Free speech today, tomorrow and forever!
Free speech in the ancient Athenian democracy (c. 500-322 BCE) came, as Jacob Mchangama so brilliantly and wittily makes clear, in two forms: isegoria (free political speech for adult male citizens, the privilege of having an equal public say) and parrhesia (unregulated public utterance outside formal political arenas). It was one of the cardinal and fundamental principles of ancient Greek demokratia (people-power), the other being freedom itself.
An ideal Socrates the martyr of free speech gave his life for