In the fifth century BC, Athens became the leading city of the Greek world and the site of an early experiment in self-rule. Adult male citizens gathered in an assembly to debate and vote directly on laws, war, and public spending, while many officials were chosen by lot rather than by election. The system excluded women, foreigners, and the enslaved, yet it gave ordinary craftsmen and farmers a share of power unusual for the age. Under the leadership of Pericles, the city rebuilt the Acropolis, crowning it with the Parthenon, and it welcomed playwrights, sculptors, and philosophers whose work is still studied today.
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