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The Two Faces of Parrhêsia: Free Speech and Self-Expression in Ancient Greece*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2015

David Konstan
David Konstan*
Affiliation:
New York State State University/Brown University, dkonstan@brown.edu
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Abstract

Parrhêsia has been understood as a right under the Athenian democracy, roughly equivalent to the right of free speech in modern democracies, including the privilege of speaking in the assembly. In this paper, I argue that the notion of ‘rights’ is anachronistic in this connection; more particularly, parrhêsia was less a right than an expectation, the idea that one might freely express even unpopular opinions without fear of repression. But unpopular opinions might run athwart notions of public decency, and free expression might tilt over into license or shamelessness. Examples are given of how Athenian discourse, in tragedy (especially Euripides' Phoenician Women) and oratory, negotiated the delicate balance between forthrightness and insolence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 46 , 2012 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2012

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Footnotes

*

This paper was delivered as the keynote address at the thirty-third annual conference of The Australasian Society for Classical Studies, held in Melbourne on 4-9 February 2012. I am immensely grateful to the organisers of the conference: the President of the Society, John Davidson; the Program Co-Ordinator, Bruce Marshall; and the Convenor, Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides. I wish to express my thanks as well to the colleagues and students who made the occasion such a splendid one, intellectually and collegially.

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