Laws

since it is impossible that a single household should be added to our 5040; consequently it is necessary that the person upon whom this punishment is to be inflicted legally should be disinherited, not by his father only, but by the whole family. Such cases should be dealt with according to a law such as this:—If any man is urged by a most unhappy impulse of anger to desire, rightly or wrongly, to expel from his own kindred one whom he has begotten and reared, he shall not be permitted

to do this informally and immediately, but he shall, first of all, assemble his own kinsfolk as far as cousins and likewise his son’s kinsfolk on the mother’s side, and in the presence of these he shall accuse his son, showing how he deserves at the hands of all to be expelled from the family, and he shall grant to the son an equal length of time for arguing that he does not deserve to suffer any such treatment; and if the father convinces them and gains the votes of more than half the family (votes being given by all the other adults of both sexes,

save only the father, the mother, and the son who is defendant), in this way and on these conditions, but not otherwise, the father shall be permitted to disinherit his son. And as regards the man disinherited, if any citizen desires to adopt him as his son, no law shall prevent him from doing so, (for the characters of the young naturally undergo many changes during their life); but if within ten years no one offers to adopt the disinherited man,

then the controllers of the surplus children designed for emigration shall take control of these persons also, in order that they may be duly included in the same scheme of emigration. And if a man becomes unusually demented owing to illness or old age or crabbedness, or a combination of these complaints, but his condition remains unnoticed by all except those who are living with him, and if he regards himself as master of his own property and wastes his goods, while his son feels at a loss and scruples to indict him for insanity,—in such a case a law shall be enacted

on behalf of the son whereby he shall, in the first instance, go to the eldest of the Law-wardens and report to them his father’s condition, and they, after full enquiry, shall advise whether or not he ought to bring an indictment; and if they advise him to bring an indictment, they shall act for him, when he brings it, both as witnesses and advocates; and the father that is convicted shall thenceforward have no power to administer even the smallest tittle of his property, and shall be counted as a child in the house for the rest of his life. Ath. If a man and his wife, being of unhappy dispositions, in no wise agree together, it is right that they should be under the constant control of ten members of the Board of Law-wardens, of middle age,

together with ten of the women in charge of marriage. If these officials are able to bring about a reconciliation, this arrangement shall hold good; but if their passions rage too high for harmony, the officials shall, so far as possible, seek out other suitable unions for each of them. And since it is probable that such persons are not of a gentle disposition, they must endeavor to yoke with them dispositions that are more gentle and sedate . If those who quarrel are childless, or have but few children,

they must form unions with a view to children; but if they have children enough, then the object both of the separation and of the new union should be to obtain companionship and mutual assistance in old age. If a man’s wife dies, leaving both male and female children, there shall be a law, advisory rather than compulsory, directing the husband to rear the children without introducing a step-mother; but if there be no children, the widower must of necessity marry, until he has begotten children sufficient alike for his household and the State.

And if the husband dies, leaving sufficient children, the mother of the children shall remain there and rear them; but if it be deemed that she is unduly young to be able to live healthfully without a husband, the relatives shall report the case to the women in charge of marriage, and shall take such action as may seem good to them and to themselves; and if there be a lack of children, they shall also act with a view to the supply of children;

and the number which constitutes a bare sufficiency of children shall be fixed by the law at one of each sex. Whenever, in spite of agreement as to who a child’s parents are, a decision is required as to which parent the child should follow, the rule is this : in all cases where a slave-woman has been mated with a slave or with a free man or a freedman, the child shall belong to the slave-woman’s master; but if a free woman mates with a slave, the issue shall belong to the slave’s master; and if the child be a master’s by his own slave-woman, or a mistress’s by her own slave, and the facts of the case are quite clear, then the women officials shall send away the woman’s child, together with its father,

to another country, and the Law-wardens shall send away the man’s child, together with its mother. Neglect of parents is a thing that no god nor any right-minded man would ever recommend to anyone; and one ought to recognize how fitly a prelude of the following kind, dealing with worship paid to the gods, would apply to the honors and dishonors paid to parents:— Ath. The ancient laws

of all men concerning the gods are two-fold: some of the gods whom we honor we see clearly , but of others we set up statues as images, and we believe that when we worship these, lifeless though they be, the living gods beyond feel great good-will towards us and gratitude. So if any man has a father or a mother, or one of their fathers or mothers, in his house laid up bed-ridden with age, let him never suppose that, while he has such a figure as this upon his hearth, any statue could be more potent, if so be that its owner tends it duly and rightly.

Clin. And what do you say is the right way? Ath. I will tell you: for in truth, my friends, matters of this sort deserve a hearing. Clin. Say on. Ath. Oedipus, when he was dishonored (so our story runs), invoked upon his children curses which, as all men allege, were granted by Heaven and fulfilled; and we tell how Amyntor in his wrath cursed his son Phoenix, and Theseus cursed Hippolytus, and countless other parents cursed countless other sons, which curses of parents upon sons it is clearly proved that the gods grant;

for a parent’s curse laid upon his children is more potent than any other man’s curse against any other, and most justly so. Let no man suppose, then, that when a father or a mother is dishonored by the children, in that case it is natural for God to hearken especially to their prayers, whereas when the parent is honored and is highly pleased and earnestly prays the gods, in consequence, to bless his children—are we not to suppose that they hearken equally to prayers of this kind, and grant them to us? For if not, they could never be just dispensers of blessings; and that, as we assert, would be

most unbecoming in gods. Clin. Most, indeed. Ath. Let us maintain, then,—as we said a moment ago—that in the eyes of the gods we can possess no image more worthy of honor, than a father or forefather laid up with old age, or a mother in the same condition; whom when a man worships with gifts of honor, God is well pleased, for otherwise He would not grant their prayers. For the shrine which is an ancestor is marvellous in our eyes,

far beyond that which is a lifeless thing; for while those which are alive pray for us when tended by us and pray against us when dishonored, the lifeless images do neither; so that if a man rightly treats his father and forefather and all such ancestors, he will possess images potent above all others to win for him a heaven-blest lot. Clin. Most excellent! Ath. Every right-minded man fears and respects the prayers of parents, knowing that many times in many cases they have proved effective. And since this is the ordinance of nature, to good men aged forefathers are a heavenly treasure

while they live, up to the very last hours of life, and when they depart they are sorely regretted; but to the bad are truly fearsome. Therefore let every man, in obedience to these counsels, honor his own parents with all the due legal honors. If however, report convicts any of deafness to such preludes, the following law will be enacted rightly to deal with them:—If any person in this State be unduly neglectful of his parents, and fail to consider them in all things more than

his sons or any of his offspring, or even himself, and to fulfil their wishes, let the parent who suffers any such neglect report it, either in person or by a messenger, to the three eldest Law-wardens, and to three of the women in charge of marriage; and these shall take the matter in hand, and shall punish the wrongdoers with stripes and imprisonment if they are still young—up to the age of thirty

if they are men, while if they are women they shall suffer similar punishment up to the age of forty. And if, when they have passed these limits of age, they do not desist from the same acts of neglect towards their parents, but in some cases maltreat them, they shall be summoned before a court of 101 citizens, who shall be the oldest citizens all; and if a man be convicted, the court shall assess what his fine or punishment must be, regarding no penalty as excluded which man can suffer or pay.

If any parent when maltreated is unable to report the fact, that free man who hears of it shall inform the magistrate, failing which he shall be esteemed base, and shall be liable to an action for damage at the hands of anyone who chooses. If a slave gives information he shall be set free: he shall be set free by the Board of Magistrates if he be a slave of either the injured party or the injurers; but if he belong to any other citizen, the State Treasury shall pay his owner a price for him; and the magistrates shall take care that no one does injury to such a man in revenge for his giving information.

We have already dealt fully with cases where one man injures another by poisons so that death is the result; but we have not as yet dealt fully with any of the minor cases in which willful and deliberate injury is caused by means of potions, foods, and unguents. A division in our treatment of poisoning cases is required by the fact that, following the nature of mankind, they are of two distinct types. Ath. The type

that we have now expressly mentioned is that in which injury is done to bodies by bodies according to nature’s laws. Distinct from this is the type which, by means of sorceries and incantations and spells (as they are called), not only convinces those who attempt to cause injury that they really can do so, but convinces also their victims that they certainly are being injured by those who possess the power of bewitchment. In respect of all such matters it is neither easy to perceive what is the real truth, nor, if one does perceive it, is it easy to convince others. And it is futile to approach the souls of men

who view one another with dark suspicion if they happen to see images of molded wax at doorways, or at points where three ways meet, or it may be at the tomb of some ancestor, to bid them make light of all such portents, when we ourselves hold no clear opinion concerning them. Consequently, we shall divide the law about poisoning under two heads, according to the modes in which the attempt is made, and, as a preliminary, we shall entreat, exhort, and advise that no one must attempt

to commit such an act, or to frighten the mass of men, like children, with bogeys, and so compel the legislator and the judge to cure men of such fears, inasmuch as, first, the man who attempts poisoning knows not what he is doing either in regard to bodies (unless he be a medical expert) or in respect of sorceries (unless he be a prophet or diviner). So this statement shall stand

as the law about poisoning:—Whosoever shall poison any person so as to cause an injury not fatal either to the person himself or to his employes, or so as to cause an injury fatal or not fatal to his flocks or to his hives,—if the agent be a doctor, and if he be convicted of poisoning, he shall be punished by death; but if he be a lay person, the court shall assess in his case what he shall suffer or pay. And if it be held that a man is acting like an injurer by the use of spells, incantations,

or any such mode of poisoning, if he be a prophet or diviner, he shall be put to death; but if he be ignorant of the prophetic art, he shall be dealt with in the same way as a layman convicted of poisoning,—that is to say, the court shall assess in his case also what shall seem to them right for him to suffer or pay. Ath. In all cases where one man causes damage to another by acts of robbery or violence, if the damage be great, he shall pay a large sum as compensation to the damaged party, and a small sum if the damage be small; and as a general rule, every man shall in every case pay a sum equal to the damage done, until the loss is made good; and, in addition to this, every man shall pay the penalty which is attached to his crime

by way of corrective. The penalty shall be lighter in the case of one who has done wrong owing to another’s folly—the wrong-doer being over-persuaded because of his youth or for some such reason; and it shall be heavier when man has done wrong owing to his own folly, because of his incontinence in respect of pleasures and pains and the overpowering influence of craven fears or of incurable desires, envies and rages. And he shall pay the penalty, not because of the wrongdoing,—for what is done can never be undone,—but in order that for the future both he himself and those who behold his punishment may either utterly loathe his sin

or at least renounce to a great extent such lamentable conduct. For all these reasons and with a view to all these objects, the law, like a good archer, must aim in each case at the amount of the punishment, and above all at its fitting amount; and the judge must assist the lawgiver in carrying out this same task, whenever the law entrusts to him the assessment of what the defendant is to suffer or pay,

while the lawgiver, like a draughtsman, must give a sketch in outline of cases which illustrate the rules of the written code. And that, O Megillus and Clinias, is the task which we must now execute as fairly and well as we can: we must state what penalties should be ordained for all cases of robbery and violence, in so far as the gods and sons of gods may suffer us to ordain them by law. If any be a madman, he shall not appear openly in the city; the relatives of such persons shall keep them indoors, employing whatever means they know of,

or else they shall pay a penalty; a person belonging to the highest property-class shall pay a hundred drachmae, whether the man he is neglecting be a free man or a slave,—one belonging to the second class shall pay four-fifths of a mina—one of the third class, three-fifths,—and one of the fourth class, two-fifths. There are many and various forms of madness: in the cases now mentioned it is caused by disease, but cases also occur where it is due to the natural growth and fostering of an evil temper, by which men in the course of a trifling quarrel abuse one another slanderously with loud cries—

a thing which is unseemly and totally out of place in a well-regulated State. Concerning abuse there shall be this one law to cover all cases:—No one shall abuse anyone. If one is disputing with another in argument, he shall either speak or listen, and he shall wholly refrain from abusing either the disputant or the bystanders. Ath. For from those light things, words, there spring in deed things most heavy to bear, even hatreds and feuds,

when men begin by cursing one another and foully abusing one another in the manner of fish-wives; and the man who utters such words is gratifying a thing most ungracious and sating his passion with foul foods, and by thus brutalizing afresh that part of his soul which once was humanized by education, he makes a wild beast of himself through his rancorous life, and wins only gall for gratitude from his passion. In such disputes all men are commonly wont to proceed to indulge in ridicule

of their opponent; but everyone who has ever yet indulged in this practice has either failed to achieve a virtuous disposition, or else has lost in great measure his former high-mindedness. No man, therefore, shall ever in any wise utter such words in any holy place or at any public sacrifice or public games, or in the market or the court or any public assembly; in every such case the magistrate concerned shall punish the offender; or, if he fail to do so, he shall be disqualified for any public distinction

because of his neglect of the laws and his failure to execute the injunctions of the lawgiver. And if in other places a man abstains not from such language—whether he be the aggressor or acting in self-defence—whosoever meets with him, if he be an older man, shall vindicate the law by driving off with stripes the man who pamper passion, that evil comrade; or, if he fail to do so, he shall be liable to the appointed penalty. We are now asserting that a man who is gripped by the habit of abuse cannot avoid trying to indulge in ridicule; and this is a thing we abuse when it is uttered in passion.

What then? Are we to countenance the readiness to ridicule people which is shown by comic writers, provided that in their comedies they employ this sort of language about citizens without any show of passion? Or shall we divide ridicule under the two heads of jest and earnest, and allow anyone to ridicule any other in jest and without passion,

but forbid anyone (as we have already said) to do so in real earnest and with passion? We must by no means go back on what we said; but we must determine by law who is to be granted this permission, and who refused. Ath. A composer of a comedy or of any iambic or lyric song shall be strictly forbidden to ridicule any of the citizens either by word or by mimicry, whether with or without passion; and if anyone disobeys, the Presidents of the Games

shall on the same day banish him wholly from the country, failing which they shall be fined three minas, dedicated to the god whose festival is being held. Those to whom permission has been given, as we previously said, to write songs about one another shall be allowed to ridicule others in jest and without passion; but they shall not be allowed to do so with passion and in earnest. The task of making this distinction shall be entrusted to the minister in charge of the general education of the young: whatever he shall approve, the composer shall be allowed to produce in public, but whatever he shall disapprove, the composer shall be forbidden either personally to exhibit to anyone or to be found teaching to any other person, free man or slave;

and if he does so, he shall be held to be a base man and disobedient to the laws. The man who suffers from hunger or the like is not the man who deserves pity, but he who, while possessing temperance or virtue of some sort, or a share thereof gains in addition evil fortune; wherefore it would be a strange thing indeed if in a polity and State that is even moderately well organized, a man of this kind (be he slave or free man) should be so entirely neglected as to come to utter beggary. Wherefore the Lawgiver will be safe in enacting for such cases some such law as this:—

There shall be no beggar in our State; and if anyone attempts to beg, and to collect a livelihood by ceaseless prayers, the market-stewards shall expel him from the market, and the Board of city-stewards from the city, and from any other district he shall be driven across the border by the country-stewards, to the end that the land may be wholly purged of such a creature. If a slave, male or female, do any injury to another man’s goods,

when the injured man himself has had no share in causing the injury through his own clumsy or careless handling, then the master of him that has done the injury shall fully make good the damage, or else shall hand over the person of the injurer: but if the master brings a charge affirming that the claim is made in order to rob him of his slave by a privy agreement between the injurer and the injured party, then he shall prosecute the man who claims that he has been injured on the charge of conspiracy; and if he wins his case, he shall receive double the price at which the court shall assess the slave,

but if he loses he shall not only make good the damage, but he shall also hand over the slave. And if it be a mule or horse or dog any other animal that causes damage to any property belonging to a neighbor, its master shall in like manner pay compensation. Ath. If anyone is unwilling to act as witness, the man who requires his evidence shall summon him, and the man so summoned shall attend the trial, and if he knows the facts and is willing to give evidence, he shall give it; but in case he denies knowledge, he shall take an oath by the three gods, Zeus, Apollo, and Themis, that of a truth he has no knowledge,

and this done, he shall be dismissed from the suit. And if a man summoned as witness does not attend with his summoner, he shall be legally liable to be sued for damages. And if one of the judges be summoned as a witness, he shall not vote at the trial after giving evidence. A free woman, if she be over forty years old, shall be allowed to give evidence to support a plea, and if she have no husband, she shall be allowed to bring an action; but if she have a husband alive,

she shall only be allowed to give evidence. A male or female slave and a child shall be allowed to give evidence and support a plea in murder cases only, provided that they furnish a substantial security that, if their evidence be denounced as false, they will remain until the trial. Either of the opposing parties in a suit may denounce all or part of the evidence, provided that he claims that false witness has been given before the action is finally decided; and the magistrates shall keep the denunciations, when they have been sealed by both parties, and shall produce them at the trial for false witness.

If any person be twice convicted of false witness, no law shall compel him any longer to bear witness, and if thrice, he shall not be allowed to bear witness any longer; and if after three convictions, a man dare to bear witness, whoso wishes shall report him to the magistrates, and they shall hand him over to the court, and if he be found guilty, he shall be punished with death. In the case of all those whose evidence is condemned at the trial,—they being adjudged to have given false witness and thus to have caused the victory of the winner,—if more than the half of their evidence be condemned,

the action that was lost because of them shall be annulled, and there shall be a disputation and a trial as to whether the action was or was not decided on the evidence in question; and by the verdict then given, whichever way it goes, the result of the previous actions shall be finally determined. Although there are many fair things in human life, yet to most of them there clings a kind of canker which poisons and corrupts them.

None would deny that justice between men is a fair thing, and that it has civilized all human affairs. And if justice be fair, how can we deny that pleading is also a fair thing? But these fair things are in disrepute owing to a kind of foul art, which, cloaking itself under a fair name, claims, first, that there exists a device for dealing with lawsuits, and further, that it is the one which is able, by pleading and helping another to plead, to win the victory, whether the pleas concerned

be just or unjust; Ath. and it also asserts that both this art itself and the arguments which proceed from it are a gift offered to any man who gives money in exchange. This art—whether it be really an art or merely an artless trick got by habit and practice —must never, if possible, arise in our State; and when the lawgiver demands compliance and no contradiction of justice, or the removal of such artists to another country,—if they comply, the law for its part shall keep silence, but if they fail to comply, its pronouncement shall be this:—If anyone be held to be

trying to reverse the force of just pleas in the minds of the judges, or to be multiplying suits unduly or aiding others to do so, whoso wishes shall indict him for perverse procedure or aiding in perverse procedure, and he shall be tried before the court of select judges; and if he be convicted, the court shall determine whether he seems to be acting from avarice or from ambition; and if from the latter, the court shall determine for how long a period such an one shall be precluded from bringing action against anyone, or aiding anyone to do so; while if avarice be his motive, if he be an alien he shall be sent out of the country

and forbidden to return on pain of death, but if he be a citizen he shall be put to death because of his unscrupulous devotion to the pursuit of gain. And anyone who has twice been pronounced guilty of committing such an act from ambition shall be put to death.

Ath. If anyone, while acting as ambassador or herald, conveys false messages from his State to another State, or fails to deliver the actual message he was sent to deliver, or is proved to have brought back, as ambassador or herald, either from a friendly or hostile nation, their reply in a false form,—against all such there shall be laid an indictment for breaking the law by sinning against the sacred messages and injunctions of Hermes and Zeus, and an assessment shall be made of the penalty they shall suffer or pay,

if convicted. Theft of property is uncivilized, open robbery is shameless: neither of these has any of the sons of Zeus practiced, through delight in fraud or force. Let no man, therefore, be deluded concerning this or persuaded either by poets or by any perverse myth-mongers into the belief that, when he thieves or forcibly robs, he is doing nothing shameful, but just what the gods themselves do. That is both unlikely and untrue; and whoever acts thus unlawfully is neither a god at all nor a child of gods;

and this the lawgiver, as it behoves him, knows better than the whole tribe of poets. He, therefore, that hearkens to our speech is blessed, and deserves blessing for all time; but he that hearkens not shall, in the next place, be holden by this law:—If anyone steals any piece of public property, he shall receive the same punishment, be it great or small. For he that steals a small thing steals with equal greed, though with less power, while he that takes a large thing which he has not deposited does wrong to the full;

wherefore the law deems it right not to inflict a less penalty on the one offender than on the other on the ground that his theft is smaller, but rather because the one is possibly still curable, the other incurable. Ath. So if anyone convict in a court of law either a resident alien or a slave of stealing any piece of public property, in his case, since he is probably curable, the court shall decide what punishment he shall suffer

or what fine he shall pay. But in the case of a citizen, who has been reared in the way he is to be reared,—if he be convicted of plundering or doing violence to his fatherland, whether he has been caught in the act or not, he shall be punished by death, as being practically incurable. Military organization is the subject of much consultation and of many appropriate laws. The main principle is this—that nobody, male or female, should ever be left without control, nor should anyone, whether at work or in play, grow habituated in mind to acting alone and on his own initiative, but he should live always, both in war

and peace, with his eyes fixed constantly on his commander and following his lead; and he should be guided by him even in the smallest detail of his actions—for example, to stand at the word of command, and to march, and to exercise, to wash and eat, to wake up at night for sentry-duty and despatch-carrying, and in moments of danger to wait for the commander’s signal before either pursuing or retreating before an enemy; and, in a word,

he must instruct his soul by habituation to avoid all thought or idea of doing anything at all apart from the rest of his company, so that the life of all shall be lived en masse and in common; for there is not, nor ever will be, any rule superior to this or better and more effective in ensuring safety and victory in war. This task of ruling, and being ruled by, others must be practiced in peace from earliest childhood; but anarchy

must be utterly removed from the lives of all mankind, and of the beasts also that are subject to man. Moreover, with a view to excellence in war, they shall dance all kinds of dances, and with the same object they shall cultivate in general suppleness and dexterity, and endurance also in the matter of foods and drinks and cold and heat and hard beds; and, what is most important, they shall accustom themselves not to spoil the natural powers of head and feet by wrapping them in coverings of alien material, and thereby ruining the production and growth

of their own natural hair and soles. Ath. For when these extremities are conserved, they keep at its highest the power of the whole body, but they effect the opposite when spoiled; and of these two extremities, the one is the chief minister of the whole body, and the other the chief master, inasmuch as, by the ordinance of nature, it contains all the leading senses of the body.

Such is the laudation of the military life to which, as we hold, the youth ought to hearken, and its laws are these:—He that is enrolled or put on some rota must perform military service. If anyone, through cowardice, fail to present himself without leave from the commanders, he shall be indicted for desertion before the military officers when they return from camp, and each class of those who have served shall sit by themselves as judge—that is, hoplites, cavalry, and each of the other branches,—

and they shall summon hoplites before the hoplites, cavalrymen before the cavalry, and all others in like manner before soldiers of their own class; and any man that is convicted shall be debarred from ever competing for any distinction and from ever prosecuting another for shirking service, or acting as accuser in connection with such charges; and, in addition to this, what he ought to suffer or pay shall be determined by the court. Next, when the suits for shirking service have been fully decided, the officers shall again hold a review of each class of soldiers, and he who wishes shall be tried before a court of his own colleagues on his claim for an award of merit; but any proof or verbal testimony which the claimant produces must have reference,

not to any previous war, but solely to that campaign in which they have just been engaged. The prize for each class shall be a wreath of olive leaves; and this the recipient shall hang up, along with an inscription, in whatever temple of the war-gods he chooses, to serve throughout his life as a proof that he has won the first,

second or third prize, as the case may be. If a man goes on military service, but returns home without leave from the officers, he shall be liable to be indicted for desertion before the same court which deals with cases of shirking service, and the same penalties which have been already prescribed shall be imposed upon him, if he is convicted. Every man, when bringing an action against another, ought rightly to dread bringing upon him, whether intentionally or unintentionally, a wrongful punishment

(for Justice is, and has been truly named, the daughter of Reverence, and falsehood and wrong are naturally detested by Reverence and Justice); and he should beware also of trespassing against Justice in any matter, and especially in respect of loss of arms in battle, lest by mistakenly abusing such losses as shameful, when they are really unavoidable, he may bring undeserved charges against an undeserving man. Ath. It is by no means easy to draw distinctions between such cases;

but none the less the law ought to try by some means to distinguish case from case. In illustration we may cite the story of Patroclus: suppose that he had been brought to his tent without his arms and had recovered—as has happened in the case of thousands,—while the arms he had had (which, as the poet relates, had been given to Peleus by the gods, as a dowry with Thetis) were in the hands of Hector,—then all the base men of those days would have been free to abuse Menoetios’ son for loss of arms. Moreover, there are instances

of men losing their arms through being flung down from cliffs, or on the sea, or in ravines, when overwhelmed by a sudden great rush of water, or from other mishaps, countless in number, which one could mention by way of consolation, and thereby justify an evil which lends itself to calumny. It is right, therefore, to separate, as best one can, the greater and more serious evil from its opposite. As a rule, indeed, the employment of the names in question by way of abuse admits of a distinction; for the term shield-flinger would not properly be applied in all cases, but rather the term arms-dropper.

For the man who by a fair amount of violence is stripped of his arms will not be as much of a shield-flinger as the man who has voluntarily thrown them away—rather there is a vast difference between the two cases. So let the pronouncement of the law be this:—If a man is overtaken by his enemies and, having arms, instead of turning and defending himself, voluntarily drops his arms or flings them away, thereby gaining for himself a life that is shameful by speed of foot, rather than by bravery a noble and blessed death,—concerning the arms flung away in a loss of this sort a trial shall be held, but the judge shall pass over in his enquiry a case of the kind previously described.

For the bad man one must always punish, in order to better him, but not the luckless man; for that profits not. What, then, would be a proper penalty for the man who has thrown away for naught such powerful weapons of defence? A god, it is said, once changed Kaineus the Thessalian from woman’s shape to man’s; but it is beyond human power to do the opposite of this; otherwise,

the converse transformation—changing him from a man into a woman—would be, perhaps, the most appropriate of all penalties for a shield-flinger. Ath. As it is, to get the nearest possible approach to this, because of the man’s love of life at any price, and to secure that for the rest of his life he may run no risk, but may live saddled with this disgrace as long as possible,—the law dealing with such cases shall be this:—If any man be convicted on a charge of shamefully throwing away his military weapons, no general or other military officer shall ever employ him as a soldier

or post him to any rank; otherwise, the examiner shall fine the officer who posts the coward 1000 drachmae, if he be of the highest property-class,—if of the second class, five minas,—if of the third, three minas,—if of the fourth, one mina. And the soldier who is convicted of the charge, in addition to being debarred, as his own nature requires, from manly risks, shall also pay back his wage—1000 drachmae, if he be of the highest class,—if of the second, five minas,—

if of the third, three,—and if of the fourth, one mina, just as in the previous cases. Respecting examiners, what would be a proper statement for us to make, seeing that some of the magistrates are appointed by the hazard of the lot and for a year, while others are appointed for several years and chosen out of a number of selected persons? Of such, who will be a competent examiner, in the event of any one of them acting at all crookedly through being burdened by the weight of his office and his own inability to support it worthily?

It is by no means easy to find an officer of officers, who surpasses them in excellence, but still one must try to find some examiners of a divine quality. In fact, the case stands thus:—The dissolution of a polity, like that of a ship’s frame, depends upon many critical factors: these (in the case of a ship) though one in nature are separated into many parts, and we call them by many names—such as stays, under-girders, bracing-ropes. For the preservation, or dissolution and disappearance, of a polity the office of examiner is such a critical factor, and that of the gravest kind.

For if those who act as examiners of the magistrates are better men than they, and if they act blamelessly with blameless justice, then the whole of the State and country flourishes and is happy; but if the examination of the magistrates is carried out otherwise, then the bond of justice which binds all political elements into one is dissolved, and in consequence every office is torn apart from every other, and they no longer tend all to the same end; and thus out of one State they make many, and by filling it with civil strife they speedily bring it to ruin.

Wherefore it is most necessary that the examiners should be men of admirably complete virtue. Ath. Let us contrive to bring them into being in some such way as this:—Every year, after the summer solstice, the whole State must assemble at the common precincts of Helios and Apollo, there to present before the god the names of three out of their own number,—

each citizen proposing that man, not less than fifty years old, whom (with the exception of himself) he regards as in all respects the best. Of those so nominated they shall choose out those who have gained most votes—half of the total number nominated, if that number be even, but if it be an odd number, they shall reject the one who has least votes and retain the even half, marking them off according to the number of the votes received; and if several have an equal number of votes, thus causing the upper half-section to be too large, they shall remove the excess by rejecting those that are youngest;

the rest being retained on the list, they shall vote again on these, and they shall continue the same process until three be left with an unequal number of votes. If, however, all of these, or two of them, have equal votes, they shall commit the matter to good luck and chance, and distinguish by lot between the first, the second, and the third, and crown them with olive-wreaths; and when they have thus awarded the distinctions, they shall make this public proclamation:—The State of the Magnetes,—which, by God’s grace, has again won salvation,—has presented to Helios the three best of its own men, and now it dedicates them,

according to the ancient law, as a joint offering to Apollo and Helios of its choicest first fruits, for so long a time as they pursue their judicial task. Twelve such examiners shall be appointed in the first year, until each of them has come to the age of seventy-five; and thereafter three shall be added annually. And they, after dividing all the public offices into twelve sections, shall employ all tests, of a gentlemanly kind, in investigating them. So long as they are serving as examiners, they shall reside within the precincts of Apollo and Helios,

where they were chosen. When they have judged—either each one singly or in consultation with one another—the State officials, they shall publish, by means of records placed in the market, a statement concerning what each official should suffer or pay according to the decision of the examiners. If any official claims that he has not been judged justly, he shall summon the examiners before the select judges; and if he be acquitted in respect of the examiners’ charges, he shall, if he wishes,

prosecute the examiners themselves; but if he be convicted, in case the penalty imposed on him by the examiners be death, he shall simply be put to death (one death only being possible), but in the case of other penalties which admit of being doubled, he shall pay a double penalty. As regards the examinations of these examiners themselves, it is right for us to hear what they are to be, and how they are to be conducted. Ath. During their lifetime these men, who have been deemed worthy of the highest distinction by the whole State,

shall have the front seats at every festival; and from their number, too, shall be chosen the heads of every sacred mission sent out to take part in any public sacrifices, congresses or other such sacred assemblies of the Hellenes; and these alone of all the citizens shall be adorned with a crown of laurel; and they all shall be priests of Apollo and Helios, and every year that one of them who has been adjudged first of those appointed in that year shall be the high-priest, and his name they shall inscribe at the head of the year,

that it may serve as a measure of the date, so long as the State remains. When they die, their laying-out, funeral and interment shall be different from that of other citizens: nothing but white raiment shall be used at it, and there shall be no dirges or lamentations; a choir of girls and another of boys shall stand round the bier, and they shall chant alternately a laudation for the priests in the form of a hymn in verse, glorifying them with their hymnody all the day long;

and at the next dawn the bier itself shall be borne to the tomb by a hundred of the young men who attend the gymnasia,—they being selected by the relatives of the dead man,—and the procession shall be led by the men of war, all clad in their proper military garb,—cavalry with their horses, hoplites with their weapons,

and the rest in like manner; and round about the bier the boys, being in front, shall sing their national anthem, and behind them the girls shall follow singing, and all the women who have passed the age of child-bearing; and next shall follow the priests and priestesses as to a tomb that is sanctified—yea, though they be debarred from approaching all other tombs,—if so be that the voice of the Pythian approves that thus it shall be. Their tomb shall be constructed under ground, in the form of an oblong vault of spongy stone, as long-lasting as possible, and fitted with couches of stone

set side by side; in this when they have laid him who is gone to his rest, they shall make a mound in a circle round it and plant thereon a grove of trees, save only at one extremity, so that at that point the tomb may for all time admit of enlargement, in case there be need of additional mounds for the buried. And every year contests of music, gymnastics and horse-racing shall be held in their honor. Ath. These shall be the rewards for those who have passed the scrutiny of examiners. But if any of these examiners, relying on the fact of his election, shall give proof of human frailty by becoming evil after his election, the law shall enjoin on him who wishes to indict him, and the trial shall take place in the court after this manner:—

The court shall be composed first of Law-wardens, next of the living members of the body of examiners themselves, and, in addition to these, of the Bench of select judges; and he who indicts anyone shall state in his indictment that the person in question is unworthy of his distinctions and of his office; and if the defendant be convicted, he shall be deprived of his office and of his tomb, and of the other privileges granted to him; but if the prosecutor fails to gain one-fifth of the votes, he shall pay twelve minas if he be of the highest class,—

if of the second, eight,—if of the third, six,—and if of the fourth, two minas. Rhadamanthys deserves admiration for the way in which, as we are told, he judged cases of law, in that he perceived that the men of his time had a clear belief in the existence of gods,—and naturally so, seeing that most men at that time were the offspring of gods, he himself among others, as the story declares. Probably he thought that he ought not to entrust lawsuits to any man, but only to gods, from whom he obtained verdicts that were both simple and speedy; for he administered an oath

to the disputants regarding each matter in dispute, and thus secured a speedy and safe settlement. But nowadays, when, as we say, a certain section of mankind totally disbelieve in gods, and others hold that they pay no regard to us men, while a third party, consisting of the most and worst of men, suppose that in return for small offerings and flatteries the gods lend them aid in committing large robberies, and often set them free from great penalties,—under such conditions, for men as they now are, the device of Rhadamanthys would no longer be appropriate in actions at law.

Since, therefore, the opinions of men about the gods have changed, so also must their laws change. In legal actions laws that are framed intelligently ought to debar both litigants from taking oaths; he that is bringing an action against anyone ought to write down his charges, but swear no oath, and the defendant in like manner ought to write down his denial and hand it to the magistrates without an oath. For truly it is a horrible thing to know full well that, inasmuch as lawsuits are frequent in a State, well-nigh half the citizens are perjurers,

although they have no scruple in associating with one another at common meals and at other public and private gatherings. Ath. So it shall be laid down by law that a judge shall take an oath when he is about to give judgment, and likewise oaths shall be taken by him who is appointing public officials

by voting under oath or by bringing his votes from a sacred spot, and by the judge of choirs or of any musical performance, and by the presidents and umpires of gymnastic and horse-racing contests, or of any matters which do not, in human opinion, bring gain to him who commits perjury. But in all cases where it obviously appears that a large gain will accrue to him who denies stoutly and swears ignorance, all the contending parties must be judged

by trials without oaths. And in general, during a trial, the presidents of the court shall not permit a man to speak under oath for the sake of gaining credence, or to imprecate curses upon himself and his family, or to make use of unseemly supplications and womanish sobbings, but only and always to state and hear what is just in proper language; otherwise, the magistrate shall check him for digressing from the point, and shall call him back to deal with the matter in hand. In the case of resident aliens dealing with aliens, it shall be permitted them, as now, to give and receive oaths of a binding character one from another, if so they choose,—

for these men will not grow old in the State nor, as a rule, will they make their nest in it, and rear up others like themselves to become naturalized in the country; and in respect of the private actions they bring against one another, they shall all have the same privilege during the trial. In all cases where a free man disobeys the State, not by acts deserving of stripes, imprisonment or death, but in respect of matters such as attendance at festivals or processions or public ceremonies of a similar kind—

matters involving either a sacrifice in peace or a contribution in time of war,—in all such cases the first necessity is to assess the penalty; in case of disobedience, those officers whom the State and the law appoint to exact the penalty shall take a pledge; and if any disregard the pledgings, the things pledged shall be sold, and the price shall go to the State; and if a greater penalty be required, the official proper in each case shall impose on the disobedient the suitable penalties

and shall summon them before the court, until they consent to do what they are bidden. For a State which makes no money except from the produce of its soil, and which does not engage in commerce, it is necessary to determine what action it ought to take regarding the emigration of its citizens to outside countries and the admission of aliens from elsewhere. In giving counsel concerning these matters the lawgiver must begin by using persuasion, so far as he can. ΑΘ. The intermixture of States with States naturally results in a blending of characters of every kind, as strangers import among strangers novel customs:

and this result would cause immense damage to peoples who enjoy a good polity under right laws; but the majority of States are by no means well governed, so that to them it makes no difference if their population is mixed through the citizens admitting strangers and through their own members visiting other States whenever any one of them, young or old, at any time or place, desires to go abroad. Now for the citizens to refuse altogether either to admit others or to go abroad themselves is by no means a possible policy,

and, moreover, it would appear to the rest of the world to be both churlish and cross-grained, since they would get the reputation of adopting harsh language, such as that of the so-called Aliens Expulsion Acts, and methods both tyrannical and severe; and reputation in the eyes of others, whether for goodness or the reverse, is a thing that should never be lightly esteemed. For the majority of men, even though they be far removed from real goodness themselves, are not equally lacking in the power of judging whether others are bad or good; and even in the wicked there resides a divine and correct intuition, whereby a vast number even of the extremely wicked

distinguish aright, in their speech and opinions, between the better men and the worse. Accordingly, for most States, the exhortation to value highly a good public reputation is a right exhortation. The most correct and most important rule is this,—that the man who pursues after a good reputation should himself be truly good, and that he should never pursue it without goodness (if he is to be really a perfect man); and furthermore, as regards the State we are founding in Crete , it would well become it to gain for itself in the eyes of the rest of the world the best and noblest reputation possible for goodness; and if it develop according to plan,

there is every hope that, as is natural, it (and but few others) will be numbered among the well-ordered States and countries upon which the Sun and all the other gods look down. In regard, therefore, to the question of going abroad to other lands and places and of the admission of foreigners we must act as follows:—First, no man under forty years old shall be permitted to go abroad to any place whatsoever; next, no man shall be permitted to go abroad in a private capacity, but in a public capacity permission shall be granted to heralds, embassies, and certain commissions of inspection.

Military expeditions in war it would be improper to reckon among official visits abroad. ΑΘ. It is right that embassies should be sent to Apollo at Pytho and to Zeus at Olympia , and to Nemea and the Isthmus, to take part in the sacrifices and games in honor of these gods; and it is right also that the ambassadors thus sent should be, so far as is practicable, as numerous, noble and good as possible,—men who will gain for the State a high reputation in the sacred congresses of peace, and confer on it

a glorious repute that will rival that of its warriors; and these men, when they return home, will teach the youth that the political institutions of other countries are inferior to their own. Also, they ought to send out other inspecting commissioners (when they have obtained leave from the Law-wardens) of the following kind:—If any of the citizens desire to survey the doings of the outside world in a leisurely way, no law shall prevent them;

for a State that is without experience of bad men and good would never be able (owing to its isolation) to become fully civilized and perfect, nor would it be able to safeguard its laws unless it grasped them, not by habit only, but also by conviction. Amongst the mass of men there always exist—albeit in small numbers—men that are divinely inspired; intercourse with such men is of the greatest value, and they spring up in badly-governed States just as much as in those that are well governed. In search of these men it is always right for one who dwells in a well-ordered State to go forth on a voyage of enquiry by land and sea,

if so be that he himself is incorruptible, so as to confirm thereby such of his native laws as are rightly enacted, and to amend any that are deficient. For without this inspection and enquiry a State will not permanently remain perfect, nor again if the inspection be badly conducted. Clin. How, then, might both these objects be secured? Ath. In this way. First, our overseas inspector shall be more than fifty years old; secondly, he shall have proved himself a man of high repute both in military and other affairs, if it is intended