Pericles and athenian democracy

The story of Greece as a nation state is an interesting one because Greece was composed of 31 individual states including Athens and Sparta and these states had governing systems and standing armies independent of each other. Greece was as close as they come when it came to having democracy. Only men were allowed to vote because women did not enrolled in the army and hence did not have as many responsibilities as men. Though they were still chauvinistic with regards to how they thought of females. The intellectuals of Athens thought that females might be useful for having babies, it would be better to be in love with a young man because that would be a higher form of relationship. The Great leader of Greece was Pericles whose statesmanship can be compared to that of Lincoln. He also believed in the ideals of democracy and wanted to spread this viewpoint as much as he could. After the Persian war, Athens decided become imperial when it started exerting its influence over other nation states. And because of this expansion, Athens eventually found itself being in conflict with Sparta and Pericles understood that there can only be one superpower not two. That's why he led his country to war. But he encountered backlash over this decision as soon as dead bodies started showing up. There were even investigations of him having unethical relations and sex scandals but he understood that all of this political manipulation was going on because they wanted out of war. This is one weak point of having a democracy. The national spirit can be quite fickle and whatever they want at one moment can quickly change at another moment.