Plato, Laws, Book IV — Greek text with English translation

although I do, indeed, see in your country settlers from Argos, Aegina, and other parts of Greece. So tell us now from what quarters the present expedition of citizens is likely to be drawn.

What I say is that the change takes place when nature supplies a true lawgiver, and when it happens that his policy is shared by the most powerful persons in the State; and wherever the State authorities are at once strongest and fewest in number, then and there the changes are usually carried out with speed and facility.

Meg.You were perfectly right to do so; and, since your story is pertinent, you will be quite right in going on with it to the end.

Ath.I must do as you say. Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Cronos was aware of the fact that no human being (as we have explained) is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings and rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, daemons. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the God, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of daemons who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace and modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy.

And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Cronos, as tradition paints it, and order both our homes and our States in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving to reason’s ordering the name of law. But if an individual man or an oligarchy or a democracy, possessed of a soul which strives after pleasures and lusts and seeks to surfeit itself therewith, having no continence and being the victim of a plague that is endless and insatiate of evil,— if such an one shall rule over a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, then there is (as I said just now) no means of salvation. This, then, is the statement, Clinias, which we have to examine, to see whether we believe it, or what we are to do.

For the wicked man is unclean of soul, whereas the good man is clean; and from him that is defiled no good man, nor god, can ever rightly receive gifts. Therefore all the great labor that impious men spend upon the gods is in vain, but that of the pious is most profitable to them all. Here, then, is the mark at which we must aim; but as to shafts we should shoot, and (so to speak) the flight of them,—what kind of shafts, think you, would fly most straight to the mark? First of all, we say, if—after the honors paid to the Olympians and the gods who keep the State—we should assign the Even and the Left as their honors to the gods of the under-world, we would be aiming most straight at the mark of piety— as also in assigning to the former gods the things superior, the opposites of these. Next after these gods the wise man will offer worship to the daemons, and after the daemons to the heroes. After these will come private shrines legally dedicated to ancestral deities; and next, honors paid to living parents. For to these duty enjoins that the debtor should pay back the first and greatest of debts, the most primary of all dues, and that he should acknowledge that all that he owns and has belongs to those who begot and reared him, so that he ought to give them service to the utmost of his power—with substance, with body, and with soul, all three—thus making returns for the loans of care and pain spent on the children by those who suffered on their behalf in bygone years, and recompensing the old in their old age, when they need help most. And throughout all his life he must diligently observe reverence of speech towards his parents above all things, seeing that for light and winged words there is a most heavy penalty,—for over all such matters Nemesis, messenger of Justice, is appointed to keep watch; wherefore the son must yield to his parents when they are wroth, and when they give rein to their wrath either by word or deed, he must pardon them, seeing that it is most natural for a father to be especially wroth when he deems that he is wronged by his own son. When parents die, the most modest funeral rites are the best, whereby the son neither exceeds the accustomed pomp, nor falls short of what his forefathers paid to their sires; and in like manner he should duly bestow the yearly attentions, which ensure honor, on the rites already completed.

He should always venerate them, by never failing to provide a continual memorial, and assigning to the deceased a due share of the means which fortune Provides for expenditure. Every one of us, if we acted thus and observed these rules of life, would win always a due reward from the gods and from all that are mightier than ourselves, and would pass the greatest part of our lives in the enjoyment of hopes of happiness. As regards duties to children, relations, friends and citizens, and those of service done to strangers for Heaven’s sake, and of social intercourse with all those classes,—by fulfilling which a man should brighten his own life and order it as the law enjoins,— the sequel of the laws themselves, partly by persuasion and partly (when men’s habits defy persuasion) by forcible and just chastisement, will render our State, with the concurrence of the gods, a blessed State and a prosperous. There are also matters which a lawgiver, if he shares my view, must necessarily regulate, though they are ill-suited for statement in the form of a law; in dealing with these he ought, in my opinion, to produce a sample for his own use and that of those for whom he is legislating, and, after expounding all other matters as best he can, pass on next to commencing the task of legislation.