AskHistorians

Pre-modern societies often took words very seriously. The Romans didn't have a robust sense of being arrested, per se, but purely verbal harassment and threats were treated the same as physical battery that didn't cause permanent injury - as a cause for a lawsuit and fines/damages to be taken from the offending party.

You could be drawn and quartered for saying the king smells bad. Romans also had slaves so I'd imagine the slaves weren't free to speak their minds lol. Protected speech among the common folk is a very new thing and relatively rare even now.

My opinion on it, from what I understand of terrorism, is that it's lasted for the past 5,800+ years (ever since the creation of our planet), which started with Cain taking down Abel, for Abel had a better gift to Yah than Cain.

The evolution from hurtful speech to something being a crime is because of the evolution of pre-crime (KYC was the start of it), which started to accelerate back in the 00's with the PATRIOT Act in the United States (the District of Columbia, the city-state it is), though it was some time earlier. However, hurtful speech was supposed to be protected since America had its start, though I later found out that 1A protected practicing Catholics, and completely ignored Protestants (making the latter slaves to the former). As long as it's "lawful, but awful", then I think you should be alright.

I learned some of this from a religious teacher named David Wilcoxson, going by the nickname of Nikao.