Free Speech

For most of human history, speaking truth to power was not advisable. Judging from the records of ancient law codes that have managed to survive, most ancient civilizations protected the ruling elite from the speech of their inferiors rather than the other way around. 

From ancient Egypt to ancient China, surviving moral codes explicitly prohibit speaking out against those of a higher station. Such prohibitions on speech were designed to preserve the rigid social hierarchies that existed in ancient societies, where those on top were often seen to rule by divine right.

All the more remarkable then that one society was able to buck the trend: a small city-state in ancient Greece called Athens. By the fifth century BCE, Athens shined like a beacon of free speech through the tyrannical fog of history. Free speech was baked into the city’s mode of government at its core. It was a democratic system where the citizens themselves – that is, freeborn men – were expected to propose, debate, and vote on the laws that governed them. 

While the Athenians’ concept of democracy suffered from several major shortcomings by modern standards with the exclusion of women and enslaved people, it was still exceptionally egalitarian for its time.

Athenians enjoyed extensive protections for free speech. In political debates, citizens were free to criticize the state and even democracy itself. And, in Athens’ famous theater culture, no one – not even the gods – was spared from satire, as Aristophanes proved when he made Dionysus out to be a fool in his famous play The Frogs.

The Athenian leniency toward speech was responsible for its cultural success. The free discussion of ideas in Athens’ public agora allowed for a vibrant intellectual spirit to blossom. This period saw great advancements in philosophy, science, and medicine that would likely have been impossible under a more oppressive system.

However, even Athens had its limits. The charge of impiety – that is, profaning the sacred religious rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries – was a serious crime, punishable by death. That’s something that Athens’ most audacious thinker would discover the hard way.

If you were to wander the marketplace in Athens in the late fifth century BCE, chances are you’d find yourself accosted by a man with a peculiar limp, bulging frog-like eyes, and an upturned nose. He’d likely be barefoot, wearing the same robes he wore every day and used as a blanket at night. This bedraggled figure is Socrates, and he’s widely considered the founder of Western philosophy.

Socrates was notoriously annoying. He spent most of every day dragging prominent Athenians into verbal sparring matches, where he would lead them down logical dead ends and reveal their ignorance. Eventually, even tolerant Athenians became tired of this act.

At the ripe old age of 70, Socrates was indicted for the crime of impiety; he’d allegedly profaned the gods and corrupted the youth of Athens with his ideas. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking poisonous hemlock.

Historians have often debated why Athenians decided to execute Socrates so late in life, when he’d been speaking freely for decades. We may never know for sure, but it seems likely that a couple of coup attempts that had briefly overturned Athens’ democratic system in the preceding years had put its citizens on edge.

It’s possible that the fear of a resurgent antidemocratic movement rendered Athens’ citizens far less tolerant of dissent and spurred them to finally silence Socrates who could sometimes be critical of democracy.

If this is true, then the trial of Socrates reveals a valuable lesson about democracy that we moderns would do well to remember: in the name of protecting democratic values, the most important one of all – free speech – is often the first to be sacrificed.