Probably something about how philosophers are smarter or some such. I’m not a classicist, so I can’t say for certain. But of course, the Greeks were living in a very class-ridden society, with slavery. Not much of a model for modernity, even if we can find a great deal of value in the writings of thinkers of the day.
In general, there has never been anything like a democracy with full participation in the history of what we think of as civilization. That sort of went out the window with the end of most people living in face to face communities. Civilization is really about organizing resources to support power structures, and that has included various levels of participation from the populations that make up the civilizations. Honestly, I have no clue what a real democracy would or should look like.
