Apart from its other claims to fame, the importance

assigned by Classical Greece to individual achieve-

ment assures it a place among the great ages of

man. There were earlier great ages, but those peri-

ods were dominated for the most part by absolute

rulers of monolithic states; the truly creative indi-

viduals who certainly existed in Egypt, Mesopota-

mia and Anatolia are almost entirely anonymous.

Classical Greece was different. We know the

names of more than 20,000 individuals in Athens

alone, most of them recorded because of their par-

ticipation in civic affairs. Recent excavations in

the heart of Athens have yielded over a thousand

ostraka (the potsherds, or pottery fragments, that

gave their name to the institution of ostracism),

each bearing the name of some outstanding man-

Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles and many

others. Each ostrakon offers proof that at some

stage in their careers the men were suspected by

their fellow citizens of aiming at tyranny. These

ostraka remind us that the Athenians were ever

mindful of the need to maintain a balance between

personal ambition and the civic interest.