Greek democracy was very different, as you suggest. It was not a system of universal suffrage. Only free male citizens with military training (roughly 30% of the population) were permitted to vote.
In this respect it was a slave-labor based economy like most of the civilizations of that time. It took millenia to deligitimize the notion of different classes of humans and that process is still mostly incomplete.
"Reviving" means obviously the good bits, unless you claim that the only possibility is an all-or-nothing replica.
It probably made sense to have only the educated people vote, and not all the elotes as well. The uneducated and stupid are always easily manipulated. See trump being a president of the united states for example. Or bolsonaro. Or erdogan.
It's a blessing, but it takes generations. The quality of the educational system reflects the quality of society, so it is not an easy task to undertake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy