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Ancient and modern

Argue away

23 September 2023

9:00 AM

23 September 2023

9:00 AM

Excited crowds of youth, encouraged by adults who should know better, take the view that opinions with which they disagree should not be debated but subject to control by the mob. In the ancient world we know of only a handful of examples. Socrates’s trial is the most famous: at a politically fraught time in 399 bc, he was executed on a charge of impiety, i.e.

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