>if you lived at the right point in time and weren't a slave You've just excluded the majority of Athenians[1]. If you generalize "slave" to "bottom Nth percentile of the population, the conditions are much better now than they were before. While someone low on the social pyramid in ancient Greece probably had no chance of contacting someone like Plato, many more people in modern times would be able to write a letter (or email, tweet, forum post, etc) to someone famous and actually receive a response.

[1] "According to the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides, the Athenian citizens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) numbered 40,000, making with their families a total of 140,000 people in all. The metics, i.e. those who did not have citizen rights and paid for the right to reside in Athens, numbered a further 70,000, whilst slaves were estimated at between 150,000 to 400,000.[7] Hence, approximately a tenth of the population were adult male citizens, eligible to meet and vote in the Assembly and be elected to office." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Athens#Geographical_...