In the fifth century, B. C., Athens became the focus of Hellenic culture. Her achievements in the Persian wars had given her very distinctly the leadership of all the Greek states; and the steady progress of her commerce brought her not only wealth but abundant intercourse with other cities. So that in the latter half of the century we find the peculiar genius of Hellas displayed in Athens with unexampled vigour, variety and splendour. But space will not allow us even to outline the achievements of that incomparable age in the various provinces of human culture. We must confine our attention to philosophy. The general advance of intelligence, education and culture in Greece produced the only result possible in communities whose religion was a traditional polytheism and whose morality rested merely on custom and proverbial wisdom: scepticism, both religious and ethical, broke in like a flood. Tradition and custom could not withstand the corrosive influences of fresh thought fed by deepening experience and widening science. The Sophists were the exponents, but scarcely the creators, of this sceptical habit of thought. The philosophers had not done much to cause it, and they could do as little to cure it. Their theories dealt with nature rather than man, and stood in no clear relation to the problems that agitated every thinking mind. It was at Athens that this sceptical spirit showed itself most conspicuously, now in the lectures of the chief Sophists of Hellas, naturally drawn to the centre of intellectual ferment, now in the stately tragedies of her Dionysiac festivals, now in the _fin-de-siècle_ conversation of her gilded youth. The timid, the old-fashioned, the conservative scolded and sputtered and threatened, blaming individuals instead of the time spirit, but had no healing word to utter.[129]