Quote:
Originally Posted by fluffygrrl
See, that's why I rose the objection, not as much because you personally were off base, but because it's this oft repeated actually false statement that many people don't verify because it's oft repeated, in a vicious circle.
As to Socrates, the issue there I tend to think is not as much speech as politics. Athens had just been handed its ass by Sparta, and times were very tough. Socrates appeared as a threat to democracy at a time democracy was hanging by a thread. So they let him have it.
But imo it was a political killing, not a matter of speech any more than Trotsky's headbashing was.
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Fair enough -- but check out “Law, Attic Comedy, and the Regulation of Comic Speech,” by Robert W. Wallace (professor of classics at Northwestern University). Wallace might just persuade you that there were indeed Athenian laws regulating and restricting speech in certain contexts, like speech that could serve to endanger the city, or its leaders.