We spoke in the previous post about mankind’s evolution over hundreds of thousands of years from savage to barbarian to slave and helot, serf and peasant to courtier, conscript, subject of a king or queen. In other words, some form of pawnship in which the capacity to think and act for ourselves was either limited or proscribed completely.

When did this change? What was the first glimmer? To me, it was with the ancient Greeks and it achieved its apotheosis in Athens during the Age of Pericles. Athens was the first great democracy. 

Demos = people. Kratia = rule. 

In Athens and the other democratic poleis (city-states) of ancient Greece, a type of human being appeared for the first time.

The citizen. 

The free citizen of a free state.

Why am I talking about this? Because this totally new incarnation of homo sapiens is the precursor to the contemporary artist⎯to everything you and I aspire to be. 

And because this new type of human began to understand, for the first time in history, the burden and responsibility of self-rule.