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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Their conference and discourse shall deal always with the subject of laws and of their own State, and with anything important they may have learnt elsewhere which bears on this subject, or any branches of knowledge which are thought likely to assist in their enquiry, in that the learning of them helps towards a clearer view of legal matters, whereas ignorance of them conduces to a view that is dim and blurred. Whatsoever of these matters are approved by the elder members the younger shall learn with all diligence; and should any of the young men invited to attend be deemed unworthy, the person who has invited him shall be censured by the whole synod, but such of them as are held in good repute shall be watched over by the rest of the citizens, who shall regard and observe them with special care, honoring them when they do right, but dishonoring them more than other men if they turn out worse than most. To this synod he that has inspected the legal institutions of other peoples shall repair immediately after his return home; and if he has discovered any persons able to declare any oracle regarding legislation or education or nurture, or if he has brought back any personal observations of his own, he shall communicate them to the whole synod; and if it appear that he has come back in no respect worse (nor yet any better) than when he went, still because of his extreme zeal he shall be commended; while if it appear that he has come back much better, he shall be much more highly commended during his life, and when dead, due honors shall be paid to him by the synod’s authority. But if, on the other hand, such an inspector appear to be corrupted on his return, in spite of his pretensions to wisdom, he shall be forbidden to associate with anyone, young or old; wherein if he obeys the magistrates, he shall live as a private person, but if not, he shall be put to death—if, that is to say, he be convicted in a court of law of being a meddler in respect of education and the laws. And if, when such an one deserves to be summoned before a court, none of the magistrates summons him, the magistrates shall be censured at the adjudication of awards of merit. Such, then, shall be the character and the procedure of him that travels abroad. Next to him we must deal in friendly wise with the visitor from abroad. There are four types of stranger which call for mention. The first and inevitable immigrant is the one who chooses summer, as a rule, for his annual visits, in the fashion of migratory birds— and, like birds, the most of these cross the sea, just as if they had wings, for the sake of making gain by their trading, and fly over to foreign cities during the summer season;
this stranger must be received, when he comes to the city, at the markets, harbors, and public buildings outside the city, by the officials in charge thereof; and they shall have a care lest any such strangers introduce any innovation, and they shall duly dispense justice to them, and shall hold such intercourse as is necessary with them, but to the least extent possible. The second type of stranger is he who is an inspector, in the literal sense, with his eyes, and with his ears also of all that appertains to musical exhibitions: for all such there must be lodgings provided at the temples, to afford them friendly accommodation, and the priests and temple-keepers must show them care and attention, until they have sojourned for a reasonable length of time and have seen and heard all that they intended; after which, if no harm has been done or suffered by them, they shall be dismissed. And for these the priests shall act as judges, in case anyone injures one of them or one of them injures anyone else, if the claim does not exceed fifty drachmae; but if any greater claim is made, the trial for such strangers must take place before the market-stewards. The third type which requires a public reception is he who comes from another country on some public business: he must be received by none but the generals, hipparchs and taxiarchs, and the care of a stranger of this kind must be entirely in the hands of the official with whom he lodges, in conjunction with the prytaneis. The fourth type of stranger comes rarely, if ever: should there, however, come at any time from another country an inspector similar to those we send abroad, he shall come on these conditions:—First, he shall be not less than fifty years old; and secondly, his purpose in coming must be to view some noble object which is superior in beauty to anything to be found in other States, or else to display to another State something of that description. Every visitor of this kind shall go as an unbidden guest to the doors of the rich and wise, he being both rich and wise himself; and he shall go also to the abode of the General Superintendent of Education, believing himself to be a proper guest for such a host, or to the house of one of those who have won a prize for virtue; and when he has communed with some of these, by the giving and receiving of information, he shall take his departure, with suitable gifts and distinctions bestowed on him as a friend by friends. Such are the laws in conformity with which they must receive all strangers, of either sex, from another country, and send out their own citizens; thus doing honor to Zeus, Patron of Strangers, instead of expelling strangers by means of meats and ceremonies (as is now done by the nurslings of the Nile), or else by savage proclamations.
If anyone gives a security, he shall give it in express terms, setting forth the whole transaction in a written record; and this he shall do before not less than three witnesses, if the amount be under 1,000 drachmae, and before not less than five, if it be over 1,000. The broker in a sale shall act as security for the seller should the latter have no real right to the goods sold or be quite unable to guarantee their possession; and the broker shall be legally liable equally with the seller. If anyone wishes to make a search on any man’s premises, he shall strip to his shirt and wear no girdle, and when he has first taken an oath by the appointed gods that of a truth he expects to find the object, he shall make his search; and the other man shall grant him the right to search his house, including things both sealed and unsealed. But if, when a man desires to search, the other party refuses leave, the man so prevented shall take legal proceedings, assessing the value of the object sought; and any man thus convicted shall pay as damages twice the value of the object assessed. And if the master of the house happens to be away from home, the occupants shall allow the claimant to search what is unsealed, and he that searches shall counter-seal what is sealed, and shall set any man he chooses to stand guard over it for five days; and if the master be absent longer, the claimant shall call in the city-stewards, and so make his search, in which he shall open also what is sealed, and he shall seal this up again in the same way in the presence of the household and of the city-stewards. In cases of disputed claims there must be a limit of time, after which it shall be no longer possible to dispute the claim of the person in possession. In our State no dispute is possible in respect of lands or houses; but in respect of anything else which a man has acquired, if the possessor be seen to be using it in the city, market, and temple, and if no one lays claim to it,—then if some man asserts that he has been looking for it all this time, while it is plain that its possessor has made no concealment of it, and if this goes on for a year, the possessor still keeping the article and the other man still seeking, at the expiration of the year no one shall be allowed to lay claim to its possession. And if a man uses an article openly in the country—although not in the city or market,—and if no claimant confronts him within five years, after the expiration of the five years no claim to such a possession shall be allowed. And if a man uses an article indoors in the city, the time-limit shall be three years; if he uses it in a concealed place in the country, it shall be ten years; while if it he in a foreign country, there shall be no limit of time set to making a claim, whenever it is found.
If any man forcibly prevent any person from appearing at an action at law—whether it be the person himself or his witnesses,—in case that person be a slave of his own or of another man, the action shall be null and void; and in case the person so prevented be a free man, in addition to the annulment of the action, the offender shall be imprisoned for a year and shall be liable to a charge of kidnapping at the hands of anyone who chooses. And if anyone forcibly prevents a rival competitor at a gymnastic, musical or other contest from appearing, whoso wishes shall report the fact to the Presidents of the Games, and they shall allow him that wishes to contend to enter for the contest free; but should they prove unable, in case he who prevented the competitor wins, they shall give the prize to the man prevented and shall inscribe his name as victor in whatever temples he chooses, whereas the preventer shall be forbidden to put up any tablet or inscription regarding such a contest, and he shall be liable to pay damages, whether he be defeated at the contest or be victorious. If anyone knowingly receive any stolen article, he shall be liable to the same penalty as the thief; and for the crime of receiving an exile the penalty shall be death. Everyone shall regard the friend or enemy of the State as his own personal friend or enemy; and if anyone makes peace or war with any parties privately and without public consent, in his case also the penalty shall be death; and if any section of the State makes peace or war on its own account with any parties, the generals shall summon the authors of this action before the court, and the penalty for him who is convicted shall be death. Those who are performing any act of service to the State must do it without gifts; and it shall be no excuse nor laudable plea to argue that for good deeds a man ought to receive gifts, though not for bad: to decide wisely, and firmly to abide by one’s decision, is no easy thing, and the safest course is for a man to listen and obey the law, which says, Perform no service for gifts. Whoso disobeys, if convicted by the court, shall be put to death once for all. Touching money-contributions to the public treasury, not only must the property of every man be valued, for many reasons, but the tribesmen also must furnish an annual record of the year’s produce to the land-wardens, so that the Treasury may adopt whichever it may prefer of the two existing methods of contribution, and may determine year by year whether it will require a proportion of the whole assessed value, or a proportion of the current yearly income, exclusive of the taxes paid for the common meals.
As regards votive offerings to the gods, it is proper for a reasonable man to present offerings of reasonable value. The soil and the hearth are in all cases sacred to all the gods; wherefore no one shall consecrate afresh what is already sacred. Gold and silver, which in other States are used both privately and in temples, are objects liable to cause envy; and ivory, which comes from a body bereft of soul, is not a pure offering; while iron and bronze are instruments of war; of wood forming a single piece a man may offer in the public temples whatsoever he wishes, and of stone likewise, and of woven stuff an amount not exceeding a month’s output by one woman. For woven stuff and other materials, white will be a color befitting the gods; but dyes they must not employ, save only for military decorations. Birds and statues make most godlike gifts, and they should be no larger than what one sculptor can complete in a single day; and all other votive offerings shall be modelled on similar lines. And now that we have stated in detail what and how many the divisions of the State as a whole must be, and have also stated to the best of our power the laws regarding all the most important business transactions, it will be proper to deal next with judicial procedure. Of law courts the first will be composed of selected judges, selected jointly by both plaintiff and defendant, and these will be called arbitrators, as being a more suitable name than judges. The second court shall be formed of the villagers and tribesmen (the tribes being divided into twelve parts); and if the cause be not decided in the first court, they shall come before these judges to fight a case involving a greater injury, and if at the second trial the defendant is defeated, he shall pay as an extra penalty the fifth part of the assessed amount of the penalty recorded; and if, dissatisfied with his judges, he desires to fight his case before a court a third time, he shall bring it before the select judges, and if he be again worsted, he shall pay one and a half times the assessed amount. Again, if the plaintiff, when worsted in the first court, does not rest satisfied, but goes to the second court, in case he wins, he shall receive the fifth part, but in case he loses, he shall pay the same fraction of the penalty. And if, through dissatisfaction with the previous verdict, they proceed to the third court, the defendant (as we have said) shall pay, if worsted, one and a half times the penalty, and the prosecutor one-half of it. As regards the allotting of courts, the filling of vacancies, the appointing of sergeants for the several boards of magistrates, the times prescribed for performing each of these duties, the recording of votes, adjournments, and all other necessary judicial arrangements,—such as the fixing by lot of the order of trials, rules about counter-pleadings and counter-attendances, and all matters cognate thereto,— all these we have dealt with previously, but nevertheless it is a proper thing to reiterate twice,—yea, thrice,—the truth.
The old lawgiver, however, may pass over all such legal observances as are trivial and easy of discovery, and the young lawgiver shall fill up his omissions. In dealing with the private law courts this method would be reasonable, but in connection with the public courts of the State, and all those which the officials have to use in managing the affairs which belong to their several offices, there exist in many States quite a number of admirable ordinances of worthy men; and from these the Law-wardens must construct a code which is suitable to the polity we are now framing, partly by comparing and amending them, partly by submitting them to the test of experience, until each such ordinance be deemed satisfactory; and when they have been finally approved, and have been sealed as absolutely unchangeable, then the magistrates shall put them into practice all their life long. All rules regarding silence and discreet speech, and the opposite of these, on the part of the judges, and all else that differs from the rules which obtain in the other States concerning justice and goodness,—all these have been stated in part, and in part they will be stated at the end. To all these matters he that purposes to be a righteous and just judge must attend, and that written exposition of them which he possesses he must learn. For of all studies, that of legal regulations, provided they be rightly framed, will prove the most efficacious in making the learner a better man; for were it not so, it would be in vain that our divine and admirable law bears a name akin to reason. Moreover, of all other speeches— whether they be of personal praise or blame, composed in verse or prose, written down or uttered from day to day at some gathering by way of controversy or by way of consent (often of a very futile character),—of all such speeches the writings of the lawgiver will serve as a test; and inasmuch as he possesses these within himself, as a talisman against other speeches, the good judge will guide both himself and the State aright; for the good he will secure both the permanence and the increase of what is just, and for the bad a change as great as possible from their ignorance, intemperance and cowardice, and, in short, from their general iniquity,—that is to say, for all the bad whose opinions are curable;
but for those whose opinions are really fixed by Fate,—if they assigned death as a cure for souls in this condition (a statement that deserves to be often repeated), such judges and leaders of judges would merit praise from the whole State. When all the lawsuits for the year have been finally adjudged, we must have laws for the execution of the verdicts to this effect:—First, the magistrate who is acting as judge shall assign to the victorious party all the goods of the party convicted, excepting such as the latter must necessarily retain in his possession; and this he shall do in each case immediately after the voting has taken place by means of a herald’s proclamation made in the hearing of the judges; and unless the loser settle with the victor to their mutual satisfaction by the end of the month next to those in which the courts are sitting, the magistrate who has tried the case shall, at the instance of the victor, hand over to him the goods of the loser. And if the means are not forthcoming, and there be a deficiency of not less than a drachma, the loser in question shall be precluded from suing anyone else until he has paid to the full his whole debt to the victor; but others may bring valid actions against him. If anyone, when condemned, obstructs the court which condemned him, the officials thus wrongfully obstructed shall summon him before the court of the Law-wardens, and anyone who is cast in such an action, as being guilty of subverting the whole State and its laws, shall be punished by death. Next, when a man has been born and reared, and has himself begotten and reared up children, and has engaged reasonably in the transactions of business, giving or receiving (as the case may be) compensation for wrongs done,—when he has thus duly grown old in a law-abiding life, his end will come in the course of nature. Touching the dead, male or female, what the sacred rites are which require to be performed in respect of the gods of the underworld, or of this world, shall be declared by the Interpreters as the final authorities: no tombs, however, shall be put in places that are tilled,—whether the monument be small or great,—but they shall fill up those places where the soil is naturally fitted for this purpose only,— namely, to receive and hide the bodies of the dead with the least hurt to the living; but as regards all the places which of their own nature desire to produce food for mankind, of these no one, living or dead, shall deprive us who are alive.
And they shall not pile up a mound to a height greater than can be made by five men in five days; nor shall they erect stone pillars of a size more than is required to hold, at the most, a eulogy of the dead man’s life consisting of not more than four heroic lines. And as to the laying-out of the corpse, first, it shall remain in the house only for such a time as is required to prove that the man is not merely in a faint, but really dead; and accordingly, in a normal case, the third will be the proper day for the carrying out to burial. As in other matters it is right to trust the lawgiver, so too we must believe him when he asserts that the soul is wholly superior to the body, and that in actual life what makes each of us to be what he is is nothing else than the soul, while the body is a semblance which attends on each of us, it being well said that the bodily corpses are images of the dead, but that which is the real self of each of us, and which we term the immortal soul, departs to the presence of other gods, there (as the ancestral law declares) to render its account,—a prospect to be faced with courage by the good, but with uttermost dread by the evil. But to him who is dead no great help can be given; it was when he was alive that all his relatives should have helped him, so that when living his life might have been as just and holy as possible, and when dead he might be free during the life which follows this life from the penalty for wickedness and sin. This being so, one ought never to spend extravagantly on the dead, through supposing that the carcass of flesh that is being buried is in the truest sense one’s own relative; but one ought rather to suppose that the real son or brother—or whoever else it may be that a man fancies himself to be mournfully burying—has departed in furtherance and fulfillment of his own destiny, and that it is our duty to make a wise use of what we have and to spend in moderation, as it were on a soulless altar to the gods below: and what constitutes moderation the lawgiver will most properly divine. Let this, then, be the law:—An expenditure on the whole funeral not exceeding five minas for a man of the highest property-class, three minas for one of the second class, two for one of the third, and one mina for one of the fourth class, shall be held to be moderate amounts. The Law-wardens must of necessity perform many other duties and supervise many other matters, but by no means the least of their duties is to live keeping a constant watch over children and men and people of every age; and at the end of his life above all everyone must have some one Law-warden to take charge of him—that one who is called in as overseer by the relatives of the dead man; and it shall stand to his credit if the arrangements about the dead man are carried out in a proper and moderate way, but if improperly, to his discredit.
The laying-out of the corpse and the other arrangements shall be carried out in accordance with the custom concerning such matters, but it is right that custom should give way to the following regulations of State law:—Either to ordain or to prohibit weeping for the dead is unseemly, but we shall forbid loud mourning and lamentation outside the house, and we shall prohibit the carrying out of the dead on to the open roads and making lamentation while he is borne through the streets, and the funeral party must be outside the city-bounds before day-break. These shall be the legal regulations regarding such matters: he that obeys them shall be free from penalty, but he that disobeys a single one of the Law-wardens shall be penalized by them all with the penalty adjudged by all in common. All other interments of the dead, or disposal of corpses without interment in the cases of parricides, temple-robbers, and all such criminals,—have been previously dealt with and laid down by law, so that our task of legislation has nearly come to an end. But in every case, the full end does not consist in the doing, gaining or founding of an object; rather our view should be that it is only when we have discovered a means of salvation, endless and complete, for our creation, that we are at length justified in believing that we have done all that ought to be done: until then, we must believe, the whole of our creation is incomplete.
and as they watch, they pass on their perceptions to the organs of memory,—that is, they report to the elder wardens all that goes on in the State,— while the old men, who are likened to the reason because of their eminent wisdom in many matters of importance, act as counsellors, and make use of the young men as ministers and colleagues also in their counsels, so that both these classes by their co-operation really effect the salvation of the whole State. Is this the way, or ought we to contrive some other? Should the State, do you think, have all its members equal instead of having some more highly trained and educated?
For no man that views these objects in no careless or amateurish way has ever proved so godless as not to be affected by them in a way just the opposite of that which most people expect. For they imagine that those who study these objects in astronomy and the other necessary allied arts become atheists through observing, as they suppose, that all things come into being by necessary forces and not by the mental energy of the will aiming at the fulfillment of good.
He that is unable to master these sciences, in addition to the popular virtues, will never make a competent magistrate of the whole State, but only a minister to other magistrates. And now, O Megillus and Clinias, it is time at last to consider whether, in addition to all the previous laws which we have stated, we shall add this also—that the nocturnal synod of magistrates shall be legally established, and shall participate in all the education we have described, to keep ward over the State, and to secure its salvation; or what are we to do?