That
people were able to have abstract thoughts is because they had the leisure to do so. Athens was rich
enough that leisure was affordable.
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Drama was virtually invented by the Athenians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the
tragedians we remember, Aristophanes in particular the comic) Many literary scholars still regard the
Oedipus Rexas the greatest play ever written. Nietzsche thought that through the great plays of the
tragedians came the 'truth' of the absurdity of the universe — that the Greeks not only survived
knowing this, but constructed a culture the likes of which has never been seen since.So at the very
least, the cultural achievements of the golden age have been a talking point for aesthetes ever since.
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What finally of philosophy? A great number of our most fundamental and troubling philosophical
questions were first asked (as far as we know) by the pre-Socratics, Socrates himself, Plato and
Aristotle. These questions range from the nature of universals, moral realism, freedom and the self.
So philosophy more-or-less came into being during this period (not that these are necessarily the
questions we should still be pondering over, according to Richard Rorty) The time period of the
golden age is short (c.490 to 404 when Athens was defeated in the Peloponnesian war) which makes
these achievements all the more amazing.
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Many principles we would not agree with today (slavery and corporal punishment) But democracy, a
relatively advanced civilisation, wealth, an emphasis on reason in philosophy and creativity in art —
these are all aspects of the golden age which continue to amaze its students and which people often
feel an affinity with. Its hard to know why it all started and came about so quickly; perhaps because
they made money and could afford to.
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Adam Gatward
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