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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2007
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).