Parrhesia and Autocracy: Roman Empire and Early Christian Eras

The genealogy of parrhesia continues into the Roman Empire, where open political critique was prohibited but where parrhesia adapted and continued to flourish in poetic works, philosophic communities, and early Christianity. Poets in the Roman Empire addressed the political climate (though in differing degrees of open critique) in the figures of Vergil and Lucan, the former who invokes the previous parrhesiastes Cicero as a subtle critique of the Empire, and the latter who openly criticizes the current regime and who eventually loses his life for doing so. Philosophical communities used frank speech as a means of self-improvement, exemplified in works by Philodemus and Plutarch, with great value placed upon frankness as opposed to empty flattery. Early Christians, too, utilized parrhesia even when doing so led to persecution; however, as the Church adopted categories of orthodoxy and heresy, the nature of what constituted “truth” narrowed so that parrhesia as speaking out against authority became problematic, further obscuring the nature of parrhesia in Western discourse and practice.