ABSTRACT
This chapter examines distinctively post-classical reconceptualizations of the frank speaker, laying out the transformation of frankness from a privilege sanctioned by status to an act that determines status. No longer do citizenship and its associated attributes of freedom and masculinity (or other elements of high status like noble birth and wealth) guarantee the ability to speak frankly. Instead, frankness enables speakers to enact and demonstrate true freedom, true masculinity, true nobility, and true wealth. While closely connected with developments in post-classical ethical philosophy, the manipulation of these concepts is nevertheless also political, in that controlling definitions is a means of claiming a more valid authority than the type belonging to worldly powers. The chapter’s wide-ranging sources include Lucian, Epictetus, Plutarch, Musonius, Dio Chrysostom, Artemidorus, Appian, Athenaeus, Aelian, Aelius Aristides, Longinus, Achilles Tatius, and the Life of Aesop.
