Chapter 8 - Blindness and Insight

Summary

Throughout the fifth century, Athens provided a focal point for the discussion, dissemination and development of the ideas that make up what has been called the fifth-century enlightenment. Travelling sophists, rhapsodes and teachers and artists of all sorts gravitated to Athens, whose self- proclaimed hegemony was cultural as well as political, and whose society offered the most extensive opportunities for intellectual pursuits. ‘To sum up’ says Pericles in Thucydides,¹ ‘I declare our city is an education to Greece’ – a paradigm and a school – and throughout Thucydides’ history the Athenians are explicitly distinguished by their allies and enemies alike for their intellectual originality and precociousness.² For Herodotus, it is a commonplace that the Athenians are renowned for their intelligence;³ Athens is the prytaneion, the ‘council-chamber’, of the wisdom of Greece⁴ – the meeting-place for ideas and debate.