Pericles (495?-429 B. C.), perhaps the greatest statesman of Greece, furthered the cause of democracy. His conception of democracy led him to make the entire body of citizens eligible to office-holding. Pericles initiated a social program which in certain aspects was paternalistic. He instituted the plan of granting allowances for performing public duties. As a result, unselfish public service was minimized and political morale was weakened. Pericles was led into this error[V-5] by the desire to compete for public esteem with Cimon, who made extensive gifts to the poor in the form of dinners and clothes. In his tragedies, Euripides (480–406 B. C.), aroused interest in the experiences, not of legendary characters as many of his predecessors had done, but of the ordinary members of Athenian society. He was a spokesman for the emancipation of woman;[V-6] his writings reveal the social changes that were occurring in the fifth century in Athens. Likewise, the comedies of Aristophanes reflected social changes, and, in addition, caricatured social conditions. Hippocrates, the so-called father of medical science, wrote several works which attracted the studious attention of Plato. He gave as the first of two chief causes of disease, the influence of climate, seasons, weather on the individual.[V-7] He might be called the first anthropo-geographer. At any rate he opened the field which has recently been so well covered by Ellen C. Semple in her _Influences of Geographic Environment_. By their disconcerting and sceptical teachings the Sophists, who also lived in the fifty century, B. C., stimulated the intellectual activities of Socrates. The influence of the Sophist leaders, such as Protagoras, Gorgas, Callicles, Thrasymachus, brought forward the problem of training pupils to solve civic questions rather than scientific or philosophical questions. According to Plato, Callicles believed that government was an instrument for exploiting the masses. Thrasymachus argued that so-called justice is that type of activity which favors the interest of the strongest members of society, and that might determines what is called right.[V-8] Epaminondas, the Theban statesman, personified in his own career an unusually high interpretation of the concept of patriotism, perhaps a more unselfish expression of patriotism than is represented by any other political spokesman of the Hellenic states.