Athens became the first direct democracy which means that citizens are able to vote on matters that affect the city and government. That is with the exception of women, who were not treated as equals to men at the time.
It decreased conflict in the region. It pleased American Indian groups. It pushed the border into British land.
Periodization is a useful concept to apply when studying history. Periodization is defined as "the process or study of categorizing the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time in order to make the study and analysis of history easier to facilitate." This is often challenging however, because it is hard to determine the beginning and the end of a period.