Although modern Republicanism, which highly values the right of freedom of speech, finds its inspiration in the historical reality of the Roman Republic, it seems that in the course of the Republican period citizens shared a recognised ability to speak freely in public, but did not enjoy equal status with one another in the domain of speech as protected by law. Of course, Republican Rome knew laws regulating free speech and perhaps even later provisions had been passed concerning iniuria. However, in these cases, as later on under Augustus, these measures acted as means of restraint and inhibition and did not directly address the right of the individual to speak freely. The fundamental question this paper addresses is why, in the course of the Republic, the right to speak freely was not protected by law and never came to be recognised as a formalised subjective right in Republican Rome. The answer, I argue, lies in the fact that in Rome speaking freely was conceived as the positive moral quality that characterised a natural ability of human beings, and thereby it could not have provided a field of legislation. It follows that the Roman Republic would not have passed the ‘straight talk test’ that modern Republicanism requires for the establishment of a free and just society. However, Republican Rome invites us to think about liberty of speech as belonging to the realm of ethics: as a moral quality sustained by contemporary social norms, not subject to legislation, which inevitably ends up protecting the interests of a group or groups and their specific speech regimes.

尽管高度重视言论自由权的现代共和主义在罗马共和国的历史现实中找到了灵感，但在共和时期，公民似乎拥有公认的在公共场合自由发表言论的能力，但没有在受法律保护的言论领域内，彼此享有平等的地位。当然，罗马共和党人知道管制言论自由的法律，也许甚至以后就通过了有关犬尿的规定。。但是，在这些情况下，后来在奥古斯都统治下，这些措施起到了克制和抑制的作用，并没有直接涉及个人自由发言的权利。本文所要解决的基本问题是，为什么在共和国共和国期间，言论自由权不受法律保护，并且在共和党罗马人中从来没有被承认为正式的主观权利。我认为，答案在于一个事实，在罗马，自由发言被认为是代表人类自然能力的积极道德品质，因此它不能提供立法领域。由此可见，罗马共和国不会通过现代共和主义建立自由公正社会所必需的“直言不讳”。然而，