Germans are brought up to adore the Greece of Pericles, Socrates and Demosthenes, and the country of package holidays.

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These he has secured for Russia, even if their character has owed more to the late Mayor Daley of Chicago than to Pericles.

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The city-states of ancient Greece had populations smaller than Iceland's today: Athens, at its peak in the age of Pericles, had perhaps 200, 000 people, slaves included.

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Pericles Lewis, a professor of English and comparative literature at Yale, was tapped Wednesday to head Yale-NUS as president, while a professor from the National University of Singapore, Lai Choy Heng, was named vice president.

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Real-estate agent Pericles Economides said foreign homeowners make up 90% of the sellers in his listings, while local buyers eager to convert their devaluing pesos into more stable real estate make up nearly all his current buyers.

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Consider this: Economic historians have calculated that if you compare living standards in Athens at the time of Pericles and in London in 1800, they had changed, over those 2, 200 years, growth was at far less than one-tenth of 1 percent per year.

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