Pericles and the Rise of Athens | In Person (Ryan Ranch)

Course Description:

In our country today, where democracy is challenged both internally and externally, we tend to look back at Athenian democracy and wonder how it could have actually worked. But it did work, and it produced the Golden Age of Athens, possibly the most creative and glorious period in the history of Western civilization. The most significant figure of Athenian democracy was Pericles, who created a new vision for how people could live together in society that was freeing for the individual and yet powerfully cooperative as a civic institution. Pericles tried to shape a new kind of society and a new kind of citizen by the power of his ideas, the strength of his personality, the use of reason, and his genius as a uniquely persuasive rhetorician. Let us return to those thrilling days of yesteryear and see how it all came to be.