Deliberazione, paura e dissenso ad Atene nel V secolo: alcuni spunti tra politica, teatro e storiografia

This paper proposes some reflections on the role that fear can play in the deliberative process in Athenian democracy. The evidence examined concerns the 5th century BC and covers both historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides) and theatre (Aeschylus, Sophocles). In a deliberative context, fear is primarily a product of language and rhetorical skill. Fear-based rhetorical manipulation can have a positive function in restoring correct decision-making, or it can be a factor in deliberative pollution and the paralysis of dissent and free speech. But freedom of speech is an essential and necessary tool of the democratic polis because it allows for the expression of dissent. Censoring free speech, fuelling suspicion, and resorting to slander are all acts that stifle the conflict of opinion necessary for decision-making: they reveal an anti-political inclination. Fear - or rather, the experience of fear - together with the anxiety and insecurity arising from it, can either deflect the capacity for deliberation or bring it back to the common interest of the polis.