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Originally Posted by Quentin
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.
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Ah, a scholar after my own heart. If I may quote from The Legal Regulation of Private Conduct at Athens: Two Controversies on Freedom (same chap) :
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Despite the Athenians’ pronounced ideology of personal freedom (“living as you like”), many scholars deny that they enjoyed either positive freedoms (in particular to speak free of interruption in the Assembly) or negative freedoms, where the state could intervene as it wished, as against Sokrates for his religious views. The current essay argues that in their personal lives the Athenians were entirely free, except when speech or action materially harmed the community.
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