answerability in cases of false allegations.
132 In the absence of such accountability, it is inevitable that actors and playwrights will come to speak louder than the laws, for who would choose the lengthy, unpredictable, and personally taxing and risky option of a formal trial, when one could gain a swift, easy, and certain vengeance by using another to put forth a dramatic accusation? This is precisely what had happened in ancient Greece, according to Rousseau and the abbé Gros de Besplas, who claimed that “poets, musicians, actors, dancers, and set designers having risen to the highest ranks in Athens, the laws lost all power.”
133 Guilt and innocence were no longer determined in a courtroom, according to fixed laws and procedures, but by playwrights, actors, and other scenic artists.
