GODS, the, Socrates’ belief in, Apol. 26; human ignorance of, Crat. 400 E, 425 C (cp. Rep. 2. 365 E ; Crit. 107 ; Parm. 134 E); disbelief in, Rep. 2. 365; Laws 10. 885 foil., 887, 909; 12. 948 ; existence of, proved, Laws 10. 886900; 12. 966; said to exist by convention, it. 10. 889 E; supposed to take no heed of human affairs, it. 885 C, 888 E foil. 12. 948 (cp. Rep. 2. 365 E; Parm. 134 E); not careless or ignorant, Laws 10. 900; eternal, but the soul and body indestructible, it. 904 A; not to be appeased by gifts, it. 905, 908 E (cp. Rep. 2. 364 ; Laws 4. 716 E; 10. 885 C, 888 D ; 12. 948 C, D ; 2 Alcib. 149 E); hate falsehood, Laws 11. 917 A; belief in, not universal, it. 12. 948 :—common stories about the gods, not to be received, Eufhyph. 6, 8; Rep. 2. 378 foil.; 3- 388 foil., 408 C ; Laws 10. 886 C; 12. 941 (cp. Symp. 195 C ; Crit. 109 B ; Laws 2.672 B ; and see Menex. 237 C); the GODS ought not to be represented grieving or laughing, Kep. 3. 388; have neither joy nor sorrow, Phil. 33 B, C :—sun and moon are gods, Apol. 26; Laws 7. 821 (cp. 10. 886); the gods of Hades, Phaedo 63 C; Laws 12., 958 C; gods of the natural world, Crat. 408 E ; gods who ‘wander about at night in the disguise of strangers,’ Rep. 2. 381 D ; the earth the first and oldest of gods in heaven, Tim. 40 C; genealogy of the gods, it. E (cp. Crat. 402); the gods divided into the Olympian gods, gods of the state, gods of the world below, ancestral and private gods, Laws 4. 417 A ; gods of generation, it. 5. 729 C; 9. 879 D; the twelve, in the Model City, it. 5. 745 ; 6. 771; 8. 828 B, 848 D; the gods who preside over contests, (agonioi theoi), ib. 6. 783 A; the gods to whom the several days and nights are dedicated, ib. 7. 807 A; heavenly and infernal gods, ib. 8. 828 D ; the gods who avert evils, (apotropaioi theoi), ib. 9. 854 B ; the gods who are concerned with the prevention of murder, ib. 871 C ; the gods of the Agora, ib. 11. 917 D :—procession of the gods, Phaedr. 246 E foil.:—names of the gods, Crat. 397, 400 foil.:—war of the gods and giants, Rep. 2.378 B ; Soph. 246 A (cp. Euthyph. 6 B, C; Symp. 190 B):—strife of the gods respecting Attica, Menex. 237 C (cp. Crit. 109 B) :—sacrifices to the gods below at places where three ways meet, Phaedo 108 A; laws about the gods, Laws 4. 716, 717 ; arrangements for their worship in a new state, ib. 5. 738 ; ancient local deities, to be honoured, ib. B ; 8.848 C; gods and temples not easily established, ib. 11. 909 C ; invocation of gods at sales, ib. 916 E, 917 B ; law respecting offerings to, ib. 12. 955 E:—the gods love a joke, Crat. 406 C ; have each their appointed work, Phaedr. 247 A ; influence of, on love, ib.2}2, 253; the givers of good, Euthyph. 14, 15 (cp. 2 Alcib. 148 C); our guardians and masters, Phaedo 62 (cp. Laws 5. 727 A; 1 Alcib. 124); are thought to favour the unjust, Rep. 2. 362 B, 364 (cp. Laws 10. 899 E); share in immortality by the will of the Creator, Tim. 41 A ; visit the good and evil among men, Soph. 216 A ; their gifts to men, Statesm. 274 (cp. Pro;ag. 320 D); excuse the perjuries of lovers, Phil. 65 C (cp. Symp. 183 B); unlike men, have absolute knowledge, Laws 1. 641 E ; have appointed festivals as a relief to men, ib. 2. 653 D, 663 A ; cease to be reverenced when anarchy prevails, ib. 3. 701 C ; a man’s most precious possession, ib. 5. 726, 727; sometimes oppose men, ib. 732; exist in all things, ib. 10. 899; are our kindred, ib’. 900 A (cp. Protag. 322 A); have care of orphans, Laws 11. 927 B; the aged bear their likeness, ib. 930 E foil.; listen to the imprecations of parents, ib. 931 B (cp. 2 Alcib. 138).
God. (The dialogues of Plato show us the ancient religious system of Hellas in a state of disintegration and transition. Old ideas were passing away:—Homer had ceased to be a sufficient guide to men who had sat at thefeet of the Sophists: the traditional conceptions of right and wrong were made topics of debate in the schools. Amid this chaos of opinion Plato strove to separate the truer and more permanent elements of religion and to give a new sanction to them. The ancient mythology was intolerable to him; the stories of the gods ‘were lies, and, what is more, bad lies’ How could the guardians be the ‘virtuous rulers of a virtuous state’ if they were taught in the impressible days of their childhood that the gods were the authors of evil, or would accept the gifts of the wicked, or show favour to the unjust ? Would they not be tempted to make the crimes which the poets impute to the gods an excuse for their own transgressions ? Accordingly Plato lays down in the second book of the Republic two canons of religion: ‘God is perfect and unchangeable’ and ‘God is true and the author of truth.’ These opinions must be held and acted upon by all the citizens of the perfect state ; and tkey also serve as a test by which to try poetry and the poets (see s. v. Poetry). Homer and the tragedians represent the gods as changing their forms and deceiving men by lying dreams; and therefore they must be expelled from the state.—A similar spirit characterizes the Laws; but some differences may be noted. A more austere temper is shewn in the later treatise; the question of the existence of the gods is debated with the greatest earnestness, and the unbeliever who remains impenetrable to argument is threatened with bonds and death. The Laws is also more pessimistic in tone than the Republic; the thought of the insignificance of man and the shortness of human life is constantly present to Plato’s mind and forms a background to the whole work. Human affairs are not worth much consideration : we are but the puppets of the gods, playing our parts for a brief while in the tragi-comedy of life.— The conception of God as the Demiurgus or Creator of the universe, which is prominent in the Timaeus, the Statesman, and to a lesser degree in the Sophist (265 foil.), hardly appears in the Republic or Laws (cp. Rep. 10. 596 foil.; Laws 10. 886 foil.). The Timaeus is remarkable for the manner in which Plato attempts to solve the problem of the existence of evil. The Maker first creates the universe, and then delegates the creation of man and the animals to an inferior order of gods, of whom He is ‘ the Father and Artificer I They receivefrom Him the divine and immortal element, i.e. the soul, and combine it in due proportion with the material and perishable. Thus man, ‘the most religious of animals’ comes into being, but evil is born within him by reason of his composite nature. Yet with the aid of education he can struggle against his passions and desires, and pass through the pilgrimage of life unharmed. If he yields to temptation, he himself and not his Creator is responsible for his evil state (cp. Rep. 10. 617 E).—In the Statesman the riddle of the universe receives a somewhat different solution. There was a lime when the Creator Himself presided over the revolutions of the world. This was the so-called ‘age of Cronos’ during which men lived the life of nature in peace and innocence. But in the fulness of time He withdrew His hand from the helm, and the world turned back in its course with a mighty shock which, caused the destruction of all living creatures. A new race then succeeded, and at first things, went fairly well. But gradually the evil which was inherent in matter reasserted itself, and the world was ready to fall into chaos again. The Creator once more took the helm and restored order to creation. At the same time He made the world immortal and self-creating: men and animals no longer grew out of the earth,but reproduced their species, each after their kind. In the beginning the human race waspoor and helpless, but gradually by the aid of the gods they acquired the arts of life and learnt to form social communities (cp. Laws 3.677 foil.).’ In this manner Plato sets forth under a mythical disguise both the origin of evil and the growth of civilization among men.)
Soc. I perceive, Ion ; and I will proceed to explain to you what I imagine to be the reason of this. The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration ; there is a divinity moving you, like that contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as the stone of Heraclea. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings ; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to form quite a long chain : and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself ; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains : but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed ; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say ; for they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses ; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him : when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men ; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art : they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only ; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses — and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse : for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all ; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us. And Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking instance of what I am saying : he wrote nothing that any one would care to remember but the famous paean which ; in every one’s mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply an invention of the Muses, as he himself says. For in this way, the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God ; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the GODS by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets he sang the best of songs ? Am I not right, Ion ? ION
Ion. Yes, indeed, Socrates, I feel that you are ; for your words touch my soul, and I am persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the GODS to us. ION
At this he blushed ; and I said to him, O Hippothales, thou son of Hieronymus ! do not say that you are, or that you are not, in love ; the confession is too late ; for I see that you are not only in love, but are already far gone in your love. Simple and foolish as I am, the GODS have given me the power of understanding affections of this kind. LYSIS
And therefore we say that those who are already wise, whether GODS or men, are no longer lovers of wisdom ; nor can they be lovers of wisdom who are ignorant to the extent of being evil, for no evil or ignorant person is a lover of wisdom. There remain those who have the misfortune to be ignorant, but are not yet hardened in their ignorance, or void of understanding, and do not as yet fancy that they know what they do not know : and therefore those who are the lovers of wisdom are as yet neither good nor bad. But the bad do not love wisdom any more than the good ; for, as we have already seen, neither is unlike the friend of unlike, nor like of like. You remember that ? LYSIS
Cal. Yes, by the GODS, you are literally always talking of cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if this had to do with our argument. GORGIAS
Soc. He often speaks of them ; notably and nobly in the places where he distinguishes the different names which GODS and men give to the same things. Does he not in these passages make a remarkable statement about the correctness of names ? For the GODS must clearly be supposed to call things by their right and natural names ; do you not think so ? CRATYLUS
Whom the GODS call Xanthus, and men call Scamander. CRATYLUS
The GODS call Chalcis, and men Cymindis : to be taught how much more correct the name Chalcis is than the name Cymindis — do you deem that a light matter ? Or about Batieia and Myrina ? And there are many other observations of the same kind in Homer and other poets. Now, I think that this is beyond the understanding of you and me ; but the names of Scamandrius and Astyanax, which he affirms to have been the names of Hector’s son, are more within the range of human faculties, as I am disposed to think ; and what the poet means by correctness may be more readily apprehended in that instance : you will remember I dare say the lines to which I refer ? CRATYLUS
Soc. Many terrible misfortunes are said to have happened to him in his life — last of all, came the utter ruin of his country ; and after his death he had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the world below — all this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You might imagine that some person who wanted to call him Talantatos (the most weighted down by misfortune), disguised the name by altering it into Tantalus ; and into this form, by some accident of tradition, it has actually been transmuted. The name of Zeus, who is his alleged father, has also an excellent meaning, although hard to be understood, because really like a sentence, which is divided into two parts, for some call him Zena, and use the one half, and others who use the other half call him Dia ; the two together signify the nature of the God, and the business of a name, as we were saying, is to express the nature. For there is none who is more the author of life to us and to all, than the lord and king of all. Wherefore we are right in calling him Zena and Dia, which are one name, although divided, meaning the God through whom all creatures always have life (di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei). There is an irreverence, at first sight, in calling him son of Cronos (who is a proverb for stupidity), and we might rather expect Zeus to be the child of a mighty intellect. Which is the fact ; for this is the meaning of his father’s name : Kronos quasi Koros (Choreo, to sweep), not in the sense of a youth, but signifying to chatharon chai acheraton tou nou, the pure and garnished mind (sc. apo tou chorein). He, as we are informed by tradition, was begotten of Uranus, rightly so called (apo tou oran ta ano) from looking upwards ; which, as philosophers tell us, is the way to have a pure mind, and the name Uranus is therefore correct. If I could remember the genealogy of Hesiod, I would have gone on and tried more conclusions of the same sort on the remoter ancestors of the GODS, — then I might have seen whether this wisdom, which has come to me all in an instant, I know not whence, will or will not hold good to the end. CRATYLUS
Soc. Ought we not to begin with the consideration of the GODS, and show that they are rightly named GODS ? CRATYLUS
Soc. My notion would be something of this sort : — I suspect that the sun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven, which are still the GODS of many barbarians, were the only GODS known to the aboriginal Hellenes. Seeing that they were always moving and running, from their running nature they were called GODS or runners (Theous, Theontas) ; and when men became acquainted with the other GODS, they proceeded to apply the same name to them all. Do you think that likely ? CRATYLUS
Soc. What shall follow the GODS ? CRATYLUS
Her. I think, Socrates, that we have said enough of this class of words. But have we any more explanations of the names of the GODS, like that which you were giving of Zeus ? I should like to know whether any similar principle of correctness is to be applied to them. CRATYLUS
Soc. Yes, indeed, Hermogenes ; and there is one excellent principle which, as men of sense, we must acknowledge, — that of the GODS we know nothing, either of their natures or of the names which they give themselves ; but we are sure that the names by which they call themselves, whatever they may be, are true. And this is the best of all principles ; and the next best is to say, as in prayers, that we will call them by any sort of kind names or patronymics which they like, because we do not know of any otHer. That also, I think, is a very good custom, and one which I should much wish to observe. Let us, then, if you please, in the first place announce to them that we are not enquiring about them ; we do not presume that we are able to do so ; but we are enquiring about the meaning of men in giving them these names, — in this there can be small blame. CRATYLUS
Soc. Well, then, how can we avoid inferring that he who gave the names of Cronos and Rhea to the ancestors of the GODS, agreed pretty much in the doctrine of Heracleitus ? Is the giving of the names of streams to both of them purely accidental ? Compare the line in which Homer, and, as I believe, Hesiod also, tells of CRATYLUS
Ocean, the origin of GODS, and mother Tethys. CRATYLUS
Soc. Then in reference to his ablutions and absolutions, as being the physician who orders them, he may be rightly called Apolouon (purifier) ; or in respect of his powers of divination, and his truth and sincerity, which is the same as truth, he may be most fitly called Aplos, from aplous (sincere), as in the Thessalian dialect, for all the Thessalians call him Aplos ; also he is Ballon (always shooting), because he is a master archer who never misses ; or again, the name may refer to his musical attributes, and then, as in akolouthos, and akoitis, and in many other words the a is supposed to mean “together,” so the meaning of the name Apollo will be “moving together,” whether in the poles of heaven as they are called, or in the harmony of song, which is termed concord, because he moves all together by an harmonious power, as astronomers and musicians ingeniously declare. And he is the God who presides over harmony, and makes all things move together, both among GODS and among men. And as in the words akolouthos and akoitis the a is substituted for an o, so the name Apollon is equivalent to omopolon ; only the second l is added in order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction (apolon). Now the suspicion of this destructive power still haunts the minds of some who do not consider the true value of the name, which, as I was saying just now, has reference to all the powers of the God, who is the single one, the everdarting, the purifier, the mover together (aplous, aei Ballon, apolouon, omopolon). The name of the Muses and of music would seem to be derived from their making philosophical enquiries (mosthai) ; and Leto is called by this name, because she is such a gentle Goddess, and so willing (ethelemon) to grant our requests ; or her name may be Letho, as she is often called by strangers — they seem to imply by it her amiability, and her smooth and easy-going way of behaving. Artemis is named from her healthy (artemes), well-ordered nature, and because of her love of virginity, perhaps because she is a proficient in virtue (arete), and perhaps also as hating intercourse of the sexes (ton aroton miseasa). He who gave the Goddess her name may have had any or all of these reasons. CRATYLUS
Soc. Son of Hipponicus, you ask a solemn question ; there is a serious and also a facetious explanation of both these names ; the serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection to your hearing the facetious one ; for the GODS too love a joke. Dionusos is simply didous oinon (giver of wine), as he might be called in fun, — and oinos is properly oionous, because wine makes those who drink, think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (noun) when they have none. The derivation of Aphrodite, born of the foam (aphoros), may be fairly accepted on the authority of Hesiod. CRATYLUS
Soc. And now, by the GODS, let us have no more of the GODS, for I am afraid of them ; ask about anything but them, and thou shalt see how the steeds of Euthyphro can prance. CRATYLUS
Soc. Is not the truth that is in him the smooth or sacred form which dwells above among the GODS, whereas falsehood dwells among men below, and is rough like the goat of tragedy ; for tales and falsehoods have generally to do with the tragic or goatish life, and tragedy is the place of them ? CRATYLUS
Soc. Then surely Pan, who is the declarer of all things (pan) and the perpetual mover (aei polon) of all things, is rightly called aipolos (goat-herd), he being the two-formed son of Hermes, smooth in his upper part, and rough and goatlike in his lower regions. And, as the son of Hermes, he is speech or the brother of speech, and that brother should be like brother is no marvel. But, as I was saying, my dear Hermogenes, let us get away from the GODS. CRATYLUS
Her. From these sort of GODS, by all means, Socrates. But why should we not discuss another kind of GODS — the sun, moon, stars, earth, aether, air, fire, water, the seasons, and the year ? CRATYLUS
Soc. And must not this be the mind of GODS, or of men, or of both ? CRATYLUS
Soc. Shall we leave them, then ? or shall we seek to discover, if we can, something about them, according to the measure of our ability, saying by way of preface, as I said before of the GODS, that of the truth about them we know nothing, and do but entertain human notions of them. And in this present enquiry, let us say to ourselves, before we proceed, that the higher method is the one which we or others who would analyse language to any good purpose must follow ; but under the circumstances, as men say, we must do as well as we can. What do you think ? CRATYLUS
Soc. That objects should be imitated in letters and syllables, and so find expression, may appear ridiculous, Hermogenes, but it cannot be avoided — there is no better principle to which we can look for the truth of first names. Deprived of this, we must have recourse to divine help, like the tragic poets, who in any perplexity have their GODS waiting in the air ; and must get out of our difficulty in like fashion, by saying that “the GODS gave the first names, and therefore they are right.” This will be the best contrivance, or perhaps that other notion may be even better still, of deriving them from some barbarous people, for the barbarians are older than we are ; or we may say that antiquity has cast a veil over them, which is the same sort of excuse as the last ; for all these are not reasons but only ingenious excuses for having no reasons concerning the truth of words. And yet any sort of ignorance of first or primitive names involves an ignorance of secondary words ; for they can only be explained by the primary. Clearly then the professor of languages should be able to give a very lucid explanation of first names, or let him be assured he will only talk nonsense about the rest. Do you not suppose this to be true ? CRATYLUS
Theaet. Yes, Socrates, and I am amazed when I think of them ; by the GODS I am ! and I want to know what on earth they mean ; and there are times when my head quite swims with the contemplation of them. THEAETETUS
Str. There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and GODS going on amongst them ; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence. SOPHIST
Str. Why, because only the most divine things of all remain ever unchanged and the same, and body is not included in this class. Heaven and the universe, as we have termed them, although they have been endowed by the Creator with many glories, partake of a bodily nature, and therefore cannot be entirely free from perturbation. But their motion is, as far as possible, single and in the same place, and of the same kind ; and is therefore only subject to a reversal, which is the least alteration possible. For the lord of all moving things is alone able to move of himself ; and to think that he moves them at one time in one direction and at another time in another is blasphemy. Hence we must not say that the world is either self-moved always, or all made to go round by God in two opposite courses ; or that two GODS, having opposite purposes, make it move round. But as I have already said (and this is the only remaining alternative) the world is guided at one time by an external power which is divine and receives fresh life and immortality from the renewing hand of the Creator, and again, when let go, moves spontaneously, being set free at such a time as to have, during infinite cycles of years, a reverse movement : this is due to its perfect balance, to its vast size, and to the fact that it turns on the smallest pivot. STATESMAN
And this is the whole tale, of which the first part will suffice to illustrate the nature of the king. For when the world turned towards the present cycle of generation, the age of man again stood still, and a change opposite to the previous one was the result. The small creatures which had almost disappeared grew in and stature, and the newly-born children of the earth became grey and died and sank into the earth again. All things changed, imitating and following the condition of the universe, and of necessity agreeing with that in their mode of conception and generation and nurture ; for no animal ; was any longer allowed to come into being in the earth through the agency of other creative beings, but as the world was ordained to be the lord of his own progress, in like manner the parts were ordained to grow and generate and give nourishment, as far as they could, of themselves, impelled by a similar movement. And so we have arrived at the real end of this discourse ; for although there might be much to tell of the lower animals, and of the condition out of which they changed and of the causes of the change, about men there is not much, and that little is more to the purpose. Deprived of the care of God, who had possessed and tended them, they were left helpless and defenceless, and were torn in pieces by the beasts, who were naturally fierce and had now grown wild. And in the first ages they were still without skill or resource ; the food which once grew spontaneously had failed, and as yet they knew not how to procure it, because they had never felt the pressure of necessity. For all these reasons they were in a great strait ; wherefore also the gifts spoken of in the old tradition were imparted to man by the gods, together with so much teaching and education as was indispensable ; fire was given to them by Prometheus, the arts by Hephaestus and his fellow-worker, Athene, seeds and plants by others. From these is derived all that has helped to frame human life ; since the care of the GODS, as I was saying, had now failed men, and they had to order their course of life for themselves, and were their own masters, just like the universal creature whom they imitate and follow, ever changing, as he changes, and ever living and growing, at one time in one manner, and at another time in another. Enough of the story, which may be of use in showing us how greatly we erred in the delineation of the king and the statesman in our previous discourse. STATESMAN
Soc. I see that I shall receive in my turn a perfect and splendid feast of reason. And now, Timaeus, you, I suppose, should speak next, after duly calling upon the GODS. TIMAEUS
Tim. All men, Socrates, who have any degree of right feeling, at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great, always call upon God. And we, too, who are going to discourse of the nature of the universe, how created or how existing without creation, if we be not altogether out of our wits, must invoke the aid of GODS and Goddesses and pray that our words may be acceptable to them and consistent with themselves. Let this, then, be our invocation of the GODS, to which I add an exhortation of myself to speak in such manner as will be most intelligible to you, and will most accord with my own intent. TIMAEUS
Ath. To be absolutely sure of the truth of matters concerning which there are many opinions, is an attribute of the GODS not given to man, Stranger ; but I shall be very happy to tell you what I think, especially as we are now proposing to enter on a discussion concerning laws and constitutions. LAWS BOOK I
Ath. Let us look at the matter thus : May we not conceive each of us living beings to be a puppet of the GODS, either their plaything only, or created with a purpose — which of the two we cannot certainly know ? But we do know, that these affections in us are like cords and strings, which pull us different and opposite ways, and to opposite actions ; and herein lies the difference between virtue and vice. According to the argument there is one among these cords which every man ought to grasp and never let go, but to pull with it against all the rest ; and this is the sacred and golden cord of reason, called by us the common law of the State ; there are others which are hard and of iron, but this one is soft because golden ; and there are several other kinds. Now we ought always to cooperate with the lead of the best, which is law. For inasmuch as reason is beautiful and gentle, and not violent, her rule must needs have ministers in order to help the golden principle in vanquishing the other principles. And thus the moral of the tale about our being puppets will not have been lost, and the meaning of the expression “superior or inferior to a man’s self” will become clearer ; and the individual, attaining to right reason in this matter of pulling the strings of the puppet, should live according to its rule ; while the city, receiving the same from some god or from one who has knowledge of these things, should embody it in a law, to be her guide in her dealings with herself and with other states. In this way virtue and vice will be more clearly distinguished by us. And when they have become clearer, education and other institutions will in like manner become clearer ; and in particular that question of convivial entertainment, which may seem, perhaps, to have been a very trifling matter, and to have taken a great many more words than were necessary. LAWS BOOK I
Ath. Let us return to the lawgiver, and say to him : — Well, lawgiver, there is certainly no such fear-potion which man has either received from the GODS or himself discovered ; for witchcraft has no place at our board. But is there any potion which might serve as a test of overboldness and excessive and indiscreet boasting ? LAWS BOOK I
Ath. I am glad to hear that you agree with me ; for, indeed, the discipline of pleasure and pain which, when rightly ordered, is a principle of education, has been often relaxed and corrupted in human life. And the GODS, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals, wherein men alternate rest with labour ; and have given them the Muses and Apollo, the leader of the Muses, and Dionysus, to be companions in their revels, that they may improve their education by taking part in the festivals of the GODS, and with their help. I should like to know whether a common saying is in our opinion true to nature or not. For men say that the young of all creatures cannot be quiet in their bodies or in their voices ; they are always wanting to move and cry out ; some leaping and skipping, and overflowing with sportiveness and delight at something, others uttering all sorts of cries. But, whereas the animals have no perception of order or disorder in their movements, that is, of rhythm or harmony, as they are called, to us, the GODS, who, as we say, have been appointed to be our companions in the dance, have given the pleasurable sense of harmony and rhythm ; and so they stir us into life, and we follow them, joining hands together in dances and songs ; and these they call choruses, which is a term naturally expressive of cheerfulness. Shall we begin, then, with the acknowledgment that education is first given through Apollo and the Muses ? What do you say ? LAWS BOOK II
Ath. Thus far I too should agree with the many, that the excellence of music is to be measured by pleasure. But the pleasure must not be that of chance persons ; the fairest music is that which delights the best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one<one man who is pre-eminent in virtue and education. And therefore the judges must be men of character, for they will require both wisdom and courage ; the true judge must not draw his inspiration from the theatre, nor ought he to be unnerved by the clamour of the many and his own incapacity ; nor again, knowing the truth, ought he through cowardice and unmanliness carelessly to deliver a lying judgment, with the very same lips which have just appealed to the GODS before he judged. He is sitting not as the disciple of the theatre, but, in his proper place, as their instructor, and he ought to be the enemy of all pandering to the pleasure of the spectators. The ancient and common custom of Hellas, which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, did certainly leave the judgment to the body of spectators, who determined the victor by show of hands. But this custom has been the destruction of the poets ; for they are now in the habit of composing with a view to please the bad taste of their judges, and the result is that the spectators instruct themselves ; — and also it has been the ruin of the theatre ; they ought to be having characters put before them better than their own, and so receiving a higher pleasure, but now by their own act the opposite result follows. What inference is to be drawn from all this ? Shall I tell you ? LAWS BOOK II
Ath. How ! Then may Heaven make us to be of one mind, for now we are of two. To me, dear Cleinias, the truth of what I am saying is as plain as the fact that Crete is an island. And, if I were a lawgiver, I would try to make the poets and all the citizens speak in this strain, and I would inflict the heaviest penalties on any one in all the land who should dare to say that there are bad men who lead pleasant lives, or that the profitable and gainful is one thing, and the just another ; and there are many other matters about which I should make my citizens speak in a manner different from the Cretans and Lacedaemonians of this age, and I may say, indeed, from the world in general. For tell me, my good friends, by Zeus and Apollo tell me, if I were to ask these same GODS who were your legislators — Is not the most just life also the pleasantest ? or are there two lives, one of which is the justest and the other the pleasantest ? — and they were to reply that there are two ; and thereupon I proceeded to ask, (that would be the right way of pursuing the enquiry), Which are the happier — those who lead the justest, or those who lead the pleasantest life ? and they replied, Those who lead the pleasantest — that would be a very strange answer, which I should not like to put into the mouth of the GODS. The words will come with more propriety from the lips of fathers and legislators, and therefore I will repeat my former questions to one of them, and suppose him to say again that he who leads the pleasantest life is the happiest. And to that I rejoin : — O my father, did you not wish me to live as happily as possible ? And yet you also never ceased telling me that I should live as justly as possible. Now, here the giver of the rule, whether he be legislator or father, will be in a dilemma, and will in vain endeavour to be consistent with himself. But if he were to declare that the justest life is also the happiest, every one hearing him would enquire, if I am not mistaken, what is that good and noble principle in life which the law approves, and which is superior to pleasure. For what good can the just man have which is separated from pleasure ? Shall we say that glory and fame, coming from GODS and men, though good and noble, are nevertheless unpleasant, and infamy pleasant ? Certainly not, sweet legislator. Or shall we say that the not-doing of wrong and there being no wrong done is good and honourable, although there is no pleasure in it, and that the doing wrong is pleasant, but evil and base ? LAWS BOOK II
Ath. The next suggestion which I have to offer is, that all our three choruses shall sing to the young and tender souls of children, reciting in their strains all the noble thoughts of which we have already spoken, or are about to speak ; and the sum of them shall be, that the life which is by the GODS deemed to be the happiest is also the best ; — we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth ; and the minds of our young disciples will be more likely to receive these words of ours than any others which we might address to them. LAWS BOOK II
Ath. I was speaking at the commencement of our discourse, as you will remember, of the fiery nature of young creatures : I said that they were unable to keep quiet either in limb or voice, and that they called out and jumped about in a disorderly manner ; and that no other animal attained to any perception of order, but man only. Now the order of motion is called rhythm, and the order of the voice, in which high and low are duly mingled, is called harmony ; and both together are termed choric song. And I said that the GODS had pity on us, and gave us Apollo and the Muses to be our playfellows and leaders in the dance ; and Dionysus, as I dare say that you will remember, was the third. LAWS BOOK II
Ath. How, then, shall we reassure him, and get him to sing ? Shall we begin by enacting that boys shall not taste wine at all until they are eighteen years of age ; we will tell them that fire must not be poured upon fire, whether in the body or in the soul, until they begin to go to work — this is a precaution which has to be taken against the excitableness of youth ; — afterwards they may taste wine in moderation up to the age of thirty, but while a man is young he should abstain altogether from intoxication and from excess of wine ; when, at length, he has reached forty years, after dinner at a public mess, he may invite not only the other GODS, but Dionysus above all, to the mystery and festivity of the elder men, making use of the wine which he has given men to lighten the sourness of old age ; that in age we may renew our youth, and forget our sorrows ; and also in order that the nature of the soul, like iron melted in the fire, may become softer and so more impressible. In the first place, will not any one who is thus mellowed be more ready and less ashamed to sing — I do not say before a large audience, but before a moderate company ; nor yet among strangers, but among his familiars, and, as we have often said, to chant, and to enchant ? LAWS BOOK II
Ath. There is a tradition or story, which has somehow crept about the world, that Dionysus was robbed of his wits by his stepmother Here, and that out of revenge he inspires Bacchic furies and dancing madnesses in others ; for which reason he gave men wine. Such traditions concerning the GODS I leave to those who think that they may be safely uttered ; I only know that no animal at birth is mature or perfect in intelligence ; and in the intermediate period, in which he has not yet acquired his own proper sense, he rages and roars without rhyme or reason ; and when he has once got on his legs he jumps about without rhyme or reason ; and this, as you will remember, has been already said by us to be the origin of music and gymnastic. LAWS BOOK II
Ath. And did we not say that the sense of harmony and rhythm sprang from this beginning among men, and that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus were the GODS whom we had to thank for them ? LAWS BOOK II
Ath. In the first place, the desolation of these primitive men would create in them a feeling of affection and good-will towards one another ; and, secondly, they would have no occasion to quarrel about their subsistence, for they would have pasture in abundance, except just at first, and in some particular cases ; and from their pasture-land they would obtain the greater part of their food in a primitive age, having plenty of milk and flesh ; moreover they would procure other food by the chase, not to be despised either in quantity or quality. They would also have abundance of clothing, and bedding, and dwellings, and utensils either capable of standing on the fire or not ; for the plastic and weaving arts do not require any use of iron : and God has given these two arts to man in order to provide him with all such things, that, when reduced to the last extremity, the human race may still grow and increase. Hence in those days mankind were not very poor ; nor was poverty a cause of difference among them ; and rich they could not have been, having neither gold nor silver : — such at that time was their condition. And the community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles ; in it there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envyings. And therefore they were good, and also because they were what is called simple-minded ; and when they were told about good and evil, they in their simplicity believed what they heard to be very truth and practised it. No one had the wit to suspect another of a falsehood, as men do now ; but what they heard about GODS and men they believed to be true, and lived accordingly ; and therefore they were in all respects such as we have described them. LAWS BOOK III
Ath. There is a seventh kind of rule which is awarded by lot, and is dear to the GODS and a token of good fortune : he on whom the lot falls is a ruler, and he who fails in obtaining the lot goes away and is the subject ; and this we affirm to be quite just. LAWS BOOK III
Ath. Next, we must pass in review the government of Attica in like manner, and from this show that entire freedom and the absence of all superior authority is not by any means so good as government by others when properly limited, which was our ancient Athenian constitution at the time when the Persians made their attack on Hellas, or, speaking more correctly, on the whole continent of Europe. There were four classes, arranged according to a property census, and reverence was our queen and mistress, and made us willing to live in obedience to the laws which then prevailed. Also the vastness of the Persian armament, both by sea and on land, caused a helpless terror, which made us more and more the servants of our rulers and of the laws ; and for all these reasons an exceeding harmony prevailed among us. About ten years before the naval engagement at Salamis, Datis came, leading a Persian host by command of Darius, which was expressly directed against the Athenians and Eretrians, having orders to carry them away captive ; and these orders he was to execute under pain of death. Now Datis and his myriads soon became complete masters of Eretria, and he sent a fearful report to Athens that no Eretrian had escaped him ; for the soldiers of Datis had joined hands and netted the whole of Eretria. And this report, whether well or ill founded, was terrible to all the Hellenes, and above all to the Athenians, and they dispatched embassies in all directions, but no one was willing to come to their relief, with the exception of the Lacedaemonians ; and they, either because they were detained by the Messenian war, which was then going on, or for some other reason of which we are not told, came a day too late for the battle of Marathon. After a while, the news arrived of mighty preparations being made, and innumerable threats came from the king. Then, as time went on, a rumour reached us that Darius had died, and that his son, who was young and hot-headed, had come to the throne and was persisting in his design. The Athenians were under the impression that the whole expedition was directed against them, in consequence of the battle of Marathon ; and hearing of the bridge over the Hellespont, and the canal of Athos, and the host of ships, considering that there was no salvation for them either by land or by sea, for there was no one to help them, and remembering that in the first expedition, when the Persians destroyed Eretria, no one came to their help, or would risk the danger of an alliance with them, they thought that this would happen again, at least on land ; nor, when they looked to the sea, could they descry any hope of salvation ; for they were attacked by a thousand vessels and more. One chance of safety remained, slight indeed and desperate, but their only one. They saw that on the former occasion they had gained a seemingly impossible victory, and borne up by this hope, they found that their only refuge was in themselves and in the GODS. All these things created in them the spirit of friendship ; there was the fear of the moment, and there was that higher fear, which they had acquired by obedience to their ancient laws, and which I have several times in the preceding discourse called reverence, of which the good man ought to be a willing servant, and of which the coward is independent and fearless. If this fear had not possessed them, they would never have met the enemy, or defended their temples and sepulchres and their country, and everything that was near and dear to them, as they did ; but little by little they would have been all scattered and dispersed. LAWS BOOK III
Ath. In the first place, let us speak of the laws about music — that is to say, such music as then existed — in order that we may trace the growth of the excess of freedom from the beginning. Now music was early divided among us into certain kinds and manners. One sort consisted of prayers to the GODS, which were called hymns ; and there was another and opposite sort called lamentations, and another termed paeans, and another, celebrating the birth of Dionysus, called, I believe, “dithyrambs.” And they used the actual word “laws,” or nomoi, for another kind of song ; and to this they added the term “citharoedic.” All these and others were duly distinguished, nor were the performers allowed to confuse one style of music with another. And the authority which determined and gave judgment, and punished the disobedient, was not expressed in a hiss, nor in the most unmusical shouts of the multitude, as in our days, nor in applause and clapping of hands. But the directors of public instruction insisted that the spectators should listen in silence to the end ; and boys and their tutors, and the multitude in general, were kept quiet by a hint from a stick. Such was the good order which the multitude were willing to observe ; they would never have dared to give judgment by noisy cries. And then, as time went on, the poets themselves introduced the reign of vulgar and lawless innovation. They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what is just and lawful in music ; raging like Bacchanals and possessed with inordinate delights-mingling lamentations with hymns, and paeans with dithyrambs ; imitating the sounds of the flute on the lyre, and making one general confusion ; ignorantly affirming that music has no truth, and, whether good or bad, can only be judged of rightly by the pleasure of the hearer. And by composing such licentious works, and adding to them words as licentious, they have inspired the multitude with lawlessness and boldness, and made them fancy that they can judge for themselves about melody and song. And in this way the theatres from being mute have become vocal, as though they had understanding of good and bad in music and poetry ; and instead of an aristocracy, an evil sort of theatrocracy has grown up. For if the democracy which judged had only consisted of educated persons, no fatal harm would have been done ; but in music there first arose the universal conceit of omniscience and general lawlessness ; — freedom came following afterwards, and men, fancying that they knew what they did not know, had no longer any fear, and the absence of fear begets shamelessness. For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty ? LAWS BOOK III
Ath. Consequent upon this freedom comes the other freedom, of disobedience to rulers ; and then the attempt to escape the control and exhortation of father, mother, elders, and when near the end, the control of the laws also ; and at the very end there is the contempt of oaths and pledges, and no regard at all for the GODS — herein they exhibit and imitate the old so called Titanic nature, and come to the same point as the Titans when they rebelled against God, leading a life of endless evils. But why have I said all this ? I ask, because the argument ought to be pulled up from time to time, and not be allowed to run away, but held with bit and bridle, and then we shall not, as the proverb says, fall off our ass. Let us then once more ask the question, To what end has all this been said ? LAWS BOOK III
Ath. That when there has been a contest for power, those who gain the upper hand so entirely monopolize the government, as to refuse all share to the defeated party and their descendants — they live watching one another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that some one who has a recollection of former wrongs will come into power and rise up against them. Now, according to our view, such governments are not polities at all, nor are laws right which are passed for the good of particular classes and not for the good of the whole state. States which have such laws are not polities but parties, and their notions of justice are simply unmeaning. I say this, because I am going to assert that we must not entrust the government in your state to any one because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage, such as strength, or stature, or again birth : but he who is most obedient to the laws of the state, he shall win the palm ; and to him who is victorious in the first degree shall be given the highest office and chief ministry of the gods ; and the second to him who bears the second palm ; and on a similar principle shall all the other be assigned to those who come next in order. And when I call the rulers servants or ministers of the law, I give them this name not for the sake of novelty, but because I certainly believe that upon such service or ministry depends the well- or ill-being of the state. For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin ; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the GODS can confer. LAWS BOOK IV
Ath. Then what life is agreeable to God, and becoming in his followers ? One only, expressed once for all in the old saying that “like agrees with like, with measure measure,” but things which have no measure agree neither with themselves nor with the things which have. Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man, as men commonly say (Protagoras) : the words are far more true of him. And he who would be dear to God must, as far as is possible, be like him and such as he is. Wherefore the temperate man is the friend of God, for he is like him ; and the intemperate man is unlike him, and different from him, and unjust. And the same applies to other things ; and this is the conclusion, which is also the noblest and truest of all sayings — that for the good man to offer sacrifice to the GODS, and hold converse with them by means of prayers and offerings and every kind of service, is the noblest and best of all things, and also the most conducive to a happy life, and very fit and meet. But with the bad man, the opposite of this is true : for the bad man has an impure soul, whereas the good is pure ; and from one who is polluted, neither good man nor God can without impropriety receive gifts. Wherefore the unholy do only waste their much service upon the GODS, but when offered by any holy man, such service is most acceptable to them. This is the mark at which we ought to aim. But what weapons shall we use, and how shall we direct them ? In the first place, we affirm that next after the Olympian GODS and the GODS of the State, honour should be given to the GODS below ; they should receive everything in even and of the second choice, and ill omen, while the odd numbers, and the first choice, and the things of lucky omen, are given to the GODS above, by him who would rightly hit the mark of piety. Next to these GODS, a wise man will do service to the demons or spirits, and then to the heroes, and after them will follow the private and ancestral GODS, who are worshipped as the law prescribes in the places which are sacred to them. Next comes the honour of living parents, to whom, as is meet, we have to pay the first and greatest and oldest of all debts, considering that all which a man has belongs to those who gave him birth and brought him up, and that he must do all that he can to minister to them, first, in his property, secondly, in his person, and thirdly, in his soul, in return for the endless care and travail which they bestowed upon him of old, in the days of his infancy, and which he is now to pay back to them when they are old and in the extremity of their need. And all his life long he ought never to utter, or to have uttered, an unbecoming word to them ; for of light and fleeting words the penalty is most severe ; Nemesis, the messenger of justice, is appointed to watch over all such matters. When they are angry and want to satisfy their feelings in word or deed, he should give way to them ; for a father who thinks that he has been wronged by his son may be reasonably expected to be very angry. At their death, the most moderate funeral is best, neither exceeding the customary expense, nor yet falling short of the honour which has been usually shown by the former generation to their parents. And let a man not forget to pay the yearly tribute of respect to the dead, honouring them chiefly by omitting nothing that conduces to a perpetual remembrance of them, and giving a reasonable portion of his fortune to the dead. Doing this, and living after this manner, we shall receive our reward from the GODS and those who are above us (i.e., the demons) ; and we shall spend our days for the most part in good hope. And how a man ought to order what relates to his descendants and his kindred and friends and fellow-citizens, and the rites of hospitality taught by Heaven, and the intercourse which arises out of all these duties, with a view to the embellishment and orderly regulation of his own life — these things, I say, the laws, as we proceed with them, will accomplish, partly persuading, and partly when natures do not yield to the persuasion of custom, chastising them by might and right, and will thus render our state, if the GODS co-operate with us, prosperous and happy. But of what has to be said, and must be said by the legislator who is of my way of thinking, and yet, if said in the form of law, would be out of place — of this I think that he may give a sample for the instruction of himself and of those for whom he is legislating ; and then when, as far as he is able, he has gone through all the preliminaries, he may proceed to the work of legislation. Now, what will be the form of such prefaces ? There may be a difficulty in including or describing them all under a single form, but I think that we may get some notion of them if we can guarantee one thing. LAWS BOOK IV
But before virtue the immortal GODS have placed the sweat of labour, and long and steep is the way thither, and rugged at first ; but when you have reached the top, although difficult before, it is then easy. LAWS BOOK IV
Cle. That I think is most true. And now, Stranger, without delay let us return to the argument, and, as people say in play, make a second and better beginning, if you please, with the principles which we have been laying down, which we never thought of regarding as a preamble before, but of which we may now make a preamble, and not merely consider them to be chance topics of discourse. Let us acknowledge, then, that we have a preamble. About the honour of the GODS and the respect of parents, enough has been already said ; and we may proceed to the topics which follow next in order, until the preamble is deemed by you to be complete ; and after that you shall go through the laws themselves. LAWS BOOK IV
Ath. I understand you to mean that we have made a sufficient preamble about GODS and demi-gods, and about parents living or dead ; and now you would have us bring the rest of the subject into the light of day ? LAWS BOOK IV
Athenian Stranger. Listen, all ye who have just now heard the laws about GODS, and about our dear forefathers : — Of all the things which a man has, next to the GODS, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. Now in every man there are two parts : the better and superior, which rules, and the worse and inferior, which serves ; and the ruling part of him is always to be preferred to the subject. Wherefore I am right in bidding every one next to the GODS, who are our masters, and those who in order follow them (i.e., the demons), to honour his own soul, which every one seems to honour, but no one honours as he ought ; for honour is a divine good, and no evil thing is honourable ; and he who thinks that he can honour the soul by word or gift, or any sort of compliance, without making her in any way better, seems to honour her, but honours her not at all. For example, every man, from his very boyhood, fancies that he is able to know everything, and thinks that he honours his soul by praising her, and he is very ready to let her do whatever she may like. But I mean to say that in acting thus he injures his soul, and is far from honouring her ; whereas, in our opinion, he ought to honour her as second only to the GODS. Again, when a man thinks that others are to be blamed, and not himself, for the errors which he has committed from time to time, and the many and great evils which befell him in consequence, and is always fancying himself to be exempt and innocent, he is under the idea that he is honouring his soul ; whereas the very reverse is the fact, for he is really injuring her. And when, disregarding the word and approval of the legislator, he indulges in pleasure, then again he is far from honouring her ; he only dishonours her, and fills her full of evil and remorse ; or when he does not endure to the end the labours and fears and sorrows and pains which the legislator approves, but gives way before them, then, by yielding, he does not honour the soul, but by all such conduct he makes her to be dishonourable ; nor when he thinks that life at any price is a good, does he honour her, but yet once more he dishonours her ; for the soul having a notion that the world below is all evil, he yields to her, and does not resist and teach or convince her that, for aught she knows, the world of the GODS below, instead of being evil, may be the greatest of all goods. Again, when any one prefers beauty to virtue, what is this but the real and utter dishonour of the soul ? For such a preference implies that the body is more honourable than the soul ; and this is false, for there is nothing of earthly birth which is more honourable than the heavenly, and he who thinks otherwise of the soul has no idea how greatly he undervalues this wonderful possession ; nor, again, when a person is willing, or not unwilling, to acquire dishonest gains, does he then honour his soul with gifts — far otherwise ; he sells her glory and honour for a small piece of gold ; but all the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. In a word, I may say that he who does not estimate the base and evil, the good and noble, according to the standard of the legislator, and abstain in every possible way from the one and practise the other to the utmost of his power, does not know that in all these respects he is most foully and disgracefully abusing his soul, which is the divinest part of man ; for no one, as I may say, ever considers that which is declared to be the greatest penalty of evil-doing — namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men, and growing like them to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad. And he who is joined to them must do and suffer what such men by nature do and say to one another — a suffering which is not justice but retribution ; for justice and the just are noble, whereas retribution is the suffering which waits upon injustice ; and whether a man escape or endure this, he is miserable — in the former case, because he is not cured ; while in the latter, he perishes in order that the rest of mankind may be saved. LAWS BOOK V
Speaking generally, our glory is to follow the better and improve the inferior, which is susceptible of improvement, as far as this is possible. And of all human possessions, the soul is by nature most inclined to avoid the evil, and track out and find the chief good ; which when a man has found, he should take up his abode with it during the remainder of his life. Wherefore the soul also is second (or next to God) in honour ; and third, as every one will perceive, comes the honour of the body in natural order. Having determined this, we have next to consider that there is a natural honour of the body, and that of honours some are true and some are counterfeit. To decide which are which is the business of the legislator ; and he, I suspect, would intimate that they are as follows : — Honour is not to be given to the fair body, or to the strong or the swift or the tall, or to the healthy body (although many may think otherwise), any more than to their opposites ; but the mean states of all these habits are by far the safest and most moderate ; for the one extreme makes the soul braggart and insolent, and the other, illiberal and base ; and money, and property, and distinction all go to the same tune. The excess of any of these things is apt to be a source of hatreds and divisions among states and individuals ; and the defect of them is commonly a cause of slavery. And, therefore, I would not have any one fond of heaping up riches for the sake of his children, in order that he may leave them as rich as possible. For the possession of great wealth is of no use, either to them or to the state. The condition of youth which is free from flattery, and at the same time not in need of the necessaries of life, is the best and most harmonious of all, being in accord and agreement with our nature, and making life to be most entirely free from sorrow. Let parents, then, bequeath to their children not a heap of riches, but the spirit of reverence. We, indeed, fancy that they will inherit reverence from us, if we rebuke them when they show a want of reverence. But this quality is not really imparted to them by the present style of admonition, which only tells them that the young ought always to be reverential. A sensible legislator will rather exhort the elders to reverence the younger, and above all to take heed that no young man sees or hears one of themselves doing or saying anything disgraceful ; for where old men have no shame, there young men will most certainly be devoid of reverence. The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time ; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice. He who honours his kindred, and reveres those who share in the same GODS and are of the same blood and family, may fairly expect that the GODS who preside over generation will be propitious to him, and will quicken his seed. And he who deems the services which his friends and acquaintances do for him, greater and more important than they themselves deem them, and his own favours to them less than theirs to him, will have their good-will in the intercourse of life. And surely in his relations to the state and his fellow citizens, he is by far the best, who rather than the Olympic or any other victory of peace or war, desires to win the palm of obedience to the laws of his country, and who, of all mankind, is the person reputed to have obeyed them best through life. In his relations to strangers, a man should consider that a contract is a most holy thing, and that all concerns and wrongs of strangers are more directly dependent on the protection of God, than wrongs done to citizens ; for the stranger, having no kindred and friends, is more to be pitied by GODS and men. Wherefore, also, he who is most able to avenge him is most zealous in his cause ; and he who is most able is the genius and the god of the stranger, who follow in the train of Zeus, the god of strangers. And for this reason, he who has a spark of caution in him, will do his best to pass through life without sinning against the stranger. And of offences committed, whether against strangers or fellow-countrymen, that against suppliants is the greatest. For the god who witnessed to the agreement made with the suppliant, becomes in a special manner the guardian of the sufferer ; and he will certainly not suffer unavenged. LAWS BOOK V
Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both to GODS and men ; and he who would be blessed and happy, should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he can be trusted ; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool. Neither condition is enviable, for the untrustworthy and ignorant has no friend, and as time advances he becomes known, and lays up in store for himself isolation in crabbed age when life is on the wane : so that, whether his children or friends are alive or not, he is equally solitary. — Worthy of honour is he who does no injustice, and of more than twofold honour, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any ; the first may count as one man, the second is worth many men, because he informs the rulers of the injustice of others. And yet more highly to be esteemed is he who co-operates with the rulers in correcting the citizens as far as he can — he shall be proclaimed the great and perfect citizen, and bear away the palm of virtue. The same praise may be given about temperance and wisdom, and all other goods which may be imparted to others, as well as acquired by a man for himself ; he who imparts them shall be honoured as the man of men, and he who is willing, yet is not able, may be allowed the second place ; but he who is jealous and will not, if he can help, allow others to partake in a friendly way of any good, is deserving of blame : the good, however, which he has, is not to be undervalued by us because it is possessed by him, but must be acquired by us also to the utmost of our power. Let every man, then, freely strive for the prize of virtue, and let there be no envy. For the unenvious nature increases the greatness of states — he himself contends in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man ; but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now every man should be valiant, but he should also be gentle. From the cruel, or hardly curable, or altogether incurable acts of injustice done to him by others, a man can only escape by fighting and defending himself and conquering, and by never ceasing to punish them ; and no man who is not of a noble spirit is able to accomplish this. As to the actions of those who do evil, but whose evil is curable, in the first place, let us remember that the unjust man is not unjust of his own free will. For no man of his own free will would choose to possess the greatest of evils, and least of all in the most honourable part of himself. And the soul, as we said, is of a truth deemed by all men the most honourable. In the soul, then, which is the most honourable part of him, no one, if he could help, would admit, or allow to continue the greatest of evils. The unrighteous and vicious are always to be pitied in any case ; and one can afford to forgive as well as pity him who is curable, and refrain and calm one’s anger, not getting into a passion, like a woman, and nursing ill-feeling. But upon him who is incapable of reformation and wholly evil, the vials of our wrath should be poured out ; wherefore I say that good men ought, when occasion demands, to be both gentle and passionate. LAWS BOOK V
Of all evils the greatest is one which in the souls of most men is innate, and which a man is always excusing in himself and never correcting ; mean, what is expressed in the saying that “Every man by nature is and ought to be his own friend.” Whereas the excessive love of self is in reality the source to each man of all offences ; for the lover is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the good, and the honourable, and thinks that he ought always to prefer himself to the truth. But he who would be a great man ought to regard, not himself or his interests, but what is just, whether the just act be his own or that of another. Through a similar error men are induced to fancy that their own ignorance is wisdom, and thus we who may be truly said to know nothing, think that we know all things ; and because we will not let others act for us in what we do not know, we are compelled to act amiss ourselves. Wherefore let every man avoid excess of self-love, and condescend to follow a better man than himself, not allowing any false shame to stand in the way. There are also minor precepts which are often repeated, and are quite as useful ; a man should recollect them and remind himself of them. For when a stream is flowing out, there should be water flowing in too ; and recollection flows in while wisdom is departing. Therefore I say that a man should refrain from excess either of laughter or tears, and should exhort his neighbour to do the same ; he should veil his immoderate sorrow or joy, and seek to behave with propriety, whether the genius of his good fortune remains with him, or whether at the crisis of his fate, when he seems to be mounting high and steep places, the GODS oppose him in some of his enterprises. Still he may ever hope, in the case of good men, that whatever afflictions are to befall them in the future God will lessen, and that present evils he will change for the better ; and as to the goods which are the opposite of these evils, he will not doubt that they will be added to them, and that they will be fortunate. Such should be men’s hopes, and such should be the exhortations with which they admonish one another, never losing an opportunity, but on every occasion distinctly reminding themselves and others of all these things, both in jest and earnest. LAWS BOOK V
Enough has now been said of divine matters, both as touching the practices which men ought to follow, and as to the sort of persons who they ought severally to be. But of human things we have not as yet spoken, and we must ; for to men we are discoursing and not to GODS. Pleasures and pains and desires are a part of human nature, and on them every mortal being must of necessity hang and depend with the most eager interest. And therefore we must praise the noblest life, not only as the fairest in appearance, but as being one which, if a man will only taste, and not, while still in his youth, desert for another, he will find to surpass also in the very thing which we all of us desire — I mean in having a greater amount of pleasure and less of pain during the whole of life. And this will be plain, if a man has a true taste of them, as will be quickly and clearly seen. But what is a true taste ? That we have to learn from the argument — the point being what is according to nature, and what is not according to nature. One life must be compared with another, the more pleasurable with the more painful, after this manner : — We desire to have pleasure, but we neither desire nor choose pain ; and the neutral state we are ready to take in exchange, not for pleasure but for pain ; and we also wish for less pain and greater pleasure, but less pleasure and greater pain we do not wish for ; and an equal balance of either we cannot venture to assert that we should desire. And all these differ or do not differ severally in number and magnitude and intensity and equality, and in the opposites of these when regarded as objects of choice, in relation to desire. And such being the necessary order of things, we wish for that life in which there are many great and intense elements of pleasure and pain, and in which the pleasures are in excess, and do not wish for that in which the opposites exceed ; nor, again, do we wish for that in which the clements of either are small and few and feeble, and the pains exceed. And when, as I said before, there is a balance of pleasure and pain in life, this is to be regarded by us as the balanced life ; while other lives are preferred by us because they exceed in what we like, or are rejected by us because they exceed in what we dislike. All the lives of men may be regarded by us as bound up in these, and we must also consider what sort of lives we by nature desire. And if we wish for any others, I say that we desire them only through some ignorance and inexperience of the lives which actually exist. LAWS BOOK V
How then can we rightly order the distribution of the land ? In the first place, the number of the citizens has to be determined, and also the number and size of the divisions into which they will have to be formed ; and the land and the houses will then have to be apportioned by us as fairly as we can. The number of citizens can only be estimated satisfactorily in relation to the territory and the neighbouring states. The territory must be sufficient to maintain a certain number of inhabitants in a moderate way of life — more than this is not required ; and the number of citizens should be sufficient to defend themselves against the injustice of their neighbours, and also to give them the power of rendering efficient aid to their neighbours when they are wronged. After having taken a survey of theirs and their neighbours’ territory, we will determine the limits of them in fact as well as in theory. And now, let us proceed to legislate with a view to perfecting the form and outline of our state. The number of our citizens shall be 5040 — this will be a convenient number ; and these shall be owners of the land and protectors of the allotment. The houses and the land will be divided in the same way, so that every man may correspond to a lot. Let the whole number be first divided into two parts, and then into three ; and the number is further capable of being divided into four or five parts, or any number of parts up to ten. Every legislator ought to know so much arithmetic as to be able to tell what number is most likely to be useful to all cities ; and we are going to take that number which contains the greatest and most regular and unbroken series of divisions. The whole of number has every possible division, and the number 5040 can be divided by exactly fifty-nine divisors, and ten of these proceed without interval from one to ten : this will furnish numbers for war and peace, and for all contracts and dealings, including taxes and divisions of the land. These properties of number should be ascertained at leisure by those who are bound by law to know them ; for they are true, and should be proclaimed at the foundation of the city, with a view to use. Whether the legislator is establishing a new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of GODS and temples — the temples which are to be built in each city, and the GODS or demi-gods after whom they are to be called — if he be a man of sense, he will make no change in anything which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or the God Ammon, or any ancient tradition has sanctioned in whatever manner, whether by apparitions or reputed inspiration of Heaven, in obedience to which mankind have established sacrifices in connection with mystic rites, either originating on the spot, or derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus or some other place, and on the strength of which traditions they have consecrated oracles and images, and altars and temples, and portioned out a sacred domain for each of them. The least part of all these ought not to be disturbed by the legislator ; but he should assign to the several districts some God, or demi-god, or hero, and, in the distribution of the soil, should give to these first their chosen domain and all things fitting, that the inhabitants of the several districts may meet at fixed times, and that they may readily supply their various wants, and entertain one another with sacrifices, and become friends and acquaintances ; for there is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should be known to one another. When not light but darkness and ignorance of each other’s characters prevails among them, no one will receive the honour of which he is deserving, or the power or the justice to which he is fairly entitled : wherefore, in every state, above all things, every man should take heed that he have no deceit in him, but that he be always true and simple ; and that no deceitful person take any advantage of him. LAWS BOOK V
The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying, that “Friends have all things in common.” Whether there is anywhere now, or will ever be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions, and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost — whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state which will be truer or better or more exalted in virtue. Whether such a state is governed by GODS or sons of GODS, one, or more than one, happy are the men who, living after this manner, dwell there ; and therefore to this we are to look for the pattern of the state, and to cling to this, and to seek with all our might for one which is like this. The state which we have now in hand, when created, will be nearest to immortality and the only one which takes the second place ; and after that, by the grace of God, we will complete the third one. And we will begin by speaking of the nature and origin of the second. LAWS BOOK V
Let the citizens at once distribute their land and houses, and not till the land in common, since a community of goods goes beyond their proposed origin, and nurture, and education. But in making the distribution, let the several possessors feel that their particular lots also belong to the whole city ; and seeing that the earth is their parent, let them tend her more carefully than children do their mother. For she is a goddess and their queen, and they are her mortal subjects. Such also are the feelings which they ought to entertain to the GODS and demi-gods of the country. And in order that the distribution may always remain, they ought to consider further that the present number of families should be always retained, and neither increased nor diminished. This may be secured for the whole city in the following manner : — Let the possessor of a lot leave the one of his children who is his best beloved, and one only, to be the heir of his dwelling, and his successor in the duty of ministering to the GODS, the state and the family, as well the living members of it as those who are departed when he comes into the inheritance ; but of his other children, if he have more than one, he shall give the females in marriage according to the law to be hereafter enacted, and the males he shall distribute as sons to those citizens who have no children and are disposed to receive them ; or if there should be none such, and particular individuals have too many children, male or female, or too few, as in the case of barrenness — in all these cases let the highest and most honourable magistracy created by us judge and determine what is to be done with the redundant or deficient, and devise a means that the number of 5040 houses shall always remain the same. There are many ways of regulating numbers ; for they in whom generation is affluent may be made to refrain, and, on the other hand, special care may be taken to increase the number of births by rewards and stigmas, or we may meet the evil by the elder men giving advice and administering rebuke to the younger — in this way the object may be attained. And if after all there be very great difficulty about the equal preservation of the 5040 houses, and there be an excess of citizens, owing to the too great love of those who live together, and we are at our wits’ end, there is still the old device often mentioned by us of sending out a colony, which will part friends with us, and be composed of suitable persons. If, on the other hand, there come a wave bearing a deluge of disease, or a plague of war, and the inhabitants become much fewer than the appointed number by reason of bereavement, we ought not to introduce citizens of spurious birth and education, if this can be avoided ; but even God is said not to be able to fight against necessity. LAWS BOOK V
Wherefore let us suppose this “high argument” of ours to address us in the following terms : — Best of men, cease not to honour according to nature similarity and equality and sameness and agreement, as regards number and every good and noble quality. And, above all, observe the aforesaid number 5040 throughout life ; in the second place, do not disparage the small and modest proportions of the inheritances which you received in the distribution, by buying and selling them to one another. For then neither will the God who gave you the lot be your friend, nor will the legislator ; and indeed the law declares to the disobedient that these are the terms upon which he may or may not take the lot. In the first place, the earth as he is informed is sacred to the GODS ; and in the next place, priests and priestesses will offer up prayers over a first, and second, and even a third sacrifice, that he who buys or sells the houses or lands which he has received, may suffer the punishment which he deserves ; and these their prayers they shall write down in the temples, on tablets of cypress-wood, for the instruction of posterity. Moreover they will set a watch over all these things, that they may be observed ; — the magistracy which has the sharpest eyes shall keep watch that any infringement of these commands may be discovered and punished as offences both against the law and the God. How great is the benefit of such an ordinance to all those cities, which obey and are administered accordingly, no bad man can ever know, as the old proverb says ; but only a man of experience and good habits. For in such an order of things there will not be much opportunity for making money ; no man either ought, or indeed will be allowed, to exercise any ignoble occupation, of which the vulgarity is a matter of reproach to a freeman, and should never want to acquire riches by any such means. LAWS BOOK V
It would be well that every man should come to the colony having all things equal ; but seeing that this is not possible, and one man will have greater possessions than another, for many reasons and in particular in order to preserve equality in special crises of the state, qualifications of property must be unequal, in order that offices and contributions and distributions may be proportioned to the value of each person’s wealth, and not solely to the virtue of his ancestors or himself, nor yet to the strength and beauty of his person, but also to the measure of his wealth or poverty ; and so by a law of inequality, which will be in proportion to his wealth, he will receive honours and offices as equally as possible, and there will be no quarrels and disputes. To which end there should be four different standards appointed according to the amount of property : there should be a first and a second and a third and a fourth class, in which the citizens will be placed, and they will be called by these or similar names : they may continue in the same rank, or pass into another in any individual case, on becoming richer from being, poorer, or poorer from being richer. The form of law which I should propose as the natural sequel would be as follows : — In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues — not faction, but rather distraction ; — here should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty, nor, again, excess of wealth, for both are productive of both these evils. Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or wealth. Let the limit of poverty be the value of the lot ; this ought to be preserved, and no ruler, nor any one else who aspires after a reputation for virtue, will allow the lot to be impaired in any case. This the legislator gives as a measure, and he will permit a man to acquire double or triple, or as much as four times the amount of this. But if a person have yet greater riches, whether he has found them, or they have been given to him, or he has made them in business, or has acquired by any stroke of fortune that which is in excess of the measure, if he give back the surplus to the state, and to the GODS who are the patrons of the state, he shall suffer no penalty or loss of reputation ; but if he disobeys this our law any one who likes may inform against him and receive half the value of the excess, and the delinquent shall pay a sum equal to the excess out of his own property, and the other half of the excess shall belong to the GODS. And let every possession of every man, with the exception of the lot, be publicly registered before the magistrates whom the law appoints, so that all suits about money may be easy and quite simple. LAWS BOOK V
The next thing to be noted is, that the city should be placed as nearly as possible in the centre of the country ; we should choose a place which possesses what is suitable for a city, and this may easily be imagined and described. Then we will divide the city into twelve portions, first founding temples to Hestia, to Zeus and to Athene, in a spot which we will call the Acropolis, and surround with a circular wall, making the division of the entire city and country radiate from this point. The twelve portions shall be equalized by the provision that those which are of good land shall be smaller. while those of inferior quality shall be larger. The number of the lots shall be 5040, and each of them shall be divided into two, and every allotment shall be composed of two such sections ; one of land near the city, the other of land which is at a distance. This arrangement shall be carried out in the following manner : The section which is near the city shall be added to that which is on borders, and form one lot, and the portion which is next nearest shall be added to the portion which is next farthest ; and so of the rest. Moreover, in the two sections of the lots the same principle of equalization of the soil ought to be maintained ; the badness and goodness shall be compensated by more and less. And the legislator shall divide the citizens into twelve parts, and arrange the rest of their property, as far as possible, so as to form twelve equal parts ; and there shall be a registration of all. After this they shall assign twelve lots to twelve GODS, and call them by their names, and dedicate to each God their several portions, and call the tribes after them. And they shall distribute the twelve divisions of the city in the same way in which they divided the country ; and every man shall have two habitations, one in the centre of the country, and the other at the extremity. Enough of the manner of settlement. LAWS BOOK V
Ath. Let us assume, then, that there ought to be servants of the temples, and priests and priestesses. There must also be superintendents of roads and buddings, who will have a care of men, that they may do no harm, and also of beasts, both within the enclosure and in the suburbs. Three kinds of officers will thus have to be appointed, in order that the city may be suitably provided according to her needs. Those who have the care of the city shall be called wardens of the city ; and those who have the care of the agora shall be called wardens of the agora ; and those who have the care of the temples shall be called priests. Those who hold hereditary offices as priests or priestesses, shall not be disturbed ; but if there be few or none such, as is probable at the foundation of a new city, priests and priestesses shall be appointed to be servants of the GODS who have no servants. Some of our officers shall be elected, and others appointed by lot, those who are of the people and those who are not of the people mingling in a friendly manner in every place and city, that the state may be as far as possible of one mind. The officers of the temples shall be appointed by lot ; in this way their election will be committed to God, that he may do what is agreeable to him. And he who obtains a lot shall undergo a scrutiny, first, as to whether he is sound of body and of legitimate birth ; and in the second place, in order to show that he is of a perfectly pure family, not stained with homicide or any similar impiety in his own person, and also that his father and mother have led a similar unstained life. Now the laws about all divine things should be brought from Delphi, and interpreters appointed, under whose direction they should be used. The tenure of the priesthood should always be for a year and no longer ; and he who will duly execute the sacred office, according to the laws of religion, must be not less than sixty years of age — the laws shall be the same about priestesses. As for the interpreters, they shall be appointed thus : — Let the twelve tribes be distributed into groups of four, and let each group select four, one out of each tribe within the group, three times ; and let the three who have the greatest number of votes (out of the twelve appointed by each group), after undergoing a scrutiny, nine in all, be sent to Delphi, in order that the God may return one out of each triad ; their age shall be the same as that of the priests, and the scrutiny of them shall be conducted in the same manner ; let them be interpreters for life, and when any one dies let the four tribes select another from the tribe of the deceased. Moreover, besides priests and interpreters, there must be treasurers, who will take charge of the property of the several temples, and of the sacred domains, and shall have authority over the produce and the letting of them ; and three of them shall be chosen from the highest classes for the greater temples, and two for the lesser, and one for the least of all ; the manner of their election and the scrutiny of them shall be the same as that of the generals. This shall be the order of the temples. LAWS BOOK VI
Let everything have a guard as far as possible. Let the defence of the city be commited to the generals, and taxiarchs, and hipparchs, and phylarchs, and prytanes, and the wardens of the city, and of the agora, when the election of them has been completed. The defence of the country shall be provided for as follows : — The entire land has been already distributed into twelve as nearly as possible equal parts, and let the tribe allotted to a division provide annually for it five wardens of the country and commanders of the watch ; and let each body of five have the power of selecting twelve others out of the youth of their own tribe — these shall be not less than twenty — five years of age, and not more than thirty. And let there be allotted to them severally every month the various districts, in order that they may all acquire knowledge and experience of the whole country. The term of service for commanders and for watchers shall continue during two years. After having had their stations allotted to them, they will go from place to place in regular order, making their round from left to right as their commanders direct them ; (when I speak of going to the right, I mean that they are to go to the east). And at the commencement of the second year, in order that as many as possible of the guards may not only get a knowledge of the country at any one season of the year, but may also have experience of the manner in which different places are affected at different seasons of the year, their then commanders shall lead them again towards the left, from place to place in succession, until they have completed the second year. In the third year other wardens of the country shall be chosen and commanders of the watch, five for each division, who are to be the superintendents of the bands of twelve. While on service at each station, their attention shall be directed to the following points : — In the first place, they shall see that the country is well protected against enemies ; they shall trench and dig wherever this is required, and, as far as they can, they shall by fortifications keep off the evil-disposed, in order to prevent them from doing any harm to the country or the property ; they shall use the beasts of burden and the labourers whom they find on the spot : these will be their instruments whom they will superintend, taking them, as far as possible, at the times when they are not engaged in their regular business. They shall make every part of the country inaccessible to enemies, and as accessible as possible to friends ; there shall be ways for man and beasts of burden and for cattle, and they shall take care to have them always as smooth as they can ; and shall provide against the rains doing harm instead of good to the land, when they come down from the mountains into the hollow dells ; and shall keep in the overflow by the help of works and ditches, in order that the valleys, receiving and drinking up the rain from heaven, and providing fountains and streams in the fields and regions which lie underneath, may furnish even to the dry places plenty of good water. The fountains of water, whether of rivers or of springs, shall be ornamented with plantations and buildings for beauty ; and let them bring together the streams in subterraneous channels, and make all things plenteous ; and if there be a sacred grove or dedicated precinct in the neighbourhood, they shall conduct the water to the actual temples of the GODS, and so beautify them at all seasons of the year. Everywhere in such places the youth shall make gymnasia for themselves, and warm baths for the aged, placing by them abundance of dry wood, for the benefit of those labouring under disease — there the weary frame of the rustic, worn with toil, will receive a kindly welcome, far better than he would at the hands of a not over-wise doctor. LAWS BOOK VI
The wardens and the overseers of the country, while on their two years service, shall have common meals at their several stations, and shall all live together ; and he who is absent from the common meal, or sleeps out, if only for one day or night, unless by order of his commanders, or by reason of absolute necessity, if the five denounce him and inscribe his name the agora as not having kept his guard, let him be deemed to have betrayed the city, as far as lay in his power, and let him be disgraced and beaten with impunity by any one who meets him and is willing to punish him. If any of the commanders is guilty of such an irregularity, the whole company of sixty shall see to it, and he who is cognizant of the offence, and does not bring the offender to trial, shall be amenable to the same laws as the younger offender himself, and shall pay a heavier fine, and be incapable of ever commanding the young. The guardians of the law are to be careful inspectors of these matters, and shall either prevent or punish offenders. Every man should remember the universal rule, that he who is not a good servant will not be a good master ; a man should pride himself more upon serving well than upon commanding well : first upon serving the laws, which is also the service of the GODS ; in the second place, upon having. served ancient and honourable men in the days of his youth. Furthermore, during the two years in which any one is a warden of the country, his daily food ought to be of a simple and humble kind. When the twelve have been chosen, let them and the five meet together, and determine that they will be their own servants, and, like servants, will not have other slaves and servants for their own use, neither will they use those of the villagers and husbandmen for their private advantage, but for the public service only ; and in general they should make up their minds to live independently by themselves, servants of each other and of themselves. Further, at all seasons of the year, summer and winter alike, let them be under arms and survey minutely the whole country ; thus they will at once keep guard, and at the same time acquire a perfect knowledge of every locality. There can be no more important kind of information than the exact knowledge of a man’s own country ; and for this as well as for more general reasons of pleasure and advantage, hunting with dogs and other kinds of sports should be pursued by the young. The service to whom this is committed may be called the secret police, or wardens of the country ; the name does not much signify, but every one who has the safety of the state at heart will use his utmost diligence in this service. LAWS BOOK VI
Let us proceed to another class of laws, beginning with their foundation in religion. And we must first return to the number 5040 — the entire number had, and has, a great many convenient divisions, and the number of the tribes which was a twelfth part of the whole, being correctly formed by 21 X 20 (5040/(21 X 20), i.e., 5040/420=12), also has them. And not only is the whole number divisible by twelve, but also the number of each tribe is divisible by twelve. Now every portion should be regarded by us as a sacred gift of Heaven, corresponding to the months and to the revolution of the universe. Every city has a guiding and sacred principle given by nature, but in some the division or distribution has been more right than in others, and has been more sacred and fortunate. In our opinion, nothing can be more right than the selection of the number 5040, which may be divided by all numbers from one to twelve with the single exception of eleven, and that admits of a very easy correction ; for if, turning to the dividend (5040), we deduct two families, the defect in the division is cured. And the truth of this may be easily proved when we have leisure. But for the present, trusting to the mere assertion of this principle, let us divide the state ; and assigning to each portion some God or son of a God, let us give them altars and sacred rites, and at the altars let us hold assemblies for sacrifice twice in the month — twelve assemblies for the tribes, and twelve for the city, according to their divisions ; the first in honour of the GODS and divine things, and the second to promote friendship and “better acquaintance,” as the phrase is, and every sort of good fellowship with one another. For people must be acquainted with those into whose families and whom they marry and with those to whom they give in marriage ; in such matters, as far as possible, a man should deem it all important to avoid a mistake, and with this serious purpose let games be instituted in which youths and maidens shall dance together, seeing one another and being seen naked, at a proper age, and on a suitable occasion, not transgressing the rules of modesty. LAWS BOOK VI
The directors of choruses will be the superintendents and regulators of these games, and they, together with the guardians of the law, will legislate in any matters which we have omitted ; for, as we said, where there are numerous and minute details, the legislator must leave out something. And the annual officers who have experience, and know what is wanted, must make arrangements and improvements year by year, until such enactments and provisions are sufficiently determined. A ten years experience of sacrifices and dances, if extending to all particulars, will be quite sufficient ; and if the legislator be alive they shall communicate with him, but if he be dead then the several officers shall refer the omissions which come under their notice to the guardians of the law, and correct them, until all is perfect ; and from that time there shall be no more change, and they shall establish and use the new laws with the others which the legislator originally gave them, and of which they are never, if they can help, to change aught ; or, if some necessity overtakes them, the magistrates must be called into counsel, and the whole people, and they must go to all the oracles of the GODS ; and if they are all agreed, in that case they may make the change, but if they are not agreed, by no manner of means, and any one who dissents shall prevail, as the law ordains. LAWS BOOK VI
Let this then be our exhortation concerning marriage, and let us remember what was said before — that a man should cling to immortality, and leave behind him children’s children to be the servants of God in his place for ever. All this and much more may be truly said by way of prelude about the duty of marriage. But if a man will not listen and remains unsocial and alien among his fellow-citizens, and is still unmarried at thirty-five years of age, let him pay a yearly fine ; — he who of the highest class shall pay a fine of a hundred drachmae, and he who is of the second dass a fine of seventy drachmae ; the third class shall pay sixty drachmae, and the fourth thirty drachmae, and let the money be sacred to Here ; he who does not pay the fine annually shall owe ten times the sum, which the treasurer of the goddess shall exact ; and if he fails in doing so, let him be answerable and give an account of the. money at his audit. He who refuses to marry shall be thus punished in money, and also be deprived of all honour which the younger show to the elder ; let no young man voluntarily obey him, and if he attempt to punish any one, let every one come to the rescue and defend the injured person, and he who is present and does not come to the rescue, shall be pronounced by the law to be a coward and a bad citizen. Of the marriage portion I have already spoken ; and again I say for the instruction of poor men that he who neither gives nor receives a dowry on account of poverty, has a compensation ; for the citizens of our state are provided with the necessaries of life, and wives will be less likely to be insolent, and husbands to be mean and subservient to them on account of property. And he who obeys this law will do a noble action ; but he who will not obey, and gives or receives more than fifty drachmae as the price of the marriage garments if he be of the lowest, or more than a mina, or a mina and-a-half, if he be of the third or second classes, or two minae if he be of the highest class, shall owe to the public treasury a similar sum, and that which is given or received shall be sacred to Here and Zeus ; and let the treasurers of these GODS exact the money, as was said before about the unmarried — that the treasurers of Here were to exact the money, or pay the fine themselves. LAWS BOOK VI
The betrothal by a father shall be valid in the first degree, that by a grandfather in the second degree, and in the third degree, betrothal by brothers who have the same father ; but if there are none of these alive, the betrothal by a mother shall be valid in like manner ; in cases of unexampled fatality, the next of kin and the guardians shall have authority. What are to be the rites before marriages, or any other sacred acts, relating either to future, present, or past marriages, shall be referred to the interpreters ; and he who follows their advice may be satisfied. Touching the marriage festival, they shall assemble not more than five male and five female friends of both families ; and a like number of members of the family of either sex, and no man shall spend more than his means will allow ; he who is of the richest class may spend a mina — he who is of the second, half a mina, and in the same proportion as the census of each decreases : all men shall praise him who is obedient to the law ; but he who is disobedient shall be punished by the guardians of the law as a man wanting in true taste, and uninstructed in the laws of bridal song. Drunkenness is always improper, except at the festivals of the God who gave wine ; and peculiarly dangerous, when a man is engaged in the business of marriage ; at such a crisis of their lives a bride and bridegroom ought to have all their wits about them — they ought to take care that their offspring may be born of reasonable beings ; for on what day or night Heaven will give them increase, who can say ? Moreover, they ought not to begetting children when their bodies are dissipated by intoxication, but their offspring should be compact and solid, quiet and compounded properly ; whereas the drunkard is all abroad in all his actions, and beside himself both in body and soul. Wherefore, also, the drunken man is bad and unsteady in sowing the seed of increase, and is likely to beget offspring who will be unstable and untrustworthy, and cannot be expected to walk straight either in body or mind. Hence during the whole year and all his life long, and especially while he is begetting children, ought to take care and not intentionally do what is injurious to health, or what involves insolence and wrong ; for he cannot help leaving the impression of himself on the souls and bodies of his offspring, and he begets children in every way inferior. And especially on the day and night of marriage should a man abstain from such things. For the beginning, which is also a God dwelling in man, preserves all things, if it meet with proper respect from each individual. He who marries is further to consider that one of the two houses in the lot is the nest and nursery of his young, and there he is to marry and make a home for himself and bring up his children, going away from his father and mother. For in friendships there must be some degree of desire, in order to cement and bind together diversities of character ; but excessive intercourse not having the desire which is created by time, insensibly dissolves friendships from a feeling of satiety ; wherefore a man and his wife shall leave to his and her father and mother their own dwelling-places, and themselves go as to a colony and dwell there, and visit and be visited by their parents ; and they shall beget and bring up children, handing on the torch of life from one generation to another, and worshipping the GODS according to law for ever. LAWS BOOK VI
Ath. The temples are to be placed all round the agora, and the whole city built on the heights in a circle, for the sake of defence and for the sake of purity. Near the temples are to be placed buildings for the magistrates and the courts of law ; in these plaintiff and defendant will receive their due, and the places will be regarded as most holy, partly because they have to do with the holy things : and partly because they are the dwelling-places of holy GODS : and in them will be held the courts in which cases of homicide and other trials of capital offenses may fitly take place. As to the walls, Megillus, I agree with Sparta in thinking that they should be allowed to sleep in the earth, and that we should not attempt to disinter them ; there is a poetical saying, which is finely expressed, that “walls ought to be of steel and iron, and not of earth ; besides, how ridiculous of us to be sending out our young men annually into the country to dig and to trench, and to keep off the enemy by fortifications, under the idea that they are not to be allowed to set foot in our territory, and then, that we should surround ourselves with a wall, which, in the first place, is by no means conducive to the health of cities, and is also apt to produce a certain effeminacy in the minds of the inhabitants, inviting men to run thither instead of repelling their enemies, and leading them to imagine that their safety is due not to their keeping guard day and night, but that when they are protected by walls and gates, then they may sleep in safety ; as if they were not meant to labour, and did not know that true repose comes from labour, and that disgraceful indolence and a careless temper of mind is only the renewal of trouble. But if men must have walls, the private houses ought to be so arranged from the first that the whole city may be one wall, having all the houses capable of defence by reason of their uniformity and equality towards the streets. The form of the city being that of a single dwelling will have an agreeable aspect, and being easily guarded will be infinitely better for security. Until the original building is completed, these should be the principal objects of the inhabitants ; and the wardens of the city should superintend the work, and should impose a fine on him who is negligent ; and in all that relates to the city they should have a care of cleanliness, and not allow a private person to encroach upon any public property either by buildings or excavations. Further, they ought to take care that the rains from heaven flow off easily, and of any other matters which may have to be administered either within or without the city. The guardians of the law shall pass any further enactments which their experience may show to be necessary, and supply any other points in which the law may be deficient. And now that these matters, and the buildings about the agora, and the gymnasia, and places of instruction, and theatres, are all ready and waiting for scholars and spectators, let us proceed to the subjects which follow marriage in the order of legislation. LAWS BOOK VI
Ath. Again, the practice of men sacrificing one another still exists among many nations ; while, on the other hand, we hear of other human beings who did not even venture to taste the flesh of a cow and had no animal sacrifices, but only cakes and fruits dipped in honey, and similar pure offerings, but no flesh of animals ; from these they abstained under the idea that they ought not to eat them, and might not stain the altars of the GODS with blood. For in those days men are said to have lived a sort of Orphic life, having the use of all lifeless things, but abstaining from all living things. LAWS BOOK VI
Ath. I see that among men all things depend upon three wants and desires, of which the end is virtue, if they are rightly led by them, or the opposite if wrongly. Now these are eating and drinking, which begin at birth — every animal has a natural desire for them, and is violently excited, and rebels against him who says that he must not satisfy all his pleasures and appetites, and get rid of all the corresponding pains — and the third and greatest and sharpest want and desire breaks out last, and is the fire of sexual lust, which kindles in men every species of wantonness and madness. And these three disorders we must endeavour to master by the three great principles of fear and law and right reason ; turning them away from that which is called pleasantest to the best, using the Muses and the GODS who preside over contests to extinguish their increase and influx. LAWS BOOK VI
Ath. The affection both of the Bacchantes and of the children is an emotion of fear, which springs out of an evil habit of the soul. And when some one applies external agitation to affections of this sort, the motion coming from without gets the better of the terrible and violent internal one, and produces a peace and calm in the soul, and quiets the restless palpitation of the heart, which is a thing much to be desired, sending the children to sleep, and making the Bacchantes, although they remain awake, to dance to the pipe with the help of the GODS to whom they offer acceptable sacrifices, and producing in them a sound mind, which takes the place of their frenzy. And, to express what I mean in a word, there is a good deal to be said in favour of this treatment. LAWS BOOK VII
Education has two branches — one of gymnastic, which is concerned with the body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul. And gymnastic has also two branches — dancing and wrestling ; and one sort of dancing imitates musical recitation, and aims at preserving dignity and freedom, the other aims at producing health, agility, and beauty in the limbs and parts of the body, giving the proper flexion and extension to each of them, a harmonious motion being diffused everywhere, and forming a suitable accompaniment to the dance. As regards wrestling, the tricks which Antaeus and Cercyon devised in their systems out of a vain spirit of competition, or the tricks of boxing which Epeius or Amycus invented, are useless and unsuitable for war, and do not deserve to have much said about them ; but the art of wrestling erect and keeping free the neck and hands and sides, working with energy and constancy, with a composed strength, and for the sake of health — these are always useful, and are not to be neglected, but to be enjoined alike on masters and scholars, when we reach that part of legislation ; and we will desire the one to give their instructions freely, and the others to receive them thankfully. Nor, again, must we omit suitable imitations of war in our choruses ; here in Crete you have the armed dances if the Curetes, and the Lacedaemonians have those of the Dioscuri. And our virgin lady, delighting in the amusement of the dance, thought it not fit to amuse herself with empty hands ; she must be clothed in a complete suit of armour, and in this attire go through the dance ; and youths and maidens should in every respect imitate her, esteeming highly the favour of the Goddess, both with a view to the necessities of war, and to festive occasions : it will be right also for the boys, until such time as they go out to war, to make processions and supplications to all the GODS in goodly array, armed and on horseback, in dances, and marches, fast or slow, offering up prayers to the GODS and to the sons of GODS ; and also engaging in contests and preludes of contests, if at all, with these objects : For these sorts of exercises, and no others, are useful both in peace and war, and are beneficial alike to states and to private houses. But other labours and sports and exercises of the body are unworthy of freemen, O Megillus and Cleinias. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. To consecrate every sort of dance or melody. First we should ordain festivals — calculating for the year what they ought to be, and at what time, and in honour of what GODS, sons of GODS, and heroes they ought to be celebrated ; and, in the next place, what hymns ought to be sung at the several sacrifices, and with what dances the particular festival is to be honoured. This has to be arranged at first by certain persons, and, when arranged, the whole assembly of the citizens are to offer sacrifices and libations to the Fates and all the other GODS, and to consecrate the several odes to gods and heroes : and if any one offers any other hymns or dances to any one of the GODS, the priests and priestesses, acting in concert with the guardians of the law, shall, with the sanction of religion and the law, exclude him, and he who is excluded, if he do not submit, shall be liable all his life long to have a suit of impiety brought against him by any one who likes. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. But what shall be our next musical law or type ? Ought not prayers to be offered up to the GODS when we sacrifice ? LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. And our third law, if I am not mistaken, will be to the effect that our poets, understanding prayers to be requests which we make to the GODS, will take especial heed that they do not by mistake ask for evil instead of good. To make such a prayer would surely be too ridiculous. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. Then it will be proper to have hymns and praises of the GODS, intermingled with prayers ; and after the GODS prayers and praises should be offered in like manner to demigods and heroes, suitable to their several characters. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. At present they think that their serious suits should be for the sake of their sports, for they deem war a serious. pursuit, which must be managed well for the sake of peace ; but the truth is, that there neither is, nor has been, nor ever will be, either amusement or instruction in any degree worth, speaking of in war, which is nevertheless deemed by us to be the most serious of our pursuits. And therefore, as we say, every one of us should live the life of peace as long and as well as he can. And what is the right way of living ? Are we to live in sports always ? If so, in what kind of sports ? We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the GODS, and to defend himself against his enemies and conquer them in battle. The type of song or dance by which he will propitiate them has been described, and the paths along which he is to proceed have been cut for him. He will go forward in the spirit of the poet : LAWS BOOK VII
Telemachus, some things thou wilt thyself find in thy heart, but other things God will suggest ; for I deem that thou wast not brought up without the will of the GODS. LAWS BOOK VII
And this ought to be the view of our alumni ; they ought to think that what has been said is enough for them, and that any other things their Genius and God will suggest to them — he will tell them to whom, and when, and to what GODS severally they are to sacrifice and perform dances, and how they may propitiate the deities, and live according to the appointment of nature ; being for the most part puppets, but having some little share of reality. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. Nay, Megillus, be not amazed, but forgive me : — I was comparing them with the GODS ; and under that feeling I spoke. Let us grant, if you wish, that the human race is not to be despised, but is worthy of some consideration. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. What will be the manner of life among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts to others, and whose husbandry, committed to slaves paying a part of the produce, brings them a return sufficient for men living temperately ; who, moreover, have common tables in which the men are placed apart, and near them are the common tables of their families, of their daughters and mothers, which day by day, the officers, male and female, are to inspect — they shall see to the behaviour of the company, and so dismiss them ; after which the presiding magistrate and his attendants shall honour with libations those GODS to whom that day and night are dedicated, and then go home ? To men whose lives are thus ordered, is there no work remaining to be done which is necessary and fitting, but shall each one of them live fattening like a beast ? Such a life is neither just nor honourable, nor can he who lives it fail of meeting his due ; and the due reward of the idle fatted beast is that he should be torn in pieces by some other valiant beast whose fatness is worn down by brave deeds and toil. These regulations, if we duly consider them, will never be exactly carried into execution under present circumstances, nor as long as women and children and houses and all other things are the private property of individuals ; but if we can attain the second-best form of polity, we shall be very well off. And to men living under this second polity there remains a work to be accomplished which is far from being small or insignificant, but is the greatest of all works, and ordained by the appointment of righteous law. For the life which may be truly said to be concerned with the virtue of body and soul is twice, or more than twice, as full of toil and trouble as the pursuit after Pythian and Olympic victories, which debars a man from every employment of life. For there ought to be no bye-work interfering with the greater work of providing the necessary exercise and nourishment for the body, and instruction and education for the soul. Night and day are not long enough for the accomplishment of their perfection and consummation ; and therefore to this end all freemen ought to arrange the way in which they will spend their time during the whole course of the day, from morning till evening and from evening till the morning of the next sunrise. There may seem to be some impropriety in the legislator determining minutely the numberless details of the management of the house, including such particulars as the duty of wakefulness in those who are to be perpetual watchmen of the whole city ; for that any citizen should continue during the whole of any night in sleep, instead of being seen by all his servants, always the first to awake and get up — this, whether the regulation is to be called a law or only a practice, should be deemed base and unworthy of a freeman ; also that the mistress of the house should be awakened by her handmaidens instead of herself first awakening them, is what the slaves, male and female, and the serving-boys, and, if that were possible, everybody and everything in the house should regard as base. If they rise early, they may all of them do much of their public and of their household business, as magistrates in the city, and masters and mistresses in their private houses, before the sun is up. Much sleep is not required by nature, either for our souls or bodies, or for the actions which they perform. For no one who is asleep is good for anything, any more than if he were dead ; but he of us who has the most regard for life and reason keeps awake as long he can, reserving only so much time for sleep as is expedient for health ; and much sleep is not required, if the habit of moderation be once rightly formed. Magistrates in states who keep awake at night are terrible to the bad, whether enemies or citizens, and are honoured and reverenced by the just and temperate, and are useful to themselves and to the whole state. LAWS BOOK VII
But how can our law sufficiently train the director of education. himself ; for as yet all has been imperfect, and nothing has been said either clear or satisfactory ? Now, as far as possible, the law ought to leave nothing to him, but to explain everything, that he may be an interpreter and tutor to others. About dances and music and choral strains, I have already spoken both to the character of the selection of them, and the manner in which they are to be amended and consecrated. But we have not as yet spoken, O illustrious guardian of education, of the manner in which your pupils are to use those strains which are written in prose, although you have been informed what martial strains they are to learn and practise ; what relates in the first place to the learning of letters, and secondly, to the lyre, and also to calculation, which, as we were saying, is needful for them all to learn, and any other things which are required with a view to war and the management of house and city, and, looking to the same object, what is useful in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies — the stars and sun and moon, and the various regulations about these matters which are necessary for the whole state — I am speaking of the arrangements of ; days in periods of months, and of months in years, which are to be observed, in order that seasons and sacrifices and festivals may have their regular and natural order, and keep the city alive and awake, the GODS receiving the honours due to them, and men having a better understanding about them : all these things, O my friend, have not yet been sufficiently declared to you by the legislator. Attend, then, to what I am now going to say : — We were telling you, in the first place, that you were not sufficiently informed about letters, and the objection was to this effect — that you were never told whether he who was meant to be a respectable citizen should apply himself in detail to that sort of learning, or not apply himself at all ; and the same remark holds good of the study of the lyre. But now we say that he ought to attend to them. A fair time for a boy of ten years old to spend in letters is three years ; the age of thirteen is the proper time for him to begin to handle the lyre, and he may continue at this for another three years, neither more nor less, and whether his father or himself like or dislike the study, he is not to be allowed to spend more or less time in learning music than the law allows. And let him who disobeys the law be deprived of those youthful honours of which we shall hereafter speak. Hear, however, first of all, what the young ought to learn in the early years of life, and what their instructors ought to teach them. They ought to be occupied with their letters until they are to read and write ; but the acquisition of perfect beauty or quickness in writinig, if nature has not stimulated them to acquire these accomplishments in the given number of years, they should let alone. And as to the learning of compositions committed to writing which are not set to the lyre, whether metrical or without rhythmical divisions, compositions in prose, as they are termed, having no rhythm or harmony — seeing how dangerous are the writings handed down to us by many writers of this class — what will you do with them, O most excellent guardians of the law ? or how can the lawgiver rightly direct you about them ? I believe that he will be in great difficulty. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. Enough of wrestling ; we will now proceed to speak of other movements of the body. Such motion may be in general called dancing, and is of two kinds : one of nobler figures, imitating the honourable, the other of the more ignoble figures, imitating the mean ; and of both these there are two further subdivisions. Of the serious, one kind is of those engaged in war and vehement action, and is the exercise of a noble person and a manly heart ; the other exhibits a temperate soul in the enjoyment of prosperity and modest pleasures, and may be truly called and is the dance of peace. The warrior dance is different from the peaceful one, and may be rightly termed Pyrrhic ; this imitates the modes of avoiding blows and missiles by dropping or giving way, or springing aside, or rising up or falling down ; also the opposite postures which are those of action, as, for example, the imitation of archery and the hurling of javelins, and of all sorts of blows. And when the imitation is of brave bodies and souls, and the action is direct and muscular, giving for the most part a straight movement to the limbs of the body — that, I say, is the true sort ; but the opposite is not right. In the dance of peace what we have to consider is whether a man bears himself naturally and gracefully, and after the manner of men who duly conform to the law. But before proceeding I must distinguish the dancing about which there is any doubt, from that about which there is no doubt. Which is the doubtful kind, and how are the two to be distinguished ? There are dances of the Bacchic sort, both those in which, as they say, they imitate drunken men, and which are named after the Nymphs, and Pan, and Silenuses, and Satyrs ; and also those in which purifications are made or mysteries celebrated — all this sort of dancing cannot be rightly defined as having either a peaceful or a warlike character, or indeed as having any meaning whatever and may, I think, be most truly described as distinct from the warlike dance, and distinct from the peaceful, and not suited for a city at all. There let it lie ; and so leaving it to lie, we will proceed to the dances of war and peace, for with these we are undoubtedly concerned. Now the unwarlike muse, which honours in dance the GODS and the sons of the GODS, is entirely associated with the consciousness of prosperity ; this class may be subdivided into two lesser classes, of which one is expressive of an escape from some labour or danger into good, and has greater pleasures, the other expressive of preservation and increase of former good, in which the pleasure is less exciting ; — in all these cases, every man when the pleasure is greater, moves his body more, and less when the pleasure is less ; and, again, if he be more orderly and has learned courage from discipline he waves less, but if he be a coward, and has no training or self-control, he makes greater and more violent movements, and in general when he is speaking or singing he is not altogether able to keep his body still ; and so out of the imitation of words in gestures the whole art of dancing has arisen. And in these various kinds of imitation one man moves in an orderly, another in a disorderly manner ; and as the ancients may be observed to have given many names which are according to nature and deserving of praise, so there is an excellent one which they have given to the dances of men who in their times of prosperity are moderate in their pleasures — the giver of names, whoever he was, assigned to them a very true, and poetical, and rational name, when he called them Emmeleiai, or dances of order, thus establishing two kinds of dances of the nobler sort, the dance of war which he called the Pyrrhic, and the dance of peace which he called Emmeleia, or the dance of order ; giving to each their appropriate and becoming name. These things the legislator should indicate in general outline, and the guardian of the law should enquire into them and search them out, combining dancing with music, and assigning to the several sacrificial feasts that which is suitable to them ; and when he has consecrated all of them in due order, he shall for the future change nothing, whether of dance or song. Thenceforward the city and the citizens shall continue to have the same pleasures, themselves being as far as possible alike, and shall live well and happily. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. My good friends, at this hour all of us Hellenes tell lies, if I may use such an expression, about those great GODS, the Sun and the Moon. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. Just so, Megillus and Cleinias ; and I maintain that our citizens and our youth ought to learn about the nature of the GODS in heaven, so far as to be able to offer sacrifices and pray to them in pious language, and not to blaspheme about them. LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. I will. For, O my good friends, that other doctrine about the wandering of the sun and the moon and the other stars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth. Each of them moves in the same path — not in many paths, but in one only, which is circular, and the varieties are only apparent. Nor are we right in supposing that the swiftest of them is the slowest, nor conversely, that the slowest is the quickest. And if what I say is true, only just imagine that we had a similar notion about horses running at Olympia, or about men who ran in the long course, and that we addressed the swiftest as the slowest and the slowest as the swiftest, and sang the praises of the vanquished as though he were the victor, — in that case our praises would not be true, nor very agreeable to the runners, though they be but men ; and now, to commit the same error about the GODS which would have been ludicrous and erroneous in the case of men — is not that ludicrous and erroneous ? LAWS BOOK VII
Ath. At all events, the GODS cannot like us to be spreading a false report of them. LAWS BOOK VII
Athenian Stranger. Next, with the help of the Delphian oracle, we have to institute festivals and make laws about them, and to determine what sacrifices will be for the good of the city, and to what GODS they shall be offered ; but when they shall be offered, and how often, may be partly regulated by us. LAWS BOOK VIII
Ath. Then we will first determine the number ; and let the whole number be 365 — one for every day — so that one magistrate at least will sacrifice daily to some God or demi-god on behalf of the city, and the citizens, and their possessions. And the interpreters, and priests, and priestesses, and prophets shall meet, and, in company with the guardians of the law, ordain those things which the legislator of necessity omits ; and I may remark that they are the very persons who ought to take note of what is omitted. The law will say that there are twelve feasts dedicated to the twelve GODS, after whom the several tribes are named ; and that to each of them they shall sacrifice every month, and appoint choruses, and musical and gymnastic contests, assigning them so as to suit the GODS and seasons of the year. And they shall have festivals for women, distinguishing those which ought to be separated from the men’s festivals, and those which ought not. Further, they shall not confuse the infernal deities and their rites with the GODS who are termed heavenly and their rites, but shall separate them, giving to Pluto his own in the twelfth month, which is sacred to him, according to the law. To such a deity warlike men should entertain no aversion, but they should honour him as being always the best friend of man. For the connection of soul and body is no way better than the dissolution of them, as I am ready to maintain quite seriously. Moreover, those who would regulate these matters rightly should consider, that our city among existing cities has fellow, either in respect of leisure or comin and of the necessaries of life, and that like an individual she ought to live happily. And those who would live happily should in the first place do no wrong to one another, and ought not themselves to be wronged by others ; to attain the first is not difficult, but there is great difficulty, in acquiring the power of not being wronged. No man can be perfectly secure against wrong, unless he has become perfectly good ; and cities are like individuals in this, for a city if good has a life of peace, but if evil, a life of war within and without. Wherefore the citizens ought to practise war — not in time of war, but rather while they are at peace. And every city which has any sense, should take the field at least for one day in every month ; and for more if the magistrates think fit, having no regard to winter cold or summer heat ; and they should go out en masse, including their wives and their children, when the magistrates determine to lead forth the whole people, or in separate portions when summoned by them ; and they should always provide that there should be games and sacrificial feasts, and they should have tournaments, imitating in as lively a manner as they can real battles. And they should distribute prizes of victory and valour to the competitors, passing censures and encomiums on one another according to the characters which they bear in the contests and their whole life, honouring him who seems to be the best, and blaming him who is the opposite. And let poets celebrate the victors — not however every poet, but only one who in the first place is not less than fifty years of age ; nor should he be one who, although he may have musical and poetical gifts, has never in his life done any noble or illustrious action ; but those who are themselves good and also honourable in the state, creators of noble actions — let their poems be sung, even though they be not very musical. And let the judgment of them rest with the instructor of youth and the other guardians of the laws, who shall give them this privilege, and they alone shall be free to sing ; but the rest of the world shall not have this liberty. Nor shall any one dare to sing a song which has not been approved by the judgment of the guardians of the laws, not even if his strain be sweeter than the songs of Thamyras and Orpheus ; but only and Orpheus ; but only such poems as have been judged sacred and dedicated to the GODS, and such as are the works of good men, which praise of blame has been awarded and which have been deemed to fulfil their design fairly. LAWS BOOK VIII
Thus the competition in gymnastic and the mode of learning it have been described ; and we have spoken also of the toils of the contest, and of daily exercises under the superintendence of masters. Likewise, what relates to music has been, for the most part, completed. But as to rhapsodes and the like, and the contests of choruses which are to perform at feasts, all this shall be arranged when the months and days and years have been appointed for GODS and demi-gods, whether every third year, or again every fifth year, or in whatever way or manner the GODS may put into men’s minds the distribution and order of them. At the same time, we may expect that the musical contests will be celebrated in their turn by the command of the judges and the director of education and the guardians of the law meeting together for this purpose, and themselves becoming legislators of the times and nature and conditions of the choral contests and of dancing in general. What they ought severally to be in language and song, and in the admixture of harmony with rhythm and the dance, has been often declared by the original legislator ; and his successors ought to follow him, making the games and sacrifices duly to correspond at fitting times, and appointing public festivals. It is not difficult to determine how these and the like matters may have a regular order ; nor, again, will the alteration of them do any great good or harm to the state. There is, however, another matter of great importance and difficulty, concerning which God should legislate, if there were any possibility of obtaining from him an ordinance about it. But seeing that divine aid is not to be had, there appears to be a need of some bold man who specially honours plainness of speech, and will say outright what he thinks best for the city and citizens — ordaining what is good and convenient for the whole state amid the corruptions of human souls, opposing the mightiest lusts, and having no man his helper but himself standing alone and following reason only. LAWS BOOK VIII
Let us first of all, then, have a class of laws which shall be called the laws of husbandmen. And let the first of them be the law of Zeus, the god of boundaries. Let no one shift the boundary line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or, if he dwells at the extremity of the land, of any stranger who is conterminous with him, considering that this is truly “to move the immovable,” and every one should be more willing to move the largest rock which is not a landmark, than the least stone which is the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours ; for Zeus, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and Zeus, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused, terrible are the wars which they stir up. He who obeys the law will never know the fatal consequences of disobedience, but he who despises the law shall be liable to a double penalty, the first coming from the GODS, and the second from the law. For let no one wilfully remove the boundaries of his neighbour’s land, and if any one does, let him who will inform the landowners, and let them bring him into court, and if he be convicted of re-dividing the land by stealth or by force, let the court determine what he ought to suffer or pay. In the next place, many small injuries done by neighbours to one another, through their multiplication, may cause a weight of enmity, and make neighbourhood a very disagreeable and bitter thing. Wherefore a man ought to be very careful of committing any offence against his neighbour, and especially of encroaching on his neighbour’s land ; for any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another. He who encroaches on his neighbour’s land, and transgresses his boundaries, shall make good the damage, and, to cure him of his impudence and also of his meanness, he shall pay a double penalty to the injured party. Of these and the like matters the wardens of the country shall take cognizance, and be the judges of them and assessors of the damage ; in the more important cases, as has been already said, the whole number of them belonging to any one of the twelve divisions shall decide, and in the lesser cases the commanders : or, again, if any one pastures his cattle on his neighbour’s land, they shall see the injury, and adjudge the penalty. And if any one, by decoying the bees, gets possession of another’s swarms, and draws them to himself by making noises, he shall pay the damage ; or if anyone sets fire to his own wood and takes no care of his neighbour’s property, he shall be fined at the discretion of the magistrates. And if in planting he does not leave a fair distance between his own and his neighbour’s land, he shall be punished, in accordance with the enactments of many law givers, which we may use, not deeming it necessary that the great legislator of our state should determine all the trifles which might be decided by any body ; for example, husbandmen have had of old excellent laws about waters, and there is no reason why we should propose to divert their course : who likes may draw water from the fountain-head of the common stream on to his own land, if he do not cut off the spring which clearly belongs to some other owner ; and he may take the water in any direction which he pleases, except through a house or temple or sepulchre, but he must be careful to do no harm beyond the channel. And if there be in any place a natural dryness of the earth, which keeps in the rain from heaven, and causes a deficiency in the supply of water, let him dig down on his own land as far as the clay, and if at this depth he finds no water, let him obtain water from his neighbours, as much, as is required for his servants’ drinking, and if his neighbours, too, are limited in their supply, let him have a fixed measure, which shall be determined by the wardens of the country. This he shall receive each day, and on these terms have a share of his neighbours’ water. If there be heavy rain, and one of those on the lower ground injures some tiller of the upper ground, or some one who has a common wall, by refusing to give the man outlet for water ; or, again, if some one living on the higher ground recklessly lets off the water on his lower neighbour, and they cannot come to terms with one another, let him who will call in a warden of the city, if he be in the city, or if he be in the country, warden of the country, and let him obtain a decision determining what each of them is to do. And he who will not abide by the decision shall suffer for his malignant and morose temper, and pay a fine to the injured party, equivalent to double the value of the injury, because he was unwilling to submit to the magistrates. LAWS BOOK VIII
But as touching payments for hire, and contracts of work, or in case any one does wrong to any of the citizens or they do wrong to any other, up to fifty drachmae, let the wardens of the city decide the case ; but if greater amount be involved, then let the public courts decide according to law. Let no one pay any duty either on the importation or exportation of goods ; and as to frankincense and similar perfumes, used in the service of the GODS, which come from abroad, and purple and other dyes which are not produced in the country, or the materials of any art which have to be imported, and which are not necessary — no one should import them ; nor again, should any one export anything which is wanted in the country. Of all these things let there be inspectors and superintendents, taken from the guardians of the law ; and they shall be the twelve next in order to the five seniors. Concerning arms, and all implements which are for military purposes, if there be need of introducing any art, or plant, or metal, or chains of any kind, or animals for use in war, let the commanders of the horse and the generals have authority over their importation and exportation ; the city shall send them out and also receive them, and the guardians of the law shall make fit and proper laws about them. But let there be no retail trade for the sake of money-making, either in these or any other articles, in the city or country at all. LAWS BOOK VIII
In the second place, our citizens should have separate houses duly ordered, and this will be the order proper for men like them. There shall be twelve hamlets, one in the middle of each twelfth portion, and in each hamlet they shall first set apart a market-place, and the temples of the GODS, and of their attendant demigods ; and if there be any local deities of the Magnetes, or holy seats of other ancient deities, whose memory has been preserved, to these let them pay their ancient honours. But Hestia, and Zeus, and Athene will have temples everywhere together with the God who presides in each of the twelve districts. And the first erection of houses shall be around these temples, where the ground is highest, in order to provide the safest and most defensible place of retreat for the guards. All the rest of the country they shall settle in the following manner : — They shall make thirteen divisions of the craftsmen ; one of them they shall establish in the city, and this, again, they shall subdivide into twelve lesser divisions, among the twelve districts of the city, and the remainder shall be distributed in the country round about ; and in each village they shall settle various classes of craftsmen, with a view to the convenience of the husbandmen. And the chief officers of the wardens of the country shall superintend all these matters, and see how many of them, and which class of them, each place requires ; and fix them where they are likely to be least troublesome, and most useful to the husbandman. And the wardens of the city shall see to similar matters in the city. LAWS BOOK VIII
Athenian Stranger. There is a sense of disgrace in legislating, as we are about to do, for all the details of crime in a state which, as we say, is to be well regulated and will be perfectly adapted to the practice of virtue. To assume that in such a state there will arise some one who will be guilty of crimes as heinous as any which are ever perpetrated in other states, and that we must legislate for him by anticipation, and threaten and make laws against him if he should arise, in order to deter him, and punish his acts, under the idea that he will arise — this, as I was saying, is in a manner disgraceful. Yet seeing that we are not like the ancient legislators, who gave laws to heroes and sons of gods, being, according to the popular belief, themselves the offspring of the gods, and legislating for others, who were also the children of divine parents, but that we are only men who are legislating for the sons of men, there is no uncharitableness in apprehending that some one of our citizens may be like a seed which has touched the ox’s horn, having a heart so hard that it cannot be softened any more than those seeds can be softened by fire. Among our citizens there may be those who cannot be subdued by all the strength of the laws ; and for their sake, though an ungracious task, I will proclaim my first law about the robbing of temples, in case any one should dare to commit such a crime. I do not expect or imagine that any well-brought-up citizen will ever take the infection, but their servants, and strangers, and strangers’ servants may be guilty of many impieties. And with a view to them especially, and yet not without a provident eye to the weakness of human nature generally, I will proclaim the law about robbers of temples and similar incurable, or almost incurable, criminals. Having already agreed that such enactments ought always to have a short prelude, we may speak to the criminal, whom some tormenting desire by night and by day tempts to go and rob a temple, the fewest possible words of admonition and exhortation : — O sir, we will say to him, the impulse which moves you to rob temples is not an ordinary human malady, nor yet a visitation of heaven, but a madness which is begotten in a man from ancient and unexpiated crimes of his race, an ever-recurring curse ; — against this you must guard with all your might, and how you are to guard we will explain to you. When any such thought comes into your mind, go and perform expiations, go as a suppliant to the temples of the GODS who avert evils, go to the society of those who are called good men among you ; hear them tell and yourself try to repeat after them, that every man should honour the noble and the just. Fly from the company of the wicked — fly and turn not back ; and if your disorder is lightened by these remedies, well and good, but if not, then acknowledge death to be nobler than life, and depart hence. LAWS BOOK IX
Next, after what relates to the GODS, follows what relates to the dissolution of the state : — Whoever by promoting a man to power enslaves the laws, and subjects the city to factions, using violence and stirring up sedition contrary to law, him we will deem the greatest enemy of the whole state. But he who takes no part in such proceedings, and, being one of the chief magistrates of the state, has no knowledge of the treason, or, having knowledge of it, by reason of cowardice does not interfere on behalf of his country, such an one we must consider nearly as bad. Every man who is worth anything will inform the magistrates, and bring the conspirator to trial for making a violent and illegal attempt to change the government. The judges of such cases shall be the same as of the robbers of temples ; and let the whole proceeding be carried on in the same way, and the vote of the majority condemn to death. But let there be a general rule, that the disgrace and punishment of the father is not to be visited on the children, except in the case of some one whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have successively undergone the penalty of death. Such persons the city shall send away with all their possessions to the city and country of their ancestors, retaining only and wholly their appointed lot. And out of the citizens who have more than one son of not less than ten years of age, they shall select ten whom their father or grandfather by the mother’s or father’s side shall appoint, and let them send to Delphi the names of those who are selected, and him whom the God chooses they shall establish as heir of the house which has failed ; and may he have better fortune than his predecessors ! LAWS BOOK IX
Ath. And now let us return from this digression and complete the work of legislation. Laws have been already enacted by us concerning the robbers of the GODS, and concerning traitors, and also concerning those who corrupt the laws for the purpose of subverting the government. A man may very likely commit some of these crimes, either in a state of madness or when affected by disease, or under the influence of extreme old age, or in a fit of childish wantonness, himself no better than a child. And if this be made evident to the judges elected to try the cause, on the appeal of the criminal or his advocate, and he be judged to have been in this state when he committed the offence, he shall simply pay for the hurt which he may have done to another ; but he shall be exempt from other penalties, unless he have slain some one, and have on his hands the stain of blood. And in that case he shall go to another land and country, and there dwell for a year ; and if he return before the expiration of the time which the law appoints, or even set his foot at all on his native land, he shall be bound by the guardians of the law in the public prison for two years, and then go free. LAWS BOOK IX
Whoever shall wrongfully and of design slay with his own hand any of his kinsmen, shall in the first place be deprived of legal privileges ; and he shall not pollute the temples, or the agora, or the harbours, or any other place of meeting, whether he is forbidden of men or not ; for the law, which represents the whole state, forbids him, and always is and will be in the attitude of forbidding him. And if a cousin or nearer relative of the deceased, whether on the male or female side, does not prosecute the homicide when he ought, and have him proclaimed an outlaw, he shall in the first place be involved in the pollution, and incur the hatred of the GODS, even as the curse of the law stirs up the voices of men against him ; and in the second place he shall be liable to be prosecuted by any one who is willing to inflict retribution on behalf of the dead. And he who would avenge a murder shall observe all the precautionary ceremonies of lavation, and any others which the God commands in cases of this kind. Let him have proclamation made, and then go forth and compel the perpetrator to suffer the execution of justice according to the law. Now the legislator may easily show that these things must be accomplished by prayers and sacrifices to certain GODS, who are concerned with the prevention of murders in states. But who these GODS are, and what should be the true manner of instituting such trials with due regard to religion, the guardians of the law, aided by the interpreters, and the prophets, and the God, shall determine, and when they have determined let them carry on the prosecution at law. The cause shall have the same judges who are appointed to decide in the case of those who plunder temples. Let him who is convicted be punished with death, and let him not be buried in the country of the murdered man, for this would be shameless as well as impious. But if he fly and will not stand his trial, let him fly for ever ; or, if he set foot anywhere on any part of the murdered man’s country, let any relation of the deceased, or any other citizen who may first happen to meet with him, kill him with impunity, or bind and deliver him to those among the judges of the case who are magistrates, that they may put him to death. And let the prosecutor demand surety of him whom he prosecutes ; three sureties sufficient in the opinion of the magistrates who try the cause shall be provided by him, and they shall undertake to produce him at the trial. But if he be unwilling or unable to provide sureties, then the magistrates shall take him and keep him in bonds, and produce him at the day of trial. LAWS BOOK IX
If a man do not commit a murder with his own hand, but contrives the death of another, and is the author of the deed in intention and design, and he continues to dwell in the city, having his soul not pure of the guilt of murder, let him be tried in the same way, except in what relates to the sureties ; and also, if he be found guilty, his body after execution may have burial in his native land, but in all other respects his case shall be as the former ; and whether a stranger shall kill a citizen, or a citizen a stranger, or a slave a slave, there shall be no difference as touching murder by one’s own hand or by contrivance, except in the matter of sureties ; and these, as has been said, shall be required of the actual murderer only, and he who brings the accusation shall bind them over at the time. If a slave be convicted of slaying a freeman voluntarily, either by his own hand or by contrivance, let the public executioner take him in the direction of the sepulchre, to a place whence he can see the tomb of the dead man, and inflict upon him as many stripes as the person who caught him orders, and if he survive, let him put him to death. And if any one kills a slave who has done no wrong, because he is afraid that he may inform of some base and evil deeds of his own, or for any similar reason, in such a case let him pay the penalty of murder, as he would have done if he had slain a citizen. There are things about which it is terrible and unpleasant to legislate, but impossible not to legislate. If, for example, there should be murders of kinsmen, either perpetrated by the hands of kinsmen, or by their contrivance, voluntary and purely malicious, which most often happen in ill-regulated and ill-educated states, and may perhaps occur even in a country where a man would not expect to find them, we must repeat once more the tale which we narrated a little while ago, in the hope that he who hears us will be the more disposed to abstain voluntarily on these grounds from murders which are utterly abominable. For the myth, or saying, or whatever we ought to call it, has been plainly set forth by priests of old ; they have pronounced that the justice which guards and avenges the blood of kindred, follows the law of retaliation, and ordains that he who has done any murderous act should of necessity suffer that which he has done. He who has slain a father shall himself be slain at some time or other by his children — if a mother, he shall of necessity take a woman’s nature, and lose his life at the hands of his offspring in after ages ; for where the blood of a family has been polluted there is no other purification, nor can the pollution be washed out until the homicidal soul which the deed has given life for life, and has propitiated and laid to sleep the wrath of the whole family. These are the retributions of Heaven, and by such punishments men should be deterred. But if they are not deterred, and any one should be incited by some fatality to deprive his father or mother, or brethren, or children, of life voluntarily and of purpose, for him the earthly lawgiver legislates as follows : — There shall be the same proclamations about outlawry, and there shall be the same sureties which have been enacted in the former cases. But in his case, if he be convicted, the servants of the judges and the magistrates shall slay him at an appointed place without the city where three ways meet, and there expose his body naked, and each of the magistrates on behalf of the whole city shall take a stone and cast it upon the head of the dead man, and so deliver the city from pollution ; after that, they shall bear him to the borders of the land, and cast him forth unburied, according to law. And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend ? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life, not because the law of the state requires him, nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him, nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty. For him, what ceremonies there are to be of purification and burial God knows, and about these the next of kin should enquire of the interpreters and of the laws thereto relating, and do according to their injunctions. They who meet their death in this way shall be buried alone, and none shall be laid by their side ; they shall be buried ingloriously in the borders of the twelve portions the land, in such places as are uncultivated and nameless, and no column or inscription shall mark the place of their interment. And if a beast of burden or other animal cause the death of any one, except in the case of anything of that kind happening to a competitor in the public contests, the kinsmen of the deceased shall prosecute the slayer for murder, and the wardens of the country, such, and so many as the kinsmen appoint, shall try the cause, and let the beast when condemned be slain by them, and let them cast it beyond the borders. And if any lifeless thing deprive a man of life, except in the case of a thunderbolt or other fatal dart sent from the GODS — whether a man is killed by lifeless objects, falling upon him, or by his falling upon them, the nearest of kin shall appoint the nearest neighbour to be a judge, and thereby acquit himself and the whole family of guilt. And he shall cast forth the guilty thing beyond the border, as has been said about the animals. LAWS BOOK IX
Let the enactment about wounding be in the following terms : — If anyone has a purpose and intention to slay another who is not his enemy, and whom the law does not permit him to slay, and he wounds him, but is unable to kill him, he who had the intent and has wounded him is not to be pitied — he deserves no consideration, but should be regarded as a murderer and be tried for murder. Still having respect to the fortune which has in a manner favoured him, and to the providence which in pity to him and to the wounded man saved the one from a fatal blow, and the other from an accursed fate and calamity — as a thank-offering to this deity, and in order not to oppose his will — in such a case the law will remit the punishment of death, and only compel the offender to emigrate to a neighbouring city for the rest of his life, where he shall remain in the enjoyment of all his possessions. But if he have injured the wounded man, he shall make such compensation for the injury as the court deciding the cause shall assess, and the same judges shall decide who would have decided if the man had died of his wounds. And if a child intentionally wound his parents, or a servant his master, death shall be the penalty. And if a brother ora sister intentionally wound a brother or a sister, and is found guilty, death shall be the penalty. And if a husband wound a wife, or a wife a husband, with intent to kill, let him or her undergo perpetual exile ; if they have sons or daughters who are still young, the guardians shall take care of their property, and have charge of the children as orphans. If their sons are grown up, they shall be under no obligation to support the exiled parent, but they shall possess the property themselves. And if he who meets with such a misfortune has no children, the kindred of the exiled man to the degree of sons of cousins, both on the male and female side, shall meet together, and after taking counsel with the guardians of the and the priests, shall appoint a 5040th citizen to be the heir of the house, considering and reasoning that no house of all the 5040 belongs to the inhabitant or to the whole family, but is the public and private property of the state. Now the state should seek to have its houses as holy and happy as possible. And if any one of the houses be unfortunate, and stained with impiety, and the owner leave no posterity, but dies unmarried, or married and childless, having suffered death as the penalty of murder or some other crime committed against the GODS or against his fellow-citizens, of which death is the penalty distinctly laid down in the law ; or if any of the citizens be in perpetual exile, and also childless, that house shall first of all be purified and undergo expiation according to law ; and then let the kinsmen of the house, as we were just now saying, and the guardians of the law, meet and consider what family there is in the state which is of the highest repute for virtue and also for good fortune, in which there are a number of sons ; from that family let them take one and introduce him to the father and forefathers of the dead man as their son, and, for the sake of the omen, let him be called so, that he may be the continuer of their family, the keeper of their hearth, and the minister of their sacred rites with better fortune than his father had ; and when they have made this supplication, they shall make him heir according to law, and the offending person they shall leave nameless and childless and portionless when calamities such as these overtake him. LAWS BOOK IX
All the preceding injuries and every kind of assault are deeds of violence ; and every man, woman, or child ought to consider that the elder has the precedence of the younger in honour, both among the GODS and also among men who would live in security and happiness. Wherefore it is a foul thing and hateful to the GODS to see an elder man assaulted by a younger in the city ; and it is reasonable that a young man when struck by an elder should lightly endure his anger, laying up in store for himself a like honour when he is old. Let this be the law : — Every one shall reverence his elder in word and deed ; he shall respect any one who is twenty years older than himself, whether male or female, regarding him or her as his father or mother ; and he shall abstain from laying hands on any one who is of an age to have been his father or his mother, out of reverence to the GODS who preside over birth ; similarly he shall keep his hands from a stranger, whether he be an old inhabitant or newly arrived ; he shall not venture to correct such an one by blows, either as the aggressor or in self-defence. If he thinks that some stranger has struck him out of wantonness or insolence, and ought to be punished, he shall take him to the wardens of the city, but let him not strike him, that the stranger may be kept far away from the possibility of lifting up his hand against a citizen, and let the wardens of the city take the offender and examine him, not forgetting their duty to the God of Strangers, and in case the stranger appears to have struck the citizen unjustly, let them inflict upon him as many blows with the scourge as he has himself inflicted, and quell his presumption. But if he be innocent, they shall threaten and rebuke the man who arrested him, and let them both go. If a person strikes another of the same age or somewhat older than himself, who has no children, whether he be an old man who strikes an old man or a young man who strikes a young man, let the person struck defend himself in the natural way without a weapon and with his hands only. He who, being more than forty years of age, dares to fight with another, whether he be the aggressor or in self defence, shall be regarded as rude and ill-mannered and slavish ; — this will be a disgraceful punishment, and therefore suitable to him. The obedient nature will readily yield to such exhortations, but the disobedient, who heeds not the prelude, shall have the law ready for him : — If any man smite another who is older than himself, either by twenty or by more years, in the first place, he who is at hand, not being younger than the combatants, nor their equal in age, shall separate them, or be disgraced according to law ; but if he be the equal in age of the person who is struck or younger, he shall defend the person injured as he would a brother or father or still older relative. Further, let him who dares to smite an elder be tried for assault, as I have said, and if he be found guilty, let him be imprisoned for a period of not less than a year, or if the judges approve of a longer period, their decision shall be final. But if a stranger or metic smite one who is older by twenty years or more, the same law shall hold about the bystanders assisting, and he who is found guilty in such a suit, if he be a stranger but not resident, shall be imprisoned during a period of two years ; and a metic who disobeys the laws shall be imprisoned for three years, unless the court assign him a longer term. And let him who was present in any of these cases and did not assist according to law be punished, if he be of the highest dass, by paying a fine of a mina ; or if he be of the second class, of fifty drachmas ; or if of the third class, by a fine of thirty drachmas ; or if he be of the fourth class, by a fine of twenty drachmas ; and the generals and taxiarchs and phylarchs and hipparchs shall form the court in such cases. LAWS BOOK IX
Laws are partly framed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they thay live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil. These are the persons who cause the word to be spoken which I am about to utter ; for them the legislator legislates of necessity, and in the hope that there may be no need of his laws. He who shall dare to lay violent hands upon his father or mother, or any still older relative, having no fear either of the wrath of the GODS above, or of the punishments that are spoken of in the world below, but transgresses in contempt of ancient and universal traditions as though he were too wise to believe in them, requires some extreme measure of prevention. Now death is not the worst that can happen to men ; far worse are the punishments which are said to pursue them in the world below. But although they are most true tales, they work on such souls no prevention ; for if they had any effect there would be no slayers of mothers, or impious hands lifted up against parents ; and therefore the punishments of this world which are inflicted during life ought not in such cases to fall short, if possible, of the terrors of the world below. Let our enactment then be as follows : — If a man dare to strike his father or his mother, or their fathers or mothers, he being at the time of sound mind, then let any one who is at hand come to the rescue as has been already said, and the metic or stranger who comes to the rescue shall be called to the first place in the games ; but if he do not come he shall suffer the punishment of perpetual exile. He who is not a metic, if he comes to the rescue, shall have praise, and if he do not come, blame. And if a slave come to the rescue, let him be made free, but if he do not come the rescue, let him receive 100 strokes of the whip, by order of the wardens of the agora, if the occurrence take place in the agora ; or if somewhere in the city beyond the limits of the agora, any warden of the city is in residence shall punish him ; or if in the country, then the commanders of the wardens of the country. If those who are near at the time be inhabitants of the same place, whether they be youths, or men, or women, let them come to the rescue and denounce him as the impious one ; and he who does not come to the rescue shall fall under the curse of Zeus, the God of kindred and of ancestors, according to law. And if any one is found guilty of assaulting a parent, let him in the first place be for ever banished from the city into the country, and let him abstain from the temples ; and if he do not abstain, the wardens of the country shall punish him with blows, or in any way which they please, and if he return he shall be put to death. And if any freeman eat or drink, or have any other sort of intercourse with him, or only meeting him have voluntarily touched him, he shall not enter into any temple, nor into the agora, nor into the city, until he is purified ; for he should consider that he has become tainted by a curse. And if he disobeys the law, and pollutes the city and the temples contrary to law, and one of the magistrates sees him and does not indict him, when he gives in his account this omission shall be a most serious charge. LAWS BOOK IX
And now having spoken of assaults, let us sum up all acts of violence under a single law, which shall be as follows : — No one shall take or carry away any of his neighbour’s goods, neither shall he use anything which is his neighbour’s without the consent of the owner ; for these are the offences which are and have been, and will ever be, the source of all the aforesaid evils. The greatest of them are excesses and insolences of youth, and are offences against the greatest when they are done against religion ; and especially great when in violation of public and holy rites, or of the partly-common rites in which tribes and phratries share ; and in the second degree great when they are committed against private rites and sepulchres, and in the third degree (not to repeat the acts formerly mentioned), when insults are offered to parents ; the fourth kind of violence is when any one, regardless of the authority of the rulers, takes or carries away or makes use of anything which belongs to them, not having their consent ; and the fifth kind is when the violation of the civil rights of an individual demands reparation. There should be a common law embracing all these cases. For we have already said in general terms what shall be the punishment of sacrilege, whether fraudulent or violent, and now we have to determine what is to be the punishment of those who speak or act insolently toward the GODS. But first we must give them an admonition which may be in the following terms : — No one who in obedience to the laws believed that there were GODS, ever intentionally did any unholy act, or uttered any unlawful word ; but he who did must have supposed one of three things — either that they did not exist, — which is the first possibility, or secondly, that, if they did, they took no care of man, or thirdly, that they were easily appeased and turned aside from their purpose, by sacrifices and prayers. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. They will make some irreverent speech of this sort : — “O inhabitants of Athens, and Sparta, and Cnosus,” they will reply, “in that you speak truly ; for some of us deny the very existence of the GODS, while others, as you say, are of opinion that they do not care about us ; and others that they are turned from their course by gifts. Now we have a right to claim, as you yourself allowed, in the matter of laws, that before you are hard upon us and threaten us, you should argue with us and convince us — you should first attempt to teach and persuade us that there are GODS by reasonable evidences, and also that they are too good to be unrighteous, or to be propitiated, or turned from their course by gifts. For when we hear such things said of them by those who are esteemed to be the best of poets, and orators, and prophets, and priests, and by innumerable others, the thoughts of most of us are not set upon abstaining from unrighteous acts, but upon doing them and atoning for them. When lawgivers profess that they are gentle and not stern, we think that they should first of all use persuasion to us, and show us the existence of GODS, if not in a better manner than other men, at any rate in a truer ; and who knows but that we shall hearken to you ? If then our request is a fair one, please to accept our challenge.” LAWS BOOK X
Cle. But is there any difficulty in proving the existence of the GODS ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. At Athens there are tales preserved in writing which the virtue of your state, as I am informed, refuses to admit. They speak of the GODS in prose as well as verse, and the oldest of them tell of the origin of the heavens and of the world, and not far from the beginning of their story they proceed to narrate the birth of the GODS, and how after they were born they behaved to one another. Whether these stories have in other ways a good or a bad influence, I should not like to be severe upon them, because they are ancient ; but, looking at them with reference to the duties of children to their parents, I cannot praise them, or think that they are useful, or at all true. Of the words of the ancients I have nothing more to say ; and I should wish to say of them only what is pleasing to the GODS. But as to our younger generation and their wisdom, I cannot let them off when they do mischief. For do but mark the effect of their words : when you and I argue for the existence of the GODS, and produce the sun, moon, stars, and earth, claiming for them a divine being, if we would listen to the aforesaid philosophers we should say that they are earth and stones only, which can have no care at all of human affairs, and that all religion is a cooking up of words and a make-believe. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Well, then ; what shall we say or do ? — Shall we assume that some one is accusing us among unholy men, who are trying to escape from the effect of our legislation ; and that they say of us — How dreadful that you should legislate on the supposition that there are GODS ! Shall we make a defence of ourselves ? or shall we leave them and return to our laws, lest the prelude should become longer than the law ? For the discourse will certainly extend to great length, if we are to treat the impiously disposed as they desire, partly demonstrating to them at some length the things of which they demand an explanation, partly making them afraid or dissatisfied, and then proceed to the requisite enactments. LAWS BOOK X
Cle. Yes, Stranger ; but then how often have we repeated already that on the present occasion there is no reason why brevity should be preferred to length ; who is “at our heels” ? — as the saying goes, and it would be paltry and ridiculous to prefer the shorter to the better. It is a matter of no small consequence, in some way or other to prove that there are GODS, and that they are good, and regard justice more than men do. The demonstration of this would be the best and noblest prelude of all our laws. And therefore, without impatience, and without hurry, let us unreservedly consider the whole matter, summoning up all the power of persuasion which we possess. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Seeing you thus in earnest, I would fain offer up a prayer that I may succeed : — but I must proceed at once. Who can be calm when he is called upon to prove the existence of the GODS ? Who can avoid hating and abhorring the men who are and have been the cause of this argument ; I speak of those who will not believe the tales which they have heard as babes and sucklings from their mothers and nurses, repeated by them both in jest and earnest, like charms, who have also heard them in the sacrificial prayers, and seen sights accompanying them — sights and sounds delightful to children — and their parents during the sacrifices showing an intense earnestness on behalf of their children and of themselves, and with eager interest talking to the GODS, and beseeching them, as though they were firmly convinced of their existence ; who likewise see and hear the prostrations and invocations which are made by Hellenes and barbarians at the rising and setting of the sun and moon, in all the vicissitudes of life, not as if they thought that there were no GODS, but as if there could be no doubt of their existence, and no suspicion of their non-existence ; when men, knowing all these things, despise them on no real grounds, as would be admitted by all who have any particle of intelligence, and when they force us to say what we are now saying, how can any one in gentle terms remonstrate with the like of them, when he has to begin by proving to them the very existence of the GODS ? Yet the attempt must be made ; for it would be unseemly that one half of mankind should go mad in their lust of pleasure, and the other half in their indignation at such persons. Our address to these lost and perverted natures should not be spoken in passion ; let us suppose ourselves to select some one of them, and gently reason with him, smothering our anger : — O my son, we will say to him, you are young, and the advance of time will make you reverse may of the opinions which you now hold. Wait awhile, and do not attempt to judge at present of the highest things ; and that is the highest of which you now think nothing — to know the GODS rightly and to live accordingly. And in the first place let me indicate to you one point which is of great importance, and about which I cannot be deceived : — You and your friends are not the first who have held this opinion about the GODS. There have always been persons more or less numerous who have had the same disorder. I have known many of them, and can tell you, that no one who had taken up in youth this opinion, that the GODS do not exist, ever continued in the same until he was old ; the two other notions certainly do continue in some cases, but not in many ; the notion, I mean, that the GODS exist, but take no heed of human things, and the other notion that they do take heed of them, but are easily propitiated with sacrifices and prayers. As to the opinion about the GODS which may some day become clear to you, I advise you go wait and consider if it be true or not ; ask of others, and above all of the legislator. In the meantime take care that you do not offend against the GODS. For the duty of the legislator is and always will be to teach you the truth of these matters. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. In the first place, my dear friend, these people would say that the GODS exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them ; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them ; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made. — These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the GODS are not such as the law bids them imagine ; and hence arise factions, these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others, and not in legal subjection to them. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. True, Cleinias ; but then what should the lawgiver do when this evil is of long standing ? should he only rise up in the state and threaten all mankind, proclaiming that if they will not say and think that the GODS are such as the law ordains (and this may be extended generally to the honourable, the just, and to all the highest things, and to all that relates to virtue and vice), and if they will not make their actions conform to the copy which the law gives them, then he who refuses to obey the law shall die, or suffer stripes and bonds, or privation of citizenship, or in some cases be punished by loss of property and exile ? Should he not rather, when he is making laws for men, at the same time infuse the spirit of persuasion into his words, and mitigate the severity of them as far as he can ? LAWS BOOK X
Cle. Why, Stranger, if such persuasion be at all possible, then a legislator who has anything in him ought never to weary of persuading men ; he ought to leave nothing unsaid in support of the ancient opinion that there are GODS, and of all those other truths which you were just now mentioning ; he ought to support the law and also art, and acknowledge that both alike exist by nature, and no less than nature, if they are the creations of mind in accordance with right reason, you appear to me to maintain, and I am disposed to agree with you in thinking. LAWS BOOK X
Cle. Why, Stranger, shall we, whose patience failed not when drinking or music were the themes of discourse, weary now of discoursing about the GODS, and about divine things ? And the greatest help to rational legislation is that the laws when once written down are always at rest ; they can be put to the test at any future time, and therefore, if on first hearing they seem difficult, there is no reason for apprehension about them, because any man however dull can go over them and consider them again and again ; nor if they are tedious but useful, is there any reason or religion, as it seems to me, in any man refusing to maintain the principles of them to the utmost of his power. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Yes, Megillus, and we should do as he proposes ; for if impious discourses were not scattered, as I may say, throughout the world, there would have been no need for any vindication of the existence of the GODS — but seeing that they are spread far and wide, such arguments are needed ; and who should come to the rescue of the greatest laws, when they are being undermined by bad men, but the legislator himself ? LAWS BOOK X
Cle. Do not hesitate, Stranger ; I see that you are afraid of such a discussion carrying you beyond the limits of legislation. But if there be no other way of showing our agreement in the belief that there are GODS, of whom the law is said now to approve, let us take this way, my good sir. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions ; they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true nature of the GODS. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Come, then, and if ever we are to call upon the GODS, let us call upon them now in all seriousness to come to the demonstration of their own existence. And so holding fast to the rope we will venture upon the depths of the argument. When questions of this sort are asked of me, my safest answer would appear to be as follows : — Some one says to me, “O Stranger, are all things at rest and nothing in motion, or is the exact opposite of this true, or are some things in motion and others at rest ? — To this I shall reply that some things are in motion and others at rest. “And do not things which move a place, and are not the things which are at rest at rest in a place ?” Certainly. “And some move or rest in one place and some in more places than one ?” You mean to say, we shall rejoin, that those things which rest at the centre move in one place, just as the circumference goes round of globes which are said to be at rest ? “Yes.” And we observe that, in the revolution, the motion which carries round the larger and the lesser circle at the same time is proportionally distributed to greater and smaller, and is greater and smaller in a certain proportion. Here is a wonder which might be thought an impossibility, that the same motion should impart swiftness and slowness in due proportion to larger and lesser circles. “Very true.” And when you speak of bodies moving in many places, you seem to me to mean those which move from one place to another, and sometimes have one centre of motion and sometimes more than one because they turn upon their axis ; and whenever they meet anything, if it be stationary, they are divided by it ; but if they get in the midst between bodies which are approaching and moving towards the same spot from opposite directions, they unite with them. “I admit the truth of what you are saying.” Also when they unite they grow, and when they are divided they waste away — that is, supposing the constitution of each to remain, or if that fails, then there is a second reason of their dissolution. “And when are all things created and how ?” Clearly, they are created when the firsfirst principle receives increase and attains to the second dimension, and from this arrives at the one which is neighbour to this, and after reaching the third becomes perceptible to sense. Everything which is thus changing and moving is in process of generation ; only when at rest has it real existence, but when passing into another state it is destroyed utterly. Have we not mentioned all motions that there are, and comprehended them under their kinds and numbered them with the exception, my friends, of two ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And of the stars too, and of the moon, and of the years and months and seasons, must we not say in like manner, that since a soul or souls having every sort of excellence are the causes of all of them, those souls are GODS, whether they are living beings and reside in bodies, and in this way order the whole heaven, or whatever be the place and mode of their existence ; — and will any one who admits all this venture to deny that all things full of GODS ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And now, Megillus and Cleinias, let us offer terms to him who has hitherto denied the existence of the GODS, and leave him. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Either he shall teach us that we were wrong in saying that the soul is the original of all things, and arguing accordingly ; or, if he be not able to say anything better, then he must yield to us and live for the remainder of his life in the belief that there are GODS. — Let us see, then, whether we have said enough or not enough to those who deny that there are GODS. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Then to them we will say no more. And now we are to address him who, believing that there are GODS, believes also that they take no heed of human affairs : To him we say — O thou best of men, in believing that there are GODS you are led by some affinity to them, which attracts you towards your kindred and makes you honour and believe in them. But the fortunes of evil and unrighteous men in private as well as public life, which, though not really happy, are wrongly counted happy in the judgment of men, and are celebrated both by poets and prose writers — these draw you aside from your natural piety. Perhaps you have seen impious men growing old and leaving their children’s children in high offices, and their prosperity shakes your faith — you have known or heard or been yourself an eyewitness of many monstrous impieties, and have beheld men by such criminal means from small beginnings attaining to sovereignty and the pinnacle of greatness ; and considering all these things you do not like to accuse the GODS of them, because they are your relatives ; and so from some want of reasoning power, and also from an unwillingness to find fault with them, you have come to believe that they exist indeed, but have no thought or care of human things. Now, that your present evil opinion may not grow to still greater impiety, and that we may if possible use arguments which may conjure away the evil before it arrives, we will add another argument to that originally addressed to him who utterly denied the existence of the GODS. And do you, Megillus and Cleinias, answer for the young man as you did before ; and if any impediment comes in our way, I will take the word out of your mouths, and carry you over the river as I did just now. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. There will probably be no difficulty in proving to him that the GODS care about the small as well as about the great. For he was present and heard what was said, that they are perfectly good, and that the care of all things is most entirely natural to them. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And the one, like other meaner things, is a human quality, but the GODS have no part in anything of the sort ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Now, then, let us examine the offenders, who both alike confess that there are GODS, but with a difference — the one saying that they may be appeased, and the other that they have no care of small matters : there are three of us and two of them, and we will say to them — In the first place, you both acknowledge that the GODS hear and see and know all things, and that nothing can escape them which is matter of sense and knowledge : — do you admit this ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Then the alternative which remains is, that if the GODS neglect the lighter and lesser concerns of the universe, they neglect them because they know that they ought not to care about such matters — what other alternative is there but the opposite of their knowing ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And we acknowledge that all mortal creatures are the property of the GODS, to whom also the whole of heaven belongs ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And, therefore, whether a person says that these things are to the GODS great or small — in either case it would not be natural for the GODS who own us, and who are the most careful and the best of owners to neglect us. — There is also a further consideration. LAWS BOOK X
Cle. Never, Stranger, let us admit a supposition about the GODS which is both impious and false. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. I think that we have now argued enough with him who delights to accuse the GODS of neglect. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. In a way which may be supposed to make the care of all things easy to the GODS. If any one were to form or fashion all things without any regard to the whole — if, for example, he formed a living element of water out of fire, instead of forming many things out of one or one out of many in regular order attaining to a first or second or third birth, the transmutation would have been infinite ; but now the ruler of the world has a wonderfully easy task. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. I will explain : — When the king saw that our actions had life, and that there was much virtue in them and much vice, and that the soul and body, although not, like the GODS of popular opinion, eternal, yet having once come into existence, were indestructible (for if either of them had been destroyed, there would have been no generation of living beings) ; and when he observed that the good of the soul was ever by nature designed to profit men, and the evil to harm them — he, seeing all this, contrived so to place each of the parts that their position might in the easiest and best manner procure the victory of good and the defeat of evil in the whole. And he contrived a general plan by which a thing of a certain nature found a certain seat and room. But the formation of qualities he left to the wills of individuals. For every one of us is made pretty much what he is by the bent of his desires and the nature of his soul. LAWS BOOK X
This is the justice of the GODS who inhabit Olympus. O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the GODS, know that if you become worse you shall go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven, which neither you nor any other unfortunate will ever glory in escaping, and which the ordaining powers have specially ordained ; take good heed thereof, for it will be sure to take heed of you. If you say : — I am small and will creep into the depths of the earth, or I am high and will fly up to heaven, you are not so small or so high but that you shall pay the fitting penalty, either here or in the world below or in some still more savage place whither you shall be conveyed. This is also the explanation of the fate of those whom you saw, who had done unholy and evil deeds, and from small beginnings had grown great, and you fancied that from being miserable they had become happy ; and in their actions, as in a mirror, you seemed to see the universal neglect of the GODS, not knowing how they make all things work together and contribute to the great whole. And thinkest thou, bold man, that thou needest not to know this ? — he who knows it not can never form any true idea of the happiness or unhappiness of life or hold any rational discourse respecting either. If Cleinias and this our reverend company succeed in bringing to you that you know not what you say of the GODS, then will God help you ; but should you desire to hear more, listen to what we say to the third opponent, if you have any understanding whatsoever. For I think that we have sufficiently proved the existence of the GODS, and that they care for men : — The other notion that they are appeased by the wicked, and take gifts, is what we must not concede to any one, and what every man should disprove to the utmost of his power. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Well, then, by the GODS themselves I conjure you to tell me — if they are to be propitiated, how are they to be propitiated ? Who are they, and what is their nature ? Must they not be at least rulers who have to order unceasingly the whole heaven ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And to what earthly rulers can they be compared, or who to them ? How in the less can we find an image of the greater ? Are they charioteers of contending pairs of steeds, or pilots of vessels ? Perhaps they might be compared to the generals of armies, or they might be likened to physicians providing against the diseases which make war upon the body, or to husbandmen observing anxiously the effects of the seasons on the growth of plants ; or I perhaps, to shepherds of flocks. For as we acknowledge the world to be full of many goods and also of evils, and of more evils than goods, there is, as we affirm, an immortal conflict going on among us, which requires marvellous watchfulness ; and in that conflict the GODS and demigods are our allies, and we are their property. Injustice and insolence and folly are the destruction of us, and justice and temperance and wisdom are our salvation ; and the place of these latter is in the life of the GODS, although some vestige of them may occasionally be discerned among mankind. But upon this earth we know that there dwell souls possessing an unjust spirit, who may be compared to brute animals, which fawn upon their keepers, whether dogs or shepherds, or the best and most perfect masters ; for they in like manner, as the voices of the wicked declare, prevail by flattery and prayers and incantations, and are allowed to make their gains with impunity. And this sin, which is termed dishonesty, is an evil of the same kind as what is termed disease in living bodies or pestilence in years or seasons of the year, and in cities and governments has another name, which is injustice. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. What else can he say who declares that the GODS are always lenient to the doers of unjust acts, if they divide the spoil with them ? As if wolves were to toss a portion of their prey to the dogs, and they, mollified by the gift, suffered them to tear the flocks. Must not he who maintains that the GODS can be propitiated argue thus ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And to which of the above-mentioned classes of guardians would any man compare the GODS without absurdity ? Will he say that they are like pilots, who are themselves turned away from their duty by “libations of wine and the savour of fat,” and at last overturn both ship and sailors ? LAWS BOOK X
Cle. That would be a fearful image of the GODS. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. And are not all the GODS the chiefest of all guardians, and do they not guard our highest interests ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. Then are the three assertions — that the GODS exist, and that they take care of men, and that they can never be persuaded to do injustice, now sufficiently demonstrated ? May we say that they are ? LAWS BOOK X
Ath. I have spoken with vehemence because I am zealous against evil men ; and I will tell dear Cleinias, why I am so. I would not have the wicked think that, having the superiority in argument, they may do as they please and act according to their various imaginations about the GODS ; and this zeal has led me to speak too vehemently ; but if we have at all succeeded in persuading the men to hate themselves and love their opposites, the prelude of our laws about impiety will not have been spoken in vain. LAWS BOOK X
Ath. After the prelude shall follow a discourse, which will be the interpreter of the law ; this shall proclaim to all impious persons : — that they must depart from their ways and go over to the pious. And to those who disobey, let the law about impiety be as follows : — If a man is guilty of any impiety in word or deed, any one who happens to present shall give information to the magistrates, in aid of the law ; and let the magistrates who. first receive the information bring him before the appointed court according to the law ; and if a magistrate, after receiving information, refuses to act, he shall be tried for impiety at the instance of any one who is willing to vindicate the laws ; and if any one be cast, the court shall estimate the punishment of each act of impiety ; and let all such criminals be imprisoned. There shall be three prisons in the state : the first of them is to be the common prison in the neighbourhood of the agora for the safe-keeping of the generality of offenders ; another is to be in the neighbourhood of the nocturnal council, and is to be called the “House of Reformation” ; another, to be situated in some wild and desolate region in the centre of the country, shall be called by some name expressive of retribution. Now, men fall into impiety from three causes, which have been already mentioned, and from each of these causes arise two sorts of impiety, in all six, which are worth distinguishing, and should not all have the same punishment. For he who does not believe in GODS, and yet has a righteous nature, hates the wicked and dislikes and refuses to do injustice, and avoids unrighteous men, and loves the righteous. But they who besides believing that the world is devoid of GODS are intemperate, and have at the same time good memories and quick wits, are worse ; although both of them are unbelievers, much less injury is done by the one than by the other. The one may talk loosely about the GODS and about sacrifices and oaths, and perhaps by laughing at other men he may make them like himself, if he be not punished. But the other who holds the same opinions and is called a clever man, is full of stratagem and deceit — men of this class deal in prophecy and jugglery of all kinds, and out of their ranks sometimes come tyrants and demagogues and generals and hierophants of private mysteries and the Sophists, as they are termed, with their ingenious devices. There are many kinds of unbelievers, but two only for whom legislation is required ; one the hypocritical sort, whose crime is deserving of death many times over, while the other needs only bonds and admonition. In like manner also the notion that the GODS take no thought of men produces two other sorts of crimes, and the notion that they may be propitiated produces two more. Assuming these divisions, let those who have been made what they are only from want of understanding, and not from malice or an evil nature, be placed by the judge in the House of Reformation, and ordered to suffer imprisonment during a period of not less than five years. And in the meantime let them have no intercourse with the other citizens, except with members of the nocturnal council, and with them let them converse with a view to the improvement of their soul’s health. And when the time of their imprisonment has expired, if any of them be of sound mind let him be restored to sane company, but if not, and if he be condemned a second time, let him be punished with death. As to that class of monstrous natures who not only believe that there are no GODS, or that they are negligent, or to be propitiated, but in contempt of mankind conjure the souls of the living and say that they can conjure the dead and promise to charm the GODS with sacrifices and prayers, and will utterly overthrow individuals and whole houses and states for the sake of money — let him who is guilty of any of these things be condemned by the court to be bound according to law in the prison which is in the centre of the land, and let no freeman ever approach him, but let him receive the rations of food appointed by the guardians of the law from the hands of the public slaves ; and when he is dead let him be cast beyond the borders unburied, and if any freeman assist in burying him, let him pay the penalty of impiety to any one who is willing to bring a suit against him. But if he leaves behind him children who are fit to be citizens, let the guardians of orphans take care of them, just as they would of any other orphans, from the day on which their father is convicted. LAWS BOOK X
In all these cases there should be one law, which will make men in general less liable to transgress in word or deed, and less foolish, because they will not be allowed to practise religious rites contrary to law. And let this be the simple form of the law : — No man shall have sacred rites in a private house. When he would sacrifice, let him go to the temples and hand over his offerings to the priests and priestesses, who see to the sanctity of such things, and let him pray himself, and let any one who pleases join with him in prayer. The reason of this is as follows : — GODS and temples are not easily instituted, and to establish them rightly is the work of a mighty intellect. And women especially, and men too, when they are sick or in danger, or in any sort of difficulty, or again on their receiving any good fortune, have a way of consecrating the occasion, vowing sacrifices, and promising shrines to GODS, demigods, and sons of GODS ; and when they are awakened by terrible apparitions and dreams or remember visions, they find in altars and temples the remedies of them, and will fill every house and village with them, placing them in the open air, or wherever they may have had such visions ; and with a view to all these cases we should obey the law. The law has also regard to the impious, and would not have them fancy that by the secret performance of these actions — by raising temples and by building altars in private houses, they can propitiate the God secretly with sacrifices and prayers, while they are really multiplying their crimes infinitely, bringing guilt from heaven upon themselves, and also upon those who permit them, and who are better men than they are ; and the consequence is that the whole state reaps the fruit of their impiety, which, in a certain sense, is deserved. Assuredly God will not blame the legislator, who will enact the following law : — No one shall possess shrines of the GODS in private houses, and he who is found to possess them, and perform any sacred rites not publicly authorized — supposing the offender to be some man or woman who is not guilty of any other great and impious crime — shall be informed against by him who is acquainted with the fact, which shall be announced by him to the guardians of the law ; and let them issue orders that he or she shall carry away their private rites to the public temples, and if they do not persuade them, let them inflict a penalty on them until they comply. And if a person be proven guilty of impiety, not merely from childish levity, but such as grown-up men may be guilty of, whether he have sacrificed publicly or privately to any GODS, let him be punished with death, for his sacrifice is impure. Whether the deed has been done in earnest, or only from childish levity, let the guardians of the law determine, before they bring the matter into court and prosecute the offender for impiety. LAWS BOOK X
In the next place, dealings between man and man require to be suitably regulated. The principle of them is very simple : — Thou shalt not, if thou canst help, touch that which is mine, or remove the least thing which belongs to me without my consent ; and may I be of a sound mind, and do to others as I would that they should do to me. First, let us speak of treasure trove : — May I never pray the GODS to find the hidden treasure, which another has laid up for himself and his family, he not being one of my ancestors, nor lift, if I should find, such a treasure. And may I never have any dealings with those who are called diviners, and who in any way or manner counsel me to take up the deposit entrusted to the earth, for I should not gain so much in the increase of my possessions, if I take up the prize, as I should grow in justice and virtue of soul, if I abstain ; and this will be a better possession to me than the other in a better part of myself ; for the possession of justice in the soul is preferable to the possession of wealth. And of many things it is well said — “Move not the immovables,” and this may be regarded as one of them. And we shall do well to believe the common tradition which says that such deeds prevent a man from having a family. Now as to him who is careless about having children and regardless of the legislator, taking up that which neither he deposited, nor any ancestor of his, without the consent of the depositor, violating the simplest and noblest of laws which was the enactment of no mean man : — “Take not up that which was not laid down by thee” — of him, I say, who despises these two legislators, and takes up, not small matter which he has not deposited, but perhaps a great heap of treasure, what he ought to suffer at the hands of the GODS, God only knows ; but I would have the first person who sees him go and tell the wardens of the city, if the occurrence has taken place in the city, or if the occurrence has taken place in the agora he shall tell the wardens of the agora, or if in the country he shall tell the wardens of the country and their commanders. When information has been received the city shall send to Delphi, and, whatever the God answers about the money and the remover of the money, that the city shall do in obedience to the oracle ; the informer, if he be a freeman, shall have the honour of doing rightly, and he who informs not, the dishonour of doing wrongly ; and if he be a slave who gives information, let him be freed, as he ought to be, by the state, which shall give his master the price of him ; but if he do not inform he shall be punished with death. Next in order shall follow a similar law, which shall apply equally to matters great and small : — If a man happens to leave behind him some part of his property, whether intentionally or unintentionally, let him who may come upon the left property suffer it to remain, reflecting that such things are under the protection of the Goddess of ways, and are dedicated to her by the law. But if any one defies the law, and takes the property home with him, let him, if the thing is of little worth, and the man who takes it a slave, be beaten with many stripes by him, being a person of not less than thirty years of age. Or if he be a freeman, in addition to being thought a mean person and a despiser of the laws, let him pay ten times the value of the treasure which he has moved to the leaver. And if some one accuses another of having anything which belongs to him, whether little or much, and the other admits that he has this thing, but denies that the property in dispute belongs to other, if the property be registered with the magistrates according to law, the claimant shall summon the possessor, who shall bring it before the magistrates ; and when it is brought into court, if it be registered in the public registers, to which of the litigants it belonged, let him take it and go his way. Or if the property be registered as belonging to some one who is not present, whoever will offer sufficient surety on behalf of the absent person that he will give it up to him, shall take it away as the representative of the other. But if the property which is deposited be not registered with the magistrates, let it remain until the time of trial with three of the eldest of the magistrates ; and if it be an animal which is deposited, then he who loses the suit shall pay the magistrates for its keep, and they shall determine the cause within three days. LAWS BOOK XI
If man exchanges either money for money, or anything whatever for anything else, either with or without life, let him give and receive them genuine and unadulterated, in accordance with the law. And let us have a prelude about all this sort of roguery, like the preludes of our other laws. Every man should regard adulteration as of one and the same class with falsehood and deceit, concerning which the many are too fond of saying that at proper times and places the practice may often be right. But they leave the occasion, and the when, and the where, undefined and unsettled, and from this want of definiteness in their language they do a great deal of harm to themselves and to others. Now a legislator ought not to leave the matter undetermined ; he ought to prescribe some limit, either greater or less. Let this be the rule prescribed : — No one shall call the GODS to witness, when he says or does anything false or deceitful or dishonest, unless he would be the most hateful of mankind to them. And he is most hateful to them takes a false oath, and pays no heed to the GODS ; and in the next degree, he who tells a falsehood in the presence of his superiors. Now better men are the superiors of worse men, and in general elders are the superiors of the young ; wherefore also parents are the superiors of their off spring, and men of women and children, and rulers of their subjects ; for all men ought to reverence any one who is in any position of authority, and especially those who are in state offices. And this is the reason why I have spoken of these matters. For every one who is guilty of adulteration in the agora tells a falsehood, and deceives, and when he invokes the GODS, according to the customs and cautions of the wardens of the agora, he does but swear without any respect for God or man. Certainly, it is an excellent rule not lightly to defile the names of the GODS, after the fashion of men in general, who care little about piety and purity in their religious actions. But if a man will not conform to this rule, let the law be as follows : — He who sells anything in the agora shall not ask two prices for that which he sells, but he shall ask one price, and if he do not obtain this, he shall take away his goods ; and on that day he shall not value them either at more or less ; and there shall be no praising of any goods, or oath taken about them. If a person disobeys this command, any citizen who is present, not being less than thirty years of age, may with impunity chastise and beat the swearer, but if instead of obeying the laws he takes no heed, he shall be liable to the charge of having betrayed them. If a man sells any adulterated goods and will not obey these regulations, he who knows and can prove the fact, and does prove it in the presence of the magistrates, if he be a slave or a metic, shall have the adulterated goods ; but if he be a citizen, and do not pursue the charge, he shall be called a rogue, and deemed to have robbed the GODS of the agora ; or if he proves the charge, he shall dedicate the goods to the GODS of the agora. He who is proved to have sold any adulterated goods, in addition to losing the goods themselves, shall be beaten with stripes — a stripe for a drachma, according to the price of the goods ; and the herald shall proclaim in the agora the offence for which he is going to be beaten. The warden of the agora and the guardians of the law shall obtain information from experienced persons about the rogueries and adulterations of the sellers, and shall write up what the seller ought and ought not to do in each case ; and let them inscribe their laws on a column in front of the court of the wardens of the agora, that they may be clear instructors of those who have business in the agora. Enough has been said in what has preceded about the wardens of the city, and if anything seems to be wanting, let them communicate with the guardians of the law, and write down the omission, and place on a column in the court of the wardens of the city the primary and secondary regulations which are laid down for them about their office. LAWS BOOK XI
When a man makes an agreement which he does not fulfil, unless the agreement be of a nature which the law or a vote of the assembly does not allow, or which he has made under the influence of some unjust compulsion, or which he is prevented from fulfilling against his will by some unexpected chance, the other party may go to law with him in the courts of the tribes, for not having completed his agreement, if the parties are not able previously to come to terms before arbiters or before their neighbours. The class of craftsmen who have furnished human life with the arts is dedicated to Hephaestus and Athene ; and there is a class of craftsmen who preserve the works of all craftsmen by arts of defence, the votaries of Ares and Athene, to which divinities they too are rightly dedicated. All these continue through life serving the country and the people ; some of them are leaders in battle ; others make for hire implements and works, and they ought not to deceive in such matters, out of respect to the GODS who are their ancestors. If any craftsman through indolence omit to execute his work in a given time, not reverencing the God who gives him the means of life, but considering, foolish fellow, that he is his own God and will let him off easily, in the first place, he shall suffer at the hands of the God, and in the second place, the law shall follow in a similar spirit. He shall owe to him who contracted with him the price of the works which he has failed in performing, and he shall begin again and execute them gratis in the given time. When a man undertakes a work, the law gives him the same advice which was given to the seller, that he should not attempt to raise the price, but simply ask the value ; this the law enjoins also on the contractor ; for the craftsman assuredly knows the value of his work. Wherefore, in free states the man of art ought not to attempt to impose upon private individuals by the help of his art, which is by nature a true thing ; and he who is wronged in a matter of this sort, shall have a right of action against the party who has wronged him. And if any one lets out work to a craftsman, and does not pay him duly according to the lawful agreement, disregarding Zeus the guardian of the city and Athene, who are the partners of the state, and overthrows the foundations of society for the sake of a little gain, in his case let the law and the GODS maintain the common bonds of the state. And let him who, having already received the work in exchange, does not pay the price in the time agreed, pay double the price ; and if a year has elapsed, although interest is not to be taken on loans, yet for every drachma which he owes to the contractor let him pay a monthly interest of an obol. Suits about these matters are to be decided by the courts of the tribes ; and by the way, since we have mentioned craftsmen at all, we must not forget the other craft of war, in which generals and tacticians are the craftsmen, who undertake voluntarily the work of our safety, as other craftsmen undertake other public works ; — if they execute their work well the law will never tire of praising him who gives them those honours which are the just rewards of the soldier ; but if any one, having already received the benefit of any noble service in war, does not make the due return of honour, the law will blame him. Let this then be the law, having an ingredient of praise, not compelling but advising the great body of the citizens to honour the brave men who are the saviours of the whole state, whether by their courage or by their military skill ; — they should honour them, I say, in the second place ; for the first and highest tribute of respect is to be given to those who are able above other men to honour the words of good legislators. LAWS BOOK XI
Ath. O ye GODS, he will say, how monstrous that I am not allowed to give, or not to give my own to whom I will — less to him who has been bad to me, and more to him who has been good to me, and whose badness and goodness have been tested by me in time of sickness or in old age and in every other sort of fortune ! LAWS BOOK XI
Thus will orphan children have a second birth. After their first birth we spoke of their nurture and education, and after their second birth, when they have lost their parents, we ought to take measures that the misfortune of orphanhood may be as little sad to them as possible. In the first place, we say that the guardians of the law are lawgivers and fathers to them, not inferior to their natural fathers. Moreover, they shall take charge of them year by year as of their own kindred ; and we have given both to them and to the children’s own guardians a suitable admonition concerning the nurture of orphans. And we seem to have spoken opportunely in our former discourse, when we said that the souls of the dead have the power after death of taking an interest in human affairs, about which there are many tales and traditions, long indeed, but true ; and seeing that they are so many and so ancient, we must believe them, and we must also believe the lawgivers, who tell us that these things are true, if they are not to be regarded as utter fools. But if these things are really so, in the first place men should have a fear of the GODS above, who regard the loneliness of the orphans ; and in the second place of the souls of the departed, who by nature incline to take an especial care of their own children, and are friendly to those who honour, and unfriendly to those who dishonour them. Men should also fear the souls of the living who are aged and high in honour ; wherever a city is well ordered and prosperous, their descendants cherish them, and so live happily ; old persons are quick to see and hear all that relates to them, and are propitious to those who are just in the fulfilment of such duties, and they punish those who wrong the orphan and the desolate, considering that they are the greatest and most sacred of trusts. To all which matters the guardian and magistrate ought to apply his mind, if he has any, and take heed of the nurture and education of the orphans, seeking in every possible way to do them good, for he is making a contribution to his own good and that of his children. He who obeys the tale which precedes the law, and does no wrong to an orphan, will never experience the wrath of the legislator. But he who is disobedient, and wrongs any one who is bereft of father or mother, shall pay twice the penalty which he would have paid if he had wronged one whose parents had been alive. As touching other legislation concerning guardians in their relation to orphans, or concerning magistrates and their superintendence of the guardians, if they did not possess examples of the manner in which children of freemen should be brought up in the bringing up of their own children, and of the care of their property in the care of their own, or if they had not just laws fairly stated about these very things — there would have been reason in making laws for them, under the idea that they were a peculiar-class, and we might distinguish and make separate rules for the life of those who are orphans and of those who are not orphans. But as the case stands, the condition of orphans with us not different from the case of those who have father, though in regard to honour and dishonour, and the attention given to them, the two are not usually placed upon a level. Wherefore, touching the legislation about orphans, the law speaks in serious accents, both of persuasion and threatening, and such a threat as the following will be by no means out of place : — He who is the guardian of an orphan of either sex, and he among the guardians of the law to whom the superintendence of this guardian has been assigned, shall love the unfortunate orphan as though he were his own child, and he shall be as careful and diligent in the management of his possessions as he would be if they were his own, or even more careful and dilligent. Let every one who has the care of an orphan observe this law. But any one who acts contrary to the law on these matters, if he be a guardian of the child, may be fined by a magistrate, or, if he be himself a magistrate, the guardian may bring him before the court of select judges, and punish him, if convicted, by exacting a fine of double the amount of that inflicted by the court. And if a guardian appears to the relations of the orphan, or to any other citizen, to act negligently or dishonestly, let them bring him before the same court, and whatever damages are given against him, let him pay fourfold, and let half belong to the orphan and half to him who procured the conviction. If any orphan arrives at years of discretion, and thinks that he has been ill-used by his guardians, let him within five years of the expiration of the guardianship be allowed to bring them to trial ; and if any of them be convicted, the court shall determine what he shall pay or suffer. And if magistrate shall appear to have wronged the orphan by neglect, and he be convicted, let the court determine what he shall suffer or pay to the orphan, and if there be dishonesty in addition to neglect, besides paying the fine, let him be deposed from his office of guardian of the law, and let the state appoint another guardian of the law for the city and for the country in his room. LAWS BOOK XI
Neither God, nor a man who has understanding, will ever advise any one to neglect his parents. To a discourse concerning the honour and dishonour of parents, a prelude such as the following, about the service of the GODS, will be a suitable introduction : — There are ancient customs about the GODS which are universal, and they are of two kinds : some of the GODS we see with our eyes and we honour them, of others we honour the images, raising statues of them which we adore ; and though they are lifeless, yet we imagine that the living GODS have a good will and gratitude to us on this account. Now, if a man has a father or mother, or their fathers or mothers treasured up in his house stricken in years, let him consider that no statue can be more potent to grant his requests than they are, who are sitting at his hearth if only he knows how to show true service to them. LAWS BOOK XI
Ath. Oedipus, as tradition says, when dishonoured by his sons, invoked on them curses which every one declares to have been heard and ratified by the GODS, and Amyntor in his wrath invoked curses on his son Phoenix, and Theseus upon Hippolytus, and innumerable others have also called down wrath upon their children, whence it is clear that the GODS listen to the imprecations of parents ; for the curses of parents are, as they ought to be, mighty against their children as no others are. And shall we suppose that the prayers of a father or mother who is specially dishonoured by his or her children, are heard by the GODS in accordance with nature ; and that if a parent is honoured by them, and in the gladness of his heart earnestly entreats the GODS in his prayers to do them good, he is not equally heard, and that they do not minister to his request ? If not, they would be very unjust ministers of good, and that we affirm to be contrary to their nature. LAWS BOOK XI
Ath. May we not think, as I was saying just now, that we can possess no image which is more honoured by the GODS, than that of a father or grandfather, or of a mother stricken in years ? whom when a man honours, the heart of the God rejoices, and he is ready to answer their prayers. And, truly, the figure of an ancestor is a wonderful thing, far higher than that of a lifeless image. For the living, when they are honoured by us, join in our prayers, and when they are dishonoured, they utter imprecations against us ; but lifeless objects do neither. And therefore, if a man makes a right use of his father and grandfather and other aged relations, he will have images which above all others will win him the favour of the GODS. LAWS BOOK XI
When a man does another any injury by theft or violence, for the greater injury let him pay greater damages to the injured man, and less for the smaller injury ; but in all cases, whatever the injury may have been, as much as will compensate the loss. And besides the compensation of the wrong, let a man pay a further penalty for the chastisement of his offence : he who has done the wrong instigated by the folly of another, through the lightheartedness of youth or the like, shall pay a lighter penalty ; but he who has injured another through his own folly, when overcome by pleasure or pain, in cowardly fear, or lust, or envy, or implacable anger, shall endure a heavier punishment. Not that he is punished because he did wrong, for that which is done can never be undone, but in order that in future times, he, and those who see him corrected, may utterly hate injustice, or at any rate abate much of their evil-doing. Having an eye to all these things, the law, like a good archer, should aim at the right measure of punishment, and in all cases at the deserved punishment. In the attainment of this the judge shall be a fellow-worker with the legislator, whenever the law leaves to him to determine what the offender shall suffer or pay ; and the legislator, like a painter, shall give a rough sketch of the cases in which the law is to be applied. This is what we must do, Megillus and Cleinias, in the best and fairest manner that we can, saying what the punishments are to be of all actions of theft and violence, and giving laws of such a kind as the GODS and sons of GODS would have us give. LAWS BOOK XI
Theft is a mean, and robbery a shameless thing ; and none of the sons of Zeus delight in fraud and violence, or ever practised, either. Wherefore let no one be deluded by poets or mythologers into a mistaken belief of such such things, nor let him suppose, when he thieves or is guilty of violence, that he is doing nothing base, but only what the GODS themselves do. For such tales are untrue and improbable ; and he who steals or robs contrary to the law, is never either a God or the son of a God ; of this the legislator ought to be better informed than all the, poets put together. Happy is he and may he be forever happy, who is persuaded and listens to our words ; but he who disobeys shall have to contend against the following law : — If a man steal anything belonging to the public, whether that which he steals be much or little, he shall have the same punishment. For he who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power, and he who takes up a greater amount ; not having deposited it, is wholly unjust. Wherefore the law is not disposed to inflict a less penalty on the one than on the other because his theft, is less, but on the ground that the thief may possibly be in one case still curable, and may in another case be incurable. If any one convict in a court of law a stranger or a slave of a theft of public property, let the court determine what punishment he shall suffer, or what penalty he shall pay, bearing in mind that he is probably not incurable. But the citizen who has been brought up as our citizens will have been, if he be found guilty of robbing his country by fraud or violence, whether he be caught in the act or not, shall be punished with death ; for he is incurable. LAWS BOOK XII
Now every man who is engaged in any suit ought to be very careful of bringing false witness against any one, either intentionally or unintentionally, if he can help ; for justice is truly said to be an honourable maiden, and falsehood is naturally repugnant to honour and justice. A witness ought to be very careful not to sift against justice, as for example in what relates to the throwing away of arms — he must distinguish the throwing them away when necessary, and not make that a reproach, or bring in action against some innocent person on that account. To make the distinction maybe difficult ; but still the law must attempt to define the different kinds in some way. Let me endeavour to explain my meaning by an ancient tale : — If Patroclus had been brought to the tent still alive but without his arms (and this has happened to innumerable persons), the original arms, which the poet says were presented to Peleus by the GODS as a nuptial gift when he married. Thetis, remaining in the hands of Hector, then the base spirits of that day might have reproached the son of Menoetius with having cast away his arms. Again, there is the case of those who have been thrown down precipices and lost their arms ; and of those who at sea, and in stormy places, have been suddenly overwhelmed by floods of water ; and there are numberless things of this kind which one might adduce by way of extenuation, and with the view of justifying a misfortune which is easily misrepresented. We must, therefore, endeavour to divide to the best of our power the greater and more serious evil from the lesser. And a distinction may be drawn in the use of terms of reproach. A man does not always deserve to be called the thrower away of his shield ; he may be only the loser of his arms. For there is a great or rather absolute difference between him who is deprived of his arms by a sufficient force, and him who voluntarily lets his shield go. Let the law then be as follows : — If a person having arms is overtaken by the enemy and does not turn round and defend himself, but lets them go voluntarily or throws them away, choosing a base life and a swift escape rather than a courageous and noble and blessed death — in such a case of the throwing away of arms let justice be done, but the judge need take no note of the case just now mentioned ; for the bad man ought always to be punished, in the hope that he may be improved, but not the unfortunate, for there is no advantage in that. And what shall be the punishment suited to him who has thrown away his weapons of defence ? Tradition says that Caeneus, the Thessalian, was changed by a God from a woman into a man ; but the converse miracle cannot now be wrought, or no punishment would be more proper than that the man who throws away his shield should be changed into a woman. This however is impossible, and therefore let us make a law as nearly like this as we can — that he who loves his life too well shall be in no danger for the remainder of his days, but shall live for ever under the stigma of cowardice. And let the law be in the following terms : — When a man is found guilty of disgracefully throwing away his arms in war, no general or military officer shall allow him to serve as a soldier, or give him any place at all in the ranks of soldiers ; and the officer who gives the coward any place, shall suffer a penalty which the public examiner shall exact of him ; and if he be of the highest dass, he shall pay a thousand drachmae ; or if he be of the second class, five minae ; or if he be of the third, three minae ; or if he be of the fourth class, one mina. And he who is found guilty of cowardice, shall not only be dismissed from manly dangers, which is a disgrace appropriate to his nature, but he shall pay a thousand drachmae, if he be of the highest class, and five minae if he be of the second class, and three if he be of the third class, and a mina, like the preceding, if he be of the fourth class. LAWS BOOK XII
What regulations will be proper about examiners, seeing that some of our magistrates are elected by lot, and for a year, and some for a longer time and from selected persons ? Of such magistrates, who will be a sufficient censor or examiner, if any of them, weighed down by the pressure of office or his own inability to support the dignity of his office, be guilty of any crooked practice ? It is by no means easy to find a magistrate who excels other magistrates in virtue, but still we must endeavour to discover some censor or examiner who is more than man. For the truth is, that there are many elements of dissolution in a state, as there are also in a ship, or in an animal ; they all have their cords, and girders, and sinews — one nature diffused in many places, and called by many names ; and the office of examiner is a most important element in the preservation and dissolution of states. For if the examiners are better than the magistrates, and their duty is fulfilled justly and without blame, then the whole state and country flourishes and is happy ; but if the examination of the magistrates is carried on in a wrong way, then, by the relaxation of that justice which is the uniting principle of all constitutions, every power in the state is rent asunder from every other ; they no longer incline in the same direction, but fill the city with faction, and make many cities out of one, and soon bring all to destruction. Wherefore the examiners ought to be admirable in every sort of virtue. Let us invent a mode of creating them, which shall be as follows : — Every year, after the summer solstice, the whole city shall meet in the common precincts of Helios and Apollo, and shall present to the God three men out of their own number in the manner following : — Each citizen shall select, not himself, but some other citizen whom he deems in every way the best, and who is not less than fifty years of age. And out of the selected persons who have the greatest number of votes, they shall make a further selection until they reduce them to one-half, if they are an even number ; but if they are not an even number, they shall subtract the one who has the smallest number of votes, and make them an even number, and then leave the half which have the great number of votes. And if two persons have an equal number of votes, and thus increase the number beyond one-half, they shall withdraw the younger of the two and do away with the excess ; and then including all the rest they shall again vote, until there are left three having an unequal number of votes. But if all the three, or two out of the three, have equal votes, let them commit the election to good fate and fortune, and separate off by lot the first, and the second, and the third ; these they shall crown with an olive wreath and give them the prize of excellence, at the same time proclaiming to all the world that the city of the Magnetes, by providence of the GODS, is again preserved, and presents to the Sun and to Apollo her three best men as first-fruits, to be a common offering to them, according to the ancient law, as long as their lives answer to the judgment formed of them. And these shall appoint in their first year twelve examiners, to continue until each has completed seventy-five years, to whom three shall afterwards be added yearly ; and let these divide all the magistracies into twelve parts, and prove the holders of them by every sort of test to which a freeman may be subjected ; and let them live while they hold office in the precinct of Helios and Apollo, in which they were chosen, and let each one form a judgment of some things individually, and of others in company with his colleagues ; and let him place a writing in the agora about each magistracy, and what the magistrate ought to suffer or pay, according to the decision of the examiners. And if a magistrate does not admit that he has been justly judged, let him bring the examiners before the select judges, and if he be acquitted by their decision, let him, if he will, accuse the examiners themselves ; if, however, he be convicted, and have been condemned to death by the examiners, let him die (and of course he can only die once) : — but any other penalties which admit of being doubled let him suffer twice over. LAWS BOOK XII
The so-called decision of Rhadamanthus is worthy of all admiration. He knew that the men of his own time believed and had no doubt that there were GODS, which was a reasonable belief in those days, because most men were the sons of GODS, and according to tradition he was one himself. He appears to have thought that he ought to commit judgment to no man, but to the GODS only, and in this way suits were simply and speedily decided by him. For he made the two parties take an oath respecting the points in dispute, and so got rid of the matter speedily and safely. But now that a certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the GODS, and others imagine that they have no care of us, and the opinion of most men, and of the men, is that in return for small sacrifice and a few flattering words they will be their accomplices in purloining large sums and save them from many terrible punishments, the way of Rhadamanthus is no longer suited to the needs of justice ; for as the needs of men about the GODS are changed, the laws should also be changed ; — in the granting of suits a rational legislation ought to do away with the oaths of the parties on either side — he who obtains leave to bring an action should write, down the charges, but should not add an oath ; and the defendant in like manner should give his denial to the magistrates in writing, and not swear ; for it is a dreadful thing to know, when many lawsuits are going on in a state that almost half the people who meet one another quite unconcernedly at the public meals and in other companies and relations of private life are perjured. Let the law, then, be as follows : — A judge who is about to give judgment shall take an oath, and he who is choosing magistrates for the state shall either vote on oath or with a voting tablet which he brings from a temple ; so too the judge of dances and of all music, and the superintendents and umpires of gymnastic and equestrian contests, and any matters in which, as far as men can judge, there is nothing to be gained by a false oath ; but all cases in which a denial confirmed by an oath clearly results in a great advantage to the taker of the oath, shall be decided without the oath of the parties to the suit, and the presiding judges shall not permit either of them. to use an oath for the sake of persuading, nor to call down curses on himself and his race, nor to use unseemly supplications or womanish laments. But they shall ever be teaching and learning what is just in auspicious words ; and he who does otherwise shall be supposed to speak beside the point, and the judges shall again bring him back to the question at issue. On the other hand, strangers in their dealings with strangers shall as at present have power to give and receive oaths, for they will not often grow old in the city or leave a fry of young ones like themselves to be the sons and heirs of the land. LAWS BOOK XII
Now a state which makes money from the cultivation of the soil only, and has no foreign trade, must consider what it will do about the emigration of its own people to other countries, and the reception of strangers from elsewhere. About these matters the legislator has to consider, and he will begin by trying to persuade men as far as he can. The intercourse of cities with one another is apt to create a confusion of manners ; strangers, are always suggesting novelties to strangers. When states are well governed by good laws the mixture causes the greatest possible injury ; but seeing that most cities are the reverse of well-ordered, the confusion which arises in them from the reception of strangers, and from the citizens themselves rushing off into other cities, when any one either young or old desires to travel anywhere abroad at whatever time, is of no consequence. On the other hand, the refusal of states to receive others, and for their own citizens never to go to other places, is an utter impossibility, and to the rest of the world is likely to appear ruthless and uncivilized ; it is a practise adopted by people who use harsh words, such as xenelasia or banishment of strangers, and who have harsh and morose ways, as men think. And to be thought or not to be thought well of by the rest of the world is no light matter ; for the many are not so far wrong in their judgment of who are bad and who are good, as they are removed from the nature of virtue in themselves. Even bad men have a divine instinct which guesses rightly, and very many who are utterly depraved form correct notions and judgments of the differences between the good and bad. And the generality of cities are quite right in exhorting us to value a good reputation in the world, for there is no truth greater and more important than this — that he who is really good (I am speaking of the man who would be perfect) seeks for reputation with, but not without, the reality of goodness. And our Cretan colony ought also to acquire the fairest and noblest reputation for virtue from other men ; and there is every reason to expect that, if the reality answers to the idea, she will before of the few well-ordered cities which the sun and the other GODS behold. Wherefore, in the matter of journeys to other countries and the reception of strangers, we enact as follows : — In the first place, let no one be allowed to go anywhere at all into a foreign country who is less than forty years of age ; and no one shall go in a private capacity, but only in some public one, as a herald, or on an embassy ; or on a sacred mission. Going abroad on an expedition or in war, not to be included among travels of the class authorized by the state. To Apollo at Delphi and to Zeus at Olympia and to Nemea and to the Isthmus, — citizens should be sent to take part in the sacrifices and games there dedicated to the GODS ; and they should send as many as possible, and the best and fairest that can be found, and they will make the city renowned at holy meetings in time of peace, procuring a glory which shall be the converse of that which is gained in war ; and when they come home they shall teach the young that the institutions of other states are inferior to their own. And they shall send spectators of another sort, if they have the consent of the guardians, being such citizens as desire to look a little more at leisure at the doings of other men ; and these no law shall hinder. For a city which has no experience of good and bad men or intercourse with them, can never be thoroughly, and perfectly civilized, nor, again, can the citizens of a city properly observe the laws by habit only, and without an intelligent understanding of them. And there always are in the world a few inspired men whose acquaintance is beyond price, and who spring up quite as much in ill-ordered as in well-ordered cities. These are they whom the citizens of a well ordered city should be ever seeking out, going forth over sea and over land to find him who is incorruptible — that he may establish more firmly institutions in his own state which are good already ; and amend what is deficient ; for without this examination and enquiry a city will never continue perfect any more than if the examination is ill-conducted. LAWS BOOK XII
When a man becomes surety, let him give the security in a distinct form, acknowledging the whole transaction in a written document, and in the presence of not less than three witnesses if the sum be under a thousand drachmae, and of not less than five witnesses if the sum be above a thousand drachmae. The agent of a dishonest or untrustworthy seller shall himself be responsible ; both the agent and the principal shall be equally liable. If a person wishes to find anything in the house of another, he shall enter naked, or wearing only a short tunic and without a girdle, having first taken an oath by the customary GODS that he expects to find it there ; he shall then make his search, and the other shall throw open his house and allow him to search things both sealed and unsealed. And if a person will not allow the searcher to make his search, he who is prevented shall go to law with him, estimating the value of the goods after which he is searching, and if the other be convicted he shall pay twice the value of the article. If the master be absent from home, the dwellers in the house shall let him search the unsealed property, and on the sealed property the searcher shall set another seal, and shall appoint any one whom he likes to guard them during five days ; and if the master of the house be absent during a longer time, he shall take with him the wardens of the city, and so make his search, opening the sealed property as well as the unsealed, and then, together with the members of the family and the wardens of the city, he shall seal them up again as they were before. There shall be a limit of time in the case of disputed things, and he who has had possession of them during a certain time shall no longer be liable to be disturbed. As to houses and lands there can be no dispute in this state of ours ; but if a man has any other possessions which he has used and openly shown in the city and in the agora and in the temples, and no one has put in a claim to them, and some one says that he was looking for them during this time, and the possessor is proved to have made no concealment, if they have continued for a year, the one having the goods and the other looking for them, the claim of the seeker shall not be allowed after the expiration of the year ; or if he does not use or show the lost property in the market or in the city, but only in the country, and no one offers himself as the owner during five years, at the expiration of the five years the claim shall be barred for ever after ; or if he uses them in the city but within the house, then the appointed time of claiming the goods shall be three years, or ten years if he has them in the country in private. And if he has them in another land, there shall be no limit of time or prescription, but whenever the owner finds them he may claim them. LAWS BOOK XII
Touching offerings to the GODS, a moderate man should observe moderation in what he offers. Now the land and the hearth of the house of all men is sacred to all GODS ; wherefore let no man dedicate them a second time to the GODS. Gold and silver, whether possessed by private persons or in temples, are in other cities provocative of envy, and ivory, the product of a dead body, is not a proper offering ; brass and iron, again, are instruments of war ; but of wood let a man bring what offerings he likes, provided it be a single block, and in like manner of stone, to the public temples ; of woven work let him not offer more than one woman can execute in a month. White is a colour suitable to the GODS, especially in woven works, but dyes should only be used for the adornments of war. The most divine of gifts are birds and images, and they should be such as one painter can execute in a single day. And let all other offerings follow a similar rule. LAWS BOOK XII
Thus a man is born and brought up, and after this manner he begets and brings up his own children, and has his share of dealings with other men, and suffers if he has done wrong to any one, and receives satisfaction if he has been wronged, and so at length in due time he grows old under the protection of the laws, and his end comes in the order of nature. Concerning the dead of either sex, the religious ceremonies which may fittingly be performed, whether appertaining to the GODS of the underworld or of this, shall be decided by the interpreters with absolute authority. Their sepulchres are not to be in places which are fit for cultivation, and there shall be no monuments in such spots, either large or small, but they shall occupy that part of the country which is naturally adapted for receiving and concealing the bodies of the dead with as little hurt as possible to the living. No man, living or dead, shall deprive the living of the sustenance which the earth, their foster-parent, is naturally inclined to provide for them. And let not the mound be piled higher than would be the work of five men completed in five days ; nor shall the stone which is placed over the spot be larger than would be sufficient to receive the praises of the dead included in four heroic lines. Nor shall the laying out of the dead in the house continue for a longer time than is sufficient to distinguish between him who is in a trance only and him who is really dead, and speaking generally, the third day after death will be a fair time for carrying out the body to the sepulchre. Now we must believe the legislator when he tells us that the soul is in all respects superior to the body, and that even in life what makes each one us to be what we are is only the soul ; and that the body follows us about in the likeness of each of us, and therefore, when we are dead, the bodies of the dead are quite rightly said to be our shades or images ; for the true and immortal being of each one of us which is called the soul goes on her way to other GODS, before them to give an account — which is an inspiring hope to the good, but very terrible to the bad, as the laws of our fathers tell us ; and they also say that not much can be done in the way of helping a man after he is dead. But the living — he should be helped by all his kindred, that while in life he may be the holiest and justest of men, and after death may have no great sins to be punished in the world below. If this be true, a man ought not to waste his substance under the idea that all this lifeless mass of flesh which is in process of burial is connected with him ; he should consider that the son, or brother, or the beloved one, whoever he may be, whom he thinks he is laying in the earth, has gone away to complete and fulfil his own destiny, and that his duty is rightly to order the present, and to spend moderately on the lifeless altar of the GODS below. But the legislator does not intend moderation to be take, in the sense of meanness. Let the law, then, be as follows : — The expenditure on the entire funeral of him who is of the highest class shall not exceed five minae ; and for him who is of the second class, three minae, and for him who is of the third class, two minae, and for him, who is of the fourth class, one mina, will be a fair limit of expense. The guardians of the law ought to take especial care of the different ages of life, whether childhood, or manhood, or any other age. And at the end of all, let there be some one guardian of the law presiding, who shall be chosen by the friends of the deceased to superintend, and let it be glory to him to manage with fairness and moderation what relates to the dead, and a discredit to him if they are not well managed. Let the laying out and other ceremonies be in accordance with custom, but to the statesman who adopts custom as his law we must give way in certain particulars. It would be monstrous for example that he should command any man to weep or abstain from weeping over the dead ; but he may forbid cries of lamentation, and not allow the voice of the mourner to be heard outside the house ; also, he may forbid the bringing of the dead body into the open streets, or the processions of mourners in the streets, and may require that before daybreak they should be outside the city. Let these, then, be our laws relating to such matters, and let him who obeys be free from penalty ; but he who disobeys even a single guardian of the law shall be punished by them all with a fitting penalty. Other modes of burial, or again the denial of burial, which is to be refused in the case of robbers of temples and parricides and the like, have been devised and are embodied in the preceding laws, so that now our work of legislation is pretty nearly at an end ; but in all cases the end does not consist in doing something or acquiring something or establishing something — the end will be attained and finally accomplished, when we have provided for the perfect and lasting continuance of our institutions until then our creation is incomplete. LAWS BOOK XII
Ath. Is not the knowledge of the GODS which we have set forth with so much zeal one of the noblest sorts of knowledge ; — to know that they are, and know how great is their power, as far as in man lies ? do indeed excuse the mass of the citizens, who only follow the voice of the laws, but we refuse to admit as guardians any who do not labour to obtain every possible evidence that there is respecting the GODS ; our city is forbidden and not allowed to choose as a guardian of the law, or to place in the select order of virtue, him who is not an inspired man, and has not laboured at these things. LAWS BOOK XII
Ath. Are we assured that there are two things which lead men to believe in the GODS, as we have already stated ? LAWS BOOK XII
Ath. No man can be a true worshipper of the GODS who does not know these two principles — that the soul is the eldest of all things which are born, and is immortal and rules over all bodies ; moreover, as I have now said several times, he who has not contemplated the mind of nature which is said to exist in the stars, and gone through the previous training, and seen the connection of music with these things, and harmonized them all with laws and institutions, is not able to give a reason of such things as have a reason. And he who is unable to acquire this in addition to the ordinary virtues of a citizen, can hardly be a good ruler of a whole state ; but he should be the subordinate of other rulers. Wherefore, Cleinias and Megillus, let us consider whether we may not add to all the other laws which we have discussed this further one — that the nocturnal assembly of the magistrates, which has also shared in the whole scheme of education proposed by us, shall be a guard set according to law for the salvation of the state. Shall we propose this ? LAWS BOOK XII
After that event he came to the conclusion that this conviction, which he himself had gained under the influence of good teaching, was not likely to be confined to himself. Indeed, he saw it being actually implanted in other minds — not many perhaps, but certainly in some ; and he thought that with the aid of the GODS, Dionysios might perhaps become one of these, and that, if such a thing did come to pass, the result would be a life of unspeakable happiness both for himself and for the rest of the Syracusans. Further, he thought it essential that I should come to Syracuse by all manner of means and with the utmost possible speed to be his partner in these plans, remembering in his own case how readily intercourse with me had produced in him a longing for the noblest and best life. And if it should produce a similar effect on Dionysios, as his aim was that it should, he had great hope that, without bloodshed, loss of life, and those disastrous events which have now taken place, he would be able to introduce the true life of happiness throughout the whole territory. LETTERS LETTER VII