### id253460203 the Greeks are the benchmark by which we judge brilliance > And once we realise that the picture of Athens as the "School of Greece" (again, Perikles) is a product of their relative abundance of wealth as well as their self-serving propaganda, we can also start to reassess the merits of those supposed paragons of brilliance. The problem here is not so much that Athens didn't produce geniuses, as it is the fact that we still define "geniuses" by the Athenian standard. When we assume that intellectual greatness comes in the form of Great Statesmen and Great Philosophers, we are perpetuating a notion *born out of what Athens was like at this time.* The influence of ancient Greece on our understanding of intellectual achievement is such that we still don't have any other paradigm to define or measure it. In a sense, when we say that a particular person or group is brilliant, we are still saying little more than that they are *like the ancient Greeks.* And unsurprisingly no one is as much like the ancient Greeks as the ancient Greeks themselves. But what did those Greeks really achieve, that they still provide the benchmark against which we compare others (and even ourselves)? - [View Highlight](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r2urd2/athens_a_small_city_of_250k_gave_rise_to_a?__readwiseLocation=0%2F3%2F0%2F4%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A0%2C4%2F3%2F0%2F4%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A229#:~:text=And%20once%20we%20realise%20that%2Ccompare%20others%20(and%20even%20ourselves)%3F) - [[how did the small city of Athens birth so much brilliance#id253460203 the Greeks are the benchmark by which we judge brilliance|View in Vault]]