Category: Timeline Stories

The Romans inscribe their first legislation on twelve bronze tables around 450 BCE. The law punishes speech crimes like slanders and libel with death. The tables are lost but can…

The Romans swearing an oath over Lucretia’s body. Detail from S. Botticelli’s The Story of Lucretia, c. 1500. (Public Domain)   According to Roman legends, the Republic is born in 509 BCE when…

Rome was the most powerful empire in the ancient world. But were the Romans free to speak truth to power? Who came out on top when the words of Cicero…

The goddess of democracy crowning the people of Athens, c. 337 BC (Photo: Craig Mauzy)   The Athenians develop the world’s first democracy in the 6th century BCE. The right…

Roman copy from Greek original, British Museum (Public Domain)   The orator Demosthenes is an unconditional proponent of parrhesia or ‘uninhibited speech’. In his discourse ‘On the Embassy’, he declares that:  …

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787 (Public Domain)   In 399 BCE, the philosopher Socrates is found guilty of “refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state” and “corrupting the…

Athens was the birth place of democracy, isegoria and parrhesia – the Greek words for equal and uninhibited speech. What did free speech entail for a comedian, a philosopher, an…