### id253460707 The intellectual stature of Athens is propaganda > Instead, we should be aware that when we think of Athens as a society of geniuses we are simply repeating the narrow, self-serving, uncritical propagandistic picture they liked to broadcast. At the very least we are forgetting to ask whether Plato and Thucydides can be thought of as representative ancient Greeks, when they represented only the absolute upper crust of society - the richest of the male citizens. We should remember that whatever went on in their circles would leave the vast majority of their contemporaries totally unaffected, if not outright invoking the wrath of the common people for the frivolousness and practical irrelevance of their interests. What juice were they drinking? Apart from the ever-bitter juices of Empire and privilege, they drank from the cups of the narrowest elite priding itself in the novelty of its latest cleverness, within a highly interconnected intellectual world, which, yes, did briefly produce some quite exceptional minds. - [View Highlight](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r2urd2/athens_a_small_city_of_250k_gave_rise_to_a?__readwiseLocation=0%2F6%2F0%2F4%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A0%2C0%2F6%2F0%2F4%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A976#:~:text=Instead%2C%20we%20should%20be%20aware%2Cproduce%20some%20quite%20exceptional%20minds.) - [[how did the small city of Athens birth so much brilliance#id253460707 The intellectual stature of Athens is propaganda|View in Vault]] - [n] This will be useful when I have to teach Athens again.