What is unique about the citizens of athens?

Athenians created in the 5th to 4th century BCE an extraordinary system of government: democracy. The Athenians were also mostly scholars and talented people working for the government.

For much of its history, Athens was either preparing for war, at war, or recovering from war. But in the window between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, from 454 to 430 B. C., the city was at peace, and it flourished. The Athenians were "not very numerous, not very powerful, not very organized," as the classicist Humphrey Kito noted, but they nevertheless "had a totally new conception of what human life was for, and showed for the first time what the human mind was for."