under pericles, who had come to power in the 460s, athens controlled a maritime empire. it was during this prosperous period that the city experienced a golden age of art and culture. in outdoor theaters, art and politics met as citizens gathered to see tragedies and comedies that queried the role of the individual in society. pericles' greatest achievement was the construction of a religious complex at the acropolis the partnon wabuilt under the supervision of the renowned sculptor phidias. its design by ictinus and callicrates embraced symmetry and order. fledolumns wer spaced and tapered to give the illusion of lightness and elance. taking into cot the perceptions of the individual. as the philosopher protagorus stated, "man is the measure of all things." the temple was dedicated to athena, goddess of wisdom and domestic crafts. a sculpture of athena, now lost, once appeared on the pediments with other gods and goddesses. on all four sides of the temple were scenes of gods, men and beasts, once exq inside stood' ry se ofthen honored the goddess on her birthday. the ci

all the way back to pericles.to a .5000 years ago they were already writing and talking about the dangers that inequality post to a stable political structure. there's nothing new about this. this is a problem that has existed for thousands of years. what is new at the moment is the american political process and ability to grapple with it. >> poverty is often seen as a problem primarily of nonwhites especially african-americans but also latinos. a couple of questions. one is the extent to which this is true or not choose and to what extent has this prevented us from really engaging or grappling with the problems associated with poverty? >> there is no doubt about it that we do think of poverty as being something other people experience. while it is true that the disproportionate number of african-americans and latinos live in poverty is also true and absolute numbers more whites are in poverty so if your measure of why you should care is does it affect my group in sydney that is a crazy measure but a lot of peopl