There are few cities in the world that are more famous than Athens. This, of course, is due primarily to its role as the birthplace of Western civilization, as well as the ways in which its artists, architects, poets, and philosophers have affected the thought and work of their successors. Indeed, one might legitimately make the argument that without the culture of the ancient Greeks and all the revolutionary developments attributed to them, the world as we know it would be a very different place.

'During the 'Golden Age' of Greece (roughly 500 BC to 300 BC) it was the world's leading cultural, commercial, and intellectual centre, and indeed the phrase 'Western civilisation' has its origins in ancient Athens' ideas, achievements, and practices'. The philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle paved the way for the kind of thinking and logic that still govern the ways in which people all over the modern Western world intellectualize most issues. And the tales told in the epic poems of Homer still resonate today. In fact, some literary scholars believe that all modern stories are in some ways direct descendants of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

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