Ancient Greece Golden Age

The classical period of ancient Greece (5th-4th century BCE) produced an extraordinary flowering of human intellectual achievement — democracy (Athens under Pericles), philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes), history (Herodotus, Thucydides), science (Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes — technically Hellenistic but in the tradition), and art that set standards for the Western world for 2,000 years. The Persian Wars (490-480 BCE) — Marathon, Thermopylae (300 Spartans), Salamis — were the existential crisis that preceded the Golden Age. The victorious Athens used tribute from the Delian League to build the Parthenon (447-432 BCE, still the Western world's most perfect building by many criteria). Socrates was tried and executed for impiety and corrupting youth (399 BCE) — philosophy's founding martyrdom. Alexander's conquest spread Greek culture across the known world.