Frank speech was a democratic right in Athens before it was a philosophical duty, and the Cynics pushed it past the point where it was safe or polite. The register is broader than the famous Alexander line: telling a crowd what it did not want to hear, and telling one person their business in front of others. The cost is recorded alongside the wit rather than tidied away — Crates was beaten more than once. Later Christian ascetics borrowed the posture wholesale, which is how the barefoot truth-teller became a religious type rather than a philosophical one.