Even though Pericles came from a wealthy and powerful family, he believed that citizenship should not be limited to the wealthy and powerful. For this reason he included more Athenians than ever before in government. He believed that people’s talents were more important than their social standing. Pericles also allowed lower class male citizens to run for public office, and he also paid officeholder. So as a result lower class men could be in the part of the inner circle running the government. But the top class of the social class was Freemen, which were all male citizens. Then the class under that is, Metics which were outsiders that could not own land and run industries and businesses. Slaves were the lowest class that didn’t have rights