The four greatest Greek playwrights: Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles, wrote during the Golden Age. In society and government, lower-class Athenians were able to improve their social position by obtaining land in subject states. Pericles gave greater governing power to bodies representing the citizenry as a whole, known as demos. For the first time, men were paid to participate in government organizations and serve on juries. Many states outside the empire felt quite threatened by the growth of Athens, creating an unstable situation in the mid-5th century