<i><b>Areopagitica by&nbsp;John Milton - A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc&#39;d Printing, to the Parlament of England</b></i>&nbsp;is a 1644 prose&nbsp;polemic&nbsp;by the English poet, scholar, and polemical author&nbsp;John Milton&nbsp;opposing&nbsp;licensing&nbsp;and censorship.<br /><br /><i>Areopagitica</i>&nbsp;is among history&#39;s most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to&nbsp;freedom of speech and expression. Many of its expressed principles have formed the basis for modern justifications.<br /><br /><i>Areopagitica</i>&nbsp;was published 23 November 1644 at the height of the&nbsp;English Civil War. It takes its title in part from&nbsp;<i>Areopagitikos</i>&nbsp;(Greek:&nbsp;?&rho;&epsilon;&omicron;&pi;&alpha;&gamma;&iota;&tau;&iota;&kappa;?&sigmaf;), a speech written by&nbsp;Athenian&nbsp;orator&nbsp;Isocrates&nbsp;in the 4th century BC.<br /><br />(The&nbsp;Areopagus&nbsp;is a hill in&nbsp;Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals, and was the name of a council whose power Isocrates hoped to restore.) Some argue that it is more importantly also a reference to the defense that&nbsp;St Paul&nbsp;made before the Areopagus in&nbsp;Athens&nbsp;against charges of promulgating foreign gods and strange teachings, as recorded in&nbsp;Acts 17:18&ndash;34.<br /><br />Like Isocrates, Milton (who was not a&nbsp;member of parliament) did not mean his work to be an oral speech to that assembly. Instead, it was distributed via pamphlet, thus defying the same publication censorship which he argued against. As a radical, Milton had supported the&nbsp;Presbyterians&nbsp;in&nbsp;Parliament, and would later work as a civil servant for the new republic, but in this work he argued forcefully against Parliament&#39;s 1643&nbsp;<i>Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing</i>, also known as the&nbsp;Licensing Order of 1643, in which Parliament required authors to have a license approved by the government before their work could be published.