dency of Greek thought in the fifth century B.C. having been gradually to lower the ideal stature of the ancestral demigods.
But this change of feeling towards the myths is not the only change of which account has to be taken. The spirit of dramatic poetry was influenced, less directly, yet broadly, by the current of political change.
At the beginning of the fifth century B.C. Athens was a limited democracy; at the close of the century it was an absolute democracy. Three periods may be marked in the transition. The first includes the new growth of democracy at Athens, springing from the common effort against Persia—the reform of Aristeides and the reform of Pericles. Its net result was the formal maturing of the democracy by the removal of a few old limitations. The second period is one of rest. It covers those thirty years during which the recent abolition of conservative checks was compensated by the controlling power of Pericles, and there was "in name a democracy, but in fact government by the leading man[1]." The third period, beginning at the death of Pericles, at last shows the mature democracy in its normal working. The platform for a leader of the people which Pericles had first set up remains; it is held by a series of men subservient to the people; and the result is the sovereignty of the ecclesia. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides represent respectively the first, second, and third of these periods.
