Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens. By Arlene W.
Saxonhouse. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 246p. $70.00.
The subject of this book is parrhêsia, free or, as the
author sometimes prefers, frank speech. Through close readings of stories
by Plato and Homer, she identifies free speech with shamelessness and
self-exposure, claiming that “[s]hame and free speech
represent opposing points in the political order that play off one another
in the construction of a stable democratic polity” (p. 8). However,
the ambitions of this book go well beyond the historical account of what
happened in Athens. Rather, the author argues “there is a congruence
between the Athenian version of freedom of speech, of philosophy, and
democracy, all exhibiting a common hostility to hierarchy and to history
or the past” (p. 36).