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The Laws of Plato
By A. E. Taylor, translator
Introduction
The Laws, today the least generally known of Plato’s major compositions, is in some respects his most characteristic work. As he tells us himself, in his great seventh Epistle, he had felt himself called from his early manhood to the life of the statesman. It was the tragedy of his life, as he saw it, that he had come into the world in an age in which Athens had no longer any important part to play in history and had lost the fundamentally sound moral without which no people can play any part in history worthily. An Athenian conscious of the vocation to statesmanship could only discharge his appointed service to Athens, Greek civilization, and humanity at large, in an indirect way; he must give himself to the work of education. If a younger generation, or rather the prospective leaders of such a generation, could be trained in sound views of conduct and duty, something could thus be done towards the production of the right kind of public man, should a happier and healthier state of public morality ever provide such a man with his opportunity; and since the quality of all others most necessary in such a statesman is capacity for true thinking and sane judgment, the proposed education must go to the roots of the matter: the true statesman must think rightly about the ultimate things, God, man, and their relations to one another. His thought, to be just, must be trained in the most exacting discipline of the severest sciences. This is why Plato founded the Academy as a school for statesmen, and why mathematics and metaphysics were the foundations of the Academic education. The reason, in fact, why the true statesman must begin his education with ‘geometry’ is that his work will require him to be a realist, in the best sense of the word, and not a romantic or sentimentalist. The school for statesmen thus became an institute for the prosecution of the most abstract of the sciences; this is why Plato seems in so much of his later writing to be preoccupied with topics so very remote from what we call ‘practical’ interests. In the Laws, as Burnet has said,
1 Platonism (University of California Press, 1928), p. 94.
So far as the modern reader knows anything of Plato’s views on those to him the most important of all matters, religion, law, education, he knows about them chiefly from the Republic, a work in the main probably some thirty years earlier than the Laws, where they are treated much less fully, and always under the restrictions imposed by the fiction that the interlocutors are men of an earlier date speaking in the days of Plato’s childhood, or possibly actually before his birth. The Republic has more to say about education than about religion, and vastly more than about law; but eve n about education it can only tell us what Plato was thinking at the age of about forty; we know from the Laws in much fuller detail what views he held after an added thirty years of experience and meditation. Without them, Plato’s immense influence on Christian theology in its primitive period would be largely inexplicable, while his services to the scientific study of jurisprudence would be entirely unknown to us. The dialogue adds little of importance to our knowledge of Plato as a thinker on metaphysics and the philosophy of the sciences; it is the one work which gives us the full measure of Plato the practical thinker and the originator of so much that is best in the ‘institutions of modern civilization’.
The date of the composition of the Laws is fixed by the following considerations. It is manifest that the passage in Book IV (711 a-b), where the principal character of the dialogue speaks of the opportunities which would be afforded to a high-minded political reformer and legislator by cooperation with a ‘tyrant’, or autocrat, of the right stamp in a way which implies first-hand knowledge of the conditions of life under an autocrat, is an allusion to Plato’s own experiences during the period when he was, against his own judgment, attempting to fit Dionysius II for his position at Syracuse, and that the events alluded to already belonged to the past. The work must therefore belong to a date later than the year 360 BC, when Plato returned from Syracuse for the last time. The composition of so long a work, especially one involving so much preliminary study of the details of Attic and other systems of laws, by a man of advanced old age must have covered a long period, and we may fairly
The personnel of the dialogue is exceedingly simple. There are three speakers, all elderly men: an unnamed Athenian, who is assumed to have had experiences, like those of Plato himself at Syracuse, of life in a city under a ‘tyrant’, and to represent the views of an organized group of scientific thinkers whom we recognize as the Platonic Academy; a Cretan named Clinias, and a Spartan called Megillus. Of the former we learn that he is a citizen of Cnossus, once the ‘capital’ of Minos, and has a family connection with the famous medicine-man and prophet Epimenides; of the latter that he belongs to a Spartan family in which the office of proxenus of Athens is hereditary. These facts are intended to explain the readiness shown by both to communicate their business to an Athenian and ask his advice on it. The dramatic situation presupposed is only fully explained in the closing words of Book III. The Cretans, who have resolved to refound a city which has long been deserted, have entrusted the necessary business to the inhabitants of Cnossus, and they, in their turn, to a body of ten commissioners, of whom Clinias is chief. Clinias and his friend, who have fallen in company with the Athenian, are walking, on a day of midsummer, from Cnossus to the cave
1 See Plato, the Man and his Work, pp. 464-5. If, as seems probable, Isocrates V 12 is an allusion to the work, the Laws must have been in circulation within a year or so of the author’s death.
It has been said that the dialogue shows Plato to have had no personal familiarity with Cretan topography. If this is true, it is nothing to be surprised at. The manifest object of the whole work is to serve as a model for scientific students of jurisprudence and politics who may be called upon to act as advisers to the practical statesman engaged in founding a new community or remodelling an old one. The revival of old societies and the constitution of new ones was, in fact, one of the outstanding features of the last quarter of a century of Plato’s life, the period which opens with the breaking of the Spartan power at Leuctra by Epaminondas in 371 BC Among the first consequences of the victory were the re-constitution of Messenia as a political community, and the foundation of Megalopolis as a centre for political life in Arcadia. Plato is credibly said to have been invited by Epaminondas to act in person as the author of a constitution and code for Megalopolis, but to have excused himself (Diogenes Laertius, III, i, 23). It is certain that assistance was asked from and rendered by his pupils in the Academy in numerous similar cases. To quote Plutarch (Adversus Colotem, 1126c-d): ‘Plato sent Aristonymus to the Arcadians, Phormio to Elis, Menedemus to Pyrrha. Eudoxus and Aristotle wrote laws for Cnidus and Stagirus. Alexander asked Xenocrates for advice about kingship; the man who was sent to Alexander by the Greek inhabitants of Asia, and did most to incite him to undertake his war on the barbarians, was Delius of Ephesus, an associate of Plato’. The eleventh extant Platonic epistle is a probably genuine reply, belonging to the same period as the inception of the Laws, to a request for assistance in a similar task from the distinguished Academic mathematician and statesman Laodamas of Thasos.
1 See J. Harward, The Platonic Epistles (1932), p. 228.
It is this immediately practical purpose which, more than anything else, explains the difference of atmosphere between the Laws and the much better known Republic. The city imagined in the Republic is partly a Utopia; we are plainly given to understand that the author himself does not think of it as anything likely ever to take actual shape in the workaday world. The aim of the dialogue is throughout ethical rather than political, to answer the question how a good man differs from a bad one, and to impress upon us the lesson that, for time and for eternity, ‘it’s better being good than bad’. The ideal city, with its philosophic kings and virtuous soldiers, is only introduced on the ground that in the life of a whole ‘nation’ the issues of right and wrong, which are so easily confused if we limit our observation to the life and fortunes of the individual, can be read on the large scale, so that ‘he who runs’ may read them. A few fundamental principles of the highest importance are explained and insisted upon, but details are, quite properly, not provided for us. What Plato gives us in the Laws, on the other hand, is a carefully thought-out scheme, often going, for illustrative purposes, into quite minor details, of the kind of constitution and the sort of legal code to which a truly philosophic statesman might look for the preservation of a high and sound moral in the life of an actual Hellenic community in the middle of the fourth century before our era. It is important for the right understanding of the work to appreciate the point that Plato was, like his contemporary and rival, the publicist, Isocrates, convinced that the palmy days of the traditional city-state were over; if Hellenic civilization were to be preserved at all, it would have to be by political institutions of some novel type. Under the transparent fiction of a legislation for ‘Magnesia’ he is putting before the younger men who will actually be called upon to devise these institutions his views of the principles on which the work must be done, if it is to have permanency and value. This explains some features of the system which would look singularly out of place if we thought of it as actually intended for any society likely to arise in
1 Cf. the amusing passage in Aristophanes’ Birds (1035-1057), in which a hawker arrives with regulations from Athens for the new ‘city in the clouds’.
Plato’s work is ostensibly, like many other later books which have made history, a treatise on the principles of jurisprudence; it might well bear the same title as a well-known volume of Hegel’s lectures, The Philosophy of Law, or be named like one of the works of Pufendorf, The Duty of a Man and Citizen. For the complete investigation of the subject he finds it necessary to construct both what we might call a theory of the constitution and a comprehensive legal code. We have to consider, first, how a civilized society should be constituted, through what organs the various functions of public life, deliberative, legislative, executive, judicial, should be exercised, and what should be the powers of these different bodies, and their relations to one another; second, what statutes should be laid down for the conduct of the members of society towards the community and towards each other, and what penalties prescribed for their infraction. This body of statutes will further require to be arranged on a logical plan in which public law, dealing with offences against the community as such, is properly discriminated from private law, which is concerned with the conduct of individual citizens towards one another, and this latter again subdivided into the law of torts, which is concerned with the award of compensation for damage, and the law of crimes, by which punishment is awarded for infringement of rights. The intellectual labour involved in a first attempt at systematization of this subject-matter may perhaps be gauged from the fact that the elementary and fundamental distinction between a civil action for damages and a criminal prosecution for violation of rights has to be made clear and defended at length by Plato himself;
1 Politics, II 1265 a 13 ff.
The excogitation of a system of political institutions and a legislative code is, however, the least part of the work of the philosophical jurist as Plato conceives it. Before these particular tasks can be entered upon, the end to which all government and all law are relative has to be rightly understood. That end is the promotion, throughout the community, of the highest type of personality attainable, ‘complete goodness’. If the authors of any people’s institutions set a false or confused idea of personality before themselves, the institutions they create and perpetuate will reflect the perversions and incoherencies of their ideals, the national life of the people in question will be stunted or distracted. The foundations of constitutional and legal theory have thus to be laid in a sound and thoroughly thought-out doctrine of conduct; ‘politics’ must be throughout an application of the principles of a true ‘ethic’. This is all the more necessary, since the true function of law in the community is not to threaten or punish, but to direct. In any society, there is an element, a minority, which has no desire to lead the good life; there are those who will only keep out of mischief from dislike of its unpleasant consequences, and the law can do nothing for such persons but issue an order, and take care that non-compliance with that order shall be made sufficiently disagreeable. But the mass of decent citizens do at heart prefer doing the right thing to doing the wrong; only they are commonly confused on the question what particular thing is the right thing, and when they know what it is, their real desire to do it cannot always be counted on to prevail against temptation. The primary business of the lawgiver with such persons is to give them direction and encouragement. This is why Plato holds that the laws of a truly philosophical code must not be so many bare ‘imperatives’, each provided with its penal ‘sanction’. They should be introduced, as the different sections of his own specimen legislation are, by ‘preambles’ in which direction and encouragement are combined. The law-maker must appeal to our intelligence by pointing out the reasons why the line of conduct he prescribes is the right one, and to our worthier emotions by enlisting our sense of
Further, the extent to which a given society can hope to achieve ‘complete goodness’, and the methods by which it will best aim at that ideal, are inevitably conditioned by its inheritance of traditions and its material ‘environment’. It is idle to attempt to construct a code or a constitution in vacuo and without reference to the antecedents and the economic condition of the persons who are to live under them, and, in a given case, antecedents and economic conditions may be such that the ideally best is not ‘humanly attainable’. The truly philosophically-minded man of affairs will never be ‘practical’ in the vulgar sense of being content to aim at anything lower than the best which it is open to him to attain, but what that attainable best is will always be largely dependent on the composition of the society for which he is working, and its general economic possibilities. Hence, in the illustrative example of the fictitious ‘Magnesian’ colony, we are carefully provided with information about the provenance of the future citizens, and the size, topography, and produce of the territory they are to occupy, before any attempt is made to provide for their public life.
There are two other outstanding features of Plato’s thought in which it is like our own, and singularly unlike the habit of mind of the Roman lawyers of whom much of his code must remind us. The typical Roman lawyer cared nothing about science or intellectual education, and he was not religiously-minded. The interest of religion for him was simply that it can be made into a useful implement for the maintenance of social order. Plato thought very differently. To know truth, he held, is the prerogative by which man is set above all the works of God which surround him, and it is his only prerogative, at once intellectual and moral. Knowledge of the true scale of good and evil is, in fact, the one sure and infallible preservative against the practical neglect of good or commission of evil, and such knowledge—as a real personal possession—only comes as the crown of an arduous discipline in true thinking pursued resolutely to its end. This is why Laws VII, Plato’s most mature and considered discussion of
The Lycée and the Inquisition may perhaps be said to be the most striking instances of Plato’s anticipations of institutions destined to have an important history in later ages; but there is a third which should be added to them. We should miss the point of the disquisitions of Book III on the history of the Peloponnese, Persia, and Athens if we neglected to note that they are all intended to enforce a doctrine of constitutional theory which had never been uttered before, and which its author holds to be of capital importance—the doctrine of the necessity of the ‘balance of the constitution’. It is one of Plato’s most important original discoveries that good government is impossible where the plenitude of sovereign power is concentrated in the hands of a single person, or a single body of men. The well-being of a society depends upon the combination of respect for legal order, good will of all to all, and the sense of personal responsibility for the good or bad conduct of the ‘nation’. This combination can only be secured where there is a proper division of the powers of sovereignty; to speak more precisely, what is needed is a constitution combining the two elements of ‘monarchy’, personal authority and initiative, and ‘democracy’, popular control of affairs, by some natural scheme of ‘division of powers’. In view of the prominence given to this thesis in Laws III, it is not too much to call Plato the author of the doctrine of constitutionalism. We might even venture on the mot that the first ‘Whig’ was neither, as Johnson once declared, the devil, nor, as Acton maintained in correction of him, St. Thomas of Aquinum, but Plato. (The Whig strain in Thomas’s de Regno is, in fact, itself influenced by the Laws through Aristotle’s Politics.) It has been the fashion in the earlier years of the present century to disparage the so-called ‘compromise’ of the Briton, with his ingrained respect for a ‘constitution’, by comparison with the more ‘logical’ intransigence of the ‘Latin’ royalist or republican. The experience of an age in which ‘dictatorships’ of various kinds are being experimented in with such dubious success may perhaps incline us to agree with Plato that it is not the truest wisdom to ride half-truths to death.
In view of the intricacy of the argument of Plato’s most elaborate work, and the length of the digressions in which the writer is fond of indulging, it will be well to prefix at this point a general synopsis of the whole book. To appreciate its real unity of purpose it is necessary to keep in mind one characteristic
The whole argument of Books I and II, like that of Republic I, is intended as preliminary to the systematic treatment of Plato’s main theme. The dramatic situation is that an Athenian student of law and constitutional theory has fallen in with an elderly Cretan who is taking a long day’s walk in the company of a Spartan friend; the common interest of all three in what would now be called ‘the social problem’ provides a natural subject for the conversation with which they propose to occupy themselves during the day. The question propounded is whether there is a discoverable central unity of purpose underlying the characteristic institutions of
Plato dissents in toto from this ‘militaristic’ philosophy of life. In his view, the supreme victory which has to be won by any man, or any society of men, is a triumph over an internal enemy, the conquest of the worse elements within the community, or the personal self, by the better, and this conquest is not completed, in either case, by the mere rout or expulsion of the worse element. It is only fully won when harmony is effected by the voluntary subjection of the worse to the direction of the better. Hence it is peace and not war which is the best state for the community, or for the soul of the individual, and the enactments of the legislator will therefore have peace, not war, as their ultimate object. From such a point of view, wisdom, sophrosyne (sobriety of soul), justice (reverence for rights), are the supreme virtues; the mere valour of the fighting-man can only take the fourth rank. It is therefore manifest that there is a fundamental vice in the famous Spartan discipline. All its provisions aim at fostering one single part of ‘complete goodness’, and that
The main contribution of the First Book to the argument is contained in these three propositions: that a state should be permanently organized with a view to peace, not to war; that to be so organized it must make ‘complete goodness’ its ideal of character for its citizens; that the moral training which is to issue in such complete goodness demands exposure to the seductions and blandishments of our ‘pleasant vices’. ‘Pleasure’ is no more to be mastered by running away than danger or pain. The practical importance of this point leads to its long and half-playful illustration by the particular case of the right treatment of convivial wine-drinking. It is, of course, impossible to approve of the unrestrained toping of many non-Hellenic people and some Hellenic societies. On the other hand, Plato does not admire the Spartan prohibition of all social use of the bottle. A wine-party, if properly conducted, that is, if the convives are under the control of an older master of the feast, who is not himself carried away by their merriment, and can therefore see to it that the drinkers ‘behave like gentlemen’, may be made a valuable training ground for the practice of modesty and sobriety. It is an excellent discipline to be thus artificially placed in a situation where it is easy to forget the demands of decorum
The Second Book of the Laws opens with the remark that there is still a third social benefit to be derived from the properly regulated use of wine, though we cannot say what this is without discussing the whole problem of the use of music and poetry as a vehicle of early moral education. (The connection of the two problems is, in fact, as artificial as ingenious, and we should probably not take it as more than half-serious). Plato is, indeed, dealing once more with the theme already treated in the third book of the Republic, the cultivation of a child’s moral sense through its taste and imagination, but the familiar topic is handled with a psychological thoroughness to which the Republic affords no parallel. As yet nothing is said of the cultivation of the child’s intelligence and understanding; that is to be the main theme of Book VII, which, in its turn, presupposes the results of the present discussion. We have to lay it down as the foundation of a sound paedagogy
1 Nicomachean Ethics 1104 b 11.
Plato’s acceptance of the standing Greek conviction that music is the most ‘imitative’ of all arts, and that what it ‘imitates’—or, as we should say, represents or suggests—is ‘moods of the soul’ prevents him from feeling that there is any difficulty about making a training in musical taste also a training in moral taste. Music being an ‘imitative’ art, it is essential to good music both that the object it ‘imitates’ should be beautiful, and that it should imitate that object rightly. The requirement that the imitating should be rightly done demands a complete harmony in the tone of all the constituents which enter into it, words, melody, rhythm, time, movements of the ballet. On this side of the matter the result to be obtained is one which we should call ‘aesthetic’, and the defects in contemporary music against which the attack is directed are sins against a refined and austere artistic taste. The stipulation that the ‘mood of soul’ which the music ‘imitates’ must be genuinely beautiful brings in the moral side of the conception. To Plato, as a true Greek, the ‘ugliness’ of conduct which is morally out of place is the most immediately salient fact about it, and the ‘beauty of holiness’, if the scriptural phrase may be permitted, is something much more than a metaphor. To judge by the tone of much of our literature, we are less sensitive on the point; we seem slow to perceive ugliness in wrong-doing as such, or even ready to concede the ‘artistry’ of great wickedness. It may be a wholesome discipline to consider carefully whether this difference of feeling may not be due less to a confusion on Plato’s part between the beautiful and the morally good than to a certain aesthetic imperceptiveness on ours.
The connection between this discussion and that which preceded it is externally effected by the reflection that if ‘music’ is to be the business of the whole community, every generation within it must take its part in the ‘singing’. There will have to be ‘choirs’ of old men, no less than of young men and children, and all of them will have to do their singing with gusto and verve. This is more than we can
With Book III we enter on the direct discussion of the main problem of the constructive statesman, what a ‘city’ is and how it arises. What Plato does in this book is to apply the ‘genetic’ method to the interpretation of Greek history from its legendary beginnings down to his own day. By a study of the way in which law and constitutional order arise in a society we are to discover their functions and the conditions requisite for the permanent and successful discharge of them. This is ‘philosophy of history’ in its first inception; in the extant literature of the ancient world we hardly meet with another example of the same kind and quality until we come to St. Augustine’s de Civitate Dei. The handling of what may be called ‘pre-history’ is notable for its judgment and sanity. Only the briefest summary of Plato’s treatment can be attempted in this introductory essay.
We have no trustworthy information about the actual beginnings of our civilization, but we may fairly represent them imaginatively by considering what would happen if a natural cataclysm destroyed the whole of a community with the exception of a few shepherds and goatherds, who might escape, for example from a deluge, owing to the remoteness and inaccessibility of their position. All the arts of civilization
With the traditional story of the war against Troy and the events which followed it, down to the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnese, we are at last in the region of fairly continuous history, and begin to discover the lesson history has for us. The main point is that the Dorian conquest, which ended an age of general upheaval due to a ‘world-war’, provided a unique historical opportunity for a statesman, if there had only been a man with the genius to profit by it. The invaders had acquired a new territory, they had no ancient traditions or vested interests to tie their hands, and so they might have established a state which could have held its own against time
We are carried a step farther by a comparison of the history of Persia since the days of Cyrus with the contemporary history of Athens. Such a comparison indicates that the two indispensable elements between which a sound constitution must be in a balance are personal rule (monarchy), and democracy (popular control). At the time of Cyrus both these necessary elements were present among the Persians as well as among the Athenians. Since that date the element of popular control has disappeared among the Persians; the government has become a complete autocracy, and the consequence is that Persia is now only strong and formidable ‘on paper’;
1 The Platonic Epistles VIII, 355e (trans. J. Harward).
The topographical inquiries about the situation and character of the territory to be assigned to the imaginary ‘city’ with which Book IV opens are meant to serve more than one purpose. As we have said already, part of Plato’s object is to enforce the practical point that the legal and constitutional institutions most appropriate to a society must be in keeping with its natural ‘environment’, its economic resources, and the composition of the population; the building of a Utopia in fairy-land is not work for a practical statesman. Further it is intended to indicate the kind of natural conditions which, in Plato’s opinion, give the constructive statesman the best chance to establish the finest type of national life. This is why we are asked to imagine that the available territory is varied enough to yield all the main staple requisites of bodily existence, but not fertile enough to make production for the foreign market possible. It is also why access to the sea, the great high road of commerce and inter-State politics, is assumed to be difficult. With the assumed conditions, the city will be self-supporting, and there will be nothing to encourage the influx of large numbers of aliens engaged in commerce, like those who congregated in the Athenian Piraeeus. The economic basis of existence will thus be agrarian, not industrial, and this, it is assumed, will make for sound national moral; the danger that the spirit of the community may be ‘commercialized’ is reduced to a minimum. The composition of the population will have every chance of remaining uniform, and there will be little risk of the perturbing influences of the outer world on national traditions of life and conduct.
Another grave risk excluded by these initial assumptions, and naturally prominent in the thought of an Athenian philosopher, is that the growth of a large volume of sea-borne commerce might lead to the rise of a navy, and this to the appearance of the spirit of aggressive ‘imperialism’. This, as Plato holds, is what had happened at Athens. The Athenians were driven by their geographical and economic situation to develop their naval strength, and their possession of a powerful fleet then led them into that policy of overseas ‘expansion’ which ultimately undermined the public moral and brought about the downfall of the Periclean democracy.
We are to imagine ourselves, then, in the ideal position of having a perfectly free hand to propose whatever institutions and laws we judge most conducive to the end the true statesman has in view, the promotion of ‘complete goodness’. It is, to be sure, hardly possible that any actual legislator will ever be so fortunate as to enjoy this complete freedom of action, but we may cone jive that miracle to happen if a
The ethical discourse on the whole duty of man, which opens at Laws, IV, 715e, does not reach its completion until we are near the middle of the following book, though it is interrupted early in its course (at 718d) in order to explain its precise function. The concern of the law, which is the embodiment of reason, is not simply with the seriously-minded, but with the whole body of citizens, most of whom are at heart on the side of decent living though they need direction in difficulties, and are often seduced into misconduct by their lower nature. Hence it is not enough to formulate a number of imperative statutes sanctioned by penalties for their infringement, in the fashion of the empirical physician who merely orders the patient to swallow his prescriptions with a threat of the consequences of neglect. The physician of the soul should attempt to enlist the sensible patient as an ally in his treatment by explaining the grounds on which it is based and encouraging cooperation with it. Each section of the ‘code’ should therefore be introduced by a preamble in
The key-note of this latest version of Plato’s ethics is struck in its famous opening sentence. ‘God eternally pursues the even tenour of his way’, and Justice is God’s attendant. To be happy a man must follow Justice and God with a ‘humbled and disciplined’ soul, and to ‘follow’ God means to be like God, who and not man, as Protagoras had said—is the true ‘measure’ of everything. To be like God, then, is to lead the life of right ‘measure’, and the first principle of this life is to have a true scale of moral worth. Reverence, or honour, is to be paid to its recipients in their proper order, and the proper order is to give the first place to the gods of the world of the living and the patron deities of the city, the second to the gods of the dim world beyond the grave, the third to ‘daemons and heroes’—or as a Christian might say to ‘angels’ and canonized saints—the fourth to departed ancestors in general, the fifth to our still living parents, and only the sixth to ourselves and the men of our own generation. In connection with duty to parents, in particular, we must observe due proportion in the discharge of it. In life we can never do too much for them; we are to put not merely our purses, or our bodily labour, at their service, but to cherish them with the deepest affections of the heart. When they are dead, modest observances which ‘keep their memory green’ are better than wasteful sepulchral rites followed by forgetfulness. When we come to the respect proper to be shown to ourselves and our contemporaries, the essential thing is to remember that a man’s soul must be held in higher honour than his body, and his body than his possessions. Hence it is dishonouring my own soul to care for enjoyment, riches, power, or health more than for virtue or wisdom, and dishonouring my body to prefer wealth to health. Moreover, neither extraordinary physical superiority nor vast wealth is, speaking generally, for a man’s good. The first breeds vanity or gross lusts, the second luxury and laziness. The middle condition in both respects is the best for a man. The main rules for right conduct to others are two: In our relations with our fellow-citizens we
There are, further, certain guiding principles which can be laid down for a man’s conduct in matters which cannot be commanded or forbidden by positive statute (Kant’s ‘duties of imperfect obligation’). One such principle is that the quality above all others required in all situations in life is ἀλήθεια, ‘genuineness’, ‘staunchness’, ‘loyalty’. Another is that it is good to practise this and all other points of virtue in one’s own person, better to go farther and bring the misdeeds of others under the notice of the authorities, best of all to give ‘authority’ active support in the chastisement of offence. Rivalry in such active practice of ‘goodness’ is, in fact, the one form of emulation which ought to be universally encouraged, just because the aim of each competitor in this case, and in this case only, is to communicate a good as widely as possible, not to engross it to himself. The good man’s zeal for justice will, however, be combined with a merciful spirit. He will treat the ‘remediable’ transgressions of his fellows mercifully, because he knows that no one does evil for its own sake, and he will be sedulous to avoid not only all hysterical emotionalism, but the deadly and insidious vice of ‘partiality to self’ in his judgments (which Plato, like Butler, regards as ‘plain dishonesty’).
Since it is, after all, men and not gods with whom the statesman has to concern himself, and—as even Kant was careful to recognize—the desire for a pleasant existence is universal in humanity, the ethical preamble ends with a consideration of our ‘interested obligation to virtue’. Plato, unlike Hedonists of the type of Mill, rests the case for the superiority of virtue to vice on ground entirely independent of ‘hedonic consequences’. But he is fully ready to add that virtue is not only more appropriate to the ‘dignity of human nature’ than vice; it is also, in point of fact, attended by a ‘surplus of pleasures over pains’, if once the rules for calculating the respective ‘lots’ of pleasures and pains are correctly formulated and the sum worked right. The rules are that
We find ourselves at last, as we are approaching the middle of Plato’s Fifth Book, on the threshold of the work of actual social and political construction. The construction itself will exhibit a twofold character. We have to provide (a) a systematic body of legislation, (b) an executive of magistrates and official boards to carry this legislation into effect. The magistrates are, so to say, the warp, the general population the woof, of the fabric the statesman will have to weave, and the threads of the warp must be the stronger of the two; the executive must be constituted in a way which will ensure that its members shall be men of tested superiority of understanding and strength of character. In the subsequent elaboration of details, the legislation and the provision of an executive naturally proceed, in the main, pari passu; each principal set of regulations for the life of the community is accompanied by a consideration of the official machinery by which it can be satisfactorily enforced. But before we can proceed with either part of our task in detail, there are certain outstanding features of social organization which we must take as fixed once and for all and permitting of no modification, and the second and larger half of Book V is concerned with the specification of these social ‘invariants’.
First of all, in this static and agrarian community, the number of households, or ‘hearths’, must be kept constant, to ensure that no grave social revolution shall arise from either over-population or under-population. Over-population would lead to unrightful expansion at the cost of neighbours, under-population to inadequacy to national self-defence. Of course, the number of households necessary and sufficient in an actual case will depend on the size of a state’s territory, but for purposes of illustration, it is taken hereafter to have been fixed at 5040. (The choice of the number is based on the practical ground that it has been formed by multiplying together the successive integers from 1 to 7, and thus is divisible by every integer less than 10, as well as by 12. This is an important practical point because it may be desirable for various purposes to divide the population into more than one set of groups constituted on different bases, and it is purely for illustration of this advantage that the particular number 5040 is chosen.)
Next, there are practical reasons why the basis of our society should not be ‘communistic’; the private family and its property will have to be fundamental institutions, and in this respect a feasible ideal for realization by ordinary humanity will depart from the Utopia of the Republic. The aged Plato is reluctant to make this concession, as he shows by repeating his earlier doctrine that there should be no private interests whatever in a perfect society; there, the very phrase ‘my own’ should not be heard. But such a condition of existence, we are now told, is one for ‘gods or sons of gods’, not for common flesh and blood. For ordinary humanity we must fall back on a system of universal ‘peasant proprietorship’. Each household will have its strictly inalienable ‘estate’, which must be handed down undivided to a single heir in each generation, and this will be made a point of religion. The heir will be a son chosen as fittest for the position by his father; daughters will be provided for by marriage, and to ensure that they shall not miss this provision, it will be the law that dowries may neither be offered nor accepted. The working of the system obviously requires that the average family shall be one son and one daughter, and Plato tries to secure this by encouraging adoptions on the part of citizens who have no sons, or have been bereaved of their sons. Tendency to over-population, if it appears, will be met, in case of need, by the sending out of colonies, and unavoidable depopulation
Economic inequalities cannot be altogether prevented, but they may be kept within reasonable bounds by a series of wise regulations. The inalienable patrimonies will, in the first instance, be made as nearly as possible of equal value, and a careful exhaustive survey of the territory, marking their boundaries, must be preserved in the public archives. Commercialism will be strictly checked by a regulation based on Spartan practice and recommended again at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Fichte in his Geschlossener Handelsstaat, a work akin in many ways to the Laws. The state will have its own currency, which must be one of tokens with no intrinsic value, and it will be illegal in a citizen to own foreign currency. Credit will be prohibited—a device for checking the rise of inequalities of fortune already mentioned in the Republic—and, as we want men to live by their own exertions, not on the automatic return of investments, and still less by ‘speculation’, there will be no toleration of lending on interest. It follows that such differences in ‘personal’ property as can arise under such restrictions will, in the main, be due to the legitimate exercise of intelligence and industry. They should, however, be further kept within limits by a device suggested to Plato by Solon’s division of the Athenians into four property-classes. Plato proposes a similar division, the fourth, or poorest class, possessing nothing beyond their patrimony, the first or richest being allowed to own four times the annual yield of the patrimony. Any increment of wealth beyond this upper limit will be escheated to the Treasury, or, as we should say, subject to an income-tax of one hundred percent. It will be found inevitable that certain important executive posts should be reserved for members of the wealthiest classes, and we shall thus, though reluctantly, have to allow a man’s ‘stake in the country’ as well as his personal qualities, some influence in the distribution of offices.
For administrative purposes the population should be divided into twelve tribes, and the ‘capital’ into twelve corresponding districts, in order that various administrative duties may rotate conveniently through all these divisions in the course of the year. Consequently, care will be taken to see that the total real and personal wealth of these tribes is as nearly equal as possible, the capital will be situated in a
With the Sixth Book we come at last to the constitution of the most important magistracies and administrative boards. The most important of all ordinary magistracies is that of the νομοϕύλακες, or ‘Curators of Law’, a body which Plato has adopted from Athenian practice, but with great extension of its powers. It is to consist of thirty-seven members of proved intelligence and character, who must be over the age of fifty and below that of seventy. Their functions are to watch over the interests of the law in general, to keep the register of properties, and penalize and ‘black-list’ citizens guilty of fraudulent concealment of income, to act alone, or in concert with others, as judges in the trials of grave offences. They are to be elected (by votes given in writing and signed with the voter’s name as a safeguard against electoral irresponsibility) by a process which has several stages. The number of thirty-seven is got by allowing three representatives to each ‘tribe’, and adding an odd man to prevent equal division of opinions.
The ‘representative chamber’ of the scheme, as we may call it, is the Executive Council. Its function is not legislation, but the issuing of administrative decrees, and it is elected by a process ingeniously devised to give all property-classes equal representation, while excluding class friction and ‘wire-pulling’. In the first stage of the election an equal number of representatives are chosen from all four classes, but with the provision that while members of the two richer classes are bound under a penalty to vote for the representatives of all four, the two poorer classes are free, if they please, to abstain from voting in the choice of their own representatives. The effect would be that the votes of the poor would have a preponderating effect at this stage in the selection of the representatives of the rich, those of the rich in the choice of representatives of the poor. The unduly ‘class-conscious’ member of any section would thus have little chance of election. In the second stage the number of the elected from each class
Since the foundation of social order in the community is a
Since the married pair are to regard it as a bounden duty to society to present it with worthy offspring, it is next proposed to institute a board of ladies, appointed by the magistrates, who will supervise the conduct of a married couple in
With Book VII we reach Plato’s most careful and final treatment of the social problem in which he was more interested than any other, that of universal education. The unfortunately better-known treatment of Republic III is a mere sketch in comparison with this more mature discussion. There must, of course, be public supervision from the outset; nothing must be left to the caprice of the individual householder, and the work cannot be taken in hand too early, since it is in the initial stages, when an infant body and mind are most readily plastic, that wrong treatment will do most mischief. Plato, in fact, begins ‘education’ even before birth by laying it down that it is the duty of the expectant mother to take all the exercise required for the well-being of the child in her womb. When the infant has been born, the authorities must see to it that the nurse gives it all the air and exercise needful, and especially that it is kept from hurting itself by walking too early; it must, before everything else, ‘grow straight’. The general principle to be observed is that a baby should live as though it were ‘always at sea’; it must be dandled and danced, and must be kept from being frightened by being
Music—the earliest vehicle for the training of taste and intelligence—requires fuller treatment. Plato accordingly repeats what he had already said in Book II about the ‘imitative’ character of music, and the danger of unwholesome innovations in musical fashions. It is now made a function of the ‘Curators of Law’ to see that the desirable types of musical composition are invested with the sanction of religion, and that no innovation upon them is tolerated. Tragedy is thus, as in the Republic, banished from Plato’s society. The State cannot permit the festivals of its gods to be polluted by choruses who are declaiming against the conduct of these very gods and wailing in a fashion only in place in a funeral dirge. Or, to put the point more generally, the legislator will say to the dramatist: ‘I too am busied in the making of a drama of real life in which the actors are the citizens of the State themselves, and I cannot permit any competition by stage-plays composed in a different spirit and inculcating very different lessons.’
1 Compare 800c with 817b.
If we are serious with education, we shall need schools with proper buildings, adequate grounds, and expert teachers. As these teachers will need to receive regular salaries from the State for their support, in fact, will need to live by a profession, they must, in accord with Hellenic sentiment which Plato shares, be aliens.
1 They must come from other Hellenic cities. It is not meant they that will be ‘barbarians’.
1 There is an evident allusion to the panic-stricken behaviour of the Spartan women when Epaminondas was threatening Sparta after the battle of Leuctra, recorded also by Aristotle (Politics 1269b 37 ff.).
Over and above the more elementary studies just enumerated there remain, as subjects for ‘higher education’, three branches of knowledge in which all free men ought to have some proficiency, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy (going beyond the very rudimentary knowledge required for understanding the Calendar). One cannot expect many young people to attain a really advanced standard in these subjects, but we may require all our pupils to learn at least as much as is commonly acquired in Egypt without any difficulty. In Egypt there are games which teach the players to discover the factors of numbers and to manipulate fractions, and we may use problems of this kind to lead up to the recognition of the existence of ‘incommensurable’ lengths, areas, and volumes, a subject on which even the dabblers in mathematics among the Greeks are discreditably ignorant. (The suggestion is thus that one subject to be included in secondary education in the later ‘teens’ should be ‘irrational magnitudes’, ‘algebra up to quadratic equations’, as the phrase is nowadays.) Astronomy should also be pursued far enough to give a proper understanding of the uniformity of the movements of the planets and of their true relative velocities in their orbits.
The contents of the Eighth Book are a little difficult to classify. Provision is first made for the placing of the whole daily life of the society under the religious sanction by providing each month and day with its appropriate ritual of worship.
1 On the precise correction of current astronomical theory hinted at here see the note in loco, at Laws, 822a. Cf. also Burnet, Greek Philosophy, Part I, 345-9.
Since
These remarks lead up to an important matter of ethical principle upon which Plato lays very great stress. Is there not real danger of a relaxed sexual morality in a society where the young men and women have ample leisure from severe toil and associate so freely in ‘sports’ and other pursuits? Plato’s view is that there is no danger if we can but establish the right social tradition. The right rule is that ‘homosexual’ relations must be absolutely suppressed as unnatural, and the normal sexual impulse confined strictly within the bounds of monogamous matrimony. He admits that most persons will think the proposal Utopian, but urges that they are mistaken. The example of famous athletes shows that strict and lasting continence is possible, and we may fairly expect our citizens to do as much for the crown of virtue as boxers have often done for an Olympic garland. The complete repression of incestuous desire in civilized society shows how effectual the moral and religious sanction can become, and the problem is therefore the simple one of creating the same sort of social tradition against fornication as already exists against incest. Even if we never quite attain this ideal, we may at least hope to attach a stigma of disgrace to all detected irregularity. Plato’s rule in matters of sex is thus precisely what the half-educated among us reject as the ‘ascetic’ Christian standard, and this ought not to astonish us. No serious Greek moralist ever took the ‘romantic’ view of sexual relations.
1 See the admirable remarks of E. R. Bevan, Christianity (Home University Library), p. 53 ff.
The
The remainder of Laws VIII, now that the topic of the personal conduct of citizens has been disposed of, is taken up with a consideration of the most important regulations dealing with torts and disorders likely to arise in an agrarian community, and their prevention. Under this head are considered such matters as encroachments on boundaries, diversion of water-courses, the ownership of stray animals, and we are given a significant hint (843e) that the provisions introduced are largely borrowed from those of existing Attic law. The illustrative examples used to elucidate the principles on which Plato desires to lay stress are often the same which we meet again in Justinian’s Institutes, and later still in Grotius’s de Jure Belli et Pacis. In this connection we have also a discussion of the regulation of markets, and the terms upon which aliens may be allowed to practise an industry. The main object of the proposed regulations of the market is to secure that all transactions shall be on the basis of immediate payment and that there shall be no ‘higgling’ about prices. The seller is to have his fixed price and to take neither more nor less. Plato’s object, like Ruskin’s in Fors Clavigera, is not so much to keep the seller from asking too much as to prevent him from getting rid of inferior wares, at a pretended ‘sacrifice’. Aliens are to be allowed to enter the territory freely, without being required, as at Athens, to pay any poll-tax, provided they have an industry by which to support themselves, and are willing to obey the laws of the State, but they must normally depart with all their property after twenty years; right of permanent settlement will be granted only as a reward for special services done to the State. (It must be remembered that it is a consequence of the previous
With the Ninth Book we come to criminal jurisprudence, and it is part of Plato’s high originality that the distinction between criminal law and the civil law of torts is made for the first time on a clear and intelligible principle. The fundamental distinction which Plato misses in all existing legal procedure is that between a tort, the mere infliction of loss or damage, which can be sufficiently met by an award of compensation, and a crime, the violation of a right, which requires that the offender should, besides making good any loss he has occasioned, suffer a penalty. The defect charged here on Attic and Hellenic procedure is that in the place of this vital distinction it sets another which is not adequate for judicial purposes, that between the voluntary and involuntary causing of damage. Plato regards this distinction as philosophically vicious, in view of the Socratic thesis, which he fully accepts, that all wrong-doing is in the last resort due to error, and so involuntary. But apart altogether from the issues raised by the Socratic ‘paradox’, the distinction, as he is careful to point out, is in any case not the one relevant for the purpose of the jurist. In deciding whether a case before the courts is one for mere award of compensation or for the infliction of a penalty, the vital question is not whether the defendant has acted voluntarily or not, but whether he has merely caused loss or violated a right. Until this point is grasped, it is impossible to draw any clear distinction between a civil action and a criminal prosecution. Naturally, when the distinction between a tort and a crime has been once made, the further subdivision of crimes according to their gravity requires the distinction between a criminal act done with intent to commit the particular violation of right, and one done with intent to commit a lesser, or possibly a graver, offence. (Thus bodily wounding may be inflicted with intent to maim, or with intent merely to inflict a disfigurement, or with intent to kill, and each of these crimes, to be punished justly, requires a different sentence.) Hence in the details of his criminal code Plato is careful to take into account the precise nature of the culprit’s presumable intention, as well as the distinction between the crime of sudden violence, committed under provocation or emotional excitement, and the premeditated crime of violence, and between both and
In the selection of penalties for various offences, what strikes a reader familiar with actual Attic practice most forcibly is the comparative frequency of the penalty of death for the more serious offences, and the still greater frequency of fairly long terms of imprisonment. Death was not a usual penalty at Athens, except for certain grave offences against the State, and imprisonment of a citizen, except in the form of temporary detention of an offender sentenced to a fine, was as good as unknown. The frequency of imprisonment for a year or longer in Plato’s code is, from the Athenian point of view, though not from ours, a singularity. The penalty of death, we must remember, is not, on Plato’s own principles, really the ‘extreme penalty’. He regards it as a more merciful procedure to dismiss the ‘incurable’ offender from the world than to let him linger on in a state of moral wickedness, and in the degradation and misery of an imprisoned convict. A modem reader is likely to be unfavourably impressed both by the free use made of corporal punishments, particularly when the offender is an alien or slave, and the exceptional severity with which all crimes committed by a slave on a free person are treated. We need to bear in mind both that Plato does not share the modern sentimental view of corporal punishment as peculiarly degrading to the victim, and that in any society where the servile status is recognized, crimes committed by a slave on the free have something of the character of mutiny. The list of crimes actually dealt with in Laws IX opens with certain grave offences against the State as a whole, which are all to be visited with death when the culprit is a citizen: sacrilege, high treason in the form of direct attempts to subvert the constitution, treasonable practice with the foreign enemy. They are to be tried by a court composed, much on the model of the Athenian Areopagus, of the ‘Curators of Law’ and the magistrates of the preceding year, and miscarriages of justice are provided against by the provisions that every member of the court must declare his personal judgment on the case, and that the proceedings, unlike those of an Athenian trial, must be spread over three days. Grave crimes against the
In Laws X, historically in many ways the most significant part of the whole work, Plato appears as an innovator in a twofold way. The book is the foundation of all subsequent ‘natural’ theology,
1 The adjective natural in this connection meant, in the first instance, simply philosophically true. The implied contrast is not with supernatural revelation, but with the imaginative fictions of poetic mythology and the socially useful fictions embodied in the religious Calendar of the State. The name is directly due to the great Roman antiquary, M. Terentius Varro, for whose views, see Augustine, de Civitas Dei, VI, 5.
The particular beliefs which are of this poisonous kind, and tend, if left unrepressed, to issue in practical evil living, are, according to Plato, three: (1) simple atheism, the denial that there are gods of any kind, a doctrine which he treats as identical with the ‘naturalistic’ theory that the world, including the minds in it, is the product of the purposeless movements of corporeal elements; (2) the doctrine that there are gods, but that they are wholly indifferent to human conduct—deism, as we might now call it; (3) the doctrine that there are gods and that they exercise a judgment on men’s conduct, but that the impenitent sinner can escape the judgment by prayers and sacrifices. Of the three, the first, simple atheism, is morally the least reprehensible, the third far the worst. It is better to believe in no God at all than to believe in careless gods, and better to believe in careless gods than to believe in venal gods. Plato’s own conviction is that he can demonstrate the falsity of atheism, though the demonstration is neither brief nor easy, and that the further refutation of the two morally graver heresies is a simple matter when once the existence of gods, or of a God, has been established.
Before proceeding to the refutation of the atheist, it is necessary to show that we understand his position and the motives for his incredulity. Plato’s view is that atheism is the product of two historical factors, the corporealism of the early Ionian men of science, who assumed that the order of nature can be accounted for on ‘mechanical principles’ without any appeal to intelligent design or purpose, and the ‘sophistic’ theory of the purely conventional and relative character of moral distinctions. Both doctrines, he holds, will be completely refuted if he can show that all the ‘motions’ of body are caused by prior ‘motions’ of soul; in that case ‘artifice’, intelligent purpose, will actually be the source of both ‘nature’ and ‘chance’; it will be impossible to maintain that the great fundamental categories of a rational morality are merely the ‘subjective’ illusions of beings who are themselves ‘products of unguided evolution’. What has to be shown is, in fact, to put it quite simply, that minds or souls, not bodies, are ‘what there is to begin with’ (892c).
The proof that the order of nature itself presupposes intelligent guidance turns upon an analysis of the notion of κίνησις, motion or process. The all-important point is that all motion is of one of two kinds; it is either ‘motion which can move other things but cannot set itself moving’, i.e. imparted or
Next, to account for the actual movements in the universe there must be more than one soul. (This means that Plato’s doctrine is not pantheism but a theism of some kind.) There must be at least two souls in existence, and there may be as many more as are needed to account for the facts. For in the world as we know it there are both order and regularity, and also irregularity and disorder. Hence we cannot account for the facts as one and all due to a single ‘best soul’; there must be one or more souls which are not completely wise or completely good. But the study of astronomy shows us that the dominant all-pervasive movements in the universe are strictly orderly and regular; partial disorder is everywhere overruled. Hence the supreme soul must be a perfectly good soul, that is, it must be God. The appeal made to astronomy as the science which most convincingly reveals a perfect wisdom at the heart of the world-order, an appeal which reminds us, with differences, of Kant’s famous sentence about the ‘starry heavens above and the moral law within’, is further illustrated by some interesting remarks made in Book XII about the difference in spirit between the secularism of the earliest Ionian science and the devoutness characteristic of the Academy. According to Plato, it is precisely because the astronomers of the Academy are so much better acquainted with the strict regularity with which the complicated motions of the heavenly bodies—he is thinking specially of the planets—
There are several points in connection with the preceding argument which should be remarked, (1) We note that evil as well as good is expressly said to be due to ‘souls’. This excludes the doctrine of the later popular Platonism, according to which an independent ‘matter’ is the ultimate source of evil. (2) God (or the gods) is definitely said to be a soul, and a soul to be ‘a motion which originates itself’. The fundamental difference in theology between Aristotle and Plato is precisely that Aristotle insists on getting behind such a source of motion to a still more ultimate ‘unmoving’ mover. The activity of Aristotle’s God is strictly immanent within himself: it is an activity of unbroken self-contemplation; out-going activity is essential to the God of Plato. He is then, as Aristotle’s God is not, a Providence, and in a real sense, a Creator. (Whether he is also a Creator in the full Christian sense is a more difficult question, and our answer to it will depend on our interpretation of the difficult and figurative psychogony of the Timaeus.) In any case Plato is absolutely in earnest in the ascription of purpose, design, and foresight to God. (3) Formally the argument disregards the question, never felt by the Greeks to be specially important, whether there is only one god or many gods. But the recurrence of the phrase, ‘the best soul’, shows at least that there is, in Plato’s theology, one soul which is supreme in the hierarchy of good souls and will therefore be God in a sense in which no other can be called so. The relation between this soul, the one which is responsible for the supreme ‘orderly movement’ in the universe, and the lesser souls responsible for the minor uniformities, such as the several orbits of the planets, is never explained, any more than Aristotle ever explains the relation between his supreme ‘unmoving mover’ of the universe and the ‘unmoving movers’ of the individual
The refutation of the two graver heresies now becomes a very simple task. The belief that God (or the gods) is (or are) indifferent to our conduct is natural in a mind which has too much native piety to acquiesce in atheism, but is shocked by the spectacle of apparently successful wickedness. Divine indifference could only be due to inability to regulate human affairs, to conviction that they are too insignificant to deserve attention, or to the pride which regards itself as superior to so humble a task. But impotence, ignorance of the real significance of the apparently trivial, conceit, are all incompatible with the character of a perfectly good soul. And we can readily see that the moral government of the world and everything in it can be sufficiently secured by the establishment of a single very simple law. The identification of the soul with a self-originating movement has, in fact, incidentally established the imperishability of all souls, as the Phaedrus had argued. Such souls are imperishable because they have the sufficient and necessary condition of their persistence within themselves. If we suppose then that God has established the simple law that souls, so to say, ‘gravitate’ towards the society of their likes, it follows at once that, in the endless succession of lives and deaths, each man’s soul steadily makes its way to the company of the like-minded; each of us therefore in the end ‘does and has done to him’ what it is fitting that such a man should do or have done to him. This is the ‘judgment of God’ which it is impossible to escape. The worst heresy of all, that which represents God as actually bribed by sacrifice or flattered by formal devotion
All this natural theology belongs, of course, not to the actual law against irreligion, but to its preamble. The proposed statute itself is a stern one. Overt maintenance of any of the proscribed doctrines is to be brought to the notice of the magistrates, and a magistrate neglecting to take action will himself become liable to prosecution for impiety. The cases are to be tried before the court already instituted to deal with capital crimes, and in the case of each heresy a distinction must be drawn between the minor guilt of the offender who is otherwise a man of virtuous life, and the worse guilt of the offender who aggravates his impiety by evil living. The less guilty ‘virtuous heretic’ must in every case be confined for not less than five years in the House of Correction, where he is to converse with none but members of the ‘Nocturnal Council’—a body to be described more fully in the closing book of the Laws—who will reason with the prisoner on his errors. A second conviction is always to be followed by death. For the worst ‘infidel’ of all, the impostor who trades on the credulity of simpler folk by founding superstitions and immoral cults, in which he himself does not believe, Plato proposes what he regards as a severer treatment. Such men are to be kept in life-long strict imprisonment in a solitary ‘convict prison’, where they will be secluded from all human society; at death they are to be denied burial. In fact, they are treated as ‘dead in law’ from the time of conviction.
1 These provisions involve one of Plato’s most interesting anticipations of very modern practice, his proposal for a grading of prisons. He would have (1) a house of detention for the safe-custody of arrested persons whose cases have not been disposed of; (2) a house of correction for the ordinary offender who is serving his sentence; (3) a peculiarly close and solitary prison for the worst criminals of all. Thus he anticipates the distinction between the cells, the county gaol, and the convict prison.
Book XI is concerned with a series of enactments against less serious offences. It deals in succession with the law of treasure-trove, the prevention of dishonesty in buying and the regulation of retail trade and innkeeping, the terms on which piece-work of all kinds should be contracted for and remunerated. Then follow elaborate regulations about testamentary dispositions, succession to an estate where there has been no testament, the guardianship of orphans, which is to be carefully controlled by the State, and the treatment of family dissensions of various kinds; the law will be particularly stringent in enforcing proper respect for parents and for the aged in general. The next offence to be dealt with is the causing of hurt by noxious drugs, with which Plato classes the employment of philtres and charms of all kinds; this last crime might be ignored in a society of perfectly rational beings, but it has to be taken into account in communities where the current belief in the sorcerer’s powers makes him dangerous. After a paragraph dealing with robbery and larceny, Plato proceeds to dwell on the necessity of public enforcement of proper supervision of the insane and imbecile. The law must hold their sane relatives responsible for their custody. Finally, begging must be rigorously suppressed by law, though it must also be recognized as a public duty to see that no one, not even a slave, who is out of employment from no fault of his own shall starve. The book closes with rules about the admissibility of evidence in the courts, and the penalizing of perjury. The litigiousness which, as we see from Aristophanes and the orators, was a common Athenian failing, is checked by penalties for vexatious prosecution; Plato even makes the offence capital in cases where the prosecutor’s motive is shown to have been personal gain. In a similar spirit he proposes to check the abuse of the calling of a professional λογογράφος, or composer of speeches for intending litigants, by making the ‘advocate’ in vexatious suits liable to the same penalties as his employer. Many of the detailed provisions of this section of the Laws can be shown, and more may be suspected, to be founded on the Attic jurisprudence which Plato is trying to correct where he finds it unsatisfactory.
With Book XII we return to the subject of public law. Penalties are imposed for various forms of misconduct on the part of ambassadors or public envoys, and embezzlement of the public funds—an offence which was always charged on Athenian politicians by their opponents—is struck at by the
The adequate discharge of duty by all magistrates is to be secured by adopting the Attic practice of requiring every magistrate, on the expiry of his term, to submit to an audit (εὔθυνα). Plato has given special care to the appointment of the Board charged with the conduct of these audits. The members must be over the age of fifty and under seventy-five, and are to be chosen, with peculiar solemnity, by universal suffrage, each voter giving his vote for the person whom he regards as, on his whole record, the best and most capable of his fellow citizens. The process is to be repeated until only the required number of names remain uneliminated. In the first instance a board of twelve members will be thus appointed, afterwards it will be sufficient to elect three new members annually. Membership of this Board is the highest honour which can be conferred on a citizen of Plato’s State, and is attended by exceptional marks of distinction, in particular by a public funeral. He is careful, however, to provide for appeals against its decisions, and requires any member of it whose action is quashed on such an appeal to be removed from his post. Incidentally, in the course of this discussion, Plato testifies at once to his own high sense of the importance of veracity and to the shortcomings of Attic practice in the matter of truth-speaking, by refusing to allow oaths to be taken by citizens in the course of legal proceedings; the permission of an oath to litigants, he thinks, as mankind go, is no better than an incentive to the impiety of perjury.
Nothing has been said as yet about the intercourse of our citizens with the rest of the Hellenic world. Plato does not desire to encourage the spirit of ‘cosmopolitanism’, nor to expose the national moral to the influences of a vast influx of aliens. On the other hand he disapproves of the Egyptian and Spartan churlish antipathy to ‘foreigners’, and is anxious that his city shall be kept well abreast of all social and intellectual ‘progress’. Accordingly, while he would not allow foreign travel to citizens before they have reached the age of
The pages which immediately follow deal with a variety of legal points. Here, and in the awkward insertion of the section on field-sports at the close of the seventh book, we see more noticeably than anywhere else in the Laws evidence that the work has not received its final arrangement. Rules are laid down in rapid succession about the giving of bail, the conditions on which one man may search another’s house or property for stolen goods, the term of undisputed possession which will create a title by prescription, the proper penalties for such different offences as violent interference with the appearance of a party to a law-suit or his witnesses, or of a competitor in the public ‘sports’, the receiving of stolen goods, the taking of presents by public servants for the performance of their official duties—a crime which Plato would always punish with death. Next comes a law directed against the waste of
Plato has now completed the survey of a proposed political constitution with its legal code. But there is still one thing to be done which he regards as of supreme moment. It is not enough that a society should have good laws, unless there
Now we know that this single aim of public life is ‘complete goodness’, and we know again that such goodness manifests itself in four great typical forms (the so-called ‘cardinal virtues’ of the Republic and Laws). So it will be impossible to understand the single aim of a rightly ordered social life without understanding how these four things can be one, and this one thing four. The members of the supreme ‘Nocturnal Council’, therefore, will not be fitted for their responsibilities unless they have been thoroughly trained in the power to ‘see the one in the many and the many in the one’. (This is the standing description in Plato of the supreme philosophical discipline for which his formal name is ‘dialectic’. The ‘dialectician’ is just the thinker who can see how a single great principle exhibits itself in a whole system of manifestations without losing its unity, and how a whole varied range of different facts are manifestations of one single principle, and yet are different manifestations.) And if the members of our council are to be capable of understanding in this way how goodness can be both one and many, they will need to have been systematically trained in the same kind of insight in other fields of knowledge. (Thus, though the name ‘dialectic’ is not used in the Laws, Plato makes exactly the same demand for the thing as he had done in the Republic.
At present we are not even in a position to speak definitely about the particular studies which will be required. (Plato means, as was the fact in the fourth century, that the ‘higher mathematics’ is making rapid and unforeseeable progress, and for that reason no precise programme can be laid down for it.) But we can at least say that without the highest attainments in the ‘new sciences’ no man will be intellectually qualified for the work he assigns to his ‘Nocturnal Council’, and without such a body in the State there is no guarantee for the effectiveness or permanency of the most wisely devised institutions. It is significant that in the closing pages of the book, the name ‘curators’ or ‘guardians’ of the law, originally given in Book V to a body of vastly inferior qualifications, is transferred to this new council, much as in the Republic the name ‘guardians’ is first given to all the soldiers of the State and then restricted to the comparatively few who prove intellectually fit for the higher office of ‘philosopher-king’. The members of the ‘Nocturnal Council’, in fact, answer closely in the Laws to the ‘philosopher-kings’ of the Republic. The main difference is that in the later work, owing to the great advances
It is certain that the Laws is the latest of all Plato’s writings, unless we accept as genuine the little dialogue Epinomis, declared by its singular title to be meant as a supplement, or appendix, to the major work. It has been common among scholars, for the greater part of a century at least, to depreciate this work, and to ascribe its composition to Plato’s pupil, the Academic Philippus of Opus, said by tradition to have been the amanuensis or transcriber of the Laws. This ascription is still vigorously maintained by many of the foremost Platonic scholars of Germany in particular, such as C. Ritter, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Werner Jaeger, and others. To the present writer, as to a minority of better scholars than himself (e.g. Hans Raeder, Professor Burnet), the alleged evidence against Platonic authorship drawn from vocabulary and diction seems singularly inconclusive, and the charges of inferiority in thought made by many critics to be illusions based on misconception of the writer’s real meaning. Frankly, I think it more likely that any increased infelicity of expression is due to advancing years and infirmity on the part of Plato than to maladroit initiative by a disciple. But the reader should be warned that this, though I hope it may yet prove to be the sound, is not the accepted view. In any case, the Epinomis seems, from the first, to have been circulated along with the Laws, and to have passed through the hands of the personal disciple who gave the larger work to the world, and may therefore be presumed to represent, at least in its main position, the thought of Plato. Its main interest is that it tells us a
1 Epinomis XI, 359a-b.
The comparative neglect of the Laws is really a modern aberration. No work seems to have had a more potent influence on the political thought of ancient philosophers from Aristotle downwards. A great German scholar, recently deceased, once, indeed, made the hasty remark that Aristotle never did more than ‘turn over the leaves’ of the book. But no one can have known better than Wilamowitz that to ‘turn over the leaves’ of an ancient papyrus roll was a physical impossibility; a book of the fourth century BC had to be read continuously or not at all. That Aristotle had read the Laws very thoroughly is shown by frequent echoes of it in his own Ethics, and more conclusively still by the treatment of political and educational principles in his Politics. Burnet’s commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics is specially deserving of commendation for the attention given in it to Aristotle’s reminiscences of the Laws. The elaborate study of the structural growth of the Aristotelian corpus which has been so faithfully imitated within the last two decades by such scholars as Jaeger, von Arnim, Mansion, has, perhaps, so far not yielded many results which can be assumed to be absolutely assured. But it does seem to be already definitely established by these investigations that all the more theoretical part of the Politics, the books which treat of the political, economic, educational institutions of the ‘ideal’ commonwealth, are directly inspired by the Laws. Aristotle’s ‘ideal state’ is just the city of the Laws made more commonplace and left
Writers of the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman ages who show knowledge of Plato treat the Laws as a perfectly familiar work: some of its great moral and religious utterances, notably the sentences about the ‘following of God’, with which the general preamble to the legislation is introduced in Book IV, are among the favourite quotations of the Christian Fathers. In the West, direct acquaintance with the book was inevitably interrupted as the knowledge of Greek died out in the ‘Dark Ages’. But, as I have already said, through the Politics of Aristotle the main principles of the Platonic ‘constitutionalism’ left a deep impress on the political thought of the great men of the thirteenth century. Direct familiarity with the Laws appears again when the revival of learning makes Greek texts once more accessible. The ill-acquaintance of 19th Century writers with the book presents a striking contrast with the knowledge of it habitually shown by the great line of ‘Platonizing’ divines and moralists who were the chief glory of 17th Century Anglicanism. In the last century itself there is one great and splendid exception to the general neglect of the work in our literature. To Ruskin, that anima naturaliter Platonica, the Laws made a special appeal, as we see from the incorporation of long and important passages into Fors Clavigera, itself, perhaps, the most Platonic of great modern works on ‘politics’ in the noble Hellenic sense.
Whether and how far the book has had the effect on the actual practice of legislators for which Plato was hoping is another question. It has once at least been proposed to put the whole scheme of the Laws into operation as it stands. The philosopher Plotinus
1 Porphyry, Vita Plotinus 12.
The synopsis already given will have shown how curiously fertile Plato’s work is in suggestions, major and minor, of new constitutional, legal, and educational departures, and how many of these departures have only been put into practice in quite modern times.
1 It may be worthwhile to insert a list, which could probably be extended, of some of the more outstanding original contributions of the Laws to ‘politics’. I would specify first, as most important:
(1) The clear enunciation of the principles of ‘constitutional’ or divided sovereignty in Book III.
(2) The provisions of Book VII about the training and education of infants, children, and young persons, which amount to recognition of (a) the importance of orthopaedics; (b) the principles of the kindergarten; and (c) of the higher secondary school.
(3) The definite creation of ‘natural theology’ in Book X.
(4) The constitution in Book IX of criminal jurisprudence as a distinct branch of law, by the side of the law of civil torts.
To these might be added as of secondary, though still great, importance:
(5) Recognition of the necessity of an official survey and registry of all titles to real estate (Book V),
(6) And of the official enforcement of a uniform standardization of all weights and measures (ibid.).
(7) The gradation of the various prisons of the State (Book X).
(8) The careful regulations dispersed through Books IX, XI, XII, to secure the proper conduct of judicial proceedings, and to prevent hasty and irresponsible verdicts.
(9) The recognition of the public duty of encouraging science shown in the regulations of Book XII about intercourse with other societies. The full measure of Plato’s detailed achievement in jurisprudence will only be apparent when some scholar with the requisite specialist knowledge has undertaken the hitherto imperfectly executed task of comparing seriatim the provisions of the later books of the Laws with the extant remains of Athenian jurisprudence.
2 Christianity (Home University Library), p. 109.
On the other hand, the appearance of the ‘secondary school’ as a regular institution in the Hellenic cities of the ‘Alexandrian’ and ‘Graeco-Roman’ ages at least suggests almost irresistibly that one of Plato’s great inspirations must have borne pretty direct fruit. If so, the modern world has to thank Plato for its two most important educational institutions. The Academy was the first ‘incorporated’ university in the world’s history, and continued to be one for nine hundred years, until the Emperor Justinian closed it, as an act of Christian propaganda, in AD 529. It seems more likely than not, that the Lycée also is the creation of Hellenistic statesmen trained on the principles of the Laws.
It is even possible that Plato’s work in jurisprudence has at least contributed to the origination of what we call Roman law, and so to the construction of all modern legal systems, though the evidence here is not so complete as we could wish. The way in which the derivation was effected seems to have been, generally speaking, this: The immediate source out of which the Roman lawyers elaborated their science was, as is well known, the edict of the praetor peregrinus, which embodied the principles upon which the praetor proceeded in dealing with cases in which one party or both were non-citizens, and therefore not entitled to the application of the cumbrous traditional jus Quiritium. These principles, those of the so-called jus Gentium, appear to have been borrowed very largely, as was only natural, from the already existing legal systems of the highly developed Greek cities with which the Romans were early brought into contact, and the study of Hellenistic papyri is gradually disclosing to us the existence in the Hellenistic age of a large body of law common to Greek cities at large. A widely diffused system of this kind, of course, implies a common source somewhere in a
It only remains to explain very briefly the principle upon which the present translation has been made. The text pre-supposed throughout is that of Burnet, for the use of which I am indebted to the proprietors, the Delegates of the Clarendon Press. It has been my aim not to depart from Burnet’s text without recording the fact. Where I have thought it no more than an even probability that a departure may be right, I have preferred to acquiesce in the printed text.
I have made constant use of the Latin version of Ficinus, and the excellent commentaries of Stallbaum, C. Ritter, and Dr. E. B. England. I owe numerous suggestions to the very happy passages of translation frequently interspersed in Dr. England’s work, of which I have ventured to make the free use I am sure he would have allowed me were he still living. I have naturally consulted the text and rendering of Dr. R. G. Bury (in the Loeb Library). More than once, when I thought I could not better the turn given to a phrase by Dr. Bury, I have allowed myself to follow him. I owe much gratitude to my old friend, Mr. W. L. Lorimer of St. Andrew’s University, for his encouraging help with the difficult passages.
A. E. Taylor
Edinburgh 1934
Laws, Book I
Persons of the Dialogue: A Visitor From Athens; Clinias, a Cretan; Megillus, a Lacedaemonian
[N.B. In the references the small letter after the Stephanus page number refers to the section and line in Burnet’s text.]
Athenian: To whom is the merit of instituting your laws ascribed, gentlemen? To a god, or to some man?
Clinias: Why, to a god, sir, indubitably to a god; in our case to Zeus, in the case of Lacedaemon, to which our friend here belongs, I believe, according to their own story, to Apollo. That is so, is it not?
Megillus: Certainly.
Athenian: You mean that Minos, just as Homer relates, used to repair to a conference with his father every ninth year,
Clinias: So our local story has it. It adds the further detail that Rhadamanthys, the brother of Minos—the name will, of course, be familiar to you—was conspicuous for his justice. Well, as we Cretans insist, it was his ancient administration of our
Athenian: An honourable distinction indeed, and most appropriate to a son of Zeus. But as you and our friend Megillus have both been brought up under such venerable legal institutions, I trust you will not find it disagreeable to spend the time, as we walk this morning, in conversation on questions of politics and jurisprudence. The distance from Cnossus to the cave and chapel of Zeus is, I understand, quite considerable, and there are presumably shady resting-places, such as the sultry season demands, on the way, among the lofty trees, where it will be a comfort, at our age of life, to make frequent halts and entertain one another with discourse. Thus we may reach the end of our long journey without fatigue.
Clinias: To be sure, sir, there are groves of prodigious fine,
1 Odyssey, T 179, ἐννέωρος βασίλεος Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής.
Athenian: I am glad to hear it.
Clinias: No doubt you are, but we shall all be gladder still when we come to them. Well, let us make our start, and good luck go with us!
Athenian: With all my heart! Come now, tell me, what is the purpose of your laws in prescribing your system of common meals and physical training, and your distinctive accoutrements?
Clinias: Why, in the case of my own countrymen, sir, I take the purpose to be very obvious. As you can both see for yourselves, Crete, as a whole, unlike Thessaly, has not a level surface. This is, of course, why the Thessalians rely by preference on cavalry, but we on rapid infantry movements, since with us the ground is uneven and better adapted for training in these manoeuvres. On such a terrain a soldier must naturally be lightly accoutred, and not carry a load as he runs; consequently, bow and arrows are felt to be recommended by their light weight. These arrangements, then, have all been made with a military purpose, and it is warfare, if I am to speak my own conviction, which our lawgiver kept in view in all his dispositions. For instance, his reason for establishing the common meals was presumably that he saw that when the whole population are in the field, that very circumstance compels them to take their meals together, through the campaign, for self-protection. He meant, I believe, to reprove the folly of mankind, who refuse to understand that they are all engaged in a continuous lifelong warfare against all cities whatsoever. Hence, if a force must take its meals together in war time, for the sake of self-defence,
Athenian: Your training, sir, would appear to have given you an admirable insight into the institutions of Crete. But you might
Clinias: Most decidedly, and I fancy our friend here will be of the same mind, too.
Megillus: Why, my good man, what other answer would you expect from any Lacedaemonian?
Athenian: Well, possibly this is the right test in comparing cities with cities, but there may be a different test for the comparison of village with village?
Clinias: Not at all.
Athenian: The same test holds good?
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: Well, and when we compare one household in our village with another, and one man with one other man? The same test still holds?
Clinias: The very same.
Athenian: And the individual man? Must we think of him as related to himself as foeman to foeman, or what are we to say in this case?
Clinias: Ah, my Athenian friend! (I would rather not say ‘Attic’, for I think you deserve to take your appellation by preference from the goddess) you have made the position all the more incontestable by this reduction of it to first principles. The more readily, then, can you satisfy yourself of the truth of what has just been said: humanity is in a condition of public war of every man against every man, and private war of each man with himself.
Athenian: And pray, how are we to understand that?
Clinias: Why, here, sir, is the field in which a man may win the primal and subtlest victory, victory over self, and where defeat, defeat by self, is most discreditable as well as most ruinous. There lies the proof that every one of us is in a state of internal warfare with himself.
Athenian: Then suppose we invert the argument, thus. If each individual man is master of himself, or, alternatively, mastered by himself, may we, or may we not, say that a family, a village, a city, exhibit this same feature?
Clinias: You mean that they may be masters of, or again mastered by, themselves?
Athenian: Exactly.
Clinias: Again a very proper question. The facts are beyond
Athenian: The question whether worse is ever really master of better is one we shall do well not to raise, since it calls for fuller consideration. Your present assertion, as I understand, comes to this: an unrighteous majority may sometimes make a combined effort to subdue by violence a righteous minority of their kinsmen and fellow-citizens; when this attempt succeeds, the city may properly be spoken of as enslaved to herself, and called bad; when it fails, we call her good, and say that she is mistress of herself.
Clinias: This language certainly sounds paradoxical, sir, but we cannot withhold our assent.
Athenian: Now stay a moment, and consider a further point. There might be a great number of brothers, with the same father and mother, and it would not be remarkable that the majority of them should prove unrighteous and only a minority righteous?
Clinias: Not in the least.
Athenian: Nor would it be seemly for you and me to press too minutely the point that such a household or family can be said as a whole to be worsted by itself when its wicked members triumph, and to be its own mistress when they fail. The aim of our present inquiry into current language is to examine, not the propriety or impropriety of its phraseology, but the objective truth or falsehood of a theory of legislation.
Clinias: Truly said, sir.
Megillus: Yes, excellently put so far, as I agree.
Athenian: Well, let us go on to a further point. These brothers of whom I have just spoken might conceivably have an adjudicator to decide between them?
Clinias: To be sure they might.
Athenian: Now which would be the better adjudicator? One who exterminated all the bad brothers and enjoined the better to govern themselves, or one who put the government into the hands of the good, but spared the lives of the worse and brought them to voluntary submission to this government? There might be still a third degree of merit in an adjudicator, if we could find one who would take in hand a family at variance
Clinias: And this third sort would be far and away the best of adjudicators or lawgivers.
Athenian: But, mark you, in all the regulations he gave them, he would be legislating with a view to the clean contrary of war.
Clinias: That much is true enough.
Athenian: Then what of the man who organizes a city? Is it with a view to external warfare he would order its life? Would he not much rather pay regard to the internal warfare which arises, from time to time, within the city, and is called, as you know, faction—a kind of war any man would desire never to see in his own city, or, if it broke out, to see appeased at once?
Clinias: Obviously he would.
Athenian: Now which of two courses would one prefer? That peace should be restored by the victory of one party or the other to the faction, and the destruction of its rival? or rather that friendship and amity should be reestablished by a reconciliation, and the citizens compelled to bestow their attention on an external enemy?
Clinias: Why, any man would prefer the latter issue, for his own city.
Athenian: A lawgiver, no less than another?
Clinias: Why, of course.
Athenian: And any legislator will have the best as the object of all his enactments?
Clinias: Undeniably.
Athenian: But the best is neither war nor faction—they are things we should pray to be spared from—but peace and mutual good will. And thus a victory of a city over itself turns out, it would seem, to be not so much a good as a necessary evil. It is as though one fancied that a diseased body which has been subjected to medical purgation were at its best in that condition, and ignored a body which has never stood in need of such treatment. So, if a man takes a similar view of the happiness of the city, or indeed, of the individual man,—I mean, if external wars are the first and only object of his regard—he will never be a true statesman, nor will any man be a finished legislator, unless he legislates for war as a means to peace, rather than for peace as a means to war.
Clinias: Your argument, sir, has the appearance of being sound; yet I am very much mistaken if the institutions of Lacedaemon,
Athenian: Very conceivably they have, but our present concern is to submit them to calm inquiry, rather than obstinate contention, as we are convinced that their authors have the same interests at heart as ourselves. We may begin, if you will kindly assist in the examination, by an appeal to the words of an enthusiast for warfare, Tyrtaeus, an Athenian by birth, and a naturalized fellow-citizen of our friend from Sparta. He says, you will remember, that he would ‘make no reckoning or count’ of any man, no matter how vast his wealth, or what his advantages—and he makes a pretty full enumeration of such advantages—unless he proves himself at need a first-rate warrior. You are sure to have heard the verses, Clinias; as for Megillus, no doubt he has them at his fingers’ ends.
Megillus: Naturally.
Clinias: We know the lines in this country, too; we got them from Sparta.
Athenian: Well now, suppose we join in putting a question to our poet to some such effect as this: ‘Tyrtaeus, you inspired poet, we are convinced of your wisdom and merit by the excellence of your eulogies of the eminent in warfare. So Clinias of Cnossus, myself, and our friend here believe ourselves to be decidedly of one mind with you already on the main point, but we should like to be quite certain that we are all speaking of the same persons. Tell us, then, do you agree with us in making a marked distinction between two forms of war, or not?’ I fancy it would not require a poet of anything like the eminence of Tyrtaeus to give the true answer that there are two forms. There is what all mankind call faction, and it is, of course, the most dangerous kind of war, as we said a few minutes ago; the other, and much milder form, as I imagine we shall all agree, is that waged when we are at variance with external aliens.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: ‘Then to which kind of warriors, or war, do your magnificent eulogies, and your corresponding censures, refer? Presumably to the external. At least, you speak in your verses of your intolerance of men who have not the nerve to "face the carnage, close with the foe and strike him down’ So we might continue thus: ‘Your special commendation, Tyrtaeus, is, we gather, meant for those who distinguish themselves in an external war against the stranger.’ No doubt he would agree to admit this?
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: But we affirm that good as such men are, those who prove themselves conspicuously best in the gravest kind of war are still better, and immensely better, and we, too, can cite a poet, Theognis of Megara in Sicily, whose words are: ‘A loyal man, Cyrnus, is worth his weight in gold and silver in the hour of deadly feuds’. We assert, then, that this type of character proves himself, and proves himself in a deadlier warfare, a far better man than the other in the measure in which justice, self-command,
Clinias: That, sir, is to rank our Cretan legislator very low.
Athenian: No, not your legislator, my friend, but ourselves, if we dream that Lycurgus or Minos had warfare primarily in view in all his legislation for Lacedaemon or Crete.
Clinias: But what, then, ought we to have said?
Athenian: What, I take it, is true and ought to be said in an inquiry into the truth.
1 σωφροσύνη
2 θείας in e 1 calls for some correction, and I adopt Burnet’s suggestion [ἀλη] θείας (explained by his citation of Phaedrus 247c 5).
3 On this difficult passage see England’s note.
Clinias: With all my heart.
Athenian: ‘Sir’—so I would have had you say—‘it is not without good cause that the laws of Crete have this exceptionally high repute with all Hellenes. They serve the right end, that of effecting the happiness of those who enjoy them. They, in fact, secure them all good things. But there are two different kinds of good things, the merely human, and the divine; the former are consequential on the latter; hence a city
1 With the punctuation of Burnet the MS. text in b 8, πόλις, κτᾶται will just translate, and accordingly I have kept it, but it is tempting to adopt Badham’s παρίσταται: ‘one who accepts the greater goods, wins the lesser as well’.
2 Keeping the μετὰ νοῦν of MSS. at c 7. But perhaps νοῦ (found in a quotation of Eusebius and adopted by Schanz, Burnet, England) is better: ‘sobriety of soul joined with insight’.
Clinias: Then what, sir, should be our next step?
Athenian: I think there will need to be a fresh start of the examination, beginning, as before, with the practices by which courage is developed; then we will examine a second, and then a third form of virtue, if you are so minded. When once we have dealt with our first topic, we may try to take it as a model of procedure, and beguile our journey with further chat on the same lines. After we have treated of all virtue, we will try, with God’s permission, to show that all the regulations we were just enumerating, have it for their object.
navy>633
Megillus: Yes.
Athenian: And thirdly, or fourthly? For in considering this and other virtues, it is possibly well to make such an enumeration of their parts (or whatever else they should be called, so long as a man’s meaning is clear).
Megillus: Well, thirdly, as I, or any other Lacedaemonian would say, he devised the chase.
Athenian: Suppose we try to find a fourthly, or a fifthly, if we can.
Megillus: Then I will venture on naming a fourthly, too, the endurance of bodily pain which finds so much scope among us Spartans in our boxing-matches and our system of foraging raids, which regularly involve heavy whippings. Besides, we have what we call a crypteia, which is a wonderfully hard discipline in endurance, as well as the practices of going without shoes or bedding in the winter, and wandering all over the country, night and day, without attendants, performing one’s menial offices for one’s self. Further, again, our Gymnopaediae involve rigid endurance, as the matches are fought in the heat of the summer, and we have a host of other similar tests, in fact, almost too many for particular enumeration.
Athenian: You state your case well, my Lacedaemonian friend. But, pray, what are we to make of courage? Is it a conflict with fear and pain, just that and no more? Or does it also include conflict with longings and pleasures and their dangerous seductive blandishments, which melt even the mettle of the would-be precisian like so much wax?
Megillus: That, I believe, is the true account; it is a conflict with all of these.
Athenian: Now, unless we have forgotten our earlier conversation, our friend from Cnossus spoke of cities, and men too, as defeated by themselves. Did you not?
Clinias: To be sure, I did.
Athenian: Well, shall we give the name bad now to the man who is defeated by pain, or to him who is defeated by pleasure as well?
Clinias: I think it belongs more properly to one who is defeated by pleasure. And I imagine all of us are readier to say that one who is mastered by pleasure is shamefully self-defeated than to say it of one who succumbs to pain.
Clinias: Both, I am confident.
Athenian: Then I must ask a second question. What practices have your two cities which teach a man the taste of pleasures without any evasion? (Just as pains were not evaded; the man was thrust into the thick of them, but forced, or persuaded by marks of honour, to get the mastery of them.) Where, I say, is the same regulation about pleasure to be found in your laws? I want to know what there is in your institutions to give the same person courage alike against pain and against pleasure, to make him victorious where he ought to be victorious, and secure him from defeat at the hands of his most intimate and mortal enemies.
Megillus: Nay, sir, possibly I could not readily allege conspicuous illustrations, on a large scale, in the matter of pleasure, to match the numerous laws I was able to produce as a counterpoise to pain, though I might be more fortunate with minor details.
Clinias: I, too, cannot produce an equally obvious illustration from our Cretan laws.
Athenian: No, my friends, and it is no matter for surprise. But if any of us should be led, in his desire to discover what is true and best, into censure of some detail in the national laws of any of us, I trust we shall take such treatment from each other gently, without resentment.
Clinias: Truly spoken, Athenian; we must do as you say.
Athenian: Harshness would, in fact, hardly become our years, Clinias.
Clinias: Indeed, it would not.
Athenian: Well, how far the reproaches which are brought against the systems of Laconia and Crete may be deserved or undeserved is another matter; in any case, I am probably better qualified than either of you to report the criticisms which are generally current. If your laws are but reasonably good, as they are, we must reckon among the best of them the enactment that no young man shall raise the question which of them all are what they should be and which not, but that all should agree, without a dissonant voice, that they are all god-given and admirable, flatly refusing a hearing to any one who disputes the point, while if an older man has any reflections to make, he must Athenian: Well, we have no younger men with us now, and for ourselves, our years give us the legislator’s licence to hold a private conversation on the subject without offence.
Clinias: Just so; accordingly we invite you to criticize our institutions without reserve. One is not insulted by being informed of something amiss, but rather gets an opportunity for amendment, if the information is taken in good part, without resentment.
Athenian: Thank you. But my object for the present is not to criticize your laws, which we have not yet thoroughly examined, so much as to state a difficulty. You are the only communities, Greek or non-Greek, known to us whose lawgiver has enjoined you to leave the intensest pleasures and delights utterly untasted, though, in the matter of pains and fears which we have just been discussing, he held that one who is allowed to flinch from them on system from his boyhood, and then has to face fatigues and fears and pains which are not to be evaded, will flinch from those who have been disciplined in them, and be enslaved by them. Now, surely the legislator, to be consistent, should take the same view of pleasures. He should say to himself, if our citizens are to grow up from childhood without experience of the intensest pleasures, if they are to have no training in constancy and refusal to disgrace themselves when assailed by pleasures, susceptibility to pleasure will lead them to the same fate as those who succumb to their fears. They will fall slaves, in a different, but even more dishonourable fashion, to those who can resist the allurements of pleasure, and have the means of producing it at their disposal, though these may sometimes be utterly evil men. Thus, their souls will be half enslaved, half free, and they will not deserve to be called brave men, or free men, without qualification. I would have you consider whether you find these remarks at all pertinent.
Clinias: Pertinent enough, on such a first hearing. But it might show immaturity and folly to form confident conclusions on such weighty matters on the instant.
Athenian: Then suppose we proceed to the next point of our programme, my friends, and turn from courage to sobriety. Can we discover any point of superiority in these two systems Athenian: Ah, my friends, how difficult it seems to ensure that the working of an institution shall be as unquestionable as its theory! Presumably it is with states as it is with human bodies; one cannot prescribe one definite treatment for one subject which involves no physically injurious consequences along with its beneficial effects. For example, these physical exercises and common meals you speak of, though in many ways beneficial to a city, provide dangerous openings for faction, as is shown by the cases of the Milesians, Boeotians, and Thuriotes. And, in particular, this practice is generally held to have corrupted the ancient and natural rule in the matter of sexual indulgence common to mankind with animals at large, and the blame for these corruptions may be charged, in the first instance, on your two cities and such others as are most devoted to physical exercises. Whether these matters are to be regarded as sport, or as earnest, we must not forget that this pleasure is held to have been granted by nature to male and female when conjoined for the work of procreation; the crime of male with male, or female with female, is an outrage on nature and a capital surrender to lust of pleasure. And you know it is our universal accusation against the Cretans that they were the inventors of the tale of Ganymede; they were convinced, we say, that their legislation came from Zeus, so they went on to tell this story against him that they might, if you please, plead his example for their indulgence in this pleasure too. With the tale we have no further concern, but the pleasures and pains of communities and of private lives arc as good as the whole subject of a study of jurisprudence. For pain and pleasure are, as it were, nature’s twin fountain-heads; whoso draws from the right fount, at due times, and in due measure, be it city, or person, or any living creature, is happy, but he that draws without science, and out of due season, has the clean contrary lot.
Megillus: Sure, sir, this is finely said, and I would not deny that we are dumbfounded for an answer to it. Yet, for myself, I hold that our Lacedaemonian lawgiver is right to command avoidance of pleasures (as to the law of Cnossus, its defence shall Athenian: Friend from Sparta, any recreation of this kind is commendable, when the power of resistance persists, though mere foolishness when it is relaxed. A countryman of my own might well defend himself by retorting on you the licence of your Spartan women. To be sure, there is a rejoinder which is commonly held to be a sufficient vindication in all such cases at Tarentum, or in my own country, no less than in yours; a native will always meet the stranger’s astonishment at an unfamiliar practice with the words: ‘There is no call for surprise; this is our established custom in the matter, though yours may perhaps be different’. What you and I are now discussing is not the practice of mankind at large, but the merits or demerits of the legislators who create the customs. So we must take the whole subject of convivial drinking into fuller consideration; it is a practice of grave importance, and calls for the judgment of no mean legislator. The question is not that of the mere drinking of wine or its complete prohibition, but of the convivial drinking of it. Should we follow the fashion of Scythians and Persians (to say nothing of Carthaginians, Celts, Iberians, and Thracians, who are all of them warlike peoples), or that of your own countrymen? They, as you remind me, absolutely reject the practice, whereas the Scythians and Thracians, men and women alike, take their wine neat, and let it run down over their garments, and count this a laudable and glorious practice. The Persians, again, indulge freely in this, as in other luxurious habits which you Spartans prohibit, though with less disorder than the nations I have mentioned.
Athenian: Nay, sir, you must not urge that plea. A flight or
Megillus: And what is it you would say?
Athenian: When such a practice is under consideration, I hold that it is always highly improper to undertake to condemn or approve it out of hand, on the bare mention of its name. This is as though one who had heard wheat, for instance, commended as a wholesome article of diet should denounce it out of hand, without any inquiry into its effects, or the manner of its administration; I mean, how it is to be administered, and to whom, or with wdiat accompaniments, in what form it is to be served, and to persons in what state of health. Well, that is exactly how I think we all argue our present question. As soon as we hear the mere word ‘drinking’, one party condemns the practice and another commends it, and both in a very odd fashion. Both sides rest their case on producing evidence to fact or character; the one thinking it decisive that its witnesses are so numerous, the other that we see the abstainers victorious in the field of battle—though there even the fact is open to dispute. Now if we are to go on to deal with established customs in general on these lines, I, for one, shall be left unsatisfied. So I propose to deal with our immediate subject, drinking, by a different method—the right one, I believe—as an attempt to illustrate the proper procedure in treating such questions generally. For there are countless peoples ready to contest the issues at stake in these matters against your two cities.
Megillus: Most certainly, if a right way of treating such problems is to be found, we must not refuse it a hearing.
Megillus: Of course not.
Athenian: And what do you say to this? Is a man a useful commander at sea, so long as he only possesses the science of navigation, whether he happens to be seasick or not?
Megillus: Certainly not, if he combines that disorder with his professional knowledge.
Athenian: And what of the commander of an army in the field? Is he a competent commander, so long as he has military science, even if he is a coward and falls seasick in peril from the inebriation of terror?
Megillus: A thoroughly useless officer, that! A commander for the veriest of women, not for men!
Athenian: And what of him who commends or condemns any social activity, be it what it may, which naturally calls for a leader, and is beneficial under his conduct, though he has never seen that activity rightly organized under such leadership, but only discharged with no leaders, or bad ones? Can we possibly imagine that there is any value in the censure or commendation of such concerted action by such observers?
Megillus: How can we, on the assumption that they have never witnessed nor taken part in any such association, conducted as it should be?
Athenian: Now, stay; I suppose we may reckon a drinking-party and its members as one kind of social activity?
Megillus: Surely, surely.
Athenian: Then has any one ever seen such a party conducted as it ought to be? Neither of you can hesitate to give the answer, ‘Never’; the whole thing is foreign and unfamiliar to you both. And for my own part, though I have been present at many, in different places, and what is more, may even say I have studied them all carefully, I have never seen nor heard of one rightly managed throughout; here and there a few minor details may not have been amiss, but, in the main, I have found universal wrong management.
Clinias: You must explain your meaning, sir, rather more precisely. Our inexperience in these matters, as you were saying, is such that, even if we were present at such a gathering, we should very likely not distinguish proper management from 640 improper at first sight.
Clinias: Beyond a doubt.
Athenian: And mark that we were lately saying that in a combat the commander must be a brave man.
Clinias: So we were, to be sure.
Athenian: Now a brave man is less agitated by alarms than a coward.
Clinias: True again.
Athenian: And if we could contrive to place an army under a general who was utterly devoid of alarm and agitation, we should by all means do so, should we not?
Clinias: Most decidedly.
Athenian: But at the present moment we are contemplating a man who is to take command, not in the embattled meeting of foes with foes, but in the peaceful intercourse of friends with friends, for the promotion of common good feeling.
Clinias: Exactly.
Athenian: Now, as the kind of gathering we have in view is to be attended by drinking, it will not be free from excitement.
Clinias: Of course not; very much the contrary, I should presume.
Athenian: To begin with then, here, too, a commander is wanted.
Clinias: Wanted, indeed; nowhere more.
Athenian: And should we secure freedom from excitement in such
a commander, if the thing is possible?
Clinias: Decidedly.
Athenian: And further, I presume, he should be a man of social tact. For his business is to conserve the existing friendly relations between the parties, as well as to ensure that they shall be still further augmented by the gathering.
Clinias: True enough.
Athenian: So the commander set to control a company of drinkers should be both sober and sagacious, not the reverse. If the drinkers are under the control of a young and indiscreet man who is drinking himself, he may think himself very fortunate if no grave disaster results.
Clinias: Indeed, he may.
Athenian: Well then, if such parties were conducted among us under the most correct regulations attainable, an unfavourable critic who should attack the institution as such, might perhaps be
Megillus: Excellent. And suppose you begin by trying your
Athenian: On you and myself, no less than on him; we are all concerned in the argument. Come, then. We may say that your common meals and physical exercises were devised by your legislator with a view to war?
Athenian: Then very surely our pair of legislators instructed by
Clinias: Perfectly true, sir; remote as today is from the times of our ancient legislator, I believe you have fairly divined his intentions and are exactly right.
Megillus: Not too easily; still, our common meals and physical exercises were presumably well devised to promote both virtues.
Megillus: Yes, my dear sir, but do not forget that we make them all run when we have weapons in our hands.
Athenian: Then let us treat our question somewhat in this fashion. Suppose that someone should commend goat-keeping, or the goat itself as a valuable animal, and another man, who had seen goats damaging lands under cultivation by grazing on them
Athenian: No, possibly not. But do your utmost to follow my explanation. No doubt you understand as much as this, that in every assembly or concerted action for any purpose, there should always be someone in control of the parties?
Clinias: Your last remark, sir, is unquestionably true. But pray go on to explain wdiat possible good this custom of drinking-bouts would do us, if they were rightly conducted. Take the case of an army, such as we were just speaking of; if it gets the right kind of leadership, the result is a victory for the force—no inconsiderable good; and so with our other examples. But what appreciable benefit accrues to individuals, or to the city, from the proper surveillance of a wine-party?
Athenian: Well, and what appreciable benefit could we say accrues to the city from the proper surveillance of one boy, or one group of boys? If the question is to be put in that form, must we not reply that the city certainly gets but a trifling advantage from the single case? But if the question is universally what considerable advantage the city derives from the education of the educated, the answer is easy. Education is the way to produce good men, and, once produced, such men will live nobly, and vanquish their enemies in the field into the bargain. So education brings victory in her train, though victory sometimes leads to loss of education, since victorious warfare often enough leads men to pride, and through pride they take the taint of other vices innumerable. Moreover, there has never been a ‘Cadmean’ education, whereas ‘Cadmean’ victories have been, and will be, only too common.
Clinias: We may gather, then, that you regard time spent in companionship over the bottle as contributing much to education, when it is rightly so spent?
Athenian: Most assuredly.
Clinias: Then can you, in the next place, offer us proof that the statement is true?
Athenian: Why, sir, as to truth, to be positive the thing is so, when there are so many to dispute it, must be left to a god. But if I am called on to give my personal opinion, I will state it frankly, since our present conversation has struck into the subject of law and politics.
Clinias: That is just what we are attempting to do—to discover your own conviction on the matter now in dispute.
Athenian: Well then, to our task. You will have to make an effort to follow, and I to elucidate the argument, with such powers as I have. But first let me make one observation. The universal belief of Hellas is that whereas my own city delights in discourse and is copious in it, Lacedaemon is inclined to taciturnity, and Crete to versatility of mind rather than fluency of utterance.
Megillus: Sir, you may perhaps be unaware that my own family hold the position of proxeni for Athens. Now it may well be the universal experience of boys anywhere that when they are told they are proxeni for a city, an early kindness for that city promptly finds its way into the boy’s heart; we feel that it is a second fatherland, only next to our own. This is certainly what has happened in my own particular case. From the first, if Lacedaemon felt herself aggrieved by Athens, or obliged by her, the boys used to tell me: ‘Megillus, your city has done the shabby (or the handsome) thing by us’. Well, by listening to these speeches and constantly replying in your defence against persons who brought reproaches against your city, I contracted a strong affection for her. To this day, I love the sound of your dialect, and am persuaded of the truth of the current saying that when an Athenian is a good man, he is exceptionally good. It is only at Athens that goodness is an unconstrained, spontaneous growth, a genuine ‘gift of God’ in the full sense of the words. So, as far as I am concerned, you need feel no misgiving in discoursing at any length you please.
Clinias: I, too, sir, have a statement to make which will relieve you from diffidence in speaking your full mind. You have presumably heard of Epimenides, an inspired person born in this
1 As Mr. Bury notes, this is a courteously disguised allusion to the reputation of the Cretans as ‘artful’ liars.
2 ἀνακαθαιρόμενος, a 2, seems to mean ‘cleansing the bosom’ of its contents, getting them ‘off one’s chest’. But see England’s note in loc.
Athenian: I take it, then, that there is full readiness to hear on your part; on mine, there is readiness enough of intention, but performance is none too easy; still I must do my endeavour. As the first step in the argument, then, let us define education and its effect, since we hold that the discussion on which we have adventured must follow that route to its destination, the wine-god.
Clinias: By all means, since that is your pleasure.
Athenian: Good; then I will attempt an account of what true education is; you must consider whether the account is acceptable.
Clinias: Pray proceed.
Athenian: Well, I proceed at once to say that he who is to be good at anything as a man must practise that thing from early childhood, in play as well as in earnest, with all the attendant circumstances of the action. Thus, if a boy is to be a good farmer, or again, a good builder, he should play, in the one case at building toy houses, in the other at farming, and both should be provided by their tutors with miniature tools on the pattern of real ones. In particular, all necessary preliminary instruction should be acquired in this way; thus, the carpenter should be taught by his play to use the rule and plumb-line, and the soldier to sit a horse, and the like;
Clinias: Indeed, it has.
1 ποιοῦντα, c 6, is clearly a slip for ποιεῖν, and I translate accordingly. But the slip is not unlikely to be Plato’s own.
Athenian: Then let us further guard against leaving our account
Clinias: True indeed; we admit the point.
Athenian: We also agreed some time ago that those who can command themselves are good, and those who cannot, bad.
Clinias: Precisely.
Athenian: Then let us once more consider rather more exactly just what our words mean. Perhaps you will allow me to make the point clearer, if I can, by a parable.
Clinias: We are all attention.
Athenian: Weil then, we may take it that any human being is one person?
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: But one person who has within himself a pair of unwise and conflicting counsellors, whose names are pleasure and pain?
Clinias: The fact is as you say.
Athenian: He has, besides, anticipations of the future, and these of two sorts. The common name for both sorts is expectation,
1 παιδείαν in e 4 is pretty clearly a slip for παιδαγωγίαν, which C. Ritter proposed, but again it is highly possible that the oversight came from Plato, dictating his words.
Clinias: I fear I hardly follow you; yet pray proceed with your statement as though I did.
Megillus: I, too, find myself in the same condition.
Athenian: Let us look at the whole matter in some such light as this. We may imagine that each of us living creatures is a puppet made by gods, possibly as a plaything, or possibly with some more serious purpose. That, indeed, is more than we can tell, but one thing is certain: these interior states are, so to say, the cords, or strings, by which we are worked; they are opposed to one another, and pull us with opposite tensions in the direction of opposite actions, and therein lies the division of virtue from vice. In fact—so says our argument—a man must always yield to one of these tensions without resistance, but pull against all the other strings,—must yield, that is, to that golden and
Clinias: Very true; so let us treat it at whatever length our present business demands.
Athenian: Well then, tell me; suppose we ply our puppet with drink, what effect are we producing on it?
Clinias: Now why are you recurring to that? What is the purpose of the question?
Athenian: I have not yet reached the why; what I want to know is generally how this puppet is affected by participating in this practice. Let me try to explain my meaning still more exactly. My question amounts to this: the drinking of wines makes our pleasures and pains, our tempers and passions more intense, does it not?
Clinias: Much more intense.
Athenian: And what of our perceptions, memories, beliefs, knowledge? Are they likewise intensified? or do they desert a man altogether, if he is thoroughly soaked with drinking?
Clinias: Why, utterly.
Athenian: And so the man is brought back to the mental condition of his remote infancy?
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: Now that is the condition in which his self-command is at its lowest.
Clinias: It is.
Athenian: Such a man, we may say, is at his worst?
Clinias: Decidedly.
Athenian: Thus the phrase ‘second childhood’ would seem to be as applicable to inebriation as to old age.
Clinias: Admirably put, sir.
Athenian: Now can there be an argument daring enough to suggest that we should try the taste of a practice such as this, and not avoid it with all our might?
Clinias: It should seem there can; at least you say so, and only just now you offered to produce it.
Athenian: An apposite reminder, and I repeat the offer now, since both of you have professed yourselves eager to give me a hearing.
Clinias: Of course you must be heard. There is a reason, if there were no other, in the sheer incredibility of your paradox, that it can be right for a man to fling himself voluntarily into a state of sheer degradation.
Athenian: Degradation of soul, that is?
Clinias: Yes.
Athenian: Well, my good sir, and what of a bad habit of body—leanness, disfigurement, feebleness? Would it be a paradox that a man can voluntarily bring himself into those conditions?
Clinias: Of course it would.
Athenian: Why, sir, when men freely go to the physician for a course of medicaments, must we imagine they do not know they
Clinias: Yes, we know all that.
Athenian: As also that they go of their own motion, for the sake of subsequent benefits?
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: And surely we should take the same point of view about other habitual practices too?
Clinias: I own we should.
Athenian: And therefore also about spending time over the wine-cup, if it is a view which can rightly be taken in this case?
Clinias: Naturally.
Athenian: Then, if only wine-drinking can be shown to lead to benefits comparable with those to be secured for the body, it certainly has the advantage over physical training in its initial stage; the second begins in pain, the other not so.
Clinias: Quite true, but I shall be surprised if we can find any such benefit in the custom.
Athenian: That, I take it, is just what we have at last to do our best to make clear. Tell me this: can we not distinguish two kinds of fear?
Clinias: And what may they be?
Athenian: They are these; in the first place, we are afraid of evil, when we expect it to befall us.
Clinias: We are.
Athenian: But we are often also afraid for our reputation, when we apprehend we are getting a bad reputation from some unworthy act or speech; it is fear of this sort to which we, and I fancy the 647 rest of the world too, give the name of shame.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: Well, those are the two fears of which I was speaking, and the second kind opposes itself to our commonest and most passionate pleasures, as much as to pains and to fears other than itself.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: Now does not a lawgiver, or any other man worth his salt, hold this sort of fear in the highest honour? He calls it modesty, and regards the kind of confidence contrary to it,
1 It suffers from the exhaustion which these exertions produce.
2 viz. that temporary inconvenience is well worth while, when it leads to solid future benefits.
Clinias: True again.
Athenian: And, to say nothing of the many other great advantages this kind of fear secures for us, when you take one thing with another, nothing contributes more effectually to victory and preservation in war itself. In fact, victory has a double source, fearlessness of the enemy, and fear of disgrace in the eyes of one’s friends?
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: And consequently each of us needs to be at once free from fear and filled with fear, the reason for these contrasted moods being as we have stated?
Clinias: Agreed.
Athenian: And when we intend to make a man immune from various fears, we achieve our purpose by bringing him into contact with fear, under the direction of law?
Clinias: So it would appear.
Athenian: But now, suppose our aim is to make him rightly fearful, what then? Must we not ensure his victory in the conflict with his own lust for pleasures by pitting him against shamelessness and training him to face it? If a man can only attain mature courage by fighting the cowardice within himself and vanquishing it, whereas without experience and discipline in that contest, no man will ever be half the champion he might be, is it credible he should come to fullness of self-command unless he first fights a winning battle against the numerous pleasures and lusts which allure him to shamelessness and wrong, by the aid of precept, practice, and artifice, alike in his play and in his serious hours? Can he be spared the experience of all this?
Clinias: The view, certainly, does not seem plausible.
Athenian: Now, tell me, has any god bestowed on mankind a specific to induce fear—a drug whose effect is that the more a man permits himself to imbibe of it, the darker he fancies his fortunes at every draught, present and future alike grow increasingly
Clinias: Nay, sir, where in all the world can we find a liquor like this?
Athenian: Why, nowhere. But suppose one could have been found, would the lawgiver have availed himself of it to develop courage?
Clinias: And he would, no doubt, be sure to say, ‘Yes’.
Athenian: ‘Well then, would you like the touchstone to be safe and applicable without serious risks, or the reverse?’
Clinias: There, again, he would be certain to prefer safety.
Athenian: ‘You would employ it to bring your citizens into such a state of fear and test them under its influence, thus constraining a man to become fearless, by encouragement, precept, and marks of recognition, as well as of disgrace for those who declined to be such as you could have them in all situations? He who shaped himself to this discipline well and manfully would be discharged from the test unscathed, but on him who shaped badly you would lay some penalty? Or would you simply refuse to employ the liquor, supposing you had no fault to find with it on other grounds?’
Clinias: Why, of course he would employ it, my dear sir.
Athenian: It would, at least, give us an infinitely readier and safer training than our present arrangements, whether for the individual, for small groups, or for groups of any desired numbers. A man would do pretty right to save endless trouble by providing himself with this single specific and training himself in privacy to face his fears, isolating himself, of course, from public view behind his regard for decorum until he had obtained a satisfactory result. And, again, he would do right, when confident that he was already adequately prepared by native endowment and preliminary practice, to prosecute his training in the company of fellow-drinkers, and make public exhibition of the virtue which enables him to transcend and master the effects of the inevitable disturbances due to the potion, without once suffering a serious fall or deterioration; though he would leave off before he reached the final draught from fear of our universal human weakness before the liquor.
Clinias: Why yes, sir, even such a man as you speak of would be wise to do that.
Athenian: Then let us resume our conversation with the legislator. ‘Very good’, we shall say to him; ‘as for such a fear-inducing specific, providence has given us none, and we have invented none ourselves (for we need not take quacksalvers into account); but what about fearlessness, excessive confidence, improper
Clinias: He will, of course, say ‘Yes’, and he will mean wine.
Athenian: And are not its effects the very opposite of all we have just mentioned? When a man drinks it, its first immediate effect is to make him merrier than he was, and the more he takes, the more it fills him with optimistic fancies and imaginary capacity. In the very final phase the drinker is swollen with the conceit of his own wisdom to the pitch of complete licence of speech and action, and utter fearlessness; there is nothing he will scruple to say, nothing he will scruple to do. I think this will be universally conceded?
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: Then let me remind you of something we said before: there are two qualities to be cultivated in our souls, supreme confidence, and its contrary, supreme fearfulness.
Clinias: What you spoke of as modesty, I take it?
Athenian: Well recollected. And seeing that the practice of courage and fearlessness has to be learned in the midst of alarms, it has to be considered whether the contrary quality does not demand the contrary conditions for its cultivation.
Clinias: The presumption, certainly, is that it does.
Athenian: It would seem, then, that the conditions in which we are naturally inclined to be more than usually confident or bold are the very conditions in which we must practise to be least audacious or unashamed, but rather apprehensive of ever presuming to say a shameful word, or submit to a shameful act, or even commit one.
Clinias: So it seems.
Athenian: Now, are not all the following conditions in which we are in the mood in question—anger, lust, pride, folly, greed, cowardice?
1 δειλία, cowardice, is quite out of place in this enumeration, and I suspect Schanz was right in proposing to omit the word.
2 The adjectives εὐτελῆ and ἀσινεστέραν in 649d 7-8 seem to me to qualify neither πεῖραν (so England) nor βάσανον ‘understood’ (so apparently Bury), but ἡδονήν (e 1), and I render accordingly.
For do but consider: which is the more dangerous course with a
Clinias: That, at least, is beyond doubt.
Athenian: Here, then, in the discovery of native disposition and character, we have something of incomparable service to the art whose business it is to cultivate them; that is, as I suppose we may say, to the art of the statesman?
Clinias: Just so.
1 μετὰ τῆς τοῦ Διονύσου θεωρίας, 650a 1-2. The wine-party is playfully spoken of as a θεωρία, as though it were one of the great festivals of the god.
2 I render the sentence as nearly literally as I can. The meaning is clear, but the expression would need complete rewriting to be satisfactory.
3 It is implied that there might be dispute about some further point in the speaker’s case. What is this still conceivably disputable point? The opening sentences of Book ii show that it is whether ‘the bottle’ can be of any further service to the legislators, beyond being a safe and easy test of the characters of his citizens.
Laws, Book II
Athenian: Then the question which next arises in discussing these matters, as I think, is this: rightly controlled fellowship over our cups affords a disclosure of our native disposition; but is this its sole recommendation? Or has it some further considerable and serious advantages. Yes or No? Yes, or so our argument should seem to suggest. But if we are to learn just what these advantages are, we must be on our guard against the snares it
Clinias: Say on, then.
Athenian: I am fain, then, for my part, to recall once more our
Athenian: Truly a bold assertion! And therefore what I would say is this: a child’s first infant consciousness is that of pleasure and pain, this is the domain wherein the soul first acquires virtue or vice. For wisdom and assured true conviction, a man is fortunate if he acquires them even on the verge of old age, and, in every case, he that possesses them with all their attendant blessings has come to the full stature of man. By education, then, I mean goodness in the form in which it is first acquired by a child. In fact, if pleasure and liking, pain and dislike, are formed in the soul on right lines before the age of understanding is reached, and when that age is attained, these feelings are in concord with understanding, thanks to early discipline in appropriate habits
1 ‘it’ = ‘the argument’, rather than ‘the custom of wine-drinking’.
2 The translation assumes here a slight departure from Burnet’s text, an insertion of [τῷ] before ὀρθῶς εἰθίσθαι in 653b 5. The suggestion comes from Stallbaum. If the MS. text is kept, I think we must take εἰθίσθαι as dependent on the λέγω of b 1, and to translate ‘and if these feelings are in concord with understanding…(I say) they have been disciplined rightly’.
Clinias: Yes indeed, sir; we grant the truth of what you have just said, no less than of your former observations about education.
Athenian: Good; but to proceed. Education—this rightly disciplined state of pleasures and pains—is apt to be relaxed and spoiled in many ways in the course of a man’s life. But the gods, in their compassion for the hardships incident to our human lot, have appointed the cycle of their festivals
Clinias: We may make that assumption.
Athenian: So by an uneducated man we shall mean one who has no choric training, and by an educated man one whose choric training has been thorough?
Clinias: Exactly.
Athenian: And, mark you, the choric art as a whole embraces both dance and song.
Clinias: No doubt.
Athenian: Thus it follows that a well-educated man can both sing well and dance well.
Clinias: So it would seem.
1 I follow England in regarding τοῖς θεοῖς in 653d 3, as a mistaken gloss on ἀμοιβὰς, wrongly taken to mean requitals.
Athenian: Next let us observe what that statement comes to.
Clinias: What statement precisely?
Athenian: Why, we say the man ‘sings well’ and ‘dances well’. But should we, or should we not, add the qualification, ‘if he sings good songs and dances good dances’?
Clinias: Suppose we take in that qualification.
Athenian: Well, suppose he judges the really good to be good and the bad bad, and acts accordingly. Shall we call a man who is in that case better educated in choric and musical art when he can be regularly counted upon for adequate physical and vocal rendering of what he apprehends to be good, though he feels no pleasure in the good, nor dislike of the bad, or rather when, though none too capable of correctness of vocal and physical execution, or of apprehension, he has correct feelings of pleasure and pain, is attracted by the good, and repelled by its opposite?
Clinias: Sir, the advantage is vastly on the side of the education you are describing.
Athenian: Then if the three of us understand what is good in song and dancing, we likewise know who has been rightly educated and who is not so; whereas, if we do not know this, we shall be equally at a loss to decide whether there is any safeguard for education, and wherein it lies. Do I take you with me?
Clinias: Entirely.
Athenian: So we must follow up the trail by investigating the goodness of figure, melody, song, and dance; if we let the quarry escape us, all further discourse of right education—Hellenic or non-Hellenic—will be so much waste of breath.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Well, come now; pray what are we to speak of as goodness in a figure, or a melody? For instance, take a manly soul struggling with distress and a cowardly soul in the same or
Clinias: Why, of course not, not even in similar complexions.
Athenian: True, indeed, friend. But though there are figures and tunes in music, as its subject-matter is rhythm and melody, and we may accordingly speak of a tune or a posture as rhythmical or melodious, we cannot properly use the metaphorical expression of the choir-trainers, ‘brilliantly-coloured’, of either. But coward and brave man have their characteristic postures and strains, and it is very proper to call those of brave men good, those of cowards bad. In fact, to spare ourselves a great deal of verbal repetition in our treatment of the whole subject,
Clinias: An excellent proposal, and you may treat it as understood that we have answered you to that effect.
Athenian: And now to one further point; does any choric performance give all men the like degree of enjoyment, or is the state of the case very different?
Clinias: Very different? Utterly different.
Athenian: Then what shall we say is likely to be the source of this confusion? Is it that the excellent is not the same thing for all alike? Or that it is in fact the same, but not believed to be so? For no one, I take it, would profess that the choric expressions of vice can in fact be more excellent than those of virtue, or that he personally enjoys the postures of turpitude, though other men may prefer the opposite Muse; though, to be sure, it is commonly said that the standard of rightness in music is its pleasure-giving effect. That, however, is an intolerable sentiment, in fact, ’tis a piece of flat blasphemy. The cause of our confusion is more probably that I am now to mention.
Clinias: And what is that?
Athenian: A choric exhibition is a mimic presentation of manners, with all variety of action and circumstance, enacted by performers who depend on characterization and impersonation. Hence, those who, from temperament, or habit, or both at once, find words, melodies, or other presentation of the choir, to their taste cannot but enjoy and applaud the performance, and further pronounce it good, whereas they who find it repugnant to temperament, taste, or training can neither enjoy nor applaud, and so call it bad. But where a man’s native temperament is right, and his training wrong, or his training right and his natural temperament wrong, there enjoyment and approbation are at
Clinias: Perfectly true.
Athenian: Now do you think a man is in any way the worse for enjoying degrading postures or melodies, or any the better for getting his pleasure from the opposite quarter?
Clinias: Presumably he is.
Athenian: Only presumably? Is not his case inevitably the same as that of one who views the evil characters of bad companions in real life not with disgust, but with enjoyment, condemning their actions in a playful fashion, like one not awake to their vileness?
Clinias: None, as I believe.
Athenian: Then is it conceivable that anywhere where there are, or may hereafter be, sound laws in force touching this educative-playful function of the Muses, men of poetic gifts should be free to take whatever in the way of rhythm, melody, or diction tickles the composer’s fancy in the act of composition and teach it through the choirs to the boys and lads of a law-respecting society, leaving it to chance whether the result prove virtue or vice?
Clinias: To be sure, that does not sound rational; decidedly not.
Athenian: And yet this is precisely what they are actually left free to do, I may say, in every community with the exception of Egypt.
Clinias: And in Egypt itself, now—pray how has the law regulated the matter there?
Athenian: The mere report will surprise you. That nation, it would seem, long enough ago recognized the truth we are now affirming, that poses and melodies must be good, if they are to be habitually practised by the youthful generation of citizens. So they drew up the inventory of all the standard types, and consecrated specimens of them in their temples. Painters and practitioners
1 At 656b 4 I feel sure we must read, with A, ὀνειρώττων αὐτοῦ τὴν μοχθηρίαν. The reading αὑτοῦ adopted by some editors from inferior MSS. would mean ‘seeing his own vileness in a dream’. But ‘his own vileness’ is just what the sort of person Plato is describing does not see at all. The meaning is that the man is not really ‘alive’ or ‘awake’ to the badness of the acts which he only censures ‘with a smile’.
2 I think the words of 656c 2, καὶ ὁποῖ᾽ ἄττα, should be deleted as an accidental ‘dittography’ from the καὶ ὁποῖ᾽ ἄττα of d 9. If they are genuine, they must be intended to mean ‘of whatever kind’.
Clinias: A most amazing state of things!
Athenian: Or rather, one immensely to the credit of their legislators and statesmen. No doubt one could find grounds for censure in other Egyptian institutions, but in this matter of music, at least, it is a fact, and a thought-provoking fact, that it has actually proved possible, in such a sphere, to canonize melodies which exhibit an intrinsic rightness permanently by law.
Clinias: That seems to be the state of the case from your present account.
Athenian: Then may we say boldly that the right way to employ music and the recreations of the choric art is on some such lines as these? When we believe things are going well with us, we feel delight, and, conversely, when we feel delight we believe things are well with us. You agree with me?
Clinias: Surely, surely.
Athenian: And, mark, when we are in that case—I mean, when we feel delight—we cannot keep still.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: And so our young folk are eager to dance and sing themselves, while, as for us elders, we think it the becoming thing to pass the time by looking on at them and enjoying their play and merriment. We miss the agility which is beginning to fail us at our years, and so we are glad to arrange competitions for performers who can reawaken the youthfulness in us by reminiscence.
Clinias: Very true.
1 I have omitted the θαρροῦντα of the MSS. in 657a 7, as it creates a verbal difficulty in the Greek, and may conceivably have got into the text from b 3 below.
Athenian: So we can hardly deny that there is much in the current popular judgment about the providers of entertainments. I mean, the judgment that the palm for superior ingenuity should be awarded to the entertainer who gives us most pleasure and enjoyment. Since we are granted the liberty to play on such occasions, so it is argued, of course he who gives the keenest enjoyment to the greatest number is rightly held in the highest esteem, and, as I just put it, carries oil the palm. That is the right thing to say, and the right way to act, too, if the occasion arises?
Clinias: Yes, perhaps it is.
Athenian: Still, my dear sir, let us avoid a hasty pronouncement on such a topic. It would be better to break the subject up into its details for consideration, in some such fashion as this. Suppose a man were to institute a competition without any further qualification, not specifying that it was to be an athletic or a musical contest, or a horse-race: imagine him to collect all his fellow-citizens, oiler a prize, and announce that any one may enter as a competitor in simplepleasure-giving; the prize to be awarded
Clinias: What have you in your mind?
Athenian: Well, it is likely enough that one performer would produce a recitation of epic poetry, like a Homer, a second a chant to the lyre, a third a tragedy, and a fourth, perhaps, a comedy, and I should not be surprised if one of them actually thought his best chance of the prize was to exhibit a puppet-show. But, now, can we say which of all these competitors, and the host of others who would enter, deserves the prize?
Clinias: That is a singular question. How could any one answer you, as though he could decide before he had listened and given a personal hearing to each of the different candidates?
Athenian: Well, come now, would you like me to give the answer to this singular question for both of you?
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: Then here it is. If the tiny children are to decide, they will, no doubt, give it for the man with the puppet-show.
Clinias: Why, of course.
1 ὃς δ᾽ ἂν τέρψῃ, 658b 1. I follow Dr. England here in regarding the δ᾽ of the MSS. as a mistaken copyist’s insertion.
Athenian: The bigger boys for the comedian; the cultivated women, youths, and perhaps the absolute majority, for the tragedy.
Clinias: Yes, perhaps they would.
Athenian: Whereas oldsters like ourselves would be likely to get most pleasure from a reciter who gave a fine rendering of the Iliad, or Odyssey, or a Hesiodic poem, and put him far and away first. Then, who would be the rightful winner? That is our next question, I presume?
Clinias: Yes.
Athenian: Clearly you and I cannot avoid saying that rightful winners are those who are preferred by men of our own age. From our point of view that custom
Clinias: And naturally so.
Athenian: So I actually go myself with the current opinion so far as this: the standard by which music should be judged is the pleasure it gives. But not the pleasure given to any and every auditor; we may take it that the finest music is that which delights the best men, the properly educated, that, above all,
1 This seems to me the true sense of the rather obscure words of 658e 3-4. The ‘custom’ (ἔθος) of which the speakers, as themselves old men, inevitably approve, is that of deferring to the tastes of the older part of the audience.
2 In 659b 4-5 it would be grammatically possible to render ‘to set himself against auditors who display their pleasure in wrong and improper ways’. But the remarks which follow seem to indicate that the speaker rather means that the ‘judge’ has a double duty, to instruct the audience, and to condemn the performer who appeals to the taste of its more uncultivated members.
Clinias: To what effect?
Athenian: Why, I believe the argument is bringing us back for the third or fourth time to our old position, that education is, in fact, the drawing and leading of children to the rule which has been pronounced right by the voice of the law, and approved as truly right by the concordant experience of the best and oldest men. That the child’s soul, then, may not learn the habit of feeling pleasure and pain in ways contrary to the law and those who have listened to its bidding, but keep them company, taking pleasure and pain in the very same things as the aged—that, I hold, proves to be the real purpose of what we call our ‘songs’, They are really spells for souls, directed in all earnest to the production of the concord of which we have spoken, but as the souls of young folk cannot bear earnestness, they are spoken of as ‘play’ and ‘song’, and practised as such. Just so, in the case of the physically invalid and infirm, the practitioner seeks to administer wholesome nutriment in palatable
Clinias: Great God! sir, do you imagine that is how poetry is actually produced in other cities? As far as my own observation goes, I know of no such practice as you recommend, except here at home, or in Lacedaemon; elsewhere I notice endless innovation in dancing and all branches of music generally, constant change, inspired not by the laws but by a sort of unregulated taste which is so far from being fixed and permanent, as is the case in Egypt by your account, that it never shows any constancy.
Athenian: Well observed, Clinias. But if you imagined my remarks to refer to existing practice, the unfortunate impression is probably due to my failure to make my thought clear. I did, perhaps, say things which might give you that impression, but they simply explained what I would wish to see done in the matter of music. For the denunciation of error which is far advanced and without remedy, though sometimes unavoidable, is a decidedly unpleasant duty. But since we are at one about the principle, pray tell me, is it put into practice better among yourselves and our Spartan friends than among the Greeks at large?
Clinias: Certainly it is.
Athenian: And suppose the rest of us followed the same practice; may we say that this would be an improvement on the existing state of things?
Clinias: An extraordinary improvement, I take it, if they would follow the example of Sparta and ourselves, and the precepts which you yourself have just given us.
Athenian: Come then, let us have an understanding on the issue before us. In both your communities the teaching conveyed by all education and music is to this effect, is it not? You constrain your poets to teach that a good man, since he is temperate and just, is a fortunate and happy man, no matter whether he be great and mighty or small and feeble, rich or poor. But if a man be unjust, even though he were ‘richer than Midas or Cinyras’, he is a pitiable creature, and his life a miserable one. To borrow the words—and true words they are—of your own poet: ‘I would neither name’ a man, nor ‘hold him in any account though he should practise or acquire all that is currently
Clinias: Partly, I think, in accord, partly decidedly not so.
Athenian: Then can the point on which I fail to convince you, by any chance, be this, that if a man enjoys lifelong health, wealth, and absolute power—and I will add, if you like, exceptional strength, and immunity from death, and exemption from all other so-called evils—so long as he but has injustice and arrogance within himself, such a man’s life is miserable, not happy?
Clinias: Exactly; that is the point.
Athenian: Good. Then what should I say next? Granted that a man is brave, strong, handsome, rich, and can satisfy every passion of a lifetime, do you deny that, if he is an unjust and
Clinias: Readily.
Athenian: And inevitably evil, too? Would you allow that?
Clinias: No, that is not to be so readily admitted.
Athenian: And, further, unpleasant and inexpedient for himself?
Clinias: How can we possibly carry concession to that pitch?
Athenian: How? Apparently only by the intervention of a god to produce a concord as complete as our present discordance. For my part, dear Clinias, I find it even more certain that these truths are beyond question than that Crete is an island. Were I a legislator, I would do my best to constrain my poets and all my citizens to proclaim them; I would inflict a penalty little short of the capital on any inhabitant heard to maintain that there are wicked men who have a pleasant life, or that one course may be advantageous and profitable, but a different course more truly rightful—not to mention many other points on which I would try to persuade my citizens to use language very different
Clinias: Surely not.
Athenian: And thus the theory which declines to separate the pleasant from the just, or the good from the honourable, if it has no other merits, is at least a persuasive to a just and religious life.
1 An allusion to the religious associations of the word εὐδαίμων (happy), ‘under the favour of heaven’. It is these associations which make it ‘odd’ to think of a god as calling a man who is wanting in virtue εὐδαίμων.
2 Or possibly, ‘is at least a persuasive to a just and religious life, if to nothing more’.
Hence from the legislator’s point of view any theory which denies these positions is highly disgraceful and
Clinias: So it would seem.
Athenian: And which verdict, should we say, has the more valid claim to be true, that of the worse soul, or that of the better?
Clinias: Certainly, I should presume, that of the better.
Athenian: Then it is consequently certain that an unjust life is not merely more dishonourable and despicable, but actually more truly unpleasant than a just and religious.
Clinias: So it should follow from our present argument, my friend.
Athenian: And even had it not been so—as our present argument has shown that it is—could a legislator of even moderate merits, supposing him to have ventured on any fiction for the sake of its good effect on the young, have devised a more useful fiction than this, or one more potent to induce us all to practise all justice freely, and without compulsion?
Clinias: Why, as to truth, sir, truth is a glorious thing and an enduring thing, but it seems no easy matter to convince men of it.
Athenian: Well, and that most improbable fable of the man from Sidon
Clinias: Tales? Of what sort?
Athenian: Why, they say teeth were once sown in the ground and armed men sprang up from them. And yet the example is striking proof for a lawgiver that the youthful mind will be persuaded of anything, if one will take the trouble to persuade it. Thus he need only tax his invention to discover what conviction
1 Cadmus, who killed the dragon from whose teeth, when sown in the ground, sprang the first inhabitants of Thebes.
Clinias: Nay, neither of us, I conceive, feels equal to disputing the point.
Athenian: Then it becomes my business to proceed to the next point. I maintain that all our choirs, of which there will be three, must enchant the souls of our children, while they are still young and tender, by reciting all the noble doctrines we have so far rehearsed or may hereafter rehearse, the sum and substance whereof may be worded thus: if we say that the gods account the pleasantest and the best life one and the same, our statement will be at once perfectly true, and more convincing to those whom we have to convince than if we spoke in any other tones.
Clinias: The contention must be admitted.
Athenian: In the first place, then, it will be proper that the choir of boys (which will be sacred to the Muses) should make its entry first to sing publicly to this effect with all its might before the whole city. Next the choir of men under thirty should make its appearance, invoking the God of Healing
Clinias: And pray, sir, whom may you mean by this third choir? My friend and I do not understand what you would say of them any too clearly.
Athenian: And yet they are the very parties we have had in view in the greater part of our previous conversation.
Clinias: We are as much in the dark as ever; would you kindly make your explanation rather clearer.
Athenian: You may recollect that we said, at the opening of our discussion, that all young creatures are naturally full of fire, and can keep neither their limbs nor their voices quiet. They are perpetually breaking into disorderly cries and jumps, but whereas no other animal develops a sense of order of either kind, mankind forms a solitary exception.
1 Apollo Paean.
2 Or perhaps, ‘who can naturally no longer contribute a song’.
Order in movement
Clinias: Why, of course we recollect this.
Athenian: Well, we have already spoken of choirs of Apollo and of the Muses, so the remaining choir, the third, must be called that of Dionysus.
Clinias: What! pray explain yourself. A choir of old men sacred to Dionysus! That sounds very oddly on a first hearing, if you seriously mean that men between thirty, or even fifty, and sixty are to form his chorus.
Athenian: You are quite right. It does call for some argument, I take it, to show that such an arrangement would be a reasonable one.
Clinias: To be sure it does.
Athenian: We are in agreement, then, upon the results reached so far?
Clinias: And what are they?
Athenian: That the spell we have described must be recited without intermission by every one, adult or child, free man or slave, man or woman; in fact the whole city must repeat it incessantly to itself in forms to which we must somehow contrive at all costs to give inexhaustible variety and subtlety, so that the performers’ appetite for their own hymnody and enjoyment of it may persist unabated.
Clinias: That is the result to be secured, as every one must agree.
Athenian: Now where must this worthiest element in our city—its combined years and wisdom will give it more authority than any other class, and the matter of its odes will be the noblest of all—do its singing, if it is to be most potent for good? Are we, in pure folly, to leave the body principally responsible for the noblest and most useful music without directions?
Clinias: We certainly must not neglect it, if your argument is to be trusted.
Athenian: What, then, would be the becoming arrangement? Something of this kind, perhaps?
Clinias: Of what kind?
Athenian: As a man gets into years, the reluctance to sing grows upon him. He feels less pleasure in the act, and, if it is forced on him, the older and more sober-minded he grows, the more bashful he feels about it. I am right, am I not?
Clinias: Decidedly right.
Athenian: And of course he will feel still more bashful about standing up and singing in a theatre before an audience of all sorts. And besides, if men of such years and character were made, like competing choirs, to train their voices for the performance by a lowering regimen and abstinence from food, their singing would surely be a thoroughly disagreeable and humiliating task, and consequently their execution would be spiritless.
Clinias: There is no disputing what you say.
Athenian: Then how shall we encourage them to sing with spirit? Might we not make a law to the following effect? In the first place, we shall absolutely prohibit the taste of wine to boys under eighteen. We shall tell them they must have too much concern for the passionate temperament of youth to feed the fire of body or soul with a further current of fire
Clinias: Emphatically so.
Athenian: As a means of inducing them to take their part in our proposed singing, then, the device is not so wholly out of place?
Clinias: Out of place? By no means.
Athenian: But what manner of strain should they utter? Of course it must be a music in keeping with their persons.
1 Literally ‘to let in a channel of fire upon the fire, of soul or body’, the metaphor being from the irrigation of a market-garden. (Cf. Timaeus 77c 7 ff.) ‘Fire upon fire’ is a proverbial expression of the same import as our ‘coals to Newcastle’.
2 Possibly the words τὸν οἶνον, 666b 6, ‘the wine-cup’, should be deleted as an explanatory ‘adscript’.
Clinias: Why, of course.
Athenian: And what is the music which befits godlike men? Choric song?
Clinias: Why, sir, personally we Spartans and our Cretan friends are quite incapable of any singing but that we learned when we were trained to sing in choirs.
Athenian: I am not surprised at it; in plain fact, you have never risen to the noblest kind of song. Your cities are organized like armies, not like societies of town-dwellers; you keep your young men in herds like so many colts at grass in one troop. None of you ever takes his own colt, draws him out of the general herd, for all his restiveness and fuming, and puts him in the charge of a special groom to be stroked and tamed and treated with all the attention required by a training which will
Clinias: Somehow or other, sir, you are back again at your belittling of our legislators.
Athenian: Nay, my dear sir, if I do so at all, it is of no set purpose; but please let us follow where our argument leads. If we can find a music more excellent than that of choirs and public theatres, let us make the attempt to assign it to these men, who, as we are saying, are anxious to take their part in the noblest music, though bashful where the kind just mentioned is concerned.
Clinias: By all means.
Athenian: Well, to begin with, must it not hold good of all things which have an attendant charm that their chief value lies either in this mere charm itself, in their rightness in some sense, or, finally, in their utility? To give an example, I mean that meat and drink, and articles of nutriment generally, are attended by a charm which we may call flavour;
1 We are now coming to the real point. We shall see that the ‘third choir’ is not meant literally to sing, but to set the standard for the music of younger performers, and apparently to take part in ‘compiling the anthology’. This, I think, explains the use they are to make of ‘the bottle’. Their natural tendency would be to make the standard and the anthology too ‘elderly’. They are less likely to commit this fault if they come to the work mellowed by a bottle of generous wine.
2 The word rendered ‘flavour’, ‘gusto’ in these passages is ἡδονή, the word for ‘pleasure’ in general. It is here, however, being used with a conscious echo of its sense in Ionian physics, ‘savour’, agreeable taste or smell.
Clinias: Exactly.
Athenian: Again, the act of learning is attended by a charm, a gusto,
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: And what of the various arts of imitation which work by producing likenesses? If they are so far successful, I mean if they give rise to an attendant pleasure, charm, I suppose, would be just the right name for it?
Clinias: Yes,
Athenian: Whereas the rightness of such products, speaking generally, depends not on their pleasantness, but on accurate correspondence in quality and magnitude?
Clinias: True.
Athenian: Thus the only case in which it will be right to make pleasure our standard of judgment is that of a performance which provides us with neither utility, nor truth, nor resemblance, though, of course, it must do us no harm either, an activity practised solely with a view to this concomitant charm, which is very properly called pleasure, unattended by any of the results just specified?
Clinias: You refer only to harmless pleasure?
Athenian: Yes, and I also use the name play for it in cases where it does neither harm nor good worth taking into serious account.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: Then surely it follows from the argument that a man’s feeling of pleasure, or his erroneous belief, is never a proper standard by which to judge of any representation, and I will
Clinias: Assuredly.
1 i.e. in this case ‘utility’ and ‘correctness’, or ‘rightness’, coincide.
2 ἰσότητα, 668a 1, literally equality. But Plato is thinking of ‘geometrical’ equality, i.e. proportionality. He does not suggest that a good portrait, for example, must be life-sized.
3 ἢ μή τις χαίρει τῳ 668a 1-2. There is clearly something wrong about the words, since the negative μή, as it stands, does not suit the context. But it seems impossible to restore the text intended with certainty. The mere replacing of the μή by εἰ gives a suitable sense, ‘because someone feels pleasure’, but the supposed corruption is not a likely one.
Athenian: Now we may say that all music is an art of producing likenesses or representations.
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: Consequently, when a man tells us that in music pleasure is the standard of judgment, we must refuse to accept his statement. It is not this type of music, if indeed there could be such a type, which we should make our serious object, but that other which retains its likeness to the model of the noble.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: And these citizens of ours, too, will naturally have to do the same. As they aim at the noblest kind of song, they will also have to aim not at a music which is pleasing, but at one which is right. In fact, we explained the rightness of a representation to lie in reproduction of the proportions and quality of the original.
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: Again, it would be universally allowed of music that its productions are all of the nature of representation and portraiture. Composers, performers, audience, all of them would be in complete agreement so far?
Clinias: Beyond doubt.
Athenian: Hence it should seem that a man who is to make no mistake of judgment about a particular production must, in every case, understand what that production is. If he does not understand what it is, that is, what it is meant for, or of what it is in fact an image, it will be a long time before he will discern the rightness or wrongness in the artist’s purpose.
Clinias: A long time indeed.
Athenian: And if a man does not understand this rightness, can he possibly be in a position to discuss the goodness or badness of the work? My question is not very clearly expressed, but it will perhaps become clearer if I put it thus.
Clinias: How, pray?
Athenian: There are, as you know, numerous likenesses which are apprehended by the eye.
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: Now suppose that, in their case too, a man did not know what the various bodies represented were. Could he possibly judge of the rightness of the artist’s work? For example, could he tell whether it shows the members of the body in
1 τῷ τοῦ καλοῦ μιμήματι, 668b 2. I think C. Ritter right in holding that here, and at 669e 4, 796b 3, μιμημα, which usually means the product of imitation, is used for the model imitated. Cf. our uses of the word copy.
Clinias: Naturally he could not.
Athenian: Now suppose we are aware that the figure the artist has drawn or modelled is that of a human being, and that he has reproduced all its members, with their colours and outlines;
Clinias: Why, sir, at that rate, we should all, without exception, be connoisseurs of an animal’s points.
Athenian: Quite true. Then must not one who is to be an intelligent judge of any representation, whether in drawing, in music, or in any other branch of art, have three qualifications? He must understand, first, what the object reproduced is, next, how correctly, third and last, how well a given representation has been effected, in point of language, melody, or rhythm.
Clinias: So it would appear.
Athenian: Now we must not omit the full explanation of the difficulty of music. There is much more talk about musical imagery than about any other kind, and this is the very reason why such imagery demands more cautious scrutiny than any other. It is here that error is at once most dangerous, as it encourages morally bad dispositions, and most difficult to detect, because our poets are not altogether on the level of the Muses themselves. The Muses, we may be assured, would never commit the grave mistake of setting masculine language to an effeminate scale, or tune, or wedding melody, or postures worthy of free men with rhythms only fit for slaves and bondsmen, or taking the pose of a free man and combining it with an air or words of inappropriate rhythm. Not to say that they would never make a pretended presentation of a single theme out of a medley of human voices, animal cries, noises of machinery, and other things. Whereas our mere human poets tend to be only too fond of provoking the contempt of those of us who, in the phrase of Orpheus, are ‘ripe for delight’, by this kind of senseless and complicated confusion. In fact, not only do we see confusion of this kind, but our poets go still further. They divorce rhythm and
Clinias: Plainly he can do nothing of the sort.
Athenian: In fact, the general public are simply ridiculous in their belief that men are adequate judges of what is good or otherwise in melody and rhythm, if they have merely been drilled into singing to the flute
Clinias: Undeniably.
Athenian: But what now about a man who does not even know what constituents a piece has? As I was asking, will he be a judge of its correctness in any instance whatever?
Clinias: Unquestionably not.
Athenian: Thus it seems we are brought back again to our discovery
1 The ‘figures’ meant are apparently those of the ballet d’ action which Plato would have combined with the voices and the instrumental accompaniment.
2 I translate in 670b 10, Badham’s palaeographically admirable correction, αὐλῷ (for MSS. αὐτῶν). With the MS. αὐτῶν the sense is, ‘the general public are ridiculous in their belief that they are adequate judges, that is, those of them who have been drilled into singing to an accompaniment and marching etc.
Clinias: Yes, inevitably.
Athenian: In such a company every one soars above his common level of lightsomeness and jollity, bubbles over with loquacity, pays no heed to the talk of his companions, but thinks himself fully entitled to give the law to himself and all the rest.
Clinias: Assuredly.
Athenian: As we were saying, then, in this state of affairs the souls of the drinkers grow softer as they are heated, like heated iron, and become more juvenile, and consequently more ductile in the hands of one who has the power and skill to train them and mould them, much as when they were still youthful, and the
1 i.e. the old men set the example of a sound taste by their relish for the best music, which, as we have been told before, is ‘imitative’ of the tones and bearing of a manly, noble character.
2 The ‘three points’, on one of which the composer himself need not be a competent judge, are those mentioned already: (1) what the subject of the work of art is; (2) how correctly it has been represented; (3) whether the representation, besides being correct, is good. The composer need not be, and usually is not, a judge on this last point; he may leave it to the authorities who act as ‘censors’.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: And for wardens of these laws and fellow-workers with them, we must set the unperturbed and sober as captains over the unsober, for without them the battle with drink is more hazardous than a battle against an enemy in the field without unperturbed commanders. Moreover, if a man cannot yield willing obedience to them and to Dionysus his officers, that is, the citizens of over sixty, he must be put to as much disgrace as one who disobeys the officers of Ares, or to more.
Clinias: Rightly said.
Athenian: Then if wine and merriment were used in such fashion, would not the members of such a party be the better for it, and part,
Clinias: True enough, if there could indeed be a party such as you describe.
Athenian: Then pray let us have done with the old unqualified censure of the gift of Dionysus as an evil thing, not fit to be tolerated in a city. Indeed, one might be still more copious on the topic, though I feel some reluctance even to mention the principal benefit of the god’s gift before the public, as the statement has been misunderstood and misjudged.
Clinias: And what benefit is that?
Athenian: There is a current of story and pious tradition to the effect that this god was bereft of his intellects by his stepmother Hera, and that this is why he afflicts his victims with Bacchic possession and all its frenzied dancing, by way of revenge; that, and nothing else, was the motive for his gift of wine. For my own part I leave such stories to those who think it safe
1 In 672a 1 the translation adopts England’s change of κατὰ νόμους δὲ to κατὰ νόμους δή.
Clinias: Naturally we have not forgotten that.
Athenian: You will recollect, too, how we said that in mankind this beginning has preluded to perception of rhythm and melody, and that the gods responsible for that development are Apollo, the Muses, and Dionysus?
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: And as for wine in particular, the general story would seem to hold that it has been bestowed on men in vindictiveness, to drive us frantic, whereas our present version is that the gift was meant, on the contrary, as a medicine, to produce modesty of soul, and health and strength of body.
Clinias: An admirable summary of the argument, sir.
Athenian: Then we have finished our treatment of one half of the choric art; shall we go on with further consideration of the other half, or should wc perhaps dismiss the subject?
Clinias: What are the halves you speak of? How do you distinguish the one from the other?
Athenian: Why, the choric art as a whole we found to be the same thing as the whole of education, and one half of the art, that which has to do with the voice, consists of rhythms and melodies.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: And the part which deals with bodily movement has rhythm in common with the movements of the voice, but
Clinias: Precisely so.
Athenian: Now the training of the voice to goodness,
Clinias: And a very proper name for it, too.
Athenian: As for the training of the body—we spoke of it as the dancing of creatures at play—when the process culminates in goodness of body, let us call scientific bodily discipline with that purpose gymnastic.
1 In 673a 4 the translation follows C. Ritter’s certain correction of ἀρετὴν παιδείαν to ἀρετὴν παιδείας.
Clinias: As we may very properly do.
Athenian: As for music—that half of the choric art of which we have just professed to have given a complete review—our statement may be taken as still standing. How shall we proceed next? Shall we discuss the other branch, or what?
Clinias: My dear sir, you are conversing with Cretans and Lacedaemonians: what possible answer, then, do you expect from either of us to that question, if we pass over gymnastic, now that we have disposed of music?
Athenian: I take that remark as a pretty plain answer to my question; in fact, I recognize that though in form a question, it is actually what I have called it, an answer, and something more—an instruction to complete our treatment of gymnastic.
Clinias: You take my meaning correctly, and I entreat you to comply with it.
Athenian: Why, so I will, nor will it be particularly difficult, as you are both at home in the subject, having indeed made more experimental acquaintance with this art than with the former.
Clinias: There you are very much in the right.
Athenian: Well, this art similarly has its origin in the habitual leaping native to all living things, and in mankind, as we have said, the acquisition of a sense of rhythm has generated dancing; since melody suggests and awakens consciousness of rhythm, the two in conjunction have given rise to the play of the choric dance.
Clinias: Quite so.
Athenian: One branch of the subject, as I have said, we have treated already, and will next do our best to deal with the other.
Clinias: With all my heart.
Athenian: Then, if you both approve, we may first give the final touch to our account of drinking.
Clinias: And how do you propose to do this?
Athenian: If a city is to practise the custom now under discussion in a serious spirit, in subjection to the control of law and rule, as a training in self-command, and permits a similar indulgence in other pleasures on the same principle, as a means to mastery of them, all without exception should be treated on the lines we have laid down. But if the practice is treated as mere play, and free licence is to be given to any man to drink whenever he pleases, in what company he pleases, and when engaged on any undertaking he pleases, I could no longer vote for allowing any
Clinias: It is well said, indeed, and we fully concur.
Laws, Book III
Athenian: Enough, then, on this matter. But what may we take 676 to have been the first beginning of a State? I wonder whether the best and easiest way to treat the problem may not be this?
Clinias: What?
Athenian: To start from the same point with which we regularly have to begin when we would study the double progressive development of a city in virtue and vice.
Clinias: And that point is?
Athenian: Why; the interminable length of time; I conceive, and the changes time brings with it.
Clinias: Pray explain yourself.
Athenian: Well, cities have existed and men have lived in civil society for a long time; do you think you could possibly tell how long?
Clinias: Not readily, to say the least of it.
Athenian: But you admit at least that it must have been so for an immense and incredible time?
Clinias: Oh yes, there is no doubt about that.
Athenian: And you will surely grant that thousands and thousands of cities have come into being during this time, and no less a number have ceased to exist? Moreover, every form of constitution has repeatedly appeared in one or other of them; sometimes a small city has grown larger, sometimes a large city smaller; a bad city has sometimes grown better, a good city sometimes worse?
Clinias: Indubitably.
Athenian: Thus we have, if possible, to discover the cause of these variations; there, I suspect, we may find the key to the primal origin of constitutions and their modification.
Clinias: A happy thought, and we must all do our best endeavour, you to expound your thoughts on the subject, and my friend and myself to keep pace with you.
Athenian: Then what view do you both take of the ancient legends? Have they any truth behind them?
Clinias: Which legends might you mean?
Athenian: Those which tell of repeated destructions of mankind by floods, pestilences, and from various other causes, which leave only a handful of survivors.
Clinias: Oh, that kind of story must be perfectly credible to any man.
Athenian: Very well; let us suppose one of those various exterminations, that which was once effected by the Flood.
Clinias: And what is the point you would have us observe about it?
Athenian: That the few who then escaped the general destruction must all have been mountain shepherds, mere scanty embers of humanity left unextinguished among their high peaks.
Clinias: Why, obviously.
Athenian: And of course men like these were bound to be unfamiliar with the crafts at large and, above all, with the tricks of town-dwellers for overreaching and outdistancing one another and the rest of their devices for mutual infliction of mischief.
Clinias: The probabilities are certainly on that side.
Athenian: Now may we assume that at such a time there is a total destruction of the cities situated in the lowlands and on the sea coast?
Clinias: We may, no doubt.
Athenian: And we may add that all implements are lost, and that any discoveries of value due to the science of statesmen or other specialists all vanish at such a time? For to be sure, my dear sir, if such inventions could persist permanently in their present excellence, how could there ever be a new discovery of anything?
Clinias: As much as to say that we must take the men of those ages to have known nothing of these matters for untold tens of thousands of years; it is only some thousand or two thousand years since they were revealed, partly by Daedalus, partly by Orpheus, partly by Palamedes, music by Marsyas and Olympus,the lyre by Amphion, and various other discoveries by numerous other persons—a mere business, so to say, of yesterday and the day before.
Athenian: It is delicate in you, Clinias, to omit your connection, who was in strict fact a man of yesterday.
Clinias: You refer to Epimenides, I presume?
Athenian: To no other. You know, my friend, his invention left them all in the lurch. True, Hesiod had long before had a
1 Apparently the speaker means the famous ‘Flood’ of Greek legend, that of Deucalion, though we are told in the Timaeus (22b) and Critias (112a) that this was only the most recent of a series.
Clinias: It did, indeed.
Athenian: Then I suppose one may say that the state of mankind at the time of the calamity was this: there was frightful and widespread depopulation, but a vast territory of unoccupied land; most of the animals had perished, but there were a few herds of cattle, and perhaps a surviving stock of goats, and these provided those who grazed them with a sustenance which would be scanty enough in the first instance.
Clinias: No doubt.
Athenian: But as for a city, a constitution, a legislation—the themes of our present conversation—can we imagine that, to put it broadly, the faintest recollection of them was preserved?
Clinias: Why, surely not.
Athenian: Now that is the condition which has given rise to the whole complex of our actual life, with its cities and constitutions, its sciences, its laws, its manifold moral evil and equally manifold moral goodness?
Clinias: I do not quite follow you.
Athenian: Why, my good sir, can we suppose that the men of that day, unacquainted as they were alike with the numerous blessings and the numerous curses of town life, would be mature either in moral virtue or in vice?
Clinias: Well demanded; we appreciate your point.
Athenian: Thus it is by progress of time and the multiplication of the species that life has come to be as we actually find it?
Clinias: Exactly.
Athenian: And that, I presume, not all at once, but little by little in the course of an immense period of time.
Clinias: Nothing can be more likely.
Athenian: Indeed, they were still haunted, I should presume, by a terror of coming down from the highlands to the plains.
Clinias: Naturally.
Athenian: Thus, though the sight of another’s face must have been welcome indeed in those days when men’s numbers were so few, all conveyances for travel by land or water must have been pretty universally abolished, must they not, with the loss of the arts? So social intercourse, I conceive, was not easily feasible. For iron, copper, and metallic deposits in general had been so obliterated by the inundation that it was a problem to get
Clinias: Of course not.
Athenian: And how many generations must we suppose to pass before that would happen?
Clinias: A very considerable number; beyond all doubt.
Athenian: Consequently; all arts which require iron; copper; and similar materials had then been lost for this period; or even longer.
Clinias: Naturally.
Athenian: And therefore both civil conflict and war had equally disappeared all through this period; for more reasons than one.
Clinias: And what were those reasons?
Athenian: For one thing; men’s loneliness made them sociable and friendly; for another; there could be no quarrelling over the
1 The connection of thought is this. There would be neither carriages nor boats, since timber is required for both, and timber could not be felled for want of the necessary tools until the arts of mining and metallurgy had been recovered.
No one was sufficiently subtle to
Clinias: I agree with the statement, for one, and so does my friend here.
Athenian: Then I take it we may say that the many generations of men who led such a life were bound, by comparison with the age before the Deluge or with our own, to be rude and ignorant in the various arts, particularly in those of warfare, as practised today by land or water, and again within the city, under the names of litigation and party-faction, with their manifold artful contrivances for the infliction of mutual injury and wrong by word and by deed; they were simpler and manlier, and by consequence more self-controlled and more righteous generally. The reason of this has already been explained.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Now it must be understood that our purpose in the statement we have made and all the inferences we have based on it, is simply to learn how laws came to be needed in those remote ages and who enacted them.
Clinias: Yes; excellently put.
Athenian: May we not perhaps say, then, that in that age men were in no need of a lawgiver, and that such a thing as a law was as yet unusual? In fact, those whose lives fall in that part of the cycle
Clinias: That is at least the fair presumption.
Athenian: Still, even this is already a form of polity.
Clinias: But what form?
Athenian: The form of polity in that age was, I believe, what is universally called dynasty,
1 The περίοδος or cycle means the complete interval between each great natural convulsion which wrecks human civilization in the fashion just described, and the next.
2 The ordinary meaning of δυναστεία in Greek is the conduct of government by a number of families of ‘notables’. What Plato means here is a ‘patriarchal system’ in which the word of the ‘chief of the clan’ is law to his clan, as the quotation from Homer shows.
Clinias: This poet of yours seems indeed to have been quite a pretty fellow. I assure you I have perused other passages from him which are equally neat, though not many, as we Cretans are not much given to cultivating verse of alien origin.
Megillus: Now in Sparta we do cultivate it, and regard Homer as the best composer of it, though the life he is always describing is decidedly Ionian rather than Laconian. He certainly seems to give full confirmation to your present theory where he ascribes the primitive manners of the characters in his story to their savage condition.
Athenian: Yes, to be sure he does, and we may take him as evidence to show that this type of polity is actually to be found at times.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: That is, they are found among such men as we are speaking of, who have been dispersed in single homesteads and families as a result of the distress caused by these disasters? In such societies do we not find that the oldest members rule, because their authority has come down to them from father or mother; the rest follow them, and form one flock, like so many birds, and are thus under patriarchal control, the most justifiable of all types of royalty?
Clinias: Exactly so.
Athenian: The next step is to come together in larger numbers, which will increase the size of the communities, and turn to agriculture. This will be at first practised in the skirts of the
Clinias: At least that is the probable succession of events.
Athenian: Well, and is there not something else which is no less probable?
Clinias: And what may that be?
Athenian: As these larger homesteads are in process of growth from the smaller and most primitive, each of the smaller groups will bring along with it its patriarchal ruler and certain private customs of its own; private, I mean, because the groups are isolated from each other, and the several groups have been trained by their different progenitors and fosterers in different habits of conduct towards gods and fellow-men, in more orderly habits where the ancestors have been more orderly, in more
1 Homer, Odyssey I 112-15 (Tr. Butcher and Lang).
Clinias: Why, inevitably so.
Athenian: And of course each group unavoidably gives its approval to its own laws, and only in the second place to those of the others.
Clinias: Exactly.
Athenian: And thus, to all appearance, we find ourselves insensibly embarked on the beginnings of legislation.
Clinias: Yes, precisely so.
Athenian: At least the next step is bound to be that the coalescing groups choose certain representatives who will, of course, review all the usages, publicly and plainly indicate those which most win their own approval to the chiefs and leaders of the various clans—their kings as we may call them—and propose them for adoption. Hence these representatives will themselves get the name of legislators, and when they have appointed the chiefs as magistrates, and thus made the patriarchal groups into an aristocracy, or possibly a monarchy,
Clinias: To be sure, this may be presumed to be the next stage in the process.
Athenian: Then let us proceed to remark the rise of a third type of polity, under which polities and the societies which exhibit them alike manifest all varieties of form and fortunes.
Clinias: And what type is that?
Athenian: That which Homer, too, has commemorated as succeeding the second, when he says that the third form originated thus:
‘He founded Dardania’—those, I believe, are his words—‘for holy Ilios had not yet been builded in the plain, a city for mortal (?) men, but they still dwelt on the slopes of many-fountained Ida’. Clinias: I can fully believe it.
Athenian: Well, let us carry the tale which has engaged our |62| Clinias: Most proper.
Athenian: Well, as I say, the foundation of Ilium was due to a descent from the heights to a wide and noble plain; it was built on a hill of low elevation watered by a number of rivers coming down from the higher ground of Ida.
Clinias: So the story goes.
Athenian: Then we must surely suppose that this happened many ages after the Deluge?
Clinias: Many ages later, no doubt.
Athenian: The founders, in fact, must have been singularly oblivious of the disaster we are now recalling, to build a city on such a site exposed to a number of rivers flowing from the mountains, with such confidence in hills of inconsiderable height.
Clinias: Why, yes, that calamity must obviously have belonged to a very remote part.
Athenian: There were also by that time, I conceive, a good many other city-communities, thanks to the multiplication of mankind.
Clinias: Yes, of course.
Athenian: It was they, you know, who assailed her, and probably enough by sea too, as all mankind had long ago forgotten their dread of the sea.
Clinias: So it should seem.
Athenian: And there was a delay of some ten years before the Achaeans succeeded in sacking Troy.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Now during this period of ten years while Ilium was under investment, occurred the various domestic misfortunes of the different besiegers, occasioned by the insurrectionary movements of the younger generation. Moreover, when the warriors returned to their cities and families, the reception they met at the hands of these young men was neither honourable nor equitable, but attended with numerous instances of homicide, massacre, and expulsion: the expelled then returned again under a new name, calling themselves now not Achaeans, but Dorians, after Dorieus, who reassembled the exiles of that time. As to the sequel of the story, it is told, and told fully, in your own Lacedaemonian tradition.
Megillus: It is indeed.
Athenian: Thus we find ourselves, providentially as it were, brought back to the very point at which we were led into a digression at If the whole discussion enables us to understand what has been commendable in such foundations, or the reverse, what types of laws lead to their preservation, where it is achieved, and what, in the opposite case, to their dissolution, and what kind of changes will contribute to the happiness of a community, why then, Megillus and Clinias, we must cover the ground again pretty much from the beginning, unless, indeed, you have some objections to urge against what has been already said.
Megillus: Why, sir, if we could have the word of a god for it that on our second attempt to study this matter of legislation we are to hear discourse as good, yes, and as long, as that which has already passed, I would readily make our walk a long one and should think this day short enough, though, if I am rightly informed, it is the day of the summer solstice.
Athenian: Then I presume we are to undertake the inquiry.
Megillus: With all my heart.
Athenian: Then, Megillus, let us place ourselves in imagination at the date at which Lacedaemon, Argos, and Messene, with all their domains, had come, to all intents, into the power of your ancestors. Their next step, as the story goes, was the resolution to divide their forces into three, and establish three cities, Argos, Messene, and Lacedaemon.
Megillus: Precisely.
Athenian: Thus Argos became the kingdom of Temenus, Messene of Cresphontes, Lacedaemon of Procles and Eurysthenes.
Megillus: To be sure.
Athenian: Whereupon the whole body took an oath to these sovereigns to support them against any attempt to subvert their monarchy.
Megillus: Certainly.
Athenian: And, in God’s name, is a monarchy ever subverted, or Megillus: Oh, surely not.
Athenian: Then we may assert the position even more confidently now, as we have met with historical facts which seem to lead to the same conclusion, and shall thus be dealing with realities Megillus: And so they are.
Athenian: Well then, have we not here provision made by the legislation of the three cities from the outset for a matter of prime importance to the established constitutions—whether the initiative was due to the monarchs or to others?
Megillus: What matter do you mean?
Athenian: I mean that in any case of infraction of the law of the constitution, there were always to be two cities leagued against the single defaulter.
Megillus: Yes, manifestly.
Athenian: Now I may remind you that a legislator is commonly expected to enact only such laws as a populace, or multitude, will accept of its own motion, which is much as though a trainer or physician were expected to make his treatment, or cure, of the body a pleasure to the recipient.
Megillus: Exactly.
Athenian: Whereas in real fact one has often ground for thankfulness
Megillus: To be sure.
Athenian: The statesmen of that period had moreover a second initial advantage which would greatly facilitate their legislative task.
Megillus: And what was that?
Athenian: They were not exposed, in their attempts to establish a certain equality of possessions, to the grave charge so persistently levelled, in connection with the passing of laws for other cities, at one who proposes change in the tenure of land, or a cancellation of debts, from his perception that equality can never be properly attained without these measures. When a legislator attempts a change in these matters, every one meets him with a cry of ‘no meddling with fundamentals’, and an imprecation on the author of redistribution of lands and repudiation of debts, sufficient to reduce any man to despair. Now the Dorians, you know, from their situation, had this further initial advantage, which relieved them of unpleasant recriminations: the land could be divided without controversy, and they had no burden of accumulated debts.
Megillus: True enough.
Athenian: Then what, I must ask you, can be the reason that their foundation and its legislation proved the failure it has been?
Athenian: Because in two of their three settlements there was a rapid degeneration of constitution and laws, only one of the three, your own city of Sparta, remaining unperverted.
Megillus: Not precisely an easy question to answer.
Athenian: All the same, there is the point we have now to envisage and discuss, if we are to relieve the distress of our journey by this sober old man’s game of jurisprudence, as we called it at the beginning of our walk.
Megillus: No doubt, and so we must do as you say.
Athenian: What laws, then, could be a fairer subject of inquiry than those by which these communities have been regulated? What greater and more illustrious cities are there, whose foundation we might take for our consideration?
Megillus: If we dismiss them, it will be no easy matter to name any others.
Athenian: Well, one thing is plain enough; the founders of that age meant their creation to be an adequate protection, not merely Megillus: Why, surely.
Athenian: So it was presumably expected that their work would Megillus: That, to be sure, was the presumption.
Athenian: And yet, as we see, these magnificent anticipations vanished speedily into air, except, as we were saying, in the case of the fraction in your territory of Laconia, and it, you know, has been in incessant warfare with the other two-thirds to this day. Though had the original project been carried out, and a single confederacy formed, its military power would have been irresistible.
Megillus: Yes, quite irresistible.
Athenian: Then where was the source of the failure? Surely it is a question worth examining, what mischance may have been the undoing of so vast and admirable a formation?
Megillus: Yes surely; one who turned his attention from this case in another direction Athenian: So here, I take it, we find ourselves happily launched on an inquiry of magnitude.
Megillus: Very certainly.
Athenian: Then I would ask, my dear sir, whether we were not just now unconscious victims of a mistake universal to mankind. Men are perpetually fancying they have discovered some splendid creation which might have worked wonders if only someone had known the proper way (whatever it may be) to use it. Now it is just on this point I suspect you and I may be thinking falsely and unnaturally, like every one else who has the same thought about anything.
Megillus: Pray, what do you mean? What is the special point of your observation?
Athenian: Why, my friend, I am actually amused by my own recent mood. As I pictured to myself the army of which we were talking, I thought ‘What a splendid force, and what a wonderful acquisition it would Megillus: Well, and was not all you said, like our assent to it, the soundest of sense?
Athenian: That may be, but what is in my mind is this. When any one sees something big, strong, and powerful, he feels at once that if the owner of such a marvellous thing knew how to use it, he could effect wonders with it, and so achieve felicity.
Megillus: Well, and that is equally true, is it not?
Athenian: And, again, when a man’s notice is attracted to a great fortune, or preeminent family distinction, or the like, and he expresses the same commendation, he speaks from the same point of view; his thought is that the advantage will enable its possessor to gratify all his desires, or the most numerous and considerable of them?
Megillus: So I should suppose.
Athenian: So it follows that there is a certain desire, that indicated by our argument, which is universal in all men, as the argument itself asserts.
Megillus: And that is?
Athenian: That events shall fall out in accord with the bidding of a man’s own soul, all of them, if possible, but if not, at least those which depend on human agency.
Megillus: Of course.
Athenian: Now if this is what all of us, from boyhood to age, are wishing all the time, it will necessarily also be our standing prayer.
Megillus: Certainly.
Athenian: And, again, I suppose, our petition for our dear ones will be that they may receive what they ask for themselves.
Megillus: Of course.
Athenian: Now a son, who is a boy, is dear to his father, a grown man.
Megillus: Certainly.
Athenian: And, mark you, there is much a boy prays to befall him, of which his father would beseech Heaven that it may never fall out as the son prays.
Megillus: You mean when the petitioner is thoughtless and still young?
Athenian: Yes, and what of the case when the father—old, or only too youthful as you please to consider him Megillus: I see your point. You mean, I apprehend, that the object of a man’s prayers and endeavours should not be that the universal course of events should conform to his own wishes,
Clinias: Verbal applause, sir, might be in doubtful taste, but our conduct will show our emphatic approval; we shall follow your discourse with the keenest attention; that is the way in which a self-respecting man best shows approbation or the reverse.
Clinias: Certainly, with God’s permission. Pray proceed.
Athenian: Well then, to follow up the thread of our argument, we say that what then destroyed that mighty power was the greatest folly, and that it inevitably produces the same results today. This being so, then, a legislator’s aim must be to create all the wisdom he can in a community, and with all his might to eradicate unwisdom.
Clinias: Yes, manifestly.
Clinias: What type do you mean?
Athenian: That of a man who hates, not loves, what his judgment pronounces to be noble or good, while he loves and enjoys what he judges vile and wicked. It is this dissonance between pleasure and pain and reasoned judgment that I call the worst folly, and also the ‘greatest’, since its seat is the commonalty of the soul; for pain and pleasure are in the soul what the populace or commonalty is in a community. Accordingly, when the soul sets itself at variance with knowledge, judgment, discourse, its natural sovereigns, you have what I describe as unwisdom, alike in a community where the commons rebel against magistrates and laws, and in one individual man when fair discourse is present in the soul, but produces no effect, but rather the very contrary. These are the types of folly I would pronounce the gravest dissonances in community or individual citizen, not the follies of professionals Clinias: Indeed we do, sir, and we grant your point.
Athenian: Then let us take it as definitely settled, and proclaim our conviction that no function of government may be entrusted to citizens who are foolish in this sense. They must be reprehended for their folly, though they were the most expert of calculators, and laboriously trained in all curious studies and everything that makes for nimbleness of mind, while those of the contrary sort should be styled wise, even though, as the proverb puts it, they can ‘neither read nor swim’, and it is to them, as the men of sense, that our magistracies should be given. How, indeed, my friends, can there be the barest particle of
Clinias: By every means.
Athenian: Now in a community, I take it, there must be those who govern and those who are governed.
Clinias: Of course there must.
Clinias: Most assuredly.
Athenian: And next by consequence that the well-born have a title to rule the worse-born, and third, by further consequence, that it is for elder men to rule and for younger to submit.
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: And fourth, that it is for slaves to submit and for their owners to rule them.
Clinias: Why of course.
Athenian: And fifth, I conceive, for the stronger to rule, and for the weaker to submit.
Clinias: Ay, there is a title which is not to be disputed.
Athenian: Yes, and one which is prevalent all through the animal kingdom—by nature’s own appointment, as Pindar of Thebes has said. Clinias: And you would be quite right.
Athenian: Then there is a seventh kind of rule by the favour of Heaven Clinias: True, indeed.
Athenian: ‘You see, then, my legislator,’—so we might playfully address a man who sets light-heartedly about the enactment of laws—‘how many titles there are in this matter of governing, and how conflicting they are. We have just discovered a whole fountain-head of dissensions; it is yours to provide the remedy for them. But suppose you begin by joining in our inquiry about the kings of Argos and Messene. How did they effect their own ruin and that of the Hellenic power which was so superb in their day? What offence did they commit against these principles?’ Was not their error that they forgot the solid truth of Hesiod’s saying Clinias: He was right, too.
Athenian: Now when the ruin sets in, where does it regularly make its first appearance? In kings or in the common people? How say you?
Athenian: Plainly, then, this infection of encroachment on the established laws began, in the old days, with the kings. They did not keep concord with one another, as they were pledged and sworn to do. It was this discord—in our judgment really supreme folly, for all its semblance of wisdom—which ruined the whole system by its shrill and tuneless dissonance.
Clinias: Probably enough.
Athenian: Well and good. Now what precaution should a legislator have taken at the time against the development of this
Megillus: And what answer may you mean?
Athenian: Why, Megillus, what should have been done then may be discovered and readily stated today if we will only look at what was done in your own society.
Megillus: You must put it still more plainly.
Athenian: Well, what is absolutely plain is just this.
Megillus: What?
Athenian: If we disregard due proportion by giving anything what is too much for it, too much canvas to a boat, too much nutriment to a body, too much authority to a soul, the consequence is always shipwreck; rankness runs in the one case to disease, in the other to presumption and its issue is crime. What is it we would say? you ask; why, my friends, surely this: No soul of man, while young or accountable to no control, will ever be able to bear the burden of supreme social authority without taking the taint of the worst spiritual disease, folly, and so becoming estranged from its dearest intimates; when this happens, that soul very soon suffers ruin and the loss of all its powers. Hence it calls for a great legislator to forestall this danger by his insight into due proportion. The reasonable inference today, then, is that the danger was forestalled, but in very truth it seems there must have been—
Megillus: What?
Athenian: Some divinity in charge of you with prevision of the future, who gave you a double line of kings instead of a single, Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: Indeed, Clinias, the repulse of those attacks was no credit to any one. I do not mean, when I say this, that the victories of the time, on land and sea alike, were not honourable to the victors; what I mean by calling the history discreditable is this. Only one of those three states took up arms for the defence of Hellas on the first assault; the other two were so badly corrupted that one Clinias: We shall do our best to keep it in mind as we review our discussions. For the present, you might explain your remarks about amity, wisdom, and liberty. What is it you were going to say a legislator should aim at?
Athenian: Then let me have your attention. There are two matrices, as we may call them, of constitutions from which all others may truly be said to be derived; the proper name of the one is monarchy, of the other democracy. The first is seen in its perfection among the Persians, the second among my own countrymen. These are the strands, as I have said, of which all other constitutions, generally speaking, are woven. Very well; it is indispensably necessary that there should be both ingredients where there is to be the combination of liberty and amity with wisdom. This is what our argument means to enjoin when it urges that no community which has not those characters can be rightly administered.
Clinias: Of course it cannot.
Clinias: By all means, if we mean to complete our investigations.
Athenian: Then lend me your ears. While the Persians steered a middle course between subjection and liberty, in the time of Cyrus, they began by winning their own freedom and went on to make themselves masters of numerous peoples. As a government they gave these subjects their share of liberty and placed them on equal terms with themselves; their soldiers thus grew attached to their commanders, and showed themselves forward in danger. Again, if a subject was a man of wisdom and a capable adviser, the king showed no jealousy of him, but permitted free speech and bestowed distinctions on such competent counsellors, so that the gift of wisdom was freely placed at the disposal of the public service. Clinias: That certainly seems to have been much the course of the history.
Athenian: Then what can have brought about the decay under Cambyses and the general recovery under Darius? Shall we hazard a guess at the reading of the riddle?
Clinias: It would at least be a contribution to the study of our original problem. Athenian: Then my own present reading of Cyrus is this. Though a good general and a true patriot, he had been wholly untouched by right education, and had never given a thought to the discipline of his household. Clinias: What are we to understand by that remark?
Clinias: A mighty fine training, by your account of it.
Athenian: Why, the training one could look for when the children were left to the women of a royal harem, new to affluence and without a man to help them, thanks to perpetual preoccupation with the wars and their dangers.
Clinias: That sounds reasonable, to be sure.
Athenian: As for their father, he was busy winning for them flocks and herds and drove after drove of men and other Clinias: Certainly that is how the story runs, and it is presumably pretty true to the facts.
Athenian: And then, we are told, the throne was recovered for the Persians by Darius and the ‘Seven’.
Clinias: Exactly.
Athenian: Well, let us follow up the train of thought suggested by
Megillus: How is that remark to be understood, sir?
Athenian: Courage, you will grant, is one part of goodness.
Megillus: To be sure it is.
Athenian: Good; then listen to my argument and decide the point for yourself. Would you like a man of great courage who
Megillus: Heaven forfend!
Athenian: And what do you say to a man of professional skill, and wise in that sense of the word, but unjust?
Megillus: I have nothing to say to him.
Athenian: And justice, again, does not flourish where temperance is not.
Megillus: No, how should it?
Athenian: Neither does the sort of wisdom we were lately contemplating, that of the man whose pleasures and pains are accordant with and consequent on his right thinking.
Megillus: No, decidedly not.
Athenian: Besides, we have still a further point to consider for its bearing on the right or wrong distribution of various civic distinctions.
Megillus: And what may it be?
Athenian: Suppose temperance to exist in a man’s soul all by itself, apart from any further goodness; ought it, or ought it not, to be a rightful title to distinction?
Megillus: That is more than I can say.
Athenian: A most becoming answer. Had you said either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, in either case you would have struck what I take to be a wrong note.
Megillus: Then it is as well I replied as I did.
Athenian: Just so. A mere adjunct to the true object of honourable distinction, or the reverse, calls for no discussion, and may well be passed over in silence.
Megillus: By the adjunct in question, I take it you mean temperance.
Athenian: I do. The truly sound procedure would be to assign the first place in honour to that other thing, be it what it may, which, combined with this adjunct, does us the chiefest service, and the second to that which serves us in the next degree. We have only to travel in the same fashion down the whole series for everything to receive its right place in the scale of distinctions.
Athenian: Well then, surely it is one part of the legislator’s business to construct this scale.
Megillus: Most assuredly.
Athenian: Then, while leaving it to him to make the construction as a whole, and in all its particulars and details, shall we try to Megillus: With all my heart.
Athenian: Then I say that it is clearly an imperative duty for a society, which is minded to survive and enjoy all the felicity men may, to award its marks of honour and dishonour in the right way. And the right way is to put the good qualities of the soul in the first and most honourable rank—its temperance always presupposed as a sine qua non—advantages and good qualities of body in the second, and in the third, goods of estate, ‘wealth’ as we call them. Should any legislator or society transgress these limits by promoting wealth to honour, or giving anything of a lower class the distinctions of a higher, the act is an offence alike against religion and statesmanship. May we take this as our conviction?
Megillus: Emphatically and absolutely, yes.
Athenian: What led us into this lengthy discussion of the point was our examination of the Persian commonwealth. We find that they degenerated… Megillus: Exactly so.
Athenian: And with this we may close our proof that the present
Megillus: Undoubtedly.
Athenian: Next as to the state of Attica; we are similarly to show that unqualified and absolute freedom from all authority is a far worse thing than submission to a magistrate with limited powers. In the old days of the Persian assault on the Greeks—or perhaps I should say on the denizens of Europe at large—my countrymen enjoyed a venerable constitution with magistracies based on a fourfold system of social classes; moreover conscience had a sovereignty among us which disposed us to willing subjection to the laws. Besides, the spectacle of the sheer magnitude of the military and naval armament threw us into helpless consternation, and led us to submit to laws and magistrates with a still stricter obedience; all these causes continued to intensify our loyalty to one another. Some ten years before the naval engagement at Salamis, Datis arrived at the head of the Persian armada, with express orders from Darius against the Athenians and Eretrians; he was to capture and deport them, and had been warned that his own life would be the price of failure. Well, Datis speedily effected the complete capture of the Eretrians by force of numbers, and thus originated the alarming report which reached us in Athens. It was said that not a man of the Eretrians escaped; in fact, the troops of Datis joined hands and so swept the whole territory of Eretria as with a net. The Athenians conceived the whole undertaking to be directed against themselves Megillus: The observation sir, is not only perfectly just, but most becoming to yourself and your countrymen.
Athenian: No doubt, Megillus; and you, who have inherited the character of your ancestors, are the right person to hear the history of those times. But I would have you and Clinias consider the relevance of my narrative to our legislation; I give
Athenian: And so I will. Under our old laws, my friends, our commons were not masters; in a sense they were the willing servants of the laws.
Megillus: Of what laws are you thinking in particular?
Athenian: In the first instance, if our progress in extravagant liberty of living is to be traced from its origin, of the laws of music as it was in those days. Our music was then divided into several kinds and patterns. One kind of song, which went by the name of a hymn, consisted of prayers to the gods; there was a second and contrasting kind which might well have been called a lament; paeans were a third kind, and there was a fourth, the dithyramb, as it was called, dealing, if I am not mistaken, with the birth of Dionysus. The actual word nome was used as the name of still another kind, though with the qualification ‘citharaedic’. Megillus: Very true.
Athenian: So the next stage of the journey towards liberty will be refusal to submit to the magistrates, and on this will follow emancipation from the authority and correction of parents and elders; then, as the goal of the race is approached, comes the effort to escape obedience to the law, and, when that goal is all but reached, contempt for oaths, for the plighted word, and all religion; the spectacle of the Titanic Athenian: Well then, I said it for its relevance to what had gone before.
Megillus: And what was that?
Athenian: Why, I said a legislator should have three aims in his enactments; the society for which he makes them must have freedom, must have amity with itself, must have understanding. That, I believe, was our position.
Megillus: Exactly.
Athenian: This was why we took the examples of the most autocratic of communities and the freest, and are now asking ourselves in which of the two public life is what it should be. We found that when we had a certain due proportionality in either case, in the one of authority, in the other of liberty, there was a maximum of well-being in both societies, whereas when things were pushed to an extreme in either case, an extreme of subjection in the one, and of its opposite in the other, the consequences were unsatisfactory in both societies alike.
Clinias: Why, sir, I believe I can find one. I fancy there has been something providential in the whole course of our argument; in fact, I find myself just now in a position in which it meets my needs well, and both your appearance and that of our friend Megillus are most opportune. So far from hiding my situation from you, I even count your presence a favourable omen. You must know that the largest part of Crete is undertaking the foundation of a colony, and has charged the Cnossians with the management of the business, which has been entrusted by the authorities of Cnossus to myself and nine others. Our instructions are further to frame a legislation from such local Cretan laws as have our approval, or laws from other quarters; we
Athenian: No declaration of hostilities that, Clinias! If Megillus has no objections to offer, I, for one, promise compliance to the best of my ability.
Clinias: Thank you.
Megillus: And so do I for another.
Clinias: My best thanks to both of you. Well, let us begin by trying to imagine the foundation of the city.
Megillus: Why, in what respect has it failed, and why this censure of them?
Athenian: Let me beg you to consider the light in which a thing must be viewed to justify this eulogy. Take the case of the armament of which we are now speaking as a first example: If its creators had understood how to construct it properly, they would fairly have attained their aim; but how? I presume, if they had constituted it securely and assured its permanent continuance in being, with the consequences of freedom for themselves, sovereignty over any desired subjects, and, in a word, ability for themselves and their posterity to deal at their pleasure with all mankind, Greeks and non-Greeks alike. These are the grounds on which they might base their eulogy.
Megillus: Exactly.
Athenian: Yes, and I am particular to remind myself that it is this which a statesmanlike legislator should always have in view in framing his enactments, as I would also remind you, if we have not forgotten how our conversation began—that whereas you both agreed that a good legislator must devise all his institutions with an eye to war, I, for my part, urged that this is an injunction to legislate with a view to one single virtue out of four; he should keep them all in view, I said, but chiefly and in the first place that virtue which brings all the rest in its train, that is, judgment, intelligence, and right conviction attended by appropriate passionate desire. So our argument has come back again to the old point; I, its mouthpiece, say once more now what I said before, in jest or earnest, as you please to take it. I look on prayer, I say, as a dangerous instrument in the hands of the man without intelligence; it defeats his wishes.
Megillus: Well said, Clinias; so we will.
Athenian: Now what type of folly may fairly be called the greatest? I should certainly say that I am on the point of describing, but you must consider whether you agree with the observation.
Athenian: Very good. Now what recognized titles to government and obedience, and how many, do we find alike in large cities, in small, and in families? Is there not, for one, the claim of father and mother? or speaking generally, would it not be universally recognized that parents have a title to rule their offspring?
Clinias: Probability and common experience suggest that it is the malady of kings whose luxury leads to pomp.
Athenian: Well, one of the societies we have mentioned has shown exclusive and inordinate devotion to the principle of monarchy, the other to that of liberty, and thus neither has effected a proper balance between them, whereas yours of Laconia and Crete have succeeded better. There was a time when this was
Athenian: It should seem that he spent his life, from his youth, in perpetual campaigning, and left the training of his sons to the women, who treated them from their childhood as blessed creatures and born favourites of fortune endowed with every advantage. They would allow no one to cross such vastly superior beings in anything, forced every one to commend all their sayings and doings, and so turned them out what you might expect.
Megillus: I quite agree with you.
Megillus: Good; but you must try to make the point of the remark a little plainer.
Megillus: To be sure.
Megillus: Very true.
Athenian: It was for the same purpose that we reviewed the settlement of the Dorian invaders, the foundation of Dardanus in the foothills, and that of the city on the coast,
Laws, Book IV
Athenian: Good, then; what must we suppose our State is to be? I do not mean that I am asking what its name is at present, or by what name it will have to be called hereafter. That might well come from the circumstances of the foundation or the locality; or the appellation of some river, or fountain, or local divinities might confer their own revered title on the city in its earliest days. What I am more concerned about in my question is this: is the site maritime or inland?
Clinias: Why, sir, the city of which I was just speaking is some eighty stadia,
Athenian: Well, and are there harbours on that side of it, or is it entirely without a harbour?
Clinias: By no means, sir. The coast on that side is as well furnished with harbours as a coast can be.
Athenian: Tut, tut! How distressing! And what about the surrounding territory? Does it yield produce of all sorts, or has it its deficiencies?
Clinias: None to speak of.
Athenian: Is there a neighbouring city within easy distance?
Clinias: Dear me, no; that is the very reason for the settlement. There was long ago an emigration from the district which has left this territory vacant for ages.
Athenian: What about plain-land, mountain, and forest? Pray, how is it furnished in all these respects?
Clinias: Much like the rest of Crete in general.
Athenian: You mean it is rugged rather than level?
Clinias: Decidedly so.
Athenian: Then its case, from the point of view of the acquisition of goodness, is not desperate. Had it to be on the coast, well furnished with harbours and ill off for many of its necessaries, not productive of all, we should need a mighty protector and lawgivers who were more than men to prevent the development of much refined vice in consequence of such a situation. As it is, there is comfort in those eighty stadia. Even so, the site is nearer to the sea than it should be, all the more as you say it is
1 Roughly about ten miles.
Clinias: We well recollect the remark and agree with you now, as we did before, about its truth.
Athenian: Then, as to a further point: how is our territory supplied with materials for ship-building?
Clinias: It has neither fir nor pine to speak of, and not much in the way of cypress. As for the kinds of wood which, as you know, builders regularly require for the interior of boats, larch [?] and plane, there is a little of them to be found.
Athenian: That again is not a bad feature in the topography.
Clinias: How so?
Athenian: It is just as well that a society should have a difficulty in copying the practice of its antagonists to its own undoing.
Clinias: Now which of our results have you in view when you say that?
Athenian: Why, my dear sir, I would have you watch my procedure in the light of our opening observations about the single object of your Cretan institutions. You both affirmed more precisely that this object is military, whereas I rejoined that it is right enough that goodness should be the object of such institutions, but could not quite concede that their aim should be some part of goodness short of the whole. It is now the turn of both of you to follow me in my proposals, taking care that I enjoin nothing which does not tend to goodness, or some part of goodness.
1 Apparently a reference to 696a above.
2 Others render ‘does not tend to goodness, or tends only to a part of goodness’. But the ‘only’ is not in the Greek, and it is more in keeping with idiom that, in the absence of such a word, the negative μή should be taken as extending to both alternatives.
Thus, you see, Homer was too well aware what a bad thing it
When thou biddest draw down the fair-benched ships to the sea while the battle and din encompass us, that the Trojans, fain as they are, may have their desire yet more fulfilled, and sheer destruction fall on ourselves. For when the ships are drawing seaward the Achaeans will not cleave to the battle, but look askance from it and flinch from the onset; then will counsel such as thou givest prove our bane.
1 The annual tribute of seven noble youths and the same number of maidens as victims for the Minotaur was a fixed datum of the legend. Cf. Phaedo, 58a 3.
2 Quoted, with trifling inaccuracies, from Iliad, Ξ 96-102.
Clinias: It is hardly possible it should. And yet, sir, it was the sea-fight at Salamis between Hellenes and non-Hellenes which was the salvation of Hellas—or so, at least, we say here in Crete.
Athenian: To be sure that is what mankind at large say, Greeks or otherwise. But we—that is to say, Megillus here and myself—insist that the deliverance of Hellas was begun by one engagement on land, that at Marathon, and completed by another, that at Plataea; moreover these victories made better men of the Hellenes, whereas the others did not, if such language is permissible about actions which contributed to the deliverance of those times. (You see I am ready to throw you in the naval engagement at Artemisium along with the action at Salamis.) The fact is, the object we are keeping in view in our present investigations into topography and legislation is the moral worth of a social system; we do not agree with the multitude that the most precious thing in life is bare preservation in existence; we hold, as I think we have said before, that it is better to become thoroughly good and to remain so as long as existence lasts.
Clinias: Surely, surely.
Athenian: Then the one and only point we have to consider is whether our treatment of settlements and legal enactments is following the same lines—the best for a society.
Clinias: Indeed far the best.
Athenian: Then tell me, in the next place, what is the population for which you are to construct a settlement? Is it made up of volunteers from all parts of Crete—the masses in the various
1 Adopting Badham’s emendation σωτηρίᾳς for σωτηρίᾳ at 707a 5. The difficulty of which Plato speaks seems to be that of discriminating between the merits of individual contributors to a victory, as it is implied could be done in the case of an infantry engagement. The ‘naval honours’ have to be indiscriminately apportioned among a host of claimants, and thus recognition goes to the wrong man.
Clinias: They will most likely come from all over Crete; of other Hellenes, Peloponnesians seem to have had the warmest welcome as settlers. In fact, it is true, as you were just saying, that we have emigrants from Argos among us, and among them the most distinguished of our societies of the present day, that of Gortyn;
Athenian: Well, it is not such an easy matter for a state to deal with a settlement when it is not formed, like a swarm of bees, by the emigration of a single stock from a single territory, with friendly feeling on both sides, under the stress of insufficient territory, or the pressure of some similar necessity. Sometimes, again, one section of a community may be driven to expatriate itself by the violence of party strife, and there has been the case of a whole society going into exile because it had been utterly crushed by an overwhelming attack. Now in one way the work of settlement and legislation is the easier in all these cases, but in another the harder. The unity of descent, speech, and institutions certainly promotes friendly feeling, since it involves the community in religious ceremonies and the like, but is not readily tolerant of novel laws or a constitution different from that of the home-land, while a group which has, perhaps, been driven into faction by the badness of the laws, yet still clings, from force of habit, to the very practices which had already led to its undoing, proves recalcitrant to the founder and his legislation, and refuses obedience. On the other side, a stock due to a confluence of various elements may perhaps be more willing to submit to novel laws, but it is a difficult business, and takes a long time for it to ‘breathe and blow in unison’, as the proverbial phrase has it of a pair of horses. No, in very truth to make a legislation or found a society is the perfect consummation of manly excellence.
1 Since the Peloponnesian Gortyn was in Arcadia, the Athenian apparently falls into a momentary oversight in speaking as though its citizens were of Argive descent.
2 This seems to be the sense of the MSS. text, but it is tempting to adopt Badham’s τελεώτατων for the τελεώτατον of 708d 7, ‘to make a legislation…is work for men of consummate excellence’.
Clinias: No doubt, but you might explain the point of the remark a little more clearly.
Athenian: Why, my dear man, I suspect my reiterated reflections about legislators will lead me to say something which is partly derogatory; still, if the remark is pertinent, no harm will be done. After all, why should I scruple at it; it is much what might be said about all human concerns.
Clinias: What is it you have in your mind?
Athenian: I was on the brink of saying that man never legislates at all; our legislation is always the work of chance and infinitely various circumstance. Constitutions are wrecked and laws revolutionized by the violence of war, or the helplessness of sheer destitution. Again, innovations are often forced on us by disease, in the case of the visitations of pestilence, or of protracted and recurrent periods of insalubrious weather.
Clinias: And what is that?
Athenian: That God is all, while chance and circumstance, under God, set the whole course of life for us, and yet we must allow for the presence of a third and more amenable partner, skill. Thus I should count it no small advantage that the navigator’s skill should cooperate with circumstance in a tempest; would not you?
Clinias: Naturally.
Athenian: Now the same thing will hold good for the other cases, and so we should make the same admission in the case of legislation. Granting the concurrence of the local conditions necessary for a fortunate settlement, such a community necessarily pre-supposes the appearance of a true legislator.
Clinias: Beyond all doubt.
Athenian: Thus one who has the skill called for by any of the contingencies we have mentioned will also know well enough what form of fortune to pray for, that he may be dependent on nothing further besides his own skill.
Clinias: To be sure.
1 Either the grammar of the sentence suffers from want of final revision, or we must accept Stallbaum’s correction of ἀκαιρίαι (709a 7) to ἀκαιρίαις. The two causes of disease contemplated are the introduction of ‘plague’ from abroad, and the persis ence of unhealthy weather at home.
Athenian: And any of the other professionals we have mentioned could, no doubt, tell us, if we asked them, what it is they are praying for?
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: And presumably, then, a legislator could do so, too.
Clinias: Presumably.
Athenian: ‘Come, then, legislator’—let us so apostrophize him—‘what must we give you—I mean what social conditions—if their provision is to make you competent to model your society for the rest by your own efforts?’
Clinias: Now I wonder what is the right reply.
Athenian: You understand we are speaking in the name of the legislator?
Clinias: Yes.
Athenian: Then here is the answer. ‘Give me a society’, he will say, ‘which is under an autocrat, but let that autocrat be young, of retentive memory, quick to learn, and temperamentally bold and high-souled. Also, if all these advantages are to be of any service, they must be further attended in the autocrat’s
Clinias: I think, Megillus, what our friend means by this accompaniment is temperance. Am I right, sir?
Athenian: Yes, Clinias, temperance in the popular sense of the word, not in that high and forced sense in which temperance might be said to be the same thing with wisdom. ’Tis a native surface quality which shows in mere children and animals that some of them have no self-restraint in the matter of pleasures, and others have—a quality, as we said, of no great account when divorced from the various other goods. You take me, no doubt?
Clinias: Why, certainly.
Athenian: Very well; our autocrat must have that endowment as well as all those we have named, if the society is to achieve the constitution which will bring felicity into its life with maximum speed and success. I assure you there neither is, nor can be, any better and more rapid way to the settlement of the constitution.
Clinias: Nay, sir, how or by what argument can a man possibly persuade himself of the truth of such a doctrine?
Athenian: Why, surely, Clinias, it is easy enough to see how natural it is that it should be so.
Clinias: What is the theory, once more? There is to be an
Athenian: And, you must add, fortunate—fortunate, that is, in the single point that there is a contemporary legislator of distinction with whom chance has brought him in contact; with that one coincidence, God has done his utmost towards his purpose of heaping blessings on a community. The next best thing would be that there should be a pair of such potentates; it would be third best, and so on proportionately more difficult, the more of them there were, and vice versa.
Clinias: The best state, as I understand you, might arise out of an autocracy, provided, that is, there were a consummate legislator and an autocrat of disciplined character, and the transition to it would be particularly easy and rapid in that case, less so from an oligarchy—is not that your meaning?—and still less from a democracy.
Athenian: By no means; the readiest starting-point would be autocracy, the next best, constitutional monarchy, the next best again, democracy of a kind; oligarchy would come fourth, and only admits of such a development with great difficulty, for there the number of persons of influence is greatest. The occasion for it, mark you, is provided, according to us, when nature produces a real legislator who happens to share power of a kind with the most influential personsin society. Where,
Clinias: What? This is more than we can follow.
Athenian: Yet the point has been made, unless I am mistaken, more than once already. But perhaps you and your friend have never observed a society under an autocrat.
Clinias: And I must say I have no particular desire to do so, either.
Athenian: If you did, you would certainly remark the presence of the feature I first spoke of.
Clinias: What feature?
Athenian: An autocrat who desires to make a change in the tone of public life has no laborious or protracted task: he has only to take in his own person the first steps on the road—be it the path to virtue or to vice—into which he would guide the community; he must first set the copy of his own conduct, awarding credit and distinctions to one course, discredit to another, and disgracing the refractory in the various departments of conduct.
Clinias: But why should you suppose that the rest of society will be so quick to follow the example of the wielder of this combined persuasion and coercion?
Athenian: O my friends, never let yourselves be persuaded that there is any speedier or easier way to change the laws of a community than the personal guidance of those in authority; there is none today, and will be none hereafter. No, it is not there that we shall find the impossibility or difficulty; the true difficulty lies in the occurrence of something which has been uncommon enough in the whole course of history, but never happens without bringing a whole infinity of blessings to the society in which it occurs.
Clinias: Now I wonder what this may be.
Athenian: The awakening of a heaven-sent passion for ways of temperance and justice in persons of the highest station, monarchs, for example, or men of exceptionally outstanding wealth or family, or, it may be, in one who recalls the qualities of Nestor who is said to have towered above all his contemporaries even more by his temperance than by his eloquence.
Clinias: But why so?
Athenian: Suppose we apply the parable to your city and try to
1 The contingency contemplated is that of a democratic leader who is also a man of outstanding moral genius, a greater Pericles.
2 ἢ νῦν ἡμῶν ἔστιν τις, 711e 5. As the words stand they can only mean ‘if one of us three should be such a man’, but the sense requires ‘if there should be such a man alive today’. This is given by Stallbaum’s proposal to insert ἐφ before ἡμῶν, but the slip may be the author’s.
3 The point of comparison with an oracle lies in the structure of the preceding sentence, ‘when so-and-so happens, then expect such-and-such consequences’. This is a familiar oracular formula, the ‘when’ clause usually stating a paradoxical conjunction of circumstances. Thus Plato’s point is the extreme rarity and improbability of the conjunction of power and moral greatness in the same person.
Clinias: En avant, then, and a truce to all delays!
Athenian: Of course we must invoke God’s presence at our foundation. So may he hear us and come, gracious and debonair, to our help as we construct our city and its laws!
Clinias: Amen to that!
Athenian: And pray what type of constitution are we proposing to impose on our society?
Clinias: But what do you mean by that question? You should put it a little more plainly. You mean, is it to be a democracy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy? You surely cannot be thinking of an autocracy, or at least my friend and I can hardly credit it.
Athenian: Come now, which of those names describes your own constitution? I wonder which of you will be the readier with his answer.
Megillus: As I am the elder man, perhaps it would be fairer that I should speak first?
Clinias: Yes, I think so.
Megillus: Why, sir, when I consider our Lacedaemonian constitution, I really cannot tell you off-hand which would be the proper name for it. It actually seems to have its resemblances to an autocracy (in fact, the power of our ephors is astonishingly autocratic), and yet at times I think it looks like the most democratic of all societies. Again, it would be sheer paradox to deny that it is an aristocracy, while yet again, a feature of it is a life-monarchy, asserted by all mankind, as well as ourselves, to be the very oldest of such institutions. When the question is put to me,
Clinias: I find myself in the same perplexity as you, Megillus. I am quite at a loss to identify our Cnossian constitution confidently with any of them.
Athenian: That, my friends, is because you enjoy real constitutions, whereas the types we have specified are not constitutions, but settlements enslaved to the domination of some component section, each taking its designation from the dominant factor. But if a society must take its name from such a quarter, the proper course is to call it by the name of the god who is the master of rational men.
Clinias: And what god is that?
1 Reading with Madvig ἀνερωτηθείς at 712e 4.
Athenian: Perhaps we may need to employ parable a little longer, if I am to answer the question to your full satisfaction.
Clinias: Oh, so that is the way we must proceed, is it?
Athenian: Certainly. Why, long before the time of the societies whose foundation we have discussed, in the age of Cronus—so they say—there was a much earlier form of settled government, and a very happy one, which is reflected in the best of our present-day communities.
Clinias: Then, I should say, we must very decidedly be told about it.
Athenian: Certainly, in my own judgment, and that is the very reason why I have brought it into the argument.
Clinias: Very properly, too, and, seeing how relevant it is, you will do right to tell the whole story.
Athenian: I must do as you propose. Well, according to the received tradition, in that age of bliss, all life needs was provided in abundance and unsought, and the reason, we are told, was this. Cronus was of course aware that, as we have explained, no human being is competent to wield an irresponsible control over mankind without becoming swollen with pride and unrighteousness. Being alive to this he gave our communities as their kings and magistrates, not men but spirits, beings of diviner and superior kind, just as we still do the same with our flocks of sheep and herds of other domesticated animals: we do not set oxen to manage oxen, or goats to manage goats; we, their betters in kind, act as their masters ourselves. Well, the god, in his kindness to man, did the same; he set over us this superior race of spirits who took charge of us with no less ease to themselves than convenience to us, providing us with peace and mercy, sound law and unscanted justice, and endowing the families of mankind with internal concord and happiness. So the story teaches us today, and teaches us truly, that when a community is ruled not by God but by man, its members have no refuge from evil and misery; we should do our utmost—this is the moral—to reproduce the life of the ‘age of Cronus’,
1 We are to regard the word νόμος (law) as derived from νέμειν in the sense of to divide, apportion, not in the sense of to practise (a custom). I doubt whether it is further meant that there is any linguistic connection between νέμειν and νοῦς (understanding). The thought is that in real life it is ‘understanding’ within the soul which acts as the vicar of an unseen God.
But when a single person, an oligarchy, or a democracy with a soul set on their pleasures and passions and lusting for their satisfaction—a soul that cannot contain itself, and is in the grip of unending and insatiate disease—when such a one tramples law under his feet and takes command of an individual or society, then, as I was just saying, all hope of deliverance is gone. That is my thesis, Clinias, and we have to consider whether it convinces us or not.
Clinias: Convinces us? Of course it does.
Athenian: Then are you acquainted with a theory that there are as many types of law as of constitution? And we have just seen how many types of constitution there are in the popular view. And pray believe me that the issue now at stake is no trifle, but of paramount moment. We are back again at the question of the standard of right and wrong. The standard of our laws, it is said, should be neither war nor a goodness as a whole; whatever the existing constitution may be, the law should look to its interest, its permanent security against dissolution, and the best way to define real justice would be to say—
Clinias: To say what?
Athenian: That it is the interest of the sovereign.
Clinias: You must explain yourself rather more clearly.
Athenian: And so I will. They say, you know, that the laws in a society are always enacted by the dominant section?
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Well then, it is said, can you imagine that when the populace, or some other political party, or an autocrat, if you like, has got the upper hand, the victorious side will, of its own accord, enact laws with any principal aim but its own interest in the permanence of its authority?
Clinias: Of course not.
Athenian: And if a man contravenes these enactments, their author will punish him for his violation of justice, meaning by justice these same enactments.
Clinias: So I should apprehend.
Athenian: These enactments, then, will in every case be justice, and for these reasons.
Clinias: Yes; according to this account of the matter.
Athenian: In fact, this is one of our former principles of sovereignty.
Clinias: Principles? What principles?
Athenian: Why, the claims to authority which we passed under
1 The same definition which is given by Thrasymachus in Republic I, where it is defended, in the first instance, by the same reasoning.
Clinias: Yes, that is certainly what we said before.
Athenian: Now consider to which side
Clinias: What situation is that?
Athenian: After a contest for office, the victorious side engrosses the conduct of public affairs so completely to itself that no share whatsoever of office is left to the vanquished, or even to their descendants; each party watches the other in jealous apprehension of insurrection, due to the attainment of office by someone with memories of past wrongs. Such societies, we are now, of course, contending, are no constitutional states, just as enactments, so far as they are not for the common interest of the whole community, are no true laws; men who are for a party, we say, are factionaries, not citizens, and their so-called rights are empty words. And our reason for saying it is that you and I have no intention of conferring an office in your society on any one for his wealth, or his possession of some similar advantage, such as physical strength, stature, or family. It is, we hold, the man who is most perfect in obedience to established law, the man whose victory over his fellow-citizens takes that form, to whom we should give the function of ministry to the gods,
1 ποτέροις, 715a 4, The ‘sides’ are that of parents, elders, nobly born…on the one hand, that of progeny, juniors, the common folk…on the other. The answer to the question is, in effect, that we are not espousing the claims of either ‘side’.
2 The meaning is, that office, as it should be won by obedience to the laws, is itself a life of service to the law; the reward for service is higher service. The speaker, in view of what he has already said of law or the ‘voice of God’ expresses this thought by calling ‘office’ the service of God.
Clinias: Right, sir, right in God’s name! You have the long sight of your years.
Athenian: Why, yes; a man is always most short-sighted in such matters in youth, and most far-sighted in age.
Clinias: Yes, indeed.
Athenian: Well, and our next step? May we not assume our settlers to be here in the country and under our eyes, and address the rest of our discourse to them in person?
Clinias: By all means.
Athenian: ‘My friends!’
Clinias: So much is plain; every man must purpose to be of the company who follow after the god.
Athenian: ‘What line of conduct, then, is dear to God and a following of him? There is but one, and it is summed up in one ancient rule, the rule that “like”—when it is a thing of due measure—“loves its like.” (For things that have no measure can be loved neither by one another nor by those that have.) Now it is God who is, for you and me, of a truth the “measure of all things,” much more truly then, as they say, “man.” So he who would be loved by such a being must himself become such to the utmost of his might, and so, by this argument, he that is temperate among us is loved by God, for he is like God,
1 From this point the speaker imagines himself to be delivering to the prospective citizens of the Cretan colony a general preliminary address on the principles of sound social morality, which is to serve as a preamble to the code of laws. The rddress is broken oh at 719a 4 by a digression justifying such preambles, but is resumed again at the opening of the next book (726), and only formally concluded at 734e 2.
1 717b 6. I would, with Hermann and England (and probably Ficinus), read οἷς (for ὡς) θέμις.
Clinias: And what result may that be?
Athenian: I should wish the subjects to give a ready audience to persuasions to virtue, and plainly this is the effect at which our legislator will aim throughout his legislation.
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: Well, it struck me that what we have said might do some service—if our words have not been an appeal to utterly brutal souls—towards gaining a civil and friendly hearing. So, as I say,
1 Inserting δεῖν, with Apelt, after δεῖγμα at 718b 7.
2 Reading with Vermehren φημὶ for the φημὶν of the MSS., Burnet and others.
Clinias: And a fine saying it is, too.
Athenian: Yes, no doubt. But I should like to propose to your common consideration the effect our foregoing argument has produced on myself.
Clinias: Then let us hear it.
Athenian: Well, let us address our remarks to the legislator, thus: ‘Tell us one thing, legislator. If you knew what we ought to do and say, you would tell us what it is. Surely that is manifest?’
Clinias: Of course it is.
Athenian: ‘Well, but did we not hear you not so long ago pronouncing that a legislator must not permit poets to compose whatever they please. For they are not likely to know where they may contradict the law to the detriment of the society.’
Clinias: I must admit that it is the fact.
Athenian: Then suppose we put the case for the poets to him; I wonder whether it might fairly be stated thus?
Clinias: How?
Athenian: As follows: ‘’Tis an old story, legislator, which we poets are always telling with the universal approval of the rest of the world, that when a poet takes his seat on the Muse’s tripod, his judgment takes leave of him. He is like a fountain which gives free course to the rush of its waters, and since representation is of the essence of his art, must often contradict his own utterances in his presentations of contrasted characters, without knowing whether the truth is on the side of this speaker or of that. Now it is not the legislator’s business in his law to make two such statements about one and the same topic; he has regularly to deliver himself of one pronouncement on one matter. Take, as an example, one of the very topics on which you have just delivered yourself. A funeral may be extravagant, it may be mean, it may be decently modest. You select one and only one of those types, the intermediate type, for universal imposition and unrestricted commendation. But, in my case, if my poem dealt with an opulent woman and her instructions for her own funeral, I should commend extravagance, whereas a frugal poor man would be for parsimony, and a man of moderate estate and modest personality would have
1 Hesiod, Works and Days, 287 ff.
Clinias: Truly said, indeed.
Athenian: Then is our appointed law-maker to set no such prefatory statement in front of his code? Is he just to tell us curtly what we are to do or not to do, add the threat of a penalty, and then turn to the next enactment, without one word of exhortation
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: All bear the name, whether freemen or slaves who gain their professional knowledge by watching their masters and obeying their directions in empiric fashion, not in the scientific way in which freemen learn their art and teach it to their pupils. You agree that there are those two types of so-called physicians?
Clinias: Certainly I do.
Athenian: Now have you further observed that, as there are slaves as well as freemen among the patients of our communities, the slaves, to speak generally, are treated by slaves, who pay them a hurried visit, or receive them in dispensaries? A physician of this kind never gives a servant any account of his complaint, nor asks him for any; he gives him some empiric injunction with an air of finished knowledge, in the brusque fashion of a dictator, and then is off in hot haste to the next ailing servant; that is how he lightens his master’s medical labours for him. The free practitioner, who, for the most part, attends free men, treats their diseases by going into things thoroughly from the beginning in a scientific way, and takes the patient and his family into his confidence. Thus he learns something from the sufferers, and at the same time instructs the invalid to the best of his powers. He does not give his prescriptions until he has
1 ἐπαινέσoι of the MSS. is grammatically impossible at 719 e 3. If, like Burnet, we adopt Bekker’s ἐπαινέσαι I think the sense will probably be ‘would commend a funeral like himself’ (i.e. one neither mean nor gorgeous). I adopt Badham’s ἐπαινoίη σοι (but suspect Plato wrote it ἐπαινoῖ σοι).
Clinias: Nay, sir, the double process is vastly superior.
Athenian: Then would you like us to consider the two methods, the double and the single, in their application to legislation itself?
Clinias: To be sure I should.
Athenian: Then, I ask you, what will be the first law our legislator will enact? Is not his natural course to begin with an ordinance regulating the first stage in the creation of a society?
Clinias: Why, of course.
Athenian: And the first stage in the creation of any society is surely conjugal conjunction and association?
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: Presumably, then, if the legislation of any society is to be sound and right it must start with a marriage-law.
Clinias: I quite agree.
Athenian: Then let us state that law in the simple form first; it might run to some such effect as this:
Item: A man to marry when he has reached the age of thirty and before he comes to that of thirty-five;
That may be taken as the simple form of our law of marriage; its double form we may word thus:
Item: A man to marry when he has reached the age of thirty and before he comes to that of thirty-five, bethinking him that there is a sense in which mankind naturally partakes of immortality, a prize our nature makes desirable to all of us in its every form; for to win renown and not lie in our graves without a name is a desire of this. Thus the race of man is Time’s equal twin and companion, bound up with him in a union never to be broken, and the manner of their immortality is in this wise: by succession of generations the race abides one and the same, so
1 Thirty is also mentioned as the age at which a man should begin to think of marrying at 785b; at 772e twenty-five is given as the ‘under limit’ of the period during which a man should marry. This is one of a number of small inconsistencies which confirm the tradition that the text of the Laws received no final revision.
You have heard this law set by the side of that, and are now in case to judge universally whether our laws, thus joining persuasion to menace, should be, at the very least, of double length, or should confine themselves to menace and so be of half the length.
Megillus: To prefer the concise, sir, is ever our Laconian way; yet were I bidden to decide which of these statutes of yours
Clinias: My thanks for your words, Megillus.
Athenian: Why, to raise debate about a number of syllables more or less were, indeed, futile—it is quality, I take it, not length or brevity we should prize; ’tis the matter of the one kind of law just mentioned that is of more than double excellence in use, by comparison with the other. As I said but now, our illustration of the two types of physicians was exactly apposite. Yet, in despite of us, none of our legislators would seem ever to have remarked that they rely wholly on one instrument in their work, whereas there are two available, so far as the mass’s lack of education will permit, persuasion and compulsion. Authority
Clinias: And pray what may it be?
1 πειθοῖ κεραννύντες τὴν μάχην (722c). μάχην, the reading of all MSS., is corrupt. For purposes of translation I adopt Stallbaum’s suggestion, ἀρχήν, which seems to me palaeographically superior to Ast’s ἀνάγκην.
2 The third requisite is that suggested by the language of 722d, ‘system, ‘method’. ‘Before making a law, we must be clear about the principle on which it is to be made’ (England).
Athenian: Why, it has been providentially disclosed by our own conversation today. Since we began our talk of law, daybreak has given place to noonday, and we have reached this delightful arbour, and all our conversation has been exclusively of laws; yet I fancy we are only now beginning to talk laws; all we have said hitherto has been but preambles to laws. Now why do I say this? Because I would observe that discourse and vocal utterance of every kind have their preludes, their preliminaries, as I might say, preliminaries which furnish a useful methodical introduction to the coming performance. High-wrought and elaborate preludes are prefixed, for example, to the so-called ‘nomes’ for the harp, and to musical compositions in general, whereas in the case of what we regard as the real ‘nomes’, the laws of the community, no one has ever uttered the name, nor constructed or published anything of the kind; it is taken for granted that such a thing does not exist. Yet our present conversation, I believe, suggests that it does; the deliverances which impressed me just now as laws of double length are not, I think, just precisely that; they contain two things at once, a law and the prelude to it. The ‘dictatorial prescription’ in tones
Clinias: I, too, would urge a legislator who understands his business to do the work in this fashion and no other.
Athenian: I thoroughly agree with you, Clinias, as far as this. All laws have their preambles, and any one who is beginning the work of legislation should prefix to each section the preamble appropriate to the whole subject; the pronouncement he is about to make is no trifle, and it will make a great difference whether it can be distinctly remembered or not. Yet we should
Clinias: I fully agree with you. But, pray, sir, let us waste no more time in delay. Let us go back to our argument and make a start, if you please, with what you said a while ago, though not as an avowed preamble. Let us begin it all over again, as they say in games, with a better ‘second shot’, on the understanding that we are no longer constructing a casual argument, but a preamble; let us begin, I say, with the admission that we are making our preamble. As for the worship of the gods and the service of our progenitors, what has been already said is adequate enough, but we must try to pursue the theme further until you feel that our whole prelude is sufficiently complete; then, and not before, you shall rehearse the actual statutes.
Athenian: Good, then; our preamble, as we are now agreed, has already dealt adequately with gods, subordinate powers, and ancestors living and dead. As I understand you, you want me to throw some light on such parts of the subject as we have not yet touched.
Clinias: Precisely.
Athenian: Why, in the next place, it is proper and to their common highest interest that speaker and hearers should do their utmost to achieve their own education by meditation on their duties of effort and remission in all that concerns mind, body, and substance. Whence these, and no others, are doubtless the matters of which we must next speak and hear.
Clinias: Very true.
Laws, Book V
Athenian: Listen then, all ye who but now gave ear to our discourse of gods and well-beloved sires. Of all a man has—after his gods—the divinest thing, and the most truly his own, is his soul. Now things which pertain to any man are ever of two sorts,
1 In 726 l. 4 I follow a suggestion, made in Dr. England’s notes, to replace the full stop after πᾶσιν by a comma.
There is nothing, then, of all a man owns so natively quick as the soul to shun the evil but follow on the trail of the chief good, win it, and spend the rest of a lifetime at home with it. Whence we have given the soul the second place in honour. The third, and so much must be plain to any vision, belongs to due honour to the body. But next it must be asked, what various honours there are, which of them ring true, which are counterfeit? and here is a task for our legislator. He will suggest, I think, that they are these and the like: the body to be honoured is not the
We have now fairly reviewed a man’s relations to parents, to himself, his possessions, his city, his friends, his kindred, to aliens and to countrymen, and must next in order consider what manner of man he must himself be to pass through life with full credit; we come to speak now, of the effects not of law, but of education through commendation and reproach in making men more amenable and well-disposed towards the laws we are hereafter to enact. Now of all things good, truth holds the first place among gods and men alike; for him who is to know felicity and happiness, my prayer is that he may be endowed with it from the first, that he may live all the longer a true man. For such a man is trusty, whereas he that loves voluntary deception is untrustworthy, and he that loves involuntary, a fool, and neither lot is to be envied. For, sure, the traitor or the fool is a man of no friends; course of time discovers him and he prepares for himself utter loneliness in the trials of age at the end of his days, so living equally destitute of companions and children, whether they survive or not. Honour is due to him who himself does no wrong, but he that will not so much as suffer another to do it merits twofold and more than twofold honour; the first has the worth of one man, the second, who reveals the wrong-doing of others to the authorities, the worth of many.
1 One’s engagements with the ‘foreigner’ are not sustained by the law of one’s own State, and international law did not exist in the fourth century BC. Since an engagement is therefore regularly placed under a ‘religious sanction’, the particular deities invoked to be witnesses to its good faith will vary with circumstances, but they are all to be regarded as agents of the supreme God as the power who ultimately expects loyalty to the word once passed, Zeus in his capacity of ‘protector of aliens’.
2 This is not to be understood as an encouragement to the professional informer. It is meant that a man does not do the whole of his duty by abstaining from personal infractions of other men’s rights. It is also a good citizen’s business to ‘expose’ injustice and to second the authorities in their attempts to suppress it.
But of all faults of soul the gravest is one which is inborn in most men, one which all excuse in themselves and none therefore attempts to avoid, that conveyed in the maxim that ‘every
There are also minor and often formulated, but no less salutary, rules which must be kept in mind by repetition. For where waters, as we may say, are wasted by emission there must always be a balancing immission, and recall is the immission which makes waste of wisdom good. This is why there must be restraint of unseasonable laughter and tears and each of us must urge his fellow to consult decorum by utter concealment of all excess of joy or grief, whether the breeze of fortune is set fair, or, by a shift of circumstance, the fortunes of an enterprise are confronted by a mountain of difficulty. It should be our constant hope that God, by the blessings He bestows, will lighten the troubles that come upon us, and change our present state for the better, while, with Heaven’s favour, the very reverse will always be true of our blessings. These are the hopes, and these and the like the meditations, in which each of us should live, sparing no pains, alike in work and in play, to bring them to his neighbour’s confident recollection and to his own.
We have now dealt pretty completely with what divinity has to say of the institution which ought to be established, and the personal character to which all should aspire; on purely human considerations we have not touched, and yet we must; it is to men, not to gods, we are speaking. Nothing is so native to men as pleasure, pain, and desire; they are, so to say, the very wires or strings from which any mortal nature is inevitably and absolutely dependent. We have therefore to commend the
What lives, then, are there, and how many, from which, on a review of the desirable and undesirable, a selection must be made and erected into a self-imposed law, if the choice of the course which is pleasant and attractive as well as virtuous and noble may lead to an existence of supreme human felicity? We shall, of course, name the life of temperance as may count that of wisdom as another, that of courage as another, and that of health as another, thus making four in all, against which we may set four other types, the lives of folly, cowardice,
Here our discourse by way of prelude to our legislation may come to its end; after the prelude, of course, must come the composition itself,
1 A play on the two senses of νόμος, ‘musical composition’ and ‘law’.
But before we come to any of these subjects, the following observations should be made. A man who takes in hand a herd of animals, a shepherd, neatherd, horse-breeder, or the like, will never dream of trying to tend that herd without first submitting the group to the purgation proper to it; he will separate the sound animals from the sickly, the thoroughbreds from the mongrels, removing the latter to other herds, and exercising his tendance on the former, since he is well aware that, unless he thus purges his stock, he will have endless and fruitless trouble with bodies and minds already degenerate by nature or ill management, which will further communicate a taint to the sound and unimpaired in body and disposition in the various herds. With the lower animals this does not so much matter—they only call for mention by way of an illustration—but in the case of man it is of the first concern to the legislator to discover and explain the method of procedure appropriate to various cases, in this matter of purgation as well as in all his other dealings with them. For instance, in the business of social purgation, the case stands thus: there are many ways of effecting a purgation, some of them milder, some sharper; some—the sharpest and best of all—will be at the disposal of one who is at once autocrat and legislator, but a legislator who establishes a new society and new laws with less than autocratic power will be well satisfied if he can so much as reach his end of purgation by the mildest of methods. The best method of all, like the most potent medicines, is painful; it is that which effects correction by the combination of justice with vengeance, and carries its vengeance, in the last instance, to the point of death or exile, usually with the result of clearing society of its most dangerous members, great and incurable offenders. The milder method of purgation we may describe much as follows: persons who, from want of the means of subsistence, show themselves
Do not forget that we enjoy the same good fortune on which we congratulated the foundation of the Heraclids, escape from cruel and dangerous controversy about confiscating of estates, cancellation of debts, and redistribution of property. In an old-established society, when legislation of this kind has become inevitable, innovation and refusal to innovate prove, in a way, alike impossible; room is left for little more than pious wishes and insensible and cautious modification by slow and gradual advances in the following direction. Among the innovators there should always be a section with extensive property in land and numerous debtors, who are not indisposed to share their advantages in a liberal spirit with the distressed by a remission of debts and redistribution of estates, thus evincing a certain regard for moderation, and showing their conviction that poverty consists not so much in the diminution of one’s property as in the intensification of one’s cupidity. This conviction is the surest of all sources of social security, a firm foundation for the subsequent erection of any political superstructure
1 The ‘euphemism’ does not lie in calling the ‘relief measure’ a ‘colonization’, but in using the word ‘relief’ itself about a proceeding which we might call a ‘good riddance of bad rubbish’.
Let us say, then, once for all, that escape must be sought in the combination of justice with freedom from avarice; there is no road to deliverance, broad or narrow, on other lines, and we must take the principle as a buttress of our society. In fact, properties must be fixed by some system which excludes recriminations among their owners; otherwise, any man of any intelligence will refuse to go further, if he can help it, with a social system for a population among whom there are long-standing mutual jealousies. In persons who have, like ourselves at this moment, the providential opportunity to found a new society where there are as yet no internal hostilities, to introduce such hostilities by the distribution of land and houses would be a combination of sheer depravity with superhuman folly.
What, then, would be the right method of distribution? First we must fix the total number of the citizens at the suitable figure; next we must come to an agreement about their distribution, the number and size of the sections into which they should be subdivided; the land and houses should be partitioned among these sections as equally as may be. What would be a satisfactory total for the population is more than can be rightly said without consideration of the territory and the neighbouring communities. The territory should be large enough for the adequate maintenance of a certain number of
Let us assume—to take a convenient number—that we have five thousand and forty landholders, who can be armed to fight for their holdings, and that the territory and houses are likewise divided among the same number, so that there will be
1 In 736e 7, I follow England, and depart from Burnet’s text, in regarding τῆς μεταβάσεως as a mistaken gloss intended to explain the preceding ταύτης.
2 At 737d 1 I would read ποσοὺς with Ficinus, Stephanus, and England, for the πόσους of the MSS. retained by Burnet.
These facts of number, then, must be thoroughly mastered at leisure by those whose business the law will make it to understand them—they will find them exactly as I have stated them—and they must be mentioned by the founder of a city, for the reason I shall now give. Whether a new foundation is to be created from the outset or an old one restored, in the matter of gods and their sanctuaries—what temples must be founded in a given community, and to what gods or spirits they should be dedicated—no man of sense will presume to disturb convictions inspired from Delphi, Dodona, the oracle of Ammon, or by old traditions of any kind of divine appearances or reported divine revelations, when those convictions have led to the establishment of sacrifice and ritual (whether original and indigenous, or borrowed from Etruria, Cyprus, or elsewhere), the consequent consecration by the tradition of oracles, statues, altars, and shrines, and the provision for each of these of its sacred precinct. A legislator should avoid the slightest interference with all such matters; he should assign every district its patron god, or spirit, or hero,
1 The ‘hero’ is a ‘deceased human or semi-human ancestor who receives worship’.
Our next move in this business of legislation must be—like the moving of a man on the board from the ‘sacred line’—so singular that it may well surprise you on a first hearing.
The first-best society, then, that with the best constitution and code of law, is one where the old saying is most universally true of the whole society. I mean the saying that ‘friends’ property is indeed common property’. If there is now on earth, or ever should be, such a society—a community in women-folk,
1 In the game of πεττοί the line down the middle of the board was called the ‘sacred line’, and a piece was only moved from it in case of absolute necessity, when no other move was open. The general meaning is that persons who do not reflect on the limitations imposed on a legislator by circumstance will be surprised that Plato does not simply propose to enact every arrangement which he regards as ideal, and does establish many which he owns to be far from ideal. A man who really understands the position of a legislator will see that these are cases of a ‘forced move’. The distinction between the ‘second-’ and ‘third-best’ societies seems to be this: In any actual society the ‘inevitable imperfections of human nature’ will make it necessary to be content with something short of the ideal. A society in which there are no further drawbacks to be reckoned with is ‘second-best’. But there will often be circumstances, not to be avoided by the practical legislator, which will call for still further compromise. One such circumstance is indicated in the text. In the Cnossian colony, where so large a proportion of the settlers are Cretans, and the legislative commission Cretan also, one must allow for a certain ‘patriotic’ attachment to Cretan institutions as well as for the more general imperfections of humanity. This is what is meant by the references to a ‘third-best’.
First, then, let them make a division of lands and houses
1 I have left the last words of 739e 4, καὶ ἡ μία δευτέρως, untranslated. They have been supposed to mean ‘and truly one in a secondary degree’ (i.e. only less of a perfect unity than the ideal already described). But it seems more than doubtful whether such a sense, can be got out of the words. The proposal καὶ τιμία δευτέρως (Apelt, Bury) is palaeographically excellent, and gives the right general sense ‘and is honourable in the second degree’. But I do not feel sure that ἡ μία is not a simple error for ἡμῖν, and that a word like μακαριστή has not been accidentally omitted after δευτέρως (‘and deserves our felicitation in the second degree’).
Let us fancy, then, that we hear our present argument exhorting us in tones like these: Worthiest of men, see to it that you grow not slack in rendering the honour nature bids render to congruity and equality, identity and conformity, alike of number and of all that can produce fair and good effects. In especial you are herewith charged first, to keep fixed thoughout life the numbers prescribed you, and next to do no despite by mutual purchase and sale to the bulk and measure of substance assigned you at the first as your fitting portion; therein you will have against you the lot by which the division was made—and it is a god—and the lawgiver to boot. For first of all, our present law, with its warning that a man must take the lot, if so he
With these injunctions goes also a further law by which no possession of gold or silver is permitted to any private man, but only a currency for the purpose of daily exchange, such as is hardly to be avoided by craftsmen or any whose business it is to pay wages in such a kind to wage-earners, whether slaves or alien settlers; whence we shall lay it down that they must have an (internal) currency of value at home but worthless abroad. As for a common Hellenic currency, to meet the needs of campaigns and foreign expeditions, such as embassies or other necessary missions of State on which a man may be dispatched, to serve these various purposes the State must possess current Hellenic money. If a private man should ever be forced to travel in foreign parts, let him get leave of the magistrates before he departs, and if on his return he have coin from any foreign quarter left, let him deposit it with the State, receiving the equivalent in local currency; if he be found to be secreting it, let it be confiscated to the Treasury, and let any who is privy to the act and conceals it be liable equally with the importer to curse and reproach, and in addition to a fine of amount not less than the amount of foreign currency imported. Let there be no dowry whatsoever, given or received, in marrying or giving in
The object our laws had in view was that our people should be supremely happy and devotedly attached to one another, but citizens will never be thus attached where there are many suits at law between them, and numerous wrongs committed, but where both are rarest and of least consequence. Our society, we pronounce, must have neither gold nor silver, nor yet much making of profits from mechanic crafts, or usury, or raising of sordid beasts,
Let him who has obtained a lot, then, as we say, hold it on the conditions here stated. It had indeed been well that all settlers should further enter our colony with equal means of every kind. But since this cannot be, but one arrival will bring more property and another less, there must be classes of unequal census, and that on many grounds, and in particular because of the equal opportunities our society affords,
1 What Plato means by this expression we can only guess. C. Ritter’s guess (followed by Bury in his translation) that the objection is to the raising of fatted animals of all kinds for the table, and perhaps especially to the practice of castration for this object, is plausible, but of course conjectural.
2 The meaning is obscure, but seems to be rightly explained by C. Ritter. The conditions of life in Plato’s city make it fairly certain that superior wealth will be the fruit of a man’s own industry and thrift. The poorer citizens have an ‘equal chance’, if they like to use it, to improve their condition.
As a further consequence of what has preceded I would enact another law of the following type. In a society which is to be immune from the most fatal of disorders which might more properly be called distraction than faction, there must be no place for penury in any section of the population, nor yet for opulence, as both breed either consequence. Accordingly the legislator must now specify the limit in either direction. So let the limit on the side of penury be the value of an allotment; this must remain constant, and no magistrate, and no other person who is ambitious of a repute for goodness must connive, in any case, at its diminution. The legislator will take it as a measure, and permit the acquisition of twice, thrice, and as much as four times its value.
1 Aristotle (Politics, 1265b 23) understood this to mean that the whole property of the citizens of the richest class, including the patrimonial ‘allotment’, may amount at most to five times the value of the ‘allotment’; the maximum property of a citizen of the poorest class to twice that value.
2 The explanation of the frequent permission given in the Laws to lay information against offenders is that no Greek legal system knew anything of the office of ‘public prosecutor’. The initiative in bringing a criminal to justice was left to the individual citizen, Under such a system the laying of information became part of the duty of a public-spirited man.
Next, the founder must see that his city is placed as nearly as possible at the centre of the territory, after selecting a site possessed of the other favourable conditions for his purpose; (it will not be difficult to discover or to state them). Then he must divide his city into twelve parts; but first he should establish and enclose a sanctuary of Hestia, Zeus, and Athena—which he will call the citadel—from which he will draw his twelve divisions of the city and its whole territory. Equality of the twelve regions should be secured by making those of good soil small and those of worse soil larger. He should then make a division into five thousand and forty allotments. Each of these, again, should be bisected and two half-sections, a nearer and a remoter
But here is a consideration on which we must be careful to reflect. All the arrangements we have just proposed are never
1 The precise text and rendering are a little uncertain, though the meaning is clear. I take the words of 745c 6, τοῦ τε ἐγγὺς καὶ τοῦ πόρρω μετέχοντα ἑκάτερον, ‘either [half-section] partaking of the nearer and greater’, to mean simply being at a lesser or greater distance from the central town of the territory. In c 7 I omit the words εἷς κλῆρος (after Peipers) as probably a marginal annotation, since they will not construe.
2 φαυλότητός τε καὶ ἀρετῆς χώρας 745d 3, seems to me absolutely to require the insertion of a [πέρι] to give a construction, and I think with Bury that the most likely place for the insertion is after the τε.
3 Unless, as is possible, Plato has made a slip here in dictation, the νείμασθαι of 745d 5 should probably be emended, with England, to νεῖμαι.
Our immediate concern, now that we have resolved on the division into twelve parts, must be precisely to see in what conspicuous fashion these twelve parts, admitting, as they do, such a multitude of further
1 ἔχει δὴ τὰ τοιαῦτα οὐ κακῶς τινα τρόπον εἰρημένα, 746a 8. Others suppose that what ‘does not sound amiss’ is the criticism of the scheme just suggested.
2 I adopt Stallbaum’s suggestion αὖ for αὐτοῦ at 746d 5.
3 In 746d 6 I suspect that a τὰ has fallen out between καὶ and ἐκ.This would give the sense ‘with the subsequent groupings and those to which they give rise’.
Clinias: Admirably said, sir. I must certainly do as you recommend.
Laws, Book VI
Athenian: Well, now, your next business, after all that has now been dealt with, will presumably be to constitute the magistracies in your society.
Clinias: Why, of course it will.
Athenian: There are really two branches of social organization implied here: first there is the creation of offices and the appointment of the persons who are to fill them, the determination of the proper number of such posts and the proper manner of appointing to them; then, when this has been done, comes the assignment of the laws to the several offices, the decision which laws, how many, and of what type it is proper for each magistracy to administer. But before we make our election, we may pause a little while to lay down a principle of some relevance to the occasion.
Clinias: And what may this principle be?
Athenian: Why, it is this. Any one may surely see that, while legislation is a great achievement, if a well-equipped State gives its excellent laws into the charge of unqualified officials, not merely does no good come of all their excellence, and not only does the State become a general laughing-stock, but such societies are pretty sure to find their laws a source of the gravest detriment and mischief.
Clinias: Yes, surely.
Athenian: Why then, my friend, we must note the presence of this danger in the case of the society you are now contemplating, and its constitution. You see, no doubt, how necessary it is first that men who are to be rightly advanced to posts of power should, in every case, have been thoroughly put to the proof, themselves and their families, from earliest boyhood to the time of their election, and next that those who are to elect them should have been well trained by a schooling in law-abiding habits for the work of selecting with right approval, and rejecting with proper disapprobation, candidates who deserve either fate. But in this case how can men who have but recently come together and are unfamiliar with one another, and devoid of education into the bargain, be expected to choose their magistrates in an irreproachable fashion?
Clinias: Indeed, ’tis hardly possible.
Athenian: Still, when you are once in the ring, as they say, the time for excuses is past, and that is the case just now with you, and with me too. You with your nine colleagues, as I understand, have pledged yourselves to the Cretan people to throw your souls into the work of the foundation, and I, on my side,
Clinias: Very true, sir.
Athenian: Yes, and besides, I mean to do my best for you.
Clinias: Then, with all my heart, let us do as we say.
Athenian: So we will, with God’s permission, if we can get the better of our years so far.
Clinias: We may fairly count on God’s permission.
Athenian: To be sure we may. So with His help, let us make a further point.
Clinias: What point is that?
Athenian: What a spirited adventure our present experiment in founding a State will prove.
Clinias: Of what are you thinking in that remark, and why in particular do you make it?
Athenian: Of the light-hearted temerity with which we are legislating for the inexperienced in the hope that they will end by accepting our proposed enactments. Yet this much must be reasonably clear, Clinias, even to the not specially discerning, that no body of men will accept them readily from the first, but only if we could contrive to wait until those who have been given a taste of them in their boyhood, grown up under them, and become thoroughly at home with them come to play their part in choosing the whole body of public officials. But, mark you, this point once compassed, supposing there is any plan or device by which it can be truly secured, I believe a society so schooled would have an assured guarantee of survival well beyond that interval.
Clinias: That sounds reasonable enough.
Athenian: Well then, let us consider whether some such measure as this would be sufficient for our purpose. What I maintain, Clinias, is that it is the duty of you Cnossians, before all other Cretans, not merely to treat the soil you are now settling with all religious care, but to give unflagging attention to the
Clinias: Well, what measure or plan have we in contemplation for this?
Athenian: I will tell you. Sons of Crete, I declare it the Cnossians’ duty, in view of their leading position among your numerous cities, to join with the new arrivals in your settlement to elect a body of thirty-seven men in all from both sections, nineteen from
Clinias: But pray, sir, why have you not proposed a share in our citizenship for yourself and Megillus as well?
Athenian: Why, Clinias, Athens is a proud State and so is Sparta, and both are far away, but you have every proper qualification, as have also your fellow-founders. What has just been said about you is equally applicable to them. So much, then, for the most satisfactory procedure in our present circumstances; in course of time, if the constitution has survived, let the board be appointed by some such process as this. All shall have a voice in the election of these magistrates who bear arms in the cavalry or infantry and have served in the field as long as their age permitted. The election shall be held in the sanctuary regarded as most venerable by the State. Each voter shall deposit on the altar a tablet inscribed with the name of his nominee, his father, his tribe, and the ward to which he belongs, and subscribe his own name with the same particulars. Any one who pleases shall be permitted to remove any voting-tablet to the contents of which he has an objection and expose it in the market-place within not less than thirty days. The names found to head the poll, to the number of three hundred, shall then be exhibited by the authorities to the view of the whole community, and every citizen shall again vote for any of them he pleases, the officials once more publishing the hundred names which stand first. On the third occasion any one who pleases is to vote for any name he pleases of the hundred, passing between sacrificial victims; the seven-and-thirty who receive most
1 In 752d 7 I would, with England and others, keep the στῶσιν of the MSS. against Hermann’s ἱστῶσιν, adopted by Burnet.
Who, then, Megillus and Clinias, arc to institute all these regulations in our State about official posts and the scrutiny for them? We can see, I suppose, that there must be such persons in a society which is just beginning to ‘get under way’, but who they can be before there are any magistrates is a problem.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: Then as we are agreed on the point we must not pass it over in silence without making clear to ourselves how it should be set about. Though, for my own part, I am ready with no more than one observation which is needful and salutary at this juncture.
Clinias: And what is that?
Athenian: That the city we are about to found has, as I may say, neither father nor mother, other than the society which is founding it. Not that I forget that plenty of such foundations have often enough been, and will hereafter be, at variance with their founders. But as things stand at present, it is as it is with a child; even if he is some day to have his differences with his parents, yet while the helplessness of childhood lasts, he is attached to them and they to him; he is always running to his family and finds his only allies among his own relatives. Now I say the same connection is to be found all ready to our purpose between the Cnossians and our new State—thanks to their care for it—and between it and Cnossus. So I maintain, as I have already maintained—a sound thought is not spoiled by repetition—that the Cnossians must join in taking charge of all this business: they should co-opt not less than a hundred of the newly-
1 The object of this scrutiny, like that of the δοκιμασία of magistrates at Athens, is to ensure that every candidate who has survived the final stage shall really have the qualifications required for the office.
2 I do not see how to translate the uniform reading of the MSS., kept by Burnet, at 753e 4, πρὸς πασῶν τῶν ἀρχῶν γεγονότες, so as to obtain a suitable sense. As a makeshift, I have translated Cornarius’s πρὸ πασῶν τῶν ἀρχῶν γεγονότες, though I find it hard to believe that this is what Plato wrote, since πρὸ is hardly likely to have been corrupted to πρὸς in so straightforward a phrase. But for the fact that πάρος is an exclusively poetical word, I should be tempted to suggest π[ά]ρος [πρό].
As to the Curators of the Laws, then, let us take it that they are charged with these three duties: each fresh statute, as legislation proceeds, will lay on them such further duties as they should undertake beyond those now specified. For the present we may turn to the appointment of the rest of our officials in order. We must next, of course, choose generals of the forces, and their military assistants, as we may call them, hipparchs and phylarchs, as well as divisional commanders of the tribal infantry, whom we may very conviently designate by that very title, taxiarchs; it is, in fact, the name commonly given them. As to these posts, there shall be a first nomination of generals, taken solely
There shall be a Council of thirty dozen—three hundred and sixty will be a convenient number for our subdivisions—and this whole number shall be divided into four groups of ninety, ninety councillors being elected from each property-class.
1 The meaning is apparently that the tellers shall, in this case, vote among themselves, and their decision shall be final (England).
2 The statement is clearly meant as a preliminary account of the final result of the protracted proceedings to be described. Ultimately, at the close of the election, each of the four classes is to be represented on the Council by ninety members.
Conducted in this way, the election will strike a mean between monarchy and democracy, as a constitutional system always
Such, my friends, must be the conduct of a society which means to survive, for the reasons we have given. Now, just as a ship at sea must have a perpetual watch set, day and night, so also a State, tossed, as it is, on the billows of inter-state affairs and in peril of being trapped by plots of every sort. Magistrate must therefore follow magistrate in steady sequence from day to night and night to day, sentinel make over to and take over from sentinel in unbroken succession. No large body will ever be able to discharge these tasks with dispatch; no, we must perforce leave the most part of the councillors for most of the time to stay at home and administer their local business, appointing a twelfth part of them for each of the twelve months of the year to serve as guardians who will give prompt audience to all comers, from abroad or from our citizens themselves, with reports to make or questions to put about matters in which it concerns a State to reply to other States or receive their replies to its own inquiries, and will, before all things, see to it in view of the frequent internal innovations of all kinds which so commonly occur, that, if possible, no such incidents arise, or, if they do, that the State may be quick to
This, then, will be a reasonable way of ordering matters within the city. But what of the general superintendence and regulation of the territory at large? Now that our city and territory as wholes have both been divided into twelve sections, must we not designate superintendents of the city streets, of buildings, private and public, of harbours, of the market, of springs, and not least, of consecrated precincts, sanctuaries, and the like?
Clinias: To be sure we must.
Athenian: So we may say that there will have to be sacristans, priests, priestesses, for the sanctuaries. For streets and buildings and the maintenance of proper order in them, for human beings—to avoid infringement of rights—for lower animals—to secure decent civil conditions within the city walls and in the suburbs—we shall have to appoint officials of three kinds, of whom we may call those who are concerned with the matters just specified ‘city commissioners and those who have the control of the market, ‘commissioners of the market’.
1 If the text is sound—as is not quite certain—the ‘priests’ and ‘sacristans’ just spoken of must be taken to constitute the third of the three types of official.
Nothing, if we can help it, shall be left unguarded. As for the city, guard shall be kept over it thus: it shall be the concern of generals, taxiarchs, hipparchs, phylarchs, and prytanes as well as of the commissioners of city and market, when once we have them duly elected and instituted. Watch shall be kept over all the rest of our territory in the following manner. As our territory as a whole has been divided into twelve nearly equal districts, one tribe shall be annually assigned by lot to each district and shall provide five ‘rural commissioners and captains of the watch’, as we may style them; it shall be the business of each of the five to select from their own tribe twelve of the younger men, who must be twenty-five years of age or over, but not over thirty. The territorial districts shall be assigned to these groups in rotation by lot, each for a month of the year,
1 The deference to Delphi has nothing to do with the theology of the State which is prescribed by Plato himself in Book X. What is borrowed from Delphi is merely ‘canon law’ regulating the cultus.
2 The ‘exponents’ of what we may call ‘religious’ or ‘canon’ law were recognized officials at Athens, and it is said that their number was three. Presumably the part played by Delphi in Plato’s scheme is also a reflection of Athenian practice, though we possess no detailed knowledge on the point. (See Burnet’s note on Euthyphro, 4c 8.)
1 Literally ‘towards the right hand’, i.e. moving always from left to right. It depends on an arbitrary convention whether this shall mean movement ‘with the sun’ or movement ‘widdershins’. Plato needs to specify the convention he is following, since in the Timaeus (36 a 6) ‘to the right’ had been taken to mean from E. to W.
2 Literally ‘to the left’, i.e. from E. to W.
3 The words in brackets, deleted by Schanz and others, though retained by Burnet, have a suspicious look of being a (correct) marginal explanation of the preceding. Unless they are omitted, must we not at least emend τῶν δώδεκα (760e 2) to τῶν δώδεκα [δων]? The general scheme is that each tribe has a ‘rural guard’ of sixty men with five officers. These groups are posted by sortition each in one of the twelve territorial districts, and move in the course of the year through all the twelve, so that at any moment there is a total force of sixty-five in each district. The details have not been completely thought out.
Work of this and similar kinds will be both useful and ornamental to a district and will also afford charming recreation; the serious duties of the office shall be as follows. Each group of sixty shall protect its district, not merely against enemies, but against professed friends. If a wrong is done to neighbour or fellow-citizen by any person, bond or free, the case shall come for trial before the five commanders, who shall act alone in petty cases, and in more serious cases of complaint, where the sum involved is one not exceeding three minae, in concert with the twelves.
1 I have here departed from Burnet’s punctuation by putting (with England) a comma after γέρουσι in 761c 6, since I think it certain that Plato does not mean to confine all ‘exercising’ to the young.
2 Like England and Bury, I follow Hug in rejecting the words τοὺς ἑπτακαίδεκα (761e 3) as a mistaken marginal comment.
3 I have followed England in omitting the word δίκας (762 a 3), though I see no reason to reject the immediately preceding καὶ; (may not δίκας have arisen from a misreading of ἢ καὶ?).
The next step in our selection of officials will be concerned with the appointment of commissioners for the market and the city. To our sixty rural commissioners will correspond three commissioners for the city. These shall divide the twelve urban districts into three regions, and, like the former board, have charge of the roads, the streets of the town itself, and the several highways leading from the country to the capital—as well as of the conformity of all the buildings erected with the legal regulations. In particular, they must take care that the water-supply, which the rural police shall transmit and deliver to them in proper condition, shall reach the reservoirs in due plenty and purity, and so serve the ends of beauty no less than of utility. Hence they must be men at once of capacity and of leisure for public affairs. Accordingly, any citizen may propose for the office any name he pleases from the highest property-class; when the names have been put to the vote and reduced to the six who receive the most numerous suffrages, the officer charged with that function shall select three by lot; these, when they have passed their scrutiny, shall hold the office under the regulations made for them.
There shall next be a selection of five commissioners of the market, to be taken from the first and second property-classes. The procedure in this case shall be in general the same as for the urban commissioners; of the ten who receive most votes,
1 κρυπτοὺς (763b 7), literally ‘hidden men’, an allusion to the Spartan κρυπτεία (cf. 633b 9, supra). But we can hardly say ‘secret service-men’, since there is nothing secret about the personnel or the function of Plato’s militia.
2 It seems to me that England is right in holding that the δέκα ἢ τῶν of A2 LO (763e 6), and the words of the Latin version of Ficinus, point to a reading δέκα τῶν ἄλλων [προ] χειροτονηθέντας which I therefore adopt in translating. (So Bury, except that he, wrongly I think, omits the [προ].)
It will next be in place to create authorities in music and physical training, in either case two sets, to have charge respectively of education and of competitions. By officers of education the law understands superintendents of gymnasia and schools in charge of their seemly maintenance as well as of the education given and the connected supervision of attendances and accommodation for children of both sexes. By officers for competitions it understands judges of performers contending in both musical and athletic competitions, and of these there should, once more, be two sorts, the one for music and the other for athletics. In athletics it will be proper to have the same officials as judges of both men and horses, but in music to have one set of judges for solo performances—e.g. those of reciters, harpists, flautists, and the like—and a second and different set for choral singing. So we should, I take it, begin by selecting our authority for the play of our choirs of children, men, and maids as exhibited
1 At 764e 5 it seems necessary to read with England γιγνομένην for the γιγνομένῃ of MSS. and earlier editions.
There is still one office to be filled in the department under our consideration, that of the supervisor of education, male and female, as a whole. Accordingly, the law will require this post also to be held by a single official who must be a man of not less than fifty years, and the father of a legitimate family, preferably of both sexes, but failing that, of one or the other sex, and nominee and nominator alike must bear in mind that the post is far the most important of the highest offices in the State. For in all growing creatures alike—trees, beasts gentle or savage, human-kind—the first sprouts and shootings, if but fair, are most potent to effect the happy consummation of goodness according to kind. Now man we call a gentle creature, but in truth,
1 πλὴν βουλῆς καὶ πρυτάνεων. The πρυτάνεις are the twelve subdivisions of the ‘common council’, each of which is to act as an executive committee for one month of the year 756b 7 ff).
2 The reason for the provision is obvious; the minister is to be taken from among the thirty-seven Curators, and it would be improper that they should have the last word in the selection.
3 That is, all those who have a grandparent in common with the orphan, excluding any who may be out of the State’s territory at the time. The exception is necessary not only in justice to the orphan, but (in view of the sanction to be imposed) in justice to the absent relative himself.
4 Plato’s judicial arrangements are intended to modify current Attic procedure so as to meet certain serious deficiencies. Two small defects are specified at once. The ἀνάιρισις, or preliminary proceedings before an Attic trial, were almost wholly formal, their main object being to ensure only that the suit had been regularly instituted and all documents to be used at the hearing specified and inventoried. The actual issue was submitted to a jury of citizens, who were judges at once of the law and the fact, as well as of the relevance of the evidence tendered, without any direction from an expert like our British judge. But the jury being a large one and having no function beyond that of giving a silent vote by simple majority on the one side or the other, full justice was unlikely to be done in a complicated case, or one which aroused strong public feeling. Hence Plato’s anxiety that there shall be real material preparation of a case before it comes into court, and that the jury which decides it shall be neither incompetent nor unduly large.
In a certain sense the appointment of these courts is also an election of magistrates. In fact, any magistrate is bound also to be a judge in some questions, while a judge,
1 Literally a ‘juror’ (δικαστής). But we may say ‘judge’, since the Attic as explained, formed his own judgment on the law of the case and the relevance of the evidence. [With this sentence compare Macaulay’s description of the British jury as invested with a temporary magistracy. (History, c. 22).]
2 It seems to me necessary here with most editors (though not Burnet) to follow the emendation of the corrector of O, λεκτέον δ᾽ for λεκτέον, in 767c 1, since in what follows Plato is still speaking of ‘private suits’.
3 Plato’s official year is thus, like that of Athens, to begin at midsummer. Since, however, it is later specified that the year is to have 365 days, its opening will not regularly coincide with a new (or full) moon (as England seems to assume).
1 Again an intentional improvement on the Attic procedure, in which care was taken to keep it a secret how a particular dicast had cast his vote.
2 From comparison with 846b 3 infra, ‘half the damage’ appears to be here a slip of Plato or of the scribes for ‘twice the damage’.
This matter of courts of justice, then (as I say, it is equally hard to give them the name of magistracies as to refuse it without qualification), this matter has partly now been dealt with in what I may call its outlines, partly left unfinished; in fact, far the best place for a more exact regulation of judicial procedure and classification of actions at law will be found towards the end of our legislation. So we may tell the subject to wait till we come to the end of our work, but the method of appointment to other magistracies has received fairly full regulation. But a full and exact treatment of every single point of civil and political administration cannot be confidently given until our survey has covered the whole ground from start to finish in detail in the natural order. Still you will see that the stage it has now reached with these arrangements for the election of our officials forms a sufficient conclusion of preliminaries and starting-point for legislation without further delay or hesitation.
Clinias: Your treatment of the preliminaries, sir, has been wholly to my mind, and the way in which you have just linked up the beginning of what is still to come with the conclusion of what has gone before pleases me even better.
Athenian: Then so far, we may say, our grave game for the aged has been finely played.
Clinias: What you really mean to call fine, I fancy, is the hard work of active men.
Athenian: Possibly; but ask yourself whether you agree with me on a further point.
Clinias: What is it, and to what does it relate?
Athenian: Why you know how the painter’s brush never seems to have finished its work on a figure; it seems as though it could go on with endless embellishments of colouring or relief—or whatever may be the professional name for the process—without ever reaching a point at which the picture admits no further enhancement of beauty or vivacity.
Clinias: I think I have heard enough about such matters to follow your description, though I have no personal familiarity with these arts.
Athenian: And no loss either! Still there is a point which we may use this chance reference to them to illustrate. Suppose it were an artist’s intention to paint a figure of great beauty which should moreover be steadily enhanced, not deteriorated, by the
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: Well now, and the legislator, has he not a similar intention? He wants first of all to frame his laws with the closest approach to absolute perfection he can compass; then, as time goes on and he puts his scheme to the test of practice, will any legislator, think you, be thoughtless enough to forget that they must be full of such lacunae which some successor will have to correct, to ensure that the constitution and system of the society he has founded may steadily improve, not deteriorate?
Clinias: That is the presumable intention of every lawgiver; of course it must be.
Athenian: So if a man found some means of effecting this—found out a method of teaching another by example or precept how to understand, better or worse, the way to conserve laws and improve them, he would never tire of explaining that method, I conceive, until he achieved success.
Clinias: Of course not.
Athenian: Well, must not I myself and both of you do the same thing now?
Clinias: Do just what, do you mean?
Athenian: Why since we are about to form a code of law and have appointed curators of it, and those young men by comparison with ourselves, whose sun is setting, we must, as I say, not merely legislate, but at the same time do all we can to make them also legislators as well as curators of law.
Clinias: By all means, if only we are equal to it.
Athenian: Well, we must at least make the attempt and do our best.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: So let this be our language to them: Friends and preservers
1 In 769c 2-3 some verb of motion is absolutely necessary. I have adopted England’s addition of [ἰέναι] after ἀεὶ in l. 3.
2 There is again a complete breakdown of grammar in 769c 4, which can be remedied if we follow Hermann in substituting δς for τοῦ before ἐπανορθοῦν. Since the general sense thus obtained is certainly that of the passage as a whole, I translate accordingly.
3 The last words are intentionally ambiguous like the πρὶν ἐπὶ τέλος ἐλθεῖν of the Greek. I agree with England that the meaning is probably ‘until he succeeded (in making the method understood)’.
We may open the legislation which is now to follow in some such way as this, with religion as our starting-point. We must first return to our number of 5040 and the various convenient subdivisions we find both in this total and in the constituent tribe, which was, you will remember, by assumption one-twelfth of the whole, and is thus the exact product of one-and-twenty by twenty. Now our total number permits of division by twelve, and so likewise does that of the tribe, so each such division must be thought of as a sacred thing, a gift of Heaven corresponding with the months of the year and the revolution
1 The text and construction of the words from 770 e 1 to e 6 (τελευτῶν δὲ καὶ πόλεως, ἐὰν ἀνάστατον ἀνάγκη φαίνηται γίγνεσθαι πρὶν ἐθέλειν δούλειον ὑπομείνασα ζυγὸν ἄρχεσθαι ὑπὸ χειρόνων, ἢ λείπειν φυγῇ τὴν πόλιν: ὡς πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα ἄρ᾽ ἔσθ᾽ ὑπομενετέον πάσχοντας πρὶν ἀλλάξασθαι πολιτείαν ἣ χείρους ἀνθρώπους πέφυκε ποιεῖν) are notoriously uncertain. It seems to me that in any case Stallbaum’s correction of ὑπομείνασα. in e 2 to ὑπομείνασαν should be accepted. In the translation I have followed his punctuation.
1 αὕτη δ᾽ ἔχει σμικρότατον ἴαμα, 771c 4. Strictly it is the divisor n of which Plato speaks as having something wrong with it for which a trifling remedy will suffice. He means that if we leave only two households of the 5040 out of account, the remaining 5038 are 11 x 458.
2 νείμωμέν τε ταύτην, if correct, presumably means νείμωμέν (τὴν πόλιν) ταύτην τὴν διανομήν but I think Mr. Bury very possibly right in reading ταύτῃ, ‘let us make the division in this way’.
3 θεῶν μὲν δὴ πρῶτον χάριτος ἕνεκα καὶ τῶν περὶ θεούς d 5-6. I take χάριτος here to mean ‘favour’, and the following τῶν περὶ θεούς to depend directly not on ἕνεκα but on χάριτος and also the τῶν περὶ θεούς to be neuter, so that the sense is ‘to get the blessing of heaven and to further religion’.
Whensoever, then, a man of five-and-twenty or upwards,
Clinias: Thank you, sir, for the allusion; you have taken what I find to be a most appropriate occasion for its introduction.
Athenian: You are most kind. This, then, is what we shall say to
1 i.e. after ten years of preliminary experiment a change in the regulations shall only be possible if it is desired by the body of magistrates, the popular assembly, and the representatives of the oracular shrines unanimously. The dissent of any one of these authorities shall be fatal to an innovation.
2 At 721b 1 and again at 785 b 4, the age within which a man must marry is fixed as that of thirty to thirty-five. We need not trouble to explain away the discrepancy, which is only one of the proofs of the unrevised state of the text of the Laws.
3 At 723d 5 ff.
This, then—as well, of course, as what we said before
1 See 721b-e.
With dowries we have already dealt,
The right of valid betrothal shall belong in the first instance to the father, failing him to the grandfather, in default of both to brothers on the father’s side; if there are no such kinsmen, it shall pass in like manner to the kindred on the mother’s side,
1 The ‘audits’—an institution taken from Attic practice—are the solemn examination incumbent on all magistrates at the end of their term of office of their whole administration. I believe England right in taking the last clause to mean that at such an audit every citizen shall be liable to be questioned about his own compliance with the law.
2 The reference is to 742c.
3 Zeus, as well as Hera, is a patron of lawful matrimony, since the ‘holy marriage’ of Zeus and Hera is the type and example of all earthly marriages.
4 i.e. the order is father, paternal grandfather, brothers by the same father, mother, maternal grandfather, brothers by the same mother. In the rare cases where nope of these relatives are to be found, the matter is to be in the hands of the nearest living relatives, if any, in conjunction with the guardians who, as we learn from 926e, will be provided for orphans by the νομοφύλακες.
Concerning the ceremonies introductory to wedlock and any other holy rites it may be proper to fulfill before, during, or after the nuptials, the citizen should make inquiry of the exponents of religious law, and be satisfied that all is well and truly done if he follows their instructions.
In the matter of the marriage-feast, the persons to be bidden to it should be not more than five male or female friends of either family, with the same number of kinsmen and connections of either, and in no case shall the expenditure be disproportionate to the means of the giver—one mina for a person of the wealthiest class, half that sum for one of the second, and thus in proportion as the means of the party diminish. Obedience to the law should receive commendation from all; the disobedient shall be punished by the Curators of the Laws as a boor with tastes untrained in the strains of the hymeneal Muses. As for drinking to excess, ’tis everywhere unseemly, except at a feast of the divine giver of the grape—and dangerous as well—above all, in one whose mind is seriously set on wedlock; then, if ever, ’tis meet for bride and bridegroom to be in their sober senses, seeing they are come to so grave a turning on life’s road, and must take all care, moreover, that that which is at any moment begetting shall be the work of sober parents; for ’tis quite unknown what night or day shall—under God—give it its being. Besides all this, the work of kind must never be left to bodies dissolved by revelry; the growing life must be fashioned with all due order, surely, firmly, in quiet. But a man in his cups does but sprawl and fumble all ways at once; his body is as crazy as his mind: by consequence the drinker is an awkward, bungling sower of his seed, and ’tis no wonder he commonly begets shambling, shifty creatures with souls as twisted as their bodies. Wherefore a man should the rather be wary all the year long, and all his life through, and more particularly while he is procreating offspring, to forbear, so far as he may, from all action that prejudices health or is touched with wrong or violence—he cannot but imprint its colour and impress on the souls and bodies of the unborn and become sire to a sorely degenerate brood—above all, to keep himself clear of such things all that day and
He that has marriage in mind must think of one of the two homesteads on his own actual lot as a nest and nursery for his chicks; must leave father and mother and hold his nuptials there, and there keep house and home for himself and his children. For in all the kind affections of life the presence of some dash of unfulfilled longing rivets hearts and knits them in one, while unbroken companionship, when there is none of this longing bred of absence, causes them to drift apart from utter satiety. This is why our young pair should leave mother, father, bride’s kindred, to their old abodes, and live like settlers in a colony; they will pay visits to the old home and receive visits from it, beget children and bring them up, and thus hand the torch of life on from one generation to another and perpetuate that service of God which our laws demand.
Next for goods and chattels: Which of them should a man possess if proprietorship is to give him true satisfaction? The more part of such goods are as easy to name as to acquire, but there are difficulties of every kind about servants. Why is this? Because the things we say about them are partly false, partly true; our very language about slaves contradicts our experience of them and confirms it at once.
Megillus: But pray how are we to take your words? As yet, sir, my friend and I are at a loss for your meaning.
Athenian: And not to be wondered at, Megillus. The status of the Helots of Laconia—the controversy as to its merits or demerits—is probably the most puzzling problem of Hellenic life. There may be a similar, though less acute, controversy about the system of slavery under which the Mariandyni are held down at Heraclea,
1 Heraclea Pontica in Bithynia, where the surrounding native population had been reduced to vassalage.
Megillus: So it is, to be sure.
Athenian: And equally common the rival theory that slaves are rotten at heart, and no man of sense should ever put any trust in the whole tribe of them. Nay, the greatest genius among our poets, in speaking of Zeus, makes the explicit declaration that he
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.’
So a man takes one or other side in the dispute for himself; some distrust the whole class and make their servants threefold—nay, a hundredfold—slaves at heart by the scourge and the lash, as though they were dealing with so many wild beasts; others take the very opposite course.
Megillus: Very true.
Clinias: Well, then, sir, where there is such utter disagreement, how should we act about this territory of ours? How shall we deal with the right to own and to discipline slaves?
Athenian: Why, Clinias, the human animal is a kittle beast, and so, clearly, is not likely to be, or become, readily amenable to the indispensable distinction between real slave and real free man and master, and so this form of property presents a difficulty. The facts of the common and repeated risings in Messenia and the experience of communities where there are great numbers of serfs all speaking the same dialect provide accumulated proof of the evils of the system—not to mention the multifarious depredations and adventures of the corsairs of Italy. When we face all this evidence we may well feel perplexed to know how to treat the whole problem. Indeed I see only two courses left open to us—the one that slaves who are to submit to their condition quietly should neither be all of one stock, nor, as far as possible, of one speech, the other that we should treat them properly and show them consideration, for their own sake indeed, but still more for ours. And proper treatment of men in that position is to use no violence towards a servant, but to wrong him—if such a thing could be—with even more reluctance than an equal. For it is his dealings with those whom he can easily wrong which reveal a man’s genuine unfeigned reverence for right and real abhorrence of wrong. Hence the man whose character and conduct are unsullied with wickedness and wrong in his relations with slaves is, beyond all others,
1 Odyssey, p 373. (The English version is Pope’s.)
Clinias: Very rightly said.
Athenian: Well, now that we have done our best to provide the citizen with a sufficient number of servants qualified to assist him in his various tasks, I suppose our next step should be to produce a plan of our houses?
Clinias: Yes, of course.
Athenian: In fact, as our city is a new foundation, without any earlier habitations, it will have to give its attention to the whole subject of its architecture in all its details, not forgetting those of the temples and city-walls. This, Clinias, is a subject which properly comes before that of marriage; but as our whole construction is imaginary, the present will be an excellent opportunity to dispose of it. When our scheme takes actual shape, we shall, God willing, deal with domestic architecture first and make our marriage-law the crown and completion of our work in this kind. For the present we shall attempt no more than a brief outline.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: The temples, then, should be built all round the market-square, and in fact round the whole city, on elevated sites, with a view at once to security and cleanliness. In their vicinity should be the offices of the magistrates and courts of law, where, as on holy ground, judgment will be received and given, partly because the business itself is so solemn, partly because these are the seats of awful deities [and among them courts of law where cases of murder and other crimes worthy of death may fitly be heard].
1 Presumably the words ‘on high ground’ are applicable only to the outer circle of temples at the outskirts of the city. The market-place would naturally be on a more or less level site. The text as it stands here cannot represent Plato’s intention. But I believe it possible that it is an editor’s combination of two versions of a sentence between which the author himself had not made his final choice, and I have indicated this by the square brackets in the translation.
1 Sparta, unlike other Greek cities, was unfortified, consisting of a number of unwalled quarters defended by the strength of their position in the rocky Eurotas valley, and the courage of their citizens.
Clinias: By all means.
Athenian: Well, then, Clinias, let us suppose the marriage ceremonies over. On them will follow, before the birth of children, an interval of not less than a year. How bride and bridegroom in a society which is to be so far above the common level, should spend their time—for that is what I meant by ‘what follows in the proper order’—is not the easiest of questions. We have had not a few such awkward problems already, but none so unpalatable to the great mass of mankind. Still, I suppose, Clinias, what we really believe to be right and true must be said at all costs.
Clinias: Of course it must.
Athenian: If a man proposes to give a society laws for the conduct of
Clinias: In all probability it is.
Athenian: Well, here is the point: though there were once persons who found the practice singular, and its imposition dangerous, a legislator who should wish to enjoin it would have no such difficulty today. But it has a natural consequence, at present adopted nowhere, though its adoption offers every prospect of success, which all but drives a legislator to ‘card his wool into the fire’, as the saying is, and waste his labour in a host of other
Clinias: And pray, sir, what is this point you are apparently so reluctant to explain?
Athenian: To avoid long and useless discourse on the subject, let me have your attention. Wherever due order and law are found in the life of a society, their fruits are blessings, but neglect of regulation or mis-regulation more often than not undoes the work of sound regulation in other directions. And this is just where our present argument comes to a halt. In fact, my friends, your public table for men is an admirable institution, miraculously originated, as I was saying, by a truly providential necessity; but it is a grave error in your law that
1 In this sentence I assume Ast’s πονοῦντα (at 780c 9) as an all but certain correction of the ποιοῦντα of the MSS. (and Burnet). There is something also to be said for Badham’s removal of the comma after the second γιγνόμενον of c 7 and his omission of the τε before ποιοῦν in c 8. This gives the rendering ‘there is a natural consequence, with every prospect of success if adopted, though the universal failure to adopt it at the present day all but drives a legislator’, etc.
2 i.e. you might be disposed to think that half the mischief in the world is due to the undisciplined tempers and passions of women and half to those of men—‘that it is six of one and half a dozen of the other’; but, in fact, owing to the greater inherent weakness of the feminine soul—women do more than twice as much mischief as men—if should rather be said, ‘four of one and eight of the other’, and then the estimate would be still within the mark.
Clinias: Sir, I assure you, we are both singularly in favour of hearing you.
Athenian: Why, then, so you shall. But you must not be surprised if you find me going a fair way back for my starting-point. You know we have plenty of time on our hands, and there is no pressing business to keep us from examining our subject, law, on all its sides.
Clinias: Quite true.
Athenian: Good, then, let us revert to the position we began with. Any man, indeed, should be perfectly aware of one thing: either
Clinias: No doubt.
Athenian: Very well, then; can we suppose there have not been, all over the world, all manner of risings and fallings of States, all kinds of institutions, orderly and disorderly, as well as every sort of taste in meat and drink,
Clinias: No, of course not.
Athenian: Why, we believe, do we not, that there was once a time
1 Or, as the words may equally well be construed, ‘if you judge that our discussion of politics at large has not—so far as theory goes—missed its end.’
2 ἢ μῆκός τι τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀφ᾽ οὗ γέγονεν ἀμήχανον ἂν χρόνον ὅσον γεγονὸς ἂν εἴη, 782a 2-3. It seems to me that we are here once more probably dealing with two variants of a phrase, both of which come from the unrevised text of the writer, ἢ μῆκός τι τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀφ᾽ οὗ γέγονεν ἀμήχανον ἂν χρόνον ὅσον γεγονὸς ἂν εἴη and ἢ ἀμήχανον ἂν χρόνον ὅσον γεγονὸς εἴη.
3 I follow Ast in omitting the καὶ βρώσεως of the text (782a 6), of which I think nothing can really be made.
Clinias: No doubt.
Athenian: Besides, we remark the persistence of human sacrifice to this day in many quarters, while it is reported, on the other hand, of other peoples that they shrank from tasting even the flesh of oxen, and offered no animals in sacrifice; they honoured their gods with cakes and meal soaked in honey and other such ‘pure’ sacrifices,
Clinias: ’Tis the widely current and highly credible tradition.
Athenian: Well, I may of course be asked the question, ‘what is your point in mentioning all this just now?’
Clinias: That, sir, is a well-founded apprehension.
Athenian: And so, Clinias, I will try, if I can, to expound the thought to which these considerations give rise.
Clinias: Pray proceed.
Athenian: I observe that mankind are universally impelled by needs or desires, of three kinds, and that this impulsion results in virtue if men are well trained, in its contrary if they are ill trained. Their needs are, in the first place, food and drink, from the hour of their birth. All creatures have the instinctive appetite for gratification in that kind and are furiously defiant of the voice which says that one has any duty except to sate one’s craving for pleasures from that source, and to avoid all discomfort of any kind; our third and most imperious need and fiercest passion arises later, but most of all fires men to all manner of frenzies—I mean lust of procreation with its blaze of wanton
1 The ‘Virgin’ is Persephone, and the gifts are the ‘cereals’. Triptolemus, according to the Attic legend, was the recipient.
2 The allusion is to the abstinence from animal food and sacrifices enjoined by the Orphic religion and perhaps also to the story that Pythagoras refused to offer any but vegetarian sacrifices at Delos.
Thus we may make the procreation of children follow on our regulations of marriages, and on their procreation, their nurture, and education. As our discourse proceeds on these lines, our several laws may possibly reach their completion, as
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: Then let us keep the points just referred to well before our memory, as we shall probably have to refer to them all.
Clinias: But exactly what are the points you would have us remember?
Athenian: Those which we made in our three clauses; we spoke, you may recollect, of meat, then of drink, and thirdly, of the excitements of sex.
Clinias: Why, sir, I take it we shall be sure to remember what you are now impressing on us.
Athenian: Well and good. So let us proceed to our regulations for the wedded pair, with the object of instructing them how and in what fashion they should set about procreation, or, if they should prove disobedient, appealing to the menace of law.
Clinias: In what manner?
Athenian: Bride and bridegroom should make it their purpose to present the city with the best and finest progeny they may. Now whenever you have human beings conjoined in any action, when the parties give their minds to themselves and what they are doing, the results of their work are every way fair and good, but clean contrary if they have no mind or apply it not to their
1 I agree with England that the text given by our best MSS. cannot be translated as it stands, and that the source of the trouble is the words εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν of 783b 5. As a minimum alteration I adopt from him ώς for εἰς in this phrase, without being at all confident that the resulting sense represents precisely what Plato intended.
2 The ambiguities of the English are meant to reproduce those of the Greek, which depend on the impossibility of being sure of the precise reference of the various pronominal words αὐτῶν b 8, αὐτὰ c 1, αὐτὰ c 2, αὐτοῖς c 3.
1 As a fact nothing has been said of this board of matrons, or the higher authority which determines their number and the method of their election. The passage is a particularly clear proof that the text of the Laws is an unrevised draft.
2 μέχρι τρίτου μέρους ὥρας (784a 4-5). Presumably the meaning is that the daily meeting may not be terminated at the earliest until some twenty minutes have passed.
3 Thus the sense is that after ten years of marriage which has been sufficiently fertile, the supervision ceases, the parties being now left to their own discretion; if the marriage has been barren, it is to be dissolved, but the relatives of both spouses are to have a voice in the terms of separation.
1 Thus, Plato would introduce what did not exist at Athens, an official and easily accessible register of births and deaths.
Laws, Book VII
Athenian: Now that we have our boys and girls born, the proper course will naturally be to deal with their nurture and education; this subject cannot possibly be passed over in silence, but our treatment will wear the guise rather of instruction and admonition than of legal enactment. The privacy of home life screens from the general observation many little incidents, too readily occasioned by a child’s pains, pleasures, and passions, which are not in keeping with a legislator’s recommendations, and tend to bring a medley of incongruities into the characters of our citizens. Now this is an evil for the public as a whole, for while the frequency and triviality of such faults makes it both improper and undignified to penalize them by law, they are a real danger to such law as we do impose, since the habit of transgression is learned from repetition of these petty misdeeds. Hence, though we are at a loss to legislate on such points, silence about them is also impossible. But I must try to illuminate my meaning by the production of what I may call samples; at present my remarks must seem something of a riddle.
Clinias: You are quite right there.
Athenian: Well, now, I suppose we may take this much as truly said: the right system of nurture must be that which can be shown to produce the highest possible perfection and excellence of body and soul.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: And perfection of the children’s bodies, I conceive, means—to put it at the simplest—that they must grow straight from their earliest days.
Clinias: Why, of course.
Athenian: And further, is it not a fact of observation that in all living things growth is most conspicuous and rapid in its initial sproutings; so much so, indeed, that many have contended that the stature reached by a human being in its first five years is not doubled by the increment due to the following twenty?
Clinias: Surely.
Athenian: Well, then, when a body is subjected to vast augmentation of bulk without a counterbalancing abundance of appropriate forms of exercise, the consequences are disastrous in all sorts of ways. That, I think, is a known fact?
Clinias: Indeed it is.
Athenian: And so the period when the body is receiving its principal increment from nutrition is also the period when it demands the maximum of exercise.
Clinias: What, sir? Are we actually to impose the maximum of exercise on infants and new-born babies?
Athenian: Not precisely that; we must impose it at a still earlier stage while the child is being nursed in its mother’s womb.
Clinias: What, my dear sir! On the embryo? You cannot mean that!
Athenian: Indeed I do, though I am not surprised you should be unaware of the proper regimen for the case. ’Tis a singular one, but I could wish to expound it for you.
Clinias: By all means do so.
Athenian: Well, the point would be more readily understood by my own countrymen, thanks to the undue devotion of some of them to sport; among us, in fact, children, and some who are no longer children too, are in the habit of rearing young birds for the purpose of cock-fighting. Now they are very far from thinking the performances in which they train these animals by pitting them against one another adequate discipline for such creatures; over and above all this, every one keeps birds somewhere on his person—the smaller ones in the hand, the bigger within his cloak, under the elbow—and takes walks of many furlongs, with an eye not to his own physique but to that of his beasties—a practice which at least indicates to the intelligent observer that all bodies are beneficially braced by every sort of shaking and stirring, whether due to their own movements, to the oscillations of a conveyance or a boat, the trot of a horse, or however the motion of the body may be caused; the frame is thus enabled to cope with its nutriment, solid or liquid, and presents a spectacle of health and beauty, to say nothing of robustness. Now in view of these facts, how, let me ask, shall we proceed to act? Would you have us raise a laugh by express statutes directing the pregnant mother to take constitutionals, to mould her infant, when she has borne it, like so much wax while it is still plastic, and to keep it swaddled for its first two years? And what of the nurse? Shall we compel her under legal penalties to be incessantly carrying her
Clinias: What consequences?
Athenian: Why the ridicule we should be sure to incur. Not to add that our nurses will have the minds of women, and slave-women at that, and be none too ready to obey.
Clinias: Then, pray, why have we thought it needful to give all these instructions?
Athenian: I will tell you why. Because the minds of our masters and free citizens may probably be led by hearing them to recognize the truth that while the right regulation of the private households within a society is neglected, it is idle to expect the foundations of public law to be secure. A citizen who understands this will be likely to regard the directions we are now giving as so many laws for his own conduct, and, so regarding them, to be happy in his administration alike of his own household and of his city.
Clinias: I believe there is much truth in what you say.
Athenian: Consequently, we are not to suppose that we have done with this sort of legislation until we have given a full account of the training of the infant’s mind on the same lines as those with which we began our remarks about its body.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: We may take it then as the A B C of the matter in both cases that it is universally beneficial for infants, particularly very young infants, to have the process of bodily and mental nursing continued without intermission, all day and all night long. If it were only possible, it would be desirable for them to spend all their time, so to say, at sea, and as it is, we should come as near that ideal as we can with the new-born baby. We may learn the same lesson from the following facts: the truth and utility of our principles has been learned from experience by children’s nurses, and the female healers of ‘Corybantic’
Clinias: And pray, sir, what explanation are we to give of these facts?
Athenian: Why, the explanation is not far to seek.
Clinias: But what is it?
Athenian: Both disturbances are forms of fright, and fright is due to some morbid condition of soul. Hence, when such disorders are treated by rocking movement the external motion thus exhibited dominates the internal, which is the source of the
Clinias: Indeed, most plausible.
Athenian: That these methods have such effects should lead us to recognize that a mind subjected from its early days to such frights will be all the more likely to contract a habit of fearfulness; now every one will admit that this is tantamount to a training not in courage, but in timidity.
Clinias: Surely.
Athenian: Whereas it will be granted that the contrary course, that of mastering our frights and alarms as they arise, is a life-long discipline in courage.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: Why then, here, we may say, is one important clement in virtue of soul to which this exercising of infants by movement is contributory.
1 From other allusions (cp. the passages collected in Stallbaum’s note on these words) it appears that the reference is to nervous and mental disturbances, like the ‘tarantism’ of the Middle Ages, believed popularly to be caused by the ‘mother of the gods’ and to resemble the excitement shown by the priests of her orgiastic worship (the Corybantes). These disorders were treated ‘homeopathically’ by working up the sufferer into a frenzied dance and so throwing him into an exhaustion from which he woke up cured.
Clinias: Yes, certainly.
Athenian: Furthermore, the encouragement of placidity of temper will play a prominent part in the development of moral excellence, and that of a fretful temper in that of vice.
Clinias: Unquestionably.
Athenian: So we must try to explain the way by which either may be induced in the new-born child at pleasure, so far as the means of effecting such results lie in our power.
Clinias: To be sure we must.
Athenian: Then—to state the conviction which I share
Clinias: But pray how should the authority of the State be brought to bear on the nurture of creatures who as yet cannot understand human speech, and are wholly incapable of education.
Athenian: Why, much in this fashion I believe: new-born creatures, especially new-born human beings, have from the very first a way of screaming, and the human infant in particular is given not only to screaming but to tears.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: So when the nurse would discover its desires she guesses
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Now a man of peevish and melancholy temper will be given to self-pity and commonly more prone to complaining than a good man should be. I take it you will both admit this?
Clinias: I certainly shall.
Athenian: Well, then, if we employ all our ingenuity to keep our growing child all through these three years from the experience of distress, alarms, and, so far as possible, pain itself, the growing soul is all this time being rendered more cheerful and gracious. Do you not think so?
1 τό παρ᾽ ἡμῖν δόγμα, 791d 5.
Clinias: Not a doubt of it, sir—above all, if we provide it with plenty of pleasures.
Athenian: My dear sir! That is just where Clinias and I must part. The course you propose to us is the most mischievous we could possibly take, because the mischief is systematically introduced at the starting-point of the process of growth. Let us see whether I am not right.
Clinias: Pray unfold your meaning.
Athenian: Why, I mean that the point now at issue between you and me is of no light consequence. So you must consider it too, Megillus, and help us to a decision. My own contention is that the right road in life is neither pursuit of pleasure nor yet unqualified avoidance of pain, but that contentment with the intermediate condition to which I have just given the name of graciousness—a state which we all, on the strength of an oracular saying, plausibly assign to God himself.
Clinias: You need not, sir, put it to Megillus which of us has more of the truth on his side; frankly and freely I make the admission that all of us must avoid a life of untempered pain or pleasure, and steer a middle course in everything. Here is the proper answer to your very proper speech.
Athenian: And an admirably true one, Clinias. Then let us, all three, turn our thoughts to a further point.
Clinias: Which is—?
Athenian: That all we are now discussing is nothing other than what mankind at large call the ‘unwritten law’; it is the whole body of such regulations, and nothing else, to which they give the
1 I take the reference to be to the famous maxim ‘nothing too much’ (μηδὲν ἅγαν), which was one of the two famous inscriptions in the temple at Delphi (Pausanias x, 24, 1).
Clinias: To be sure you are right, and we will not forget the caution.
1 The two ‘sorts’ of ‘rivets’ are the actual written statute-law, on one side, and the body of unwritten traditions and customs on the other.
Athenian: Then until the age of three has been reached by boy or girl, scrupulous and unperfunctory obedience to the instructions just given will be of the first advantage to ouri nfantile charges. At the stage reached by the age of three, and the after ages of four, five, six, play will be necessary, and we must relax our coddling and inflict punishments—though not such as are degrading; as we were saying in the case of slaves that we should neither inflame the culprit by brutal punishments nor spoil a servant by leaving him uncorrected, so we must adopt the same course
Clinias: What notion?
Athenian: The belief that there is a real and natural difference in the serviceability of either hand for various actions, though, in fact, where the feet and lower limbs are concerned, there is no such difference in capacity to be detected; it is only the folly of nurses and mothers to which we owe it that we are all, so to say, lame of one hand. Nature, in fact, makes the members on both sides broadly correspondent; we have introduced the difference between them for ourselves by our improper habits. No doubt in actions of no particular importance the practice is immaterial—as for example, that the player should hold his lyre in the left hand and his plectrum in the right, and the like; but to make these cases, without any necessity, precedents for others, is fairly foolish. This is illustrated by the practice of the Scythians, who do not confine the left hand
1 I do not believe that any other sense can be got from the words of the MSS. text, though there is the difficulty that these twelve matrons have never been ‘already mentioned’. But I cannot feel sure that Plato himself—who never lived to revise the book—may not have fallen into a mistake of supposing that this board of lady overseers had been already described.
Their instruction may be said to fall, for practical purposes, under two heads, physical culture, which is concerned with the body, and music, which aims at mental excellence. Physical culture, again, has two branches, dancing and wrestling. One department of dancing is the presentation of works of poetical inspiration with a care for the preservation of dignity and decorum; the other, which aims at physical fitness, nobility, and beauty,
1 This second department of dancing is what we might call calisthenics (England appositely refers to ‘Swedish drill ‘).
2 Antaeus is the African wrestler vanquished by Heracles, whose special trick was falling on his back and wrestling on the ground; Cercyon, one of the nuisances extirpated by Theseus, is credited with introducing the use of the legs into the sport. Epeus is the winner of the boxing match at the funeral of Patroclus in Iliad Ψ; Amycus, vanquished by Polydeuces (Pollux), was the traditional inventor of the ‘boxing-glove’ (Theocritus, xxii). Plato playfully uses language which suggests that they all wrote ‘manuals’ of sports. He is for stand-up wrestling against anything like ju-jitsu, and for the ‘naked morleys’ against the ‘gloves’.
I have now fairly described such a course of physical training as I said at first we should have to examine; the entire scheme is now before you. If either of you can propose a better, it is for you to lay it before us.
Clinias: Nay, sir, if we reject these proposals, it will be hard to devise a better plan of physical training and athletic contests.
1 i.e. from the age at which these ‘lessons’ begin until that of twenty, when they become liable to field-service.
2 ‘The τούτων’ 796d 2 is neuter; the following οὗτοι means, I think, οὗτοι οἱ ἀγῶνες. All the ‘sports’ must be organized with a view to the ends already mentioned (’war’ and ‘festivals’); sports thus organized, and no others, are proper for free men.
Athenian: As for the subject which naturally comes next, the gifts of Apollo and the Muses, we thought at first that we had said all there is to be said, and had only the treatment of bodily training still left on our hands, but now it is plain both what must be said of it to every one, and that these things should be said to them before anything else.
Clinias: Ay, to be sure they should.
Athenian: Then I will ask you to give me your attention. It is true you have done so once already; still, speaker and hearer alike are called on to show the greatest caution in dealing with a startling paradox, above all in the present case. I feel some misgivings in advancing the thesis I shall lay before you; still, I will take heart as best I may not to flinch from it.
Clinias: And what is your thesis, sir?
Athenian: Why, as to this matter of children’s games I maintain that our communities are sunk in a universal ignorance; it is not seen that they have a decisive influence on the permanence or impermanence of a legislation once enacted. Where there is prescription on this point, where it is ensured that the same children shall always play the same games in one and the same way, and get their pleasure from the same playthings, the regulations in more serious matters too are free to remain undisturbed; but where there is change and innovation in the former,
Clinias: You mean the evil of public dissatisfaction with the ancient fashions?
Athenian: That and nothing else.
Clinias: Why, we of all men are least likely to turn a deaf ear to that plea; we shall listen in the most friendly spirit.
1 Perhaps ταῶτα (England) is a more correct punctuation of the text in 797b 4 than the τὰ αὐτὰ of our existing MSS. kept by Burnet and other editors, but the sense is the same, however we divide the letters.
Athenian: So I should anticipate.
Clinias: Speak on, then.
Athenian: Come, then, let us rise above ourselves, as listeners or speakers, as we plead the case thus. Change—except when it is change from what is bad—is always, we shall find, highly perilous, whether it be change of seasons, of prevailing winds, of bodily regimen, of mental habit, or, in a word, change of anything whatever without exception, except in the case I have just mentioned, change from bad. Thus, if we consider our body and the way it can familiarize itself with any kind of food or drink or exertion; how, though they may upset it at first, in
Clinias: Yes, of course.
Athenian: Well, then, are we, or are we not, still of the same mind as before, when we said
Clinias: Our conviction on the point remains exactly what it was.
Athenian: Every means, then, shall we say, must be employed to keep our children from the desire to reproduce different models in dance or song, as well as to prevent a possible tempter from offering them the inducement of a variety of delights.
Clinias: Perfectly true.
Athenian: Well, can any of us find a better device for this purpose than that employed in Egypt?
Clinias: And what is that?
Athenian: Why, the plan is to consecrate all our dances and all our tunes. First, the festivals must be fixed by compiling an annual calendar to show what feasts are to be celebrated, at what dates, and in honour of what deities, sons of deities, or spirits respectively; next, certain authorities must determine what hymn is to be sung on the feast of each divinity, and by what dances the ceremony of the day is to be graced; when this has been determined, the whole citizen body must do public sacrifice to the Destinies and the entire Pantheon at large, and consecrate each hymn to its respective god or other patron by solemn libation. If any man tries to introduce hymn or dance into the worship of any deity in contravention of these canons, the priests of either sex, acting in conjunction with the Curators of Law, shall have the warrant both of religion and law in excluding him from the festival; if the excluded party declines to submit to this excommunication, he shall for life be liable to indictment for impiety at the instance of any who cares to institute proceedings.
Clinias: And rightly so.
Athenian: Then, now we are upon this subject, we must be careful to act as becomes us.
Clinias: What have you in mind?
Athenian: When a young man—not to say an elderly man—has seen or heard something out of the common and quite unfamiliar, he will not be likely to rush on a solution of the puzzle all in a moment; he is more likely to stop short, as a man, travelling alone or in company, who has come to a cross-road and is none too sure of his way, will stop and question himself or his companions about his difficulty, and refuse to take a step
1 Viz. at 655 d ff.
2 i.e. with the caution proper to old men (Bury).
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: So we will take our time over the question, and only decide it after searching investigation. Still, we do not wish the completion of the regulations which belong to our legislation on the topic before us to be interrupted to no good purpose, and so we will go on with them to the end. Perhaps, indeed, by the kindness of Providence, when the complete recital reaches its end, it will incidentally provide the answer to our present problem.
Clinias: A good suggestion, sir; let us act on it.
Athenian: Well, then, let us, I say, take the paradox as granted; our songs have become canons,
Clinias: We may.
Athenian: Then what sort of legal rules can a man lay down on such matters without exposing himself to sheer derision? Here is a further point it will be relevant to consider. Our safest course will be to begin by imagining a few typical cases, and as one such case I propose the following. Suppose sacrifice has been offered and the victims burned as law directs, when some worshipper—a son or a brother—in the immediate presence of
1 The ‘present problem’ is how to make matters of musical taste matter for legislation, and the suggestion is that its solution will emerge from the consideration of the kind of regulations we should lay down in our legislation on the assumption that the thing is practicable.
2 Once more a play on the double use of the word νόμος as a name both for ‘laws’ and for a certain type of musical composition (not, of course, the type we call ‘canon’).
Clinias: To be sure it will.
Athenian: Now that is precisely what happens in pretty nearly all societies in our own world. A magistrate has just offered sacrifice in the name of the public when a choir, or rather a number of choirs, turn up, plant themselves not at a remote distance from the altar, but, often enough, in actual contact with it, and drown the solemn ceremony with sheer blasphemy, harrowing the feelings of their audience with their language, rhythms and lugubrious strains, and the choir which is most successful in plunging the city which has just offered sacrifice into sudden tears is adjudged the victor. Surely our vote will be cast against such a practice.
Clinias: Should be what?
Athenian: That of auspiciousness of language; indeed, may we lay it down that our hymnody must be wholly auspicious in every particular? Or perhaps I need not repeat the question, but may simply impose the rule?
Clinias: Out of doubt, you may do so; the proposal is carried by a unanimous vote.
Athenian: Then what shall our second regulation be? That there must always be a prayer to the gods to whom sacrifice is being done?
1 The significance of the illustration is that it is meant to strike at the whole institution of the dithyrambic and tragic chorus. Both dithyramb and tragedy are part of what is professedly a religious celebration, but their melodramatic and harrowing themes are utterly out of keeping with the spirit of serenity, joy, and trust which ought to pervade the worshippers. The attack is not merely on bad melodrama and vulgarly sensational music.
Clinias: Obviously.
Athenian: And a third, I take it, must be that our poets must understand that a prayer is a request made to a god, and should therefore be scrupulously careful not inadvertently to ask for a curse in mistake for a blessing. To offer such a petition, you know, would be a ridiculous proceeding.
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: Now we satisfied ourselves, I believe, a little while ago that wealth of silver or gold must have neither sanctuary nor abode in our city?
Clinias: To be sure we did.
Athenian: Now what principle, we may ask, did that statement illustrate? Was not the implication that poets are not quite the most competent judges of good and evil? Hence a poet who goes wrong in language or melody on this point—that of praying for the wrong thing—will of course lead our citizens to transgress our regulations in their prayers for things of supreme moment, though, as we just said, it would be hard to find a more serious error. Shall we then add another typical regulation about music to this effect?
Clinias: But to what effect? We should be glad of a clearer statement.
Athenian: No poet shall compose anything in contravention of the public standards of law and right, honour and good, nor shall he be at liberty to display any composition to any private citizen whatsoever until he has first submitted it to the appointed censors of such matters and the Curators of Law, and obtained their approval. (These censors we have to all intents appointed by our election of legislators for music and a superintendent of education.) Well then—to repeat the question—shall this be taken as our third example of a typical regulation, or what do you say?
Clinias: Why, of course it shall.
Athenian: This matter once determined, the gods may be properly addressed in hymns and strains of mingled praise and petition; under them, spirits and heroes may similarly receive the prayers and praises appropriate to them.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: And next, we may now proceed straight away, without any occasion for scruples, to the following regulation: such citizens as have brought to an end a life of honourable and arduous physical or mental achievements and obedience to law shall be deemed fitting recipients for our praises.
Clinias: Why, of course.
Athenian: As for the still living, it is perilous to award the honour of praises and hymns until the whole course of life has been crowned by a glorious end. All these distinctions shall be awarded alike to persons of either sex who have been illustrious for their goodness. The regulations for the songs and dances should be determined in the following way. The music of earlier times is rich in fine old poems, and similarly also in dances for the body, from which we shall be perfectly free to select whatever inappropriate and suitable for the society we are instituting, the selection should be made by appointing a number of triers of not less than fifty years of age; old poems pronounced satisfactory shall be accepted, while any that are judged to be defective, or wholly unsuitable, shall in the one case be simply rejected, in the other, revised and corrected, with the aid of advice from experts in poetry and music. While we shall make full use of the poetical gifts of these experts we shall not, except in a very few cases, trust to their tastes or preferences, but make ourselves interpreters of the legislator’s intentions, and construct the whole scheme of dance, song, and choric activity in the closest conformity to their purport. Any unregulated pursuit of music is infinitely improved by being subjected to system, even without any addition of musical sweetmeats; delight is something which can be provided by all styles alike. If a man has from childhood to the age of sobriety and discretion been familiar with austere, classical music, he is repelled by the sound of the opposite kind and pronounces it unmanly; if brought up on music of the popular, cloying kind, he finds its opposite frigid and displeasing. Thus, as I was saying, neither type has any advantage or disadvantage over the other in respect of pleasing or displeasing, and there is the additional consideration that the one regularly makes those who are brought up on it better men, the other worse.
Clinias: Perfectly true.
Athenian: It will further be necessary to make a rough general distinction between two types of songs, those suited for females and those suited for males, and so we shall have to provide both with their appropriate scales and rhythms; it would be a dreadful thing that the whole tune or rhythm of a composition should be out of place, as it will be if our various songs are inappropriately treated in these respects. So we shall further have to legislate on these points, at any rate in general outline. Now it is perfectly possible to make the necessary regulations for
Clinias: You certainly may.
Athenian: Why, I mean we should keep our seriousness for serious things, and not waste it on trifles, and that, while God is the real goal of all beneficent serious endeavour, man, as we said before,
Clinias: Inversion; in what way?
1 In the difficult sentence, ἔστιν δὲ ἀμφοτέροις μὲν ἀμφότερα ἀνάγκῃ κατεχόμενα ἀποδιδόναι, τὰ δὲ τῶν θηλειῶν αὐτῷ τῷ τῆς φύσεως ἑκατέρου διαφέροντι, τούτῳ δεῖ καὶ διασαφεῖν (802e 5-8) I take it as certain that ἀνάγκη, which Burnet records as the reading of A in e 6, is right against the vulgate ἀνάγκη, of which, indeed, I can make no sense. In e 7 some change of the MSS. text which Burnet prints is unavoidable. In my own translation I have ventured to assume a change of one letter (διαφέροντα for διαφέροντι).
2 I depart here from the MSS. (and Burnet’s text) by adopting Peiper’s σκοπῶν for σκοπεῖν at 803b 3.
3 Cf. supra 644d.
Athenian: It is the current fancy that our serious work should be done for the sake of our play; thus it is held that war is serious work which ought to be well discharged for the sake of peace. But the truth is that in war we do not find, and we never shall
Search, for some thoughts, thy own suggesting mind;
And others, dictated by heavenly power.
Shall rise spontaneous in the needful hour.
For naught unprosperous shall thy ways attend,
Born with good omens, and with heaven thy friend.
Our nurslings, too, must be of the poet’s mind; they must believe that what we have said has been sufficient for its purpose, and that, for the rest, they will be visited by promptings, superhuman and divine, as to their sacrifices and dances, suggestions as to the several gods in whose honour, and the several times at which, they are to play their play, win Heaven’s favour for it, and so live out their lives as what they really are, puppets in the main, though with some touch of reality about them, too.
Megillus: I must say, sir, you have but a poor estimate of our race.
Athenian: Do not be amazed by that, Megillus; bear with me. I had God before my mind’s eye, and felt myself to be what I have just said. However, if you will have it so, man shall be something not so insignificant but more serious.
To proceed with our subject: we have already arranged for
1 Homer, Odyssey, γ 26-8.
2 An alternative interpretation of this last clause (σμικρὰ δὲ ἀληθείας ἄττα μετέχοντες) is that followed by Dr. England and others, 4 we are in the main puppets (and so our thinking does not amount to much), but we have our gleams of truth too’.
3 This is an oversight, as Plato himself makes haste to admit, unless, indeed, the pretended allusion to something which has not, in fact, been yet said, is intentional, and meant to reproduce the style of an actual conversation, where such a slip might readily occur.
Clinias: Why, so it would seem, sir, though a good many of our present proposals are at variance with our customary systems. However, your proposal to let the argument take its course, and not to decide on our verdict until it has reached its end, was most apposite—and in view of it, I feel self-condemned for my present observation. So pray go on with your exposition according to your own mind.
1 The importance of the passage, as Burnet has pointed out, is that the proposal to have a permanently organized, paid body of teachers of all the different ‘subjects’ of education resident together in a properly equipped institution is made here for the first time.
Athenian: Well, Clinias, my mind, as I have already said, is that
Clinias: To be sure we are.
Athenian: And which of the various systems now recognized can we prefer to the comradeship we are just imposing on them? The system followed by the Thracians and many other peoples, that the women till the fields, look after the flocks and herds, and perform menial offices, exactly like slaves, or the practice universal in our own part of the world? You know what our own customs in this matter are; we ‘pack’ all our belongings, as the phrase goes, ‘into one’ house, and make over to our women the control of the store-closet and the superintendence of the spinning and wool-work at large. Or should we perhaps
1 θεραπείας (806a 4) might mean ‘domestic tendance’ generally, but since, as we see from Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, looking after sick servants ranked at Athens along with keeping the stores and minding the children as part of the wife’s duty, I think Plato means to mention this here as one of the tasks in which the Spartan women, as compared with the Athenian, ‘go half-way’.
As for the Sarmatian women, yours, while
Megillus: What are we to do, Clinias? Must we suffer our visitor to run Sparta down in our hearing like this?
Clinias: Indeed we must; we allowed him full liberty of speech, and so we must let him alone until our review of our legislation has fairly reached its completion.
Megillus: I own you are right.
Athenian: Then it is for me to proceed once more with my exposition.
Clinias: Yes, certainly.
Athenian: What, then, should life be like with men whose necessities have been moderately provided for, their trades and crafts put into other hands, their lands let out to villeins who render from the produce such rent as is sufficient for sober livers; men, moreover, furnished with common dining-halls, some for themselves, others near at hand for the members of their families—their daughters and their daughters’ mothers—under presidents of either sex, whose appointed function is daily to dismiss the tables after review and inspection of the conduct of the
1 As editors observe, the passage is meant as a censure on the panicky behaviour of the Spartan women, in spite of their famous training, when Epaminondas was in the valley of the Eurotas after the battle of Leuctra, and threatened an assault on the town of Sparta.
2 As the use of the square brackets is meant to show, I am here trying to represent what I take to be the original sense of a corrupt clause. The MSS. text kept by Burnet in 807b 4, ὡς καὶ νῦν, εἰ ζητοῖμεν ἄν can hardly be translated as it stands, and I am not quite satisfied by Badham’s ὡς καὶ νυνι ζητούμεν ἄν. The difficulty, to my mind, is less with the εἰ ζητούμενα (though I do not feel too confident about this) than with the ὡς καὶ νῦν. I suspect Plato wrote ὡς καὶ νῦν [εἴρηται ζητούμενα ἄν (or ζητούμεν’ ἄν).
1 I think the πάντως of the quotation of this passage in Stobaeus an improvement on the MSS. πάτας in 808 a 7 and translate in that sense.
2 Plato is thinking throughout not so much of what we should call doing business ‘late at night’—a thing not very possible under ancient conditions—as of starting it in the early hours before ‘sunup’.
So much, then, for night; and we may add to what we have said that to spend it in this fashion will further promote the spirit of courage in the souls of citizens of all sorts. With the return of day and dawn, the boys should betake themselves to school. And just as sheep, or any other creatures, cannot be allowed to live unshepherded, so neither must boys be left without the care of attendants, nor slaves without that of a master. Now of all wild young things a boy is the most difficult to handle; just because he more than any other has a fount of intelligence in him which has not yet ‘run clear’, he is the craftiest, most mischievous, and unruliest of brutes. So the creature must be held in check, as we may say, by more than one bridle; in the first place, when once he is out of the mother’s and nurse’s hand, by attendants to care for his childish helplessness, and then, further, by all the masters who teach him anything, and, as befits a free-born man, by the teaching he gets; but further chastisement, as befits a slave, shall be inflicted on the boy and his attendant and teacher
1 The thought is that the teacher is to be held responsible for the good behaviour of the boys who attend his class.
2 i.e. the Minister of Education, spoken of before at 765d, who is the most important person in the whole community.
But, now, as to this Minister himself, how is he to be sufficiently instructed
Your instructions, we have said, are deficient, in the first place, as to reading and writing. Now what is the defect of which we complain? It is that you have so far not been told whether the lad who would be a decent citizen must attain to finished mastery of the study, or must leave it wholly alone, and the same is true of the lyre. Well, we tell you now that these studies must not be left alone. For reading and writing three years or so, from the age of ten, is a fair allowance of a boy’s time, and if the handling of the lyre is begun at thirteen, the
1 That is ‘prose literature’.
2 At 747b.
3 The problem is that of adjusting the religious calendar to the actual movements of the sun, by a proper device for holding the year and month together. Without such a device the months will gradually travel round the year, so that, e.g., a festival appropriate to harvest-time will, sooner or later, come to be celebrated in the middle of winter.
Clinias: Pray, sir, what is the difficulty, for it is plain you speak with a real sense of a personal difficulty?
Athenian: I do, indeed, Clinias; you are right there. But you and your friend are my colleagues in this juristic discussion, and so I am bound to tell you frankly where I see difficulties and where I see none.
Clinias: Well, and why do you mention the point just now? What is the feeling which leads you to do so?
Athenian: Why, here it is: ’Tis no light matter to speak against so many thousands of voices.
Clinias: But, bless me, do you imagine what we have already said about jurisprudence only contradicts popular opinion in a few trifles!
Athenian: Yes, that is true enough. You tell me, I conceive, that though this legislative path of ours is repellent to so many—perhaps those who find it attractive may be as numerous, or if fewer, at least not inferior—you tell me, I say, to join this latter party and follow the path our present discussions have laid down for us with a stout courage and a good heart, not to flinch.
Clinias: I do, indeed.
Athenian: Then there shall be no flinching. Now mark my words. We have a great number of poets, in hexameter verse, in iambic
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: Well, what adequate verdict can I conceivably give about them all in a single sentence? Perhaps something like this—and it is a statement in which I suppose every one will concur—in every poet there is much that is admirably said and also much that is not. But if so, this extensive learning, I must tell you, has its dangers for our young people.
Clinias: Then how would you advise our Curator of Law?
Athenian: Advise him? On what point?
Clinias: On the choice of a standard by reference to which he will permit all the young folk to learn one piece and forbid their learning another. Tell us your mind without any diffidence.
Athenian: There, my dear Clinias, I venture to think I am in a way fortunate.
Clinias: Fortunate in what?
1 i.e. the Minister of Education.
Athenian: In not being altogether at a loss for a standard. As I look back on the discourse you and I have been holding ever since day-break until this moment—and I really believe there has been some divine guiding about the matter—well, be that as it may, our converse has been, to my mind, just like a kind of poem. I dare say there is nothing surprising in my having felt this keen pleasure in reviewing this compact formation, as I may call it, of discourse of my own composition; the fact is that of all the many compositions I have met with or listened to, in verse or in plain prose, I find it the most satisfactory and the most suitable for the ears of the young. So I really think I could not direct our Curator of Law and Minister of Education to a better standard, or bid him do better than instruct his schoolmasters to teach it to their pupils, and also
Clinias: If one is to judge by reference to our professed intentions, sir, I believe we have kept the discussion on the lines originally laid down for it; whether our whole attitude is the right one or not it might be harder to pronounce.
Athenian: That, Clinias—to repeat what I have said more than once already—will presumably become clearer of itself when we have reached the end of our review of our legislation.
Clinias: True.
Athenian: Then we may leave the teacher of letters, may we not, and direct our discourse to the instructor in the cithern?
Clinias: By all means.
Athenian: Well, as for the teachers of that instrument, I fancy we shall be making a proper assignment of their functions as instructors, and more generally as trainers, in that branch of education, if we call to mind our earlier pronouncements.
Clinias: And, pray, what were they?
1 The suitable passages from existing literature would, of course, be already in writing. But presumably Plato means that the Minister of Education is to see that they are all put into the officially authorized ‘reading-books’ of his State schools.
2 The meaning is apparently that the conclusions now reached are strictly consequences of the principles laid down as postulates (ὑποθέσεις) at the opening of the discussion. It still remains, however, possible that our postulates might prove to be mistakes.
Athenian: Why, I believe we said the sexagenarians of the ‘chorus of Dionysus’ would need to be exceptionally sensitive to rhythmic and melodic structure to ensure their competence to distinguish a good musical imitation of a soul under the stress of its emotions from a bad, competence, that is, to distinguish the counterfeit presentments of a good soul from those of an evil, to reject the second but produce the first publicly in their hymnody, and thus to put a charm on the youthful mind, challenging one and
Clinias: Truly said, indeed.
Athenian: That is the purpose, then, for which teacher and pupil must employ the notes of the lyre; they must do so to get the benefit of the emphasis given by its strings, and so must make their tones accordant with those of the voice. As for diversification and complication of the instrumental part—the strings giving out one tone and the composer of the melody another—and, in fact, for correspondence [within or without the octave]
Clinias: Here, again, what you say is true.
Athenian: Ay, absolutely true. So our chosen Director of Music shall have the matter put under his care for supervision, and the blessings of Fortune go with him! Our business shall be to add. further specifications to what we have already said on the subject of the dance and the training of physique in general; we supplemented our treatment of music by adding directions for the teacher, and we will do the same for physical culture. Both the boys and the girls will, of course, have to dance and practice bodily exercises, will they not?
Clinias: Yes.
1 If the words καὶ ἀντίφωνον are sound at 812e 1, ἀντίφωνον must have its usual sense of ‘answering at the interval of an octave’ to the main note, or distinguished from σύμφωνον ‘consonant within the octave’. I feel inclined to agree with England that the two words have been wrongly added here by someone who meant ἀντίφωνον to stand for ‘dissonant’.
2 See supra, 798d 7-802d 6.
Athenian: So the convenient arrangement for these exercises will be that there should be dancing-masters for boys and mistresses for girls.
Clinias: I don’t dispute it.
Athenian: Then once more we must call in the busiest of our functionaries, the Director of Education; his supervision of music and physical training will keep his hands pretty full.
Clinias: How then, at his advanced age, will he be equal to the supervision of such varied business?
Athenian: Oh, easily enough. The law will permit him, as it has already done, to associate with himself in this work any citizens he may choose of either sex; he will know who are the right persons and have no wish to go wrong in such matters, as he will have a prudent respect for his office and an understanding of its importance, and a life-long conviction that so long as the young generation is, and continues to be, well brought up, our ship of State will have a fair voyage, while in the contrary case the consequences are better left unspoken, and we will leave them so in the case of a city which we are founding for the first time, from regard for the anxious observers of omens. On this subject, too—dancing and the motions of physical training in general—we ourselves have already
1 795d ff.
2 In 814a 2, I think Bury probably right in inserting [ἄλλου] between ἕνεκα and ἀλλὰ.
Clinias: Why, no sir, such a performance would be no credit to any city in which it might occur—to say nothing of the mischief it would do.
Athenian: Then we may impose the law that, up to the point indicated, our women are not to neglect the arts of war; they must be practised by all citizens, male and female alike?
Clinias: You have one supporter at any rate in me.
Athenian: Now as to wrestling; we have dealt with it already, but we said nothing of what is to my mind the most important point, though one not easy to explain in the absence of an actual physical demonstration. So we will leave the decision of that issue until theory and practice combined have cleared up the whole subject and made it plain that the kind of wrestling we have in mind is far more closely connected with military combat than any other sort of movement, and also that it is to be cultivated with a view to this latter, not the latter with a view to it.
Clinias: That last point is well taken.
Athenian: So much, then, at present for what we have to say of the value of wrestling. As for other movement of the body as a whole—in the main it may properly be called dancing—we must bear in mind that it has two species, one reproducing motions of comely bodies with a dignified effect, the other those of uncomely bodies with a ludicrous, and that further, the comic and the serious kinds have each two sub-species. One species of the serious sort represents the movements of the comely body and its valiant soul in battle and in the toils of enforced endurance, the other the bearing of the continent soul in a state of prosperity and duly measured pleasure; an appropriate name for this latter would be the dance of peace. The war-dance has a different character, and may properly be called the Pyrrhic; it depicts the motions of eluding blows and shots of every kind by various devices of swerving, yielding ground, leaping from the ground or crouching, as well as the contrary
1 There is, as the commentators say, a strange confusion here. Strictly speaking, the war-dance ‘reproduces’ or ‘imitates’ the movements of the fighting-man, not motions which reproduce these movements. But whether the confusion is due to transcribers, and to be remedied by the correction of ἐπιχειρούσας (815a 7) to ἐπιχειρούσαν (Badham, Paton) or comes from Plato himself (and is only one more sign of the unrevised condition of the Laws) it is perhaps impossible to say.
Again, the more sober the man and the more schooled to fortitude, the less violent these motions; the more fearful the
1 i.e. the Minister of Education. It will be left to him to work out all details.
This concludes our treatment of the employment of comely body and noble mind in choric performances such as we have said these displays should be. As for the play of uncomely body and mind and the artistes of ludicrous burlesque in diction, song, dance, and all the caricaturistic effects of the three, we cannot avoid taking notice of this and passing it under review; a man who means to form his judgment can no more understand earnest apart from burlesque than any other contrary apart from its contrary; but, on the other side, a man who means to have any part in goodness, were it never so little, cannot possibly produce both; the very reason why he must get to know such a thing is that he may never be betrayed by ignorance into doing or saying a ludicrous thing when it is out of place. We shall enjoin that such representations be left to slaves or hired aliens, and that they receive no serious consideration whatsoever; no free person, whether woman or man, shall be found taking lessons in them, and there must always be some
Such, then—subject to your approval—shall be our legislation, and such our conjoined practice in the whole matter of the choric art and the instruction in it—slaves and their masters to receive separate treatment.
Clinias: Well, of course, we approve—at any rate, for the moment.
1 i.e. no such piece is to have a ‘long run’, for fear familiarity might ‘give it a hold’ on the public taste (England). The linguistically possible rendering ‘and a performance of this kind must always be felt to the something unusual’ does not suit the context so well.
2 Accepting Bywater’s necessary γοῦν for οὖν at 817b 3.
Athenian: Then there are, of course, three subjects for the free-born still to study. Ciphering and arithmetic make one subject; mensuration, linear, superficial, and solid, taken as one single study, forms a second; the third is the true relations of
1 Cf. Timaeus 39c-e on the general ignorance of mankind on this subject.
2 The reference is apparently to the closing pages of Book XII (961c ff.) which deal with the composition of the ‘Nocturnal Council,’ whose members are required to have advanced mathematical knowledge.
3 The translation follows Burnet’s punctuation. A very possible alternative rendering is that of Ritter who places a comma after λέγεται (818a 5), ‘for the common folk it is a disgrace that the multitude should not know so much of the matter as is in a certain sense very properly called indispensable.’
4 There is an intentional shift here from the sense of the word ἀναγκαῖα ‘indispensable’, ‘that without which men cannot make shift to get on,’ to the sense, ‘necessarily true’. The ‘necessary truth’ of a mathematical conclusion is what Plato means here by a divine ‘necessity’ as contrasted with the merely human ‘necessity’ of means indispensable to the attaining of some end (which perhaps ought never to be attained at all).
5 The reference is to the words of Simonides in the poem quoted in the Protogoras (345d) ἀνάγκῃ δ᾽ οὐδὲ θεοὶ μάχονται, ‘not even gods contend against necessity’. Presumably Simonides is quoting an already existing popular ‘saw’, and ‘the author of the proverb’ means the unknown originator of the saying.
6 A direct allusion to the poem of Simonides. From the quotations in the Protogoras it is plain that Simonides is there excusing some one on whose reputation there was the stain of some shocking act by ‘the tyrant’s plea, necessity’. Plato’s comment is in the spirit of the retort to the offender who urges that il faut vivre, ‘Mais Monsieur, je n’en vois pas la nécessité’.
Clinias: Yes, sir, but where in these studies do the other sort of necessities, the divine, come in?
Athenian: Why, I presume they are those in neglect
Clinias: Yes, sir, the views you have just expressed sound true and natural, as you expound them.
Athenian: Indeed, they are so, Clinias, though it is difficult to legislate on the subject by anticipation as we are now doing. The more precise details of legislation, with your consent, we may postpone to another occasion.
Clinias: You are apprehensive, I take it, sir, of the common unfamiliarity of our countrymen with such topics, but your concern is unwarranted; pray do your best to state your views without any reservation on that score.
Athenian: I certainly feel the apprehension you speak of, but am
Clinias: Truly observed.
1 ἃς μή τις πράξας μηδὲ αὖ μαθὼν (818b 9). The expression πράττειν ἀνάγκας is singular, and it is hard to be sure of its precise meaning, except that the antithesis with μαθὼν seems to show that the general sense is ‘acting upon’. Ritter, who has a long and valuable note on ‘divine necessity,’ proposes to take the word to mean ‘creating’. The general sense is plainly that the necessity of mathematical truth has its source in the nature of God himself. Cf. the later story which attributes to Plato the saying, ἀεὶ ὁ θεὸς γεωμετρεῖ, ‘God is always at his geometry’.
Clinias: And in what may this native ignorance consist?
Athenian: My dear Clinias, when I was told, rather belatedly, of our condition in this matter, like you, I was utterly astounded; such ignorance seemed to me more worthy of a stupid beast like the hog than of a human being, and I blushed not for myself alone, but for our whole Hellenic world.
Clinias: But what was the reason for your blushes? Let us have your account of it, sir.
Athenian: Why, so I will. Or rather I will make it plain by a question. Pray tell me one little thing; you know what is meant by line?
Clinias: Of course I do.
Athenian: And by surface?
Clinias: Certainly.
1 The words are usually understood as meaning that Plato himself had only realized the existence of ‘incommensurables ‘ late in life, or comparatively late. To me this is incredible. ‘Incommensurables’ are frequently mentioned in the Platonic dialogues from the Hippias Major—a certainly very early dialogue—onward. The thing which Plato only ‘heard of’ late in life may be not the existence of incommensurables, but the wide prevalence of the error of denying their existence. ‘I only learned lately what the universal delusion among Hellenics is, and I was amazed to learn of it.’ This might well be a discovery which Plato would only make after a long experience as a teacher.
Athenian: And you know that they are two distinct things, and that volume is another and a third?
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Now you hold, do you not, that all three are commensurable with one another?
Clinias: Yes.
Athenian: That is, that line is in its very nature measurable by line, surface by surface, and similarly with volume?
Clinias: Most assuredly.
Athenian: But suppose this cannot be said of some of them, neither with more assurance nor with less, but is true in some cases, but not in others, and you believe it true universally; what do you think of your state of mind on the matter?
Clinias: That it is unsatisfactory, to be sure.
Athenian: And what of the relations of line and surface to volume, or of line and surface to one another?
Clinias: Why certainly that is the fact.
Athenian: Then if this is another entire impossibility, though we Hellenes, as I said, all fancy it possible, are we not bound to blush for them all as we tell them: ‘Worthy Hellenes, here is one of the things of which we said that ignorance is a disgrace and knowledge on a point so necessary, no great accomplishment’?
Clinias: We are, indeed.
Athenian: There are, besides, other closely related points which frequently give rise to errors akin to those just mentioned.
Clinias: Such for example as—?
Athenian: The real relation of commensurability and incommensurability to one another.
1 The meaning can hardly be that the Greeks commonly imagine that area or cubic capacity can be stated in linear measures. Most probably the mistake meant is to assume that the areas of figures whose sides, or the volume of figures whose edges are commensurable, must themselves be commensurable, and again that if the volumes and the areas are commensurable, the edges or sides of the figures must be commensurable also.
2 That is, behind the more special problems of the commensurability of specific areas and volumes there lies the problem of constructing a general ‘theory of incommensurables.’ The Epinomis tells us a little more on this point (990b-991 b). The common view, even among mathematicians, was that though in geometry there are incommensurable magnitudes, there are no incommensurable numbers, all numbers are, as we should say, ‘rational’. Against this view, the Epinomis insists that the studies popularly called geometry and stereometry are really concerned with numbers which, though not themselves commensurable, have commensurable second or third powers.
Clinias: I dare say, after all, the game of draughts and these studies are not so widely different.
Athenian: Accordingly, Clinias, I hold that these are subjects which our young people must learn. Indeed there is neither danger nor difficulty in them, and if they are learned through the medium of play, they will do our city no harm, but rather good.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Still, while we must clearly include them in our scheme, if our case for this proves to be made out, equally clearly we shall reject them if it is not made out.
Clinias: Oh, plainly, plainly.
Athenian: Well then, for the present, sir, let them be set down among the requisite studies, to leave no gap in the body of our laws, but set down as detachable from the rest of our polity—like so many redeemable pledges—should they prove unacceptable to us who have deposited them, or you who have received them.
Clinias: The terms of proposal are fair enough.
Athenian: Next you must consider astronomy; are we to adopt the recommendation that our young folk should study it, or are we not?
Clinias: Well, say on.
Athenian: Now here, mark you, I find a strange, indeed, a wholly intolerable paradox.
Clinias: And of what kind?
Athenian: It is currently said that it is wrong—indeed, positively blasphemous—to prosecute inquiry or busy ourselves with the quest for explanation where the supreme God and the universe as a whole are concerned—though the very opposite should seem to be our right course.
Clinias: What!
Athenian: What lam trying to say, I know, is startling, and might be thought unbecoming in a man of our years; but the plain truth is that a man who knows of a study which he believes sublime, true, beneficial to society, and perfectly acceptable to God, simply cannot refrain from calling attention to it.
Clinias: Presumably not; but what astronomical study shall we find answering to this description?
Athenian: Why, my friends, at this moment, all our Hellenic world,
Clinias: And what may this false charge be?
Athenian: We say that they, and certain heavenly bodies associated with them, never keep to the same path, which is why we call them ‘planets’.
Clinias: Egad, sir, and that is true enough. Why, in my own life-time I myself have often seen the morning and evening stars and some others never keeping to the same track, but divagating in all directions; as for sun and moon, of course, I have seen them behave as we all know they regularly do behave.
Athenian: Well then, Megillus and Clinias, that is just the reason why I am now insisting that our citizens and their young people must learn enough of all the facts about the divinities of the sky to prevent blasphemy of them, and to ensure a reverent piety in the language of all our sacrifices and prayers.
Clinias: That is right, provided, of course, that, in the first place, the knowledge of which you speak is possible; on that assumption, if there are errors in our present language on such matters which study will correct, I, too, confess that a subject of such scope and quality must be taught. Do your best, then, with the demonstration that the facts are as you say, as we will do our best to follow your instruction.
Athenian: Why, the lesson I have in mind, to be sure, is not an easy one—and yet it is not so hopelessly difficult either, and takes no very great time to learn, as this one fact is enough to prove; I was not a young man when I heard of the truth myself, and it was no long time ago, and yet I may possibly make it clear to both of you now at no great expense of time. Were the point a really hard one, a man of my age would never be able to explain it to men of yours.
1 A playful allusion to the literal meaning of the word, stellae errabundae, vagrant stars, ’tramps of the sky’, a name given to the sun and his satellites because, by contrast with the ‘fixed’ stars, they seem to have no permanent ‘domicile’. The apparent lawlessness of their movements explains why the pre-Platonic men of science took no interest in these bodies.
2 The irregularities meant are: (1) that the sun, moon, and planets have no fixed position relative to the other heavenly bodies, but go the round of the Zodiac; (2) that what we call the true planets do not even keep steadily on their path through the Zodiac, but appear from time to time to stand still, go back in their tracks, or make excursions north and south in latitude; (3) that the sun’s ‘tropics’ and ‘soltices’ do not divide the year equally; the seasons are of unequal length.
Clinias: Quite true. But pray what may this knowledge be—this doctrine, as you maintain, so surprising, yet so proper for
Athenian: I will do my best. The fact is, my friends, that the belief that sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies are ‘wandering stars’ of any sort is not true; the very reverse is the truth—each of these bodies always revolves in the same orbit and in one orbit, not many, for all that it looks to be moving in several;
1 Unfortunately in this important astronomical pronouncement, Plato, as he says, is merely giving a summary indication of his views without the necessary explanations. Consequently, interpreters have differed greatly about his meaning. The astronomers Schiaparelli and Wolf, of whose views Ritter gives an excellent account in his note on the passage, actually find in it a complete anticipation of the heliocentric astronomy taught in the third century BC by Aristarchus of Samos, and revived eighteen hundred years later by Copernicus, and in Burnet’s posthumous Sather lectures on Platonism the same interpretation is repeated. Others have seen no more in the passage than a mere assertion that the orbit of a planet is uniform, and have supposed Plato to be here enunciating as a recent important discovery the theory that this orbit is compounded of two circular movements, one from east to west with a period of twenty-four hours, common to all the heavenly bodies, in the plane of the sidereal equator, and another, with a period special to each planet, in the plane of the ecliptic from west to east. (So Burnet at one time in the second edition of his Early Greek Philosophy.) To me both these views seem inconsistent with the plain words of the text. Plato cannot be meaning to teach the ‘double motion’ view just mentioned, for two reasons: (1) he distinctly implies that his present doctrine is a recent novelty, whereas the theory of the ‘double motion’ is taken for granted throughout the myth of Er in Republic X—a work long anterior to the Laws—as a matter of course; (2) the emphasis laid in our passage on the point that in spite of all appearances, each planet has only one motion is only intelligible if we suppose that the ‘double motion’ is the very thing Plato intends now to deny (as Burnet admitted in the third edition of Early Greek Philosophy, p. no b 2). On the other hand, it should be plain that there is no intention of teaching a heliocentric theory. The sun is still mentioned as one of the ‘planets’ whose movements we have to explain by the theory—whatever it is—which Plato has in his mind. I can therefore see only one interpretation of our passage which does justice to all the facts. It clearly means to assert that each ‘planet’ moves in one uniform closed curve, all appearances of ‘anomalies’ notwithstanding. To make this view possible at all, clearly what we need to do is to eliminate the apparent diurnal motion of the ‘planet’ as only apparent, leaving it only its ‘year’. This means transferring the apparent diurnal motion to the earth, and this, I believe, is what Plato is hinting at here. The thought is that the ‘irregularities’ in the observed movements of the ‘planets’ are really due to the fact that we make our observations from a moving earth. I take it, then, that Plato’s final view, as hinted at in the Laws, is like that ascribed by the doxographers (probably wrongly) to the Pythagorean Philolaus. Earth, true planets, sun, are all thought of as revolving—in the case of the innermost of all, the earth, with a period of twenty-four hours—round a centre invisible to ourselves. This fits in both with the indications of the Epinomis, and with the well-known testimony of Theophrastus, reproduced by Plutarch (Questiones Platoniae, VIII, 1006c), that ‘Plato in his later years repented of having placed the earth in the centre of the universe, a place not proper for it’, without adding anything which the statement of Theophrastus does not warrant. For a fuller discussion I would refer the reader to both Ritter’s excursus on our present passage, and to my own treatment of the question in my Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, pp. 226-39.
Clinias: Nothing can be truer—if the facts are really as you say.
Athenian: Then, if we can show that they are so, all these matters must be studied—within the limits we have proposed; if not, we must let them alone. May we take it that our agreement extends so far?
Clinias: With all my heart. Aih. Then we may say that our regulations for the studies to be included in our education are now complete. As to the chase, we should recur to the thought which has guided us in other cases of the same kind. It should seem that a legislator’s task extends to something more than the mere imposing of a law and so dismissing a topic; there is something else he must do besides laying down the law, something which verges at once on admonition and on legislation, as our argument has led us to remark more than once already.
1 If the ‘diurnal revolution’ is discounted as only apparent, each planet will have only one motion, its ‘proper motion’ through the signs of the Zodiac. As the moon completes this in a month, while Saturn takes some thirty years to do the same thing, we shall say that the moon gets over the ground quickest, Saturn slowest. But if we regard the diurnal motion as a real motion of the heavenly bodies, it becomes possible to take the opposite view. We may think of the ‘planets’—as Anximander must have done—as really revolving in the same sense with the ‘outermost heaven’, from east to west, but being ‘left behind’ in the race. On that view the moon, which is ‘left behind’ roughly twelve degrees a day, will be the slowest of them, Saturn, which falls behind only about one degree a month, the quickest. This is the confusion of which Plato is speaking. Cf. Timaeus 39a where we are told in the same way that the planets which appear to be ‘caught up’ by others are really the catchers.
A case in point is our treatment of the regimen of infants; as we say, we must not leave our These preliminary remarks may naturally be succeeded by judicious commendation and reprobation of divers forms of the chase, commendation of such as tend to improve the young man’s soul, reprobation of those which have the contrary
The discourse we have just rehearsed may serve the end of general commendation and censure in the matter; the actual law may run to this effect: Such hunters are truly ‘sacred’, and none shall binder them from following the game with their hounds when and as they please; the night-trapper who trusts to his nets and springes no one shall permit to pursue his game at any time or place; the fowler is not to be disturbed on uncultivated ground or in the mountains, but shall be turned off tilled fields or untilled consecrated demesnes by any who may find him there: the fisherman shall be free to take his fish anywhere save in harbours and consecrated rivers, marshes, or lakes, with the sole proviso that he may not foul the waters with stupefying juices.
And with this we may say our regulation of education is at last completed.
Clinias: And well completed, too.
1 i.e. the poisoning of the fish by preparations which paralyse them and so cause them to rise to the top is prohibited.
Laws, Book VIII
Athenian: The next task awaiting us is, with the help of oracles from Delphi, to construct the calendar of festivals and give it the authority of law—to determine what sacrifices it will be ‘to the welfare and profit’ of the State to celebrate, and to what deities they should be offered. The question of their dates and their number will be—to some extent—one for our own decision.
Clinias: That of their number will no doubt be so.
Athenian: Then let me deal with the question of number first. This shall be not less than three hundred and sixty-five,
1 See supra 771d ft. It is an important point that Plato’s official civil year is to be one of 365 days—a true, solar year.
2 ἐξηγηταί, official exponents of the religious law.
Furthermore, an authority which is to make these arrangements
Clinias: Why, sir, I can think of none but the name you have just employed.
1 παγκρατιαστὰς (830a 3) has no precise English equivalent. The pancratium was a rough and dangerous combination of boxing with wrestling.
2 ἀντὶ ἱμάντων σφαίρας ἂν περιεδούμεθα (830b 3-4), ‘should have balls round our wrists instead of himantes’. The himantes were leather thongs used in the actual boxing-match to make the blows more severe (the Roman cestus). The ‘balls’ will be a lighter leather substitute. The object (England) is to make sure that the boxer’s training will accustom him to give and take real ‘punishment’.
Athenian: Very well, then. And is the fighting force of our society to be worse prepared than such combatants as these when it ventures itself, as the occasion arises, in the gravest of all contests, in which the stake is the very existence oneself, children, possessions, nay, of the whole community? Is this precious fear that our practice on one another may provoke some laughter
Clinias: My friend and I, sir, agree with you that this is what the law should enjoin and the whole community practise.
Athenian: Now I wonder whether all of us understand the reason why such contests between opposing teams are nowhere to be found in our existing societies, except perhaps on the smallest scale. Should we lay the blame on the ignorance of the generality of mankind and their legislators?
Clinias: Very likely we should.
Athenian: My dear Clinias! Not in the least! The true causes are two, both very powerful.
Clinias: And what are they?
Athenian: One arises from the passion for wealth which leaves a man not a moment of leisure to attend to anything beyond his personal fortunes. So long as a citizen’s whole soul is wrapped up in these, he cannot give a thought to anything but the day’s takings; any study or pursuit which tends to that result every one sets himself eagerly to learn and practise; all others are laughed to scorn. Here, then, we may say, is one reason
Clinias: Too true.
Athenian: Well then, this, as I say, may be set down for one reason which tends to keep societies from efficient cultivation of noble activities, military and otherwise; it turns the naturally quiet and decent man into a tradesman, skipper, or mere menial, and
Clinias: Unfortunate; why so?
Athenian: Why, what epithet but ‘most unfortunate’ can I find for men who are forced to go through the world with an incessant hunger gnawing at their own souls?
Clinias: Well, that is one of your causes, sir; but what do you mean by the other?
Athenian: Thank you for the reminder.
Clinias: One cause, as I understand you, is this life-long insatiate quest which leaves none of us an hour’s leisure, and so keeps us all from practising the arts of war as we should. Good; but let us hear something of the other reason.
Athenian: I fancy you think my reason for being so slow to name it is that I cannot.
Clinias: Not so; but what one must call your abhorrence of the character just described is leading you, as we think, into an invective irrelevant to our present argument.
Athenian: I stand properly rebuked, gentlemen. You wish me, it appears, to proceed.
Clinias: You have only to do so.
Athenian: Then I say the reason is to be found in those ‘no-constitutions’
1 See 712e, 713e, and especially 715b where it was said that the subjects of these ‘governments by a party’ should properly be called not πολῖται, but στασιῶται. στασιωτεία is, of course, a word coined for the nonce as an antithesis to πολιτεία, almost as we might say ‘not constitutions, but dis-titutions’.
Clinias: Quite true.
Athenian: Then I suppose we may next make a general observation about all athletic contests; those which provide a training for war should be encouraged and prizes instituted for success in them; those which do not may be dismissed. Which these are it will be better to make matter for explicit statement and legislation from the very first. To begin with, I apprehend there should be such institution of prizes for fleetness of foot and rapidity of movement in general?
Clinias: There should.
Athenian: To be sure, bodily agility—quickness of hand as well as of foot—is a first-rate point in the soldier’s equipment; fleetness of foot has its use in flight and pursuit, and readiness
Clinias: Of course.
Athenian: And again, neither yields its best service without the aid of weapons.
Clinias: Naturally not.
1 In 832c 9-d 1 I translate the MSS. (and vulgate) text, ἣν νομοθετούμενοι λέγομεν. But probably we should read, with Badham, ὴν νομοθετούμενοι [ἃ] λέγομεν, ‘the city-constitution we are imposing has avoided both the evils of which we are speaking’.
Athenian: So our herald will follow the existing custom and announce the furlong race as the first event of our sports; the competitor shall make his entry in full armour, we shall give no prize for an unarmed competitor. No, the order of entry
Clinias: A good arrangement.
Athenian: Now let us make three classes in these athletic events, one for boys, one for lads, and one for men. We will fix the length of the course for lads at two-thirds, and that for boys at one-half the length of the full course, whether they enter as ‘hoplites’ or as ‘archers’. In the case of females, we shall have races of one and two furlongs, a ‘chariot-course’, and a long-distance event, in which girls below the age of puberty must actually compete stripped, while girls who have passed thirteen and are still awaiting marriage—to ensue at latest at twenty and at earliest at eighteen—must be clad in the proper accoutrement when they enter into these competitions. So much then for races for both males and females. As for competitions of strength, in place of wrestling and the like, the ‘heavy events’ of current practice, we shall institute fights in armour, single combats, or combats between pairs, or contests between any number of combatants up to ten a side. In determining what points will disqualify for victory or count towards it, we shall follow the precedent set by existing authorities on wrestling in their rules for the proper conduct of that sport: we shall, in like manner call in experts in fencing under arms and invite their help in regulating the faults which must be avoided, and hits which must be scored, to qualify for a victory in these
We have at last come to the end of this subject of athletic contests, and the teaching of physical culture, with all the work it entails both in the competitions and in the daily routine of school. We have similarly completed our main treatment of music; rules for rhapsodes
1 Because of the paucity of horses in Crete. In such a district no one is likely to want to drive ‘four-in-hand’, or to have a stud for the purpose, even if the nature of the ground were less unfavourable.
2 The language in 834b 7-8 is unusual, but the meaning is clear. If any change is to be made, I think I would suggest merely writing ἀγωνίσματ for ἀγωνιστὰς in b 7.
3 Possibly, as C. Ritter holds, παιδιᾶς, (sport) in 834d 3 should be παιδειᾶς, ‘education’; the words are constantly confused in MSS. The thought would then be, ‘since it is useful to have mounted archers etc., we must, of course, educate them for the work’.
4 ‘Rhapsodes’, i.e. professional reciters of poems which have received the State’s imprimatur.
Clinias: Pray, sir, where may our argument be getting to now? As yet we do not see its drift.
1 i.e. the committee which has just been named, and is to make all the particular regulations on its own authority.
Athenian: I am not surprised you do not. But come! I must try to put the matter more plainly still. When our conversation brought us to this theme of education, there rose before me a vision of young people of both sexes living in affectionate intimacy: as you may imagine, I was moved to uneasy apprehensions when I asked myself how one is to manage such a society; a society where the young of both sexes are in the pink of condition, exempt from the severe menial labour which does more than anything else to damp the fires of wantonness, and all make sacrifices, feasts, and choric song the concern of their lives. How, indeed, in such a society, are they to be kept free
1 Laius was, according to legend, the inventor of masculi amores.
2 In 836c 6-7, if, with Burnet, we keep the MS. text πιθανῷ λόγῳ, καὶ the sense will be as I have given it, but we shall have to force on the καὶ the meaning ‘and yet’. This seems to me very hard, and I should prefer, with Hermann, to add a [εὶ] before the καὶ.
Clinias: How so?
Athenian: Why, we speak, you know, of the attachment between those who are alike in goodness, or between equals, and again of that between the indigent and the rich, where the one party is the opposite of the other, and when either feeling is intense we call it ‘love’.
Clinias: We do.
Athenian: Now this attachment between opposites is fierce and furious, and we do not often find it reciprocated, whereas that founded on similarity is equable and permanently reciprocal; where both factors are present at once, for one thing it is hard to perceive what the subject of this ‘love’ is really seeking, and for another, he is distracted and baffled by rival impulses, one inviting him to enjoy the charms of the object, the other forbidding the enjoyment. The man whose love is a physical passion, a hunger for another’s charms, like that for ripe fruit, tells himself to take his fill and gives not a thought to his minion’s state of soul. But he that treats carnal appetite as out of the question, that puts contemplation before passion, he whose desire is veritably that of soul for soul, looks on enjoyment of flesh by flesh as wanton shame; as one that reverences, ay and worships, chastity and manhood, greatness and wisdom, he will aspire to live with his love in constant purity on both parts. The sort of love in which both factors are involved is that we have now reckoned the third.
1 The MSS. text at 837d 1-2, ὁ δὲ μειχθεὶς ἐξ ἀμφοῖν τρίτος ἔρως οὗτός ἐσθ᾽ ὃν νῦν διεληλύθαμεν ὡς τρίτον, cannot represent what Plato meant to stand, either τρίτος or ὡς τρίτον is superfluous. The redundancy would be removed if, with England, we adopted Dr. H. Jackson’s γ’ for τρίτος. But ἐξ ἀμφοῖν τρίτος sounds exactly right and looks like a verbal echo of 837a 3 above; hence the error of transcription, if there is one, is probably rather in ὡς τρίτον. I half suspect that here, as in some other passages, the redundancy may be due to indecision on the author’s part between two equivalent wordings of his thought, of which his transcriber has preserved both.
Now since loves are of
Megillus: All you have even now said of this same matter, sir, is perfectly well.
Athenian: I expected I should find you in accord with myself, friend, and it seems I was right. What your Spartan law thinks about such matters is a question I need not raise; I need only welcome your assent to our doctrine. As for Clinias, I must do my best to charm him into acceptance of our view on some later occasion. But enough of your common concession; by all means let us return to our legislating.
Megillus: Rightly proposed.
Athenian: Well now, and about a device to make the establishment of our law secure? I have one actually ready to my hand,
Megillus: You mean to say—?
Athenian: Even today, as you know, lawless as most men are, they are very effectually deterred from cohabitation with the fair, and not against their own will either, but with their full and entire consent.
Megillus: Of what cases are you thinking?
Athenian: Of persons who have a fair sister or brother. The same law, though unwritten, proves a complete safeguard of son and daughter; so much so that no one lies with them, openly or covertly, or approaches them with any familiarities of that sort; nay the very wish for such congress never so much as enters the mind of the ordinary person.
Megillus: True enough.
Athenian: Well then, you see how all such lusts are extinguished by a mere phrase.
Megillus: Phrase? What phrase?
Athenian: The saying that they are all unhallowed, abominations to God, deeds of black shame. The explanation must surely be that no one holds a different language about them; all of us, from our very cradles, are constantly hearing the same report of them from all quarters; we hear it alike from the lips of the buffoon, and again delivered with all the so-called solemnity
Megillus: You are perfectly right on one point; common fame is indeed a wonderfully potent force, provided only no single soul dares to entertain a sentiment contrary to the established usage.
Athenian: So you see how right I was to say that if only the legislator has a mind to subjugate one of the passions which keep humanity in the hardest bondage, it is easy enough for him to find out the way to get a hold on it; he has merely to get the sanction of a common fame which is universal—embraces bond and free, women and children, and every section of society alike—and he will without more ado have secured the best of guarantees for his law.
Megillus: No doubt; but, then, how a whole community is ever to be brought to this voluntary unanimity of language on such a point
Athenian: A pertinent rejoinder. That was exactly my own meaning when I said I knew of a device for establishing this law of restricting procreative intercourse to its natural function by abstention from congress with our own sex, with its deliberate murder of the race
1 I render the λεγομένα of the MSS. at 838c 4, since it gives a good sense and is not demonstrably wrong. But one cannot but suspect that Orelli’s correction λεγομένῃ may be sound, ‘and again uttered with all the solemnity of tragedy.’
2 A reference (inter alia) to a consideration important to the legislator that the vice in question is not only ‘foul sin’, as we have already been told, but menacing to the perpetuation of a society.
Megillus: And there was truth in what you said.
Athenian: Still, would you like me to do what I can to urge an argument, and a telling one to show that the proposal is feasible, not out of the range of human possibility?
Clinias: Most certainly.
Athenian: Then tell me, in which case would a man find it an easier task to abstain from sexual gratifications and obey orders on the matter readily, as a decent man should—if his physique were in good condition—in training, in fact—or if it were in poor form?
Clinias: If he were in training, of course; most decidedly so.
Athenian: Well, we have all heard, have we not, how Iccus of Tarentum is said to have acted for the sake of distinction at
Clinias: You are perfectly right when you say that tradition asserts this emphatically as actual fact about these athletes.
Athenian: Why then, they made no hardship of denying themselves this ‘heaven of bliss’ as the vulgar account it, for the sake of
Clinias: And what victory is that?
Athenian: The conquest of their lusts: if they achieve it,
Clinias: We can hardly suppose so.
Athenian: Then if this is how we stand in the matter of this law—if it is the general viciousness which has brought us to a standstill—I say it is the law’s simple duty to go straight on its way and tell our citizens that it is not for them to behave worse than birds and many other creatures which flock together in large bodies. Until the age for procreation these creatures live in continence and unspotted virginity; when they have reached that age, they pair together, the male with the female and the female with the male their preference dictates, and they live thereafter in piety and justice, steadfastly true to their contract of first love. ‘Surely you,’ we shall say, ‘ought to be better than the beasts.’ But if, alas! they should be corrupted by the example of the great mass of other Greeks and of non-Greeks, as they learn from their eyes and ears how all-powerful so-called ‘free’ love is among them all, and should so fail to win the victory, I would have our Curators of Law turn legislators and contrive a second law to meet their case.
1 I think England probably right in suggesting that νίκης [ἧς] should be read for νίκης at 840c 5.
Clinias: And what law do you advise them to enact, if the one we are now proposing slips through their fingers?
Athenian: Why, of course, Clinias, the next best to it.
Clinias: And what is that?
Athenian: There was a way of effectively checking the development of the full violence of these lusts, that of directing the rising current into some other physical channel by hard work. Now this result may be attained if sexual indulgence is attended by a sense of shame; this feeling will make indulgence infrequent, and the infrequency of the indulgence will moderate the tyranny of the appetite. So it must be the ordinance of custom and
Clinias: And what are the three?
Athenian: Fear of God, desire of honourable distinction, and the development of the passion for a beauty which is spiritual, not physical. It may be that my present proposals are no more than the aspirations of a pious imagination, though I assure you any society would find their realization a supreme blessing. However, by God’s help, we might not impossibly enforce one or other of two rules for sexual love. One would be that no free-born citizen should dare to touch any but his own wedded wife, and that there should be no sowing of unhallowed and bastard seed with concubines, and no sterile and unnatural intercourse with males. Failing this, we may suppress such relations with males utterly, and as for women, if a man should have to do with any—whether acquired by purchase or in any way whatsoever—save those who have entered the house with the sanction of heaven and holy matrimony, and his act become known to man or woman, we shall probably be pronounced to do well by enacting that he be deprived of the honours of a citizen, as one that proves himself an alien indeed. So whether this be taken as one single statute, or should rather be called two, let it stand as our law in the matter of sex and the whole business of love, our rule of right and wrong in all relations inspired by those passions.
Megillus: Indeed sir, I for one shall welcome this law with all my heart; Clinias, of course, must declare his mind on the matter for himself.
Clinias: And so I shall, Megillus, when I think I have fitting occasion; for the moment, however, suppose we permit our friend to proceed with his legislation.
Megillus: Well and good.
Athenian: Observe then; our progress has now brought us to a point at which me may well take the public meals to have been instituted. (As I say, there would be difficulties about this anywhere else; but in Crete no one is likely to recommend any other arrangement.) But on what system they should be
The question which arises next in natural order is that of commissariat; what will be the appropriate sources of provisions? Of course, the sources from which societies in general can be provisioned are varied and numerous, twice as numerous, at least, as those open to our citizens, since a Greek population, as a rule, draws its food supply from land and sea alike, whereas ours is confined to the land. So far as the legislator is concerned, this makes his work lighter; the number of laws necessary for adequacy will be reduced not merely to one-half, but within still narrower compass, and those which are required will also be fitter for free-born men. The maker of our city’s code is free to turn his back on the regulation of commerce water-borne or land-borne, of retail trading, inn-keeping, tolls and customs, mining operations, interest simple and compound, and a thousand such details; his statutes will be made for husbandmen, graziers, bee-keepers, custodians of such stock, and users of the implements connected with it; his principal task has already been achieved by his regulation of marriage, procreation and rearing of children, education, appointment of civic officials; he has now to turn his attention to regulations for those who raise the food-supply or are concerned in its preparation.
We shall begin, then, with a number of statutes under the rubric Of Agriculture. At their head shall stand a law of the sacred landmark, and it shall run thus: No man shall move his neighbour’s landmark, whether that neighbour be a fellow-citizen, or the property lie on the border marches and the neighbour be thus an alien; the act must be held to be a literal
1 For the differences between the systems of Crete and of Sparta, cf. Aristotle Politics, 1271a ff, and Athenaeus iv, p. 143 The main difference is that in Sparta the expense of the meals fell upon the individual citizens, who consequently lost their franchise if unable to keep up their contributions; in the Cretan cities the cost was defrayed by the community as a whole.
For Zeus the god of common clanship is witness to one of these sanctities, Zeus protector of the stranger to the other, and when
Further, little repeated torts between neighbours by their frequency engender a heavy burden of ill-will and make neighbourhood a grevious and bitter hardship. Hence neighbour must take every care to do nothing exceptionable to neighbour; must keep himself strictly from all such acts, and above all from encroachment on a neighbour’s lands; for whereas by no means every man can do his neighbour a service, to cause him hurt is easy enough, and any man can do it. He that disregards boundary-marks and works soil that belongs to his neighbour shall make the damage good to him, and shall moreover, by way of medicine for his churlish insolence, pay a further sum of double the amount of the damage to the sufferer. In all such cases the inspection, conviction, and assessment of penalties shall be in the hands of the Rural Commissioners—action being taken, as has already been said,
1 At 761e, where the duties of this force of rural police under its commissioners were described.
Thus, to take one instance, there are
As to the fruit-harvest, there must be an accepted general understanding to some such effect as this. Two gifts are bestowed on us by the bounty of the goddess of harvest, one the ‘ungarnered nursling
1 The two gifts, as explained below, are the ‘common’ or ‘coarse’ grapes, figs, etc., which are dried or made into vin ordinaire in bulk, and the choice fruit specially preserved for eating. I have kept the MSS. reading παιδιὰν Διονυσιάδα (844d 6), ‘nursling of Dionysus’, against the emendation παιδιὰν, ‘plaything of Dionysus’, adopted by Burnet and others (Stallbaum, Ritter), on the ground of the Euripidean description of the lotus-plant as πλεκτὰν Αἰγύπτου παιδείαν (Troades, 128).
Water, above all things, is exceptionally necessary for the growth of all garden produce, but is easily corrupted. It is not easy to affect the other contributory causes of the growth of products of the ground, the soil, the sunlight, the winds, by doctoring, diverting, or intercepting the supply, but water can be tampered with in all these ways, and the law must accordingly come to the rescue. So we shall meet the case by enacting as follows: if one man intentionally tamper with another’s supply, whether of spring-water or standing water, whether by way of drugging, of digging, or of abstraction, the injured party shall
As to the bringing home of the fruits of the seasons, it shall be
As to the arts and crafts we should proceed as follows. In the first place, no native, and no servant of a native, is to practice a craft as his calling. A citizen has already a calling which will make full demands on him, in view of the constant practice and wide study it involves, in the preservation and enjoyment of the public social order—a task which permits of no relegation to the second place. But human capacity, we may fairly say, is never equal to the finished exercise of two callings or crafts; nay more, none of us has the gift of following
No dues shall be paid in our city either on exports or on imports. There shall be no importation of frankincense or other such foreign perfumes for the purposes of religious ceremonial, nor yet of purple and other dye-stuffs not produced in the country, nor of the materials of any other industry dependent on foreign importation and serving no necessary purpose. Further there shall be no exportation of any commodities which it is indispensable to retain at home. The jurisdiction and supervision in all these matters shall be with the twelve Curators of Law who stand at the head of the board when its five senior members are exempted.
1 The meaning of ἀναιρέσεων τῶν ἔργων (847b 3) is uncertain. On the analogy of the juristic use of ἀναιρέσεσις for the repeal of a law, the meaning should be refusal to accept unsatisfactory work. On the other hand, on the analogy of the use of the word to mean the ‘taking up’, ‘recovery’, of the slain after a battle, it may mean here either the ‘acceptance’ of work done to an order, or (?) the ‘taking-up’ of a contract to do a certain piece of work. (I do not even feel sure that England is wrong in suggesting that Plato wrote ἀνακρίσεων, the ‘scrutiny’ of a piece of work produced by the artisan. This would cover both the possible cases of complaint that the work had been wrongfully rejected and that it had been ‘passed’ and then not paid for.) On the whole, however, I think the rendering I have adopted the most probable.
When we come to supplies and the distribution of natural produce, a rule much like that followed in Crete will probably be found to serve our turn. All should divide the total produce of the soil into twelve parts, as it will in fact be divided in consumption: each twelfth—that of the wheat and barley, for example, and all the produce of the seasons as well as all saleable
Clinias: A word in explanation, please.
Athenian: Why, you know, some of these products are bound to be inferior in strain and condition and others superior.
Clinias: Of course.
1 The exporting is mentioned because the imported ‘war material’ would have been paid for by exportation. The main point of the law is that the State is to be the dealer in these transactions; they are not to be undertaken by ‘private enterprise.’
Athenian: Well, in that respect none of the three subdivisions, neither that for the masters, nor that for the slaves, nor yet that of the aliens, shall have any advantage over the other; the distribution shall secure the same equality of similarity for all. Each citizen shall receive the two-thirds and be authorized to distribute them among the slaves and free persons of his household in such quantity and quality as he pleases. The residue shall be distributed by number and measure in manner following; the distribution shall proceed upon a computation
Next, we must provide our personnel with individual dwelling-houses properly grouped, and the following disposition will be appropriate for the purpose. There should be twelve villages, each standing in the centre of one of our twelve regional districts. Our first proceeding should be, in each of these villages, to set apart temples, with a market-square, for the gods and super-human beings under them, taking care that any local deities of the Magnetes, or sanctuaries of other powers of venerable memory which may be left, receive the same honours as in earlier ages. In each of the twelve regions we shall found shrines of Hestia, Zeus, Athena, and the god, whoever he may be, who is to be patron of the district. We should then begin by building dwellings on the highest ground, in the neighbourhood of these temples, as the strongest lodging we can find for the garrison. The whole of the rest of our territory will be furnished with workmen, who will be divided into thirteen sections. One of these will be appointed to dwell in the capital (this section itself, in its turn, will be divided into twelve parts, like the capital itself, who will be distributed through all the suburbs) while we shall collect in the several villages the classes of hands whom farmers will find useful. The supervision of them all is to be in the hands of the chiefs of the Rural Commissioners, who shall decide what workers each district requires, and how many of them, and where they can live with least discomfort to themselves and most benefit to the farmers. The workmen in the capital shall, in like manner, be placed
The details of the conduct of the market must, of course, rest with the Commissioners of the Market. After their vigilance to protect the temples in the market-place from all violation, their second concern must be with the supervision of the human traffic, and in this charge they shall take careful note of decency and indecency of behaviour, and inflict correction where it is called for. They are, first of all, to take note whether the sales of the articles which citizens are required to vend to aliens are in all cases conducted as the law commands. For each such article the law will be that on the first of the month the quantity which is to be sold to the aliens shall be produced by the agents—that is, aliens or slaves appointed by the citizens for this purpose—beginning with the monthly twelfth portion of corn,
1 I depart, with some hesitation, from Burnet’s text by adopting τρίτη (W. R. Paton) for the MSS. τρίτῃ in 849c 1. With the MSS. text, the sense may be either that the cattle-market shall be held ‘on the twenty-third’, or that it shall be held ‘on the third twentieth’ (which presumably would mean rather ‘every other month’ than ‘every quarter’). But the choice of the day is wholly arbitrary with the first interpretation: on the second, the cattle-market is, to judge from the practice of our own dealers, not held often enough.
2 The ‘market for foreigners’ is (of course) to be distinguished from the three ‘stated markets’ just described, at which citizens, as well as aliens, do business.
3 This is apparently to be distinguished from both the markets already mentioned, since it is implied that it is held every day.
If the property bought or sold, in quantity or value, violate the law which fixes the limits of increase and decrease outside which both transactions are prohibited, the excess must be at once recorded
1 The meaning is that if any sale or purchase results in bringing a citizen’s wealth above the upper, or below the lower, limits legally permissible, the fact is to be at once recorded. The ‘excess’, in the former case, would, by Plato’s requirements in Book V, be confiscated: whether the ‘cancelling of the deficit’ in the contrary case, means that the man who has been thus impoverished by a contract contrary to the spirit of the law, is to be recouped in some way, or that the sale or purchase itself is to be pronounced invalid is not stated. Common sense surely suggests the second interpretation.
Laws, Book IX
Athenian: The next place in a digest of law will naturally fall to judicial processes arising from all the activities we have so far studied. What will inevitably be the matter of actions at law we have, indeed, already explained in a measure, viz., the affairs of the farm and the business connected therewith. But the main topic has not yet been broached; to handle it in its details—to say what punishment an offence must receive and before what court it must be brought—will be the next subject for our consideration.
Clinias: And rightly so.
Athenian: In a way, to be sure, it is to our shame to be framing any such legislation as we are now on the point of undertaking at all in such a society as we contemplate, one which, we hope, will have all advantages and enjoy all the right conditions for the practice of virtue. Why, the very assumption that a man will ever be born in such a society who will be stained by the graver turpitudes of other States, that we consequently need to anticipate the appearance of such characters by minatory legislation and enact statutes for their warning and punishment in the expectation that they will be found among us—the mere imagination, as I say, is, in a way, to our shame. But after all, we are not in the position of the legislators of earlier days, whose codes were framed for an age of heroes: they, if the current tales may be believed, were sons of gods and their laws were made for men of the same celestial ancestry; we are but men, and the law we are imposing is meant for slips of humanity. So we may well be pardoned for the apprehension that some ‘hard-shell’
1 I assume that Stephanus was right in inserting a καὶ before καθάπερ in 853d 3. (Burnet follows the MSS.)
To him, then, who is driven by the voice of some unhappy passion that besets him by day and wakes him from his sleep at night, to go a-temple-robbing we may address some such words of reasoning and exhortation as these: ‘Poor soul, this evil prompting which now moves you to go a-robbing temples comes neither from man nor from God; ’tis an infatuate obsession that is bred in men by crime done long ago and never expiated, and so runs its fatal course. You should strain every nerve to guard yourself from it; how you are to do so, you are now to be told. When thoughts of such things assail you, hasten to the rites that baffle the evil chance, hasten in supplication to the altars of the gods who give deliverance from curses, hasten to the company of your men of virtuous repute; listen to them as they tell you, yes and do your best to tell the story to yourself, how all are bound to revere the good and the right. From the company of the evil run, and look not once back. If such action bring relief from your malady, well; if not, think on the better way of death, and take your leave of life.’
In such strains we shall couch our preludes for the behoof of such as purpose any of these accursed deeds whereby a society is undone. The actual law shall be left without a voice for him who hearkens to us, but for him who will not listen it must follow up our prelude in ringing tones. Whosoever shall be taken in sacrilege, shall, if slave or alien, have his misfortune branded on hands and forehead, be scourged with such number of stripes as the court shall think proper, and be cast forth naked beyond the borders. For if he suffer that judgment, he may perchance be made a better man by his correction. For truly judgment by sentence of law is never inflicted for harm’s sake: its normal effect is one of two; it makes him that suffers it a better man, or, failing this, less of a wretch. If ever a citizen be detected in such an act, in gross and horrible crime against gods, parents, or society, the judge shall treat
1 i.e. not only must the offender, after execution, be refused a grave in his native land, but his very name must never be mentioned.
2 For the method of appointing this court, see supra 767b ff. It corresponds to the Athenian Areopagus, but its jurisdiction is extended to all capital cases [not confined to those of homicide, and in these trials it is augmented by the addition of an unspecified number of the senior νομοφύλακες].
3 εἰσαγωγὰς (855d 1) means the formal laying of the case before the jury, and involves seeing that all the proper proceedings have been taken in the formulation of the charge and the defendant’s reply to it, that the depositions of witnesses, any documents to be used in evidence, and the like are in order, and so on. This was, at Athens, the business of the magistrate who presided over a trial in one of the Heliastic courts.
The prosecutor shall state his case and the defendant reply to it, each in a single speech. When the speeches have been delivered, the senior judge shall first state his view of the case, discussing the statements of the parties in full and sufficient detail. When he has finished, the rest of the judges, each in his order, shall review any omissions or errors they find to complain of in the pleadings of either party, a judge who has no complaint to make leaving the right of speech to his neighbour; the written record of all statements pronounced to be relevant shall be confirmed by the seals of all the judges and deposited
To turn from cases of religion to cases of treason to the State.
1 Or—which comes to the same thing—on the sacred hearth of the courtroom.
2 The proceedings are largely modeled on those of the Areopagus, but with the important addition that the verdict is not reached by a secret ballot, but after a reasoned pronouncement from each member of the court. The extension of the length of a trial to three days, itself apparently based on Areopagitic procedure, to all capital cases, is another important reform.
3 κατάλυσιν τῆς πολιτείας (856b 1), ‘subversion of the established constitution’.
Any man of worth, however slight, must reveal the matter to the
Clinias: An admirable proposal.
Athenian: There is yet a third class to be covered by a single law
1 The repeated prohibition of forfeiture, as a method of punishment by which the innocent suffer in perpetuity for the guilty, is aimed at a marked blemish in the Attic legal system.
2 I would read τρίτοις in 857e 5, ’one law is to be common to still a third class of offenders’, i.e. common to them with the traitors and temple-breakers already, dealt with.
Clinias: Pray, sir, how can we rule that it shall make no difference to a thief’s case whether the stolen property be of great value or little, whether it be taken from a consecrated spot or an unconsecrated, or how the circumstances of a theft may differ in other respects? A lawgiver should surely adapt himself to
Athenian: A sound observation, Clinias. I fear I was letting myself drift when the collision with you woke me up. You remind me of the observation I made a while ago, that the business of legislation, if I may speak on the spur of the moment, has never yet been thoroughly worked out on right lines. But what, you may ask, do I mean by this? That was no unhappy simile by which we likened all existing legislation to the treatment of unfree patients by unfree physicians.
1 Supra, 720 a.
Clinias: Well, and would not the speaker be in the right of it?
Athenian: He might be so, if only he also understood that any man who treats of law in the style we are now adopting, means to educate his fellow-citizens rather than to lay down the law to them. That, too, would be a pertinent remark, would it not?
Clinias: It might be.
Athenian: And how fortunate for us that our present position is what it is!
Clinias: In what way fortunate?
Athenian: Because we are under no obligation to lay down the law; we are free to pursue our own reflections on all points of political
Clinias: A singular pair of alternatives, sir. We should be in the position of the statesman driven by the stress of some dire necessity to produce his laws on the instant, because tomorrow will be too late. Our case, please God, is more like that of stonemasons or some such workers at the beginning of their
Athenian: At all events, Clinias, our digest of law will be the more scientific so. For here is a point I beg we may observe in connection with the legislator.
Clinias: And what may it be?
Athenian: Our societies, we may say, abound in literary works by various authors, and of this literature the productions of the legislator form part.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: Well then; are we to give serious attention to the compositions of others, poets and others who have left a written record of their counsels for the conduct of life, in prose or in verse, and none to the legislator’s? Should not they have our first attention?
Clinias: Decidedly.
Athenian: And can we suppose that the legislator alone among authors is to give us no counsel about honour, good, or right, not to tell us what they are, and how they must be cultivated by one who would ha858ve a happy life?
Clinias: Of course he must tell us.
Athenian: Then if it is discreditable in Homer, or Tyrtaeus, or another poet, to have laid down bad precepts for the conduct of life in his verses, is the discredit less in Lycurgus, or Solon, or any other author of a legislation? Surely a society’s law-book should, in right and reason, prove, when we open it, far the best and finest work of its whole literature; other men’s
1 i.e. the line of wise and affectionate counsel.
in uttering our thoughts on law, or, at least,
Clinias: Well said, indeed; we must act as you propose.
Athenian: Then we must, in the first place, go on with the investigation we had begun; we must look closely into our law of sacrilege, theft in general, and injuries as a class. We must not be discouraged to find that though some matters have been disposed of in the course of our still unfinished legislation, others still demand further consideration. We are still on our way to become legislators, but as yet have not reached the goal, as we may perhaps do in time. With your approval, then, we will discuss the points I have specified on the lines I suggest.
Clinias: With all my heart.
Athenian: Then here is the point where we must make an effort after clarity of vision in all discussion of the good and right. What amount of agreement and what amount of disagreement is actually to be found, among ourselves (who, you know, would own at least to an aspiration to surpass the common herd), and again among the mass of mankind among themselves?
Clinias: Of what disagreements between us are you thinking?
Athenian: Let me try to explain. When we think of right in general, or of upright men, right deeds, right conduct, we are universally agreed in a way that they are one and all comely. Thus, however strongly a man should insist on the point that even upright men who may be physically ugly are perfectly comely, in respect of their eminent uprightness of character, his language would never be thought out of place.
Clinias: And rightly not, surely.
Athenian: No doubt. But I would have you observe that if all that is characterized by rightness is comely, this ‘all’ must include what is done to us, no less than what we do.
Clinias: And what then?
Athenian: The right thing we do, just so far as it has its share of rightness, equally partakes of comeliness.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: Well then, if our language is to be kept clear of inconsistency, we must also admit that the thing done to us is
Clinias: True enough.
Athenian: But if we grant that something may be done to us which is unseemly, though right, there will be a discord between the
Clinias: But the point of your remark?
Athenian: Quite a simple one. The laws we were just now laying down look like a proclamation of the direct contrary of our present doctrine.
Clinias: Where does the discrepancy come in?
Athenian: Why, you know, we laid it down that a temple-robber or a man at war with an excellent law is rightly put to death. And we were on the point of enacting a host of similar rules when we were checked by the discovery that we have here the infliction of a host of severe penalties, and that these inflictions are at once supremely right and superlatively shameful.
Clinias: It looks dangerously like it.
Athenian: And this is what brings the discordance and confusion into the popular employment of the epithets comely and right in such cases.
Clinias: So it should seem, sir.
Athenian: Well then, Clinias, let us turn to ourselves. How far are we consistent in our language about the matter?
Clinias: Consistent? Consistent with what?
Athenian: I fancy I have already
Clinias: That what?
Athenian: That bad men universally are always bad against their own will. Now on that presupposition a further consequence inevitably follows.
Clinias: And that consequence is?
Athenian: Why, the doer of a wrong, you will grant, is a bad man, and a bad man is what he is against his will. But it is mere nonsense to talk of the voluntary doing of an involuntary act. Ergo, he who declares the doing of a wrong involuntary must
1 The connection of thought is this. A legal penalty is always a πάθυς or ‘infliction’, something done to a man. In popular language, it is said both that it is right that we should do the thing to him, and that it is shameful, degrading, unseemly that he should have it done to him. What it is right, and therefore seemly, in us to do to him, it is ‘an ignominy’ that he should undergo. And yet, when we come to think of it, if it is seemly that we should inflict the penalty, it cannot also be unseemly that it should be undergone.
2 πρὸς ποίαν (860c 6) could only mean πρὸς ποίαν συμφωνίαν, and this makes no good sense. As a makeshift, I render Ast’s πρὸς ποῖον or Baiter’s πρὸς ποῖα.
3 e.g. at 731c 2, 734b 4.
Clinias: Indeed, sir, you are very right. What are we to make of our statements?
Athenian: Well demanded. Well, the first thing to be made of them is this.
Clinias: What?
Athenian: We shall remind ourselves of the truth of our recent remarks about the bewildering confusion and contradiction in our views of rights. Bearing this in mind, we shall go on to ask ourselves a further question. ‘We have never extricated ourselves from our perplexity about this matter; we have never achieved any clear demarcation between these two types of wrongs, the voluntary and the involuntary, which are recognized as distinct by every legislator who has ever existed in any society and regarded as distinct by all law: and is the formula we have just pronounced to dispose of the business by an ipse dixit, like some oracular response? Is it, so to say, to stifle opposition by decree, without one syllable of justification?’ Surely not. Before we come to the legislating we are bound to show that the cases are distinct and the difference between them other than supposed, to ensure that when we prescribe the penalty for an offence of either kind, every one shall follow our reasoning and be capable of a more or less competent judgment on the appropriateness of the infliction.
Clinias: Your audience is with you, there, sir. Of two things, one; either we must deny the thesis that all wrongful acts are
1 Plato means that the really important distinction for the jurist, which is misapprehended when a court is invited to base its verdict on the voluntariness or involuntariness of detriment caused, is that between the violation of a right (which involves wrongful intention), and the mere infliction of loss or detriment. There is here no unlawful intention, and therefore no wrong at all.
Athenian: One of your alternatives, the denial of the thesis, I must absolutely decline to admit. Convinced as I am of its truth, to deny it would be unlawful and impious. But how do the two cases differ, if not as the involuntary and the voluntary? Of course we must try to find some other principle of distinction.
Clinias: Assuredly, sir, we can think of no other possible course.
Athenian: Well, I will try to do so. Consider: citizens, of course, frequently cause mutual damage in their various associations and relations with one another, and the damage is often enough voluntary and also often enough involuntary.
Clinias: Exactly.
Athenian: Now we should not regard all these cases of causation of damage as wrongs, and so come to the conclusion that the wrong done in such acts may be of two kinds, voluntary, or again involuntary—involuntary damage, as a form of damage, is as common and serious as voluntary—what you must
Clinias: Admirable, so far.
Athenian: And then as to wrongful detriment—or gain, either, in the case that a man should cause another to profit by a wrongful act—such things, as we know, are maladies of the soul, and we must cure them whenever they are curable. And the line our cure for wrong must follow, I say, is this.
Clinias: What?
Athenian: The line whereby law will both teach and constrain the man who has done a wrong, great or small, never again, if he can help it, to venture on repetition of the act, or to repeat it much more rarely—and he must make the damage good to boot. And so, if we can but bring a man to this—to hatred of iniquity, and love of right or even acquiescence in right—by acts we do or words we utter, through pleasure or through pain, through honour bestowed or disgrace inflicted, in a word, whatever the means we take, thus and only thus is the work of a perfect law effected. But should our legislator find one whose disease is past such cure, what will be his sentence or law for such a case? He will judge, I take it, that longer life is no boon to the sinner himself in such a case, and that his decease will bring a double blessing on his neighbours; it will be a lesson to them to keep themselves from wrong, and will rid society of an evil man. These are the reasons for which a legislator is bound to ordain
Clinias: All you have said seems, in its way, sound enough. But there is a point on which we should still be thankful for clearer explanations. How comes the distinction between wrong and detriment to be complicated in these cases with that between voluntary and involuntary?
Athenian: Well, I must do what I can to give the explanation you require of me. I am sure that when you talk together about the soul there is one point assumed by speaker and listener alike, the presence in it of a native character—or, if you like, part—of passion, a contentious and combative element which frequently causes shipwreck by its headstrong violence.
Clinias: Yes, of course.
Athenian: You must observe further that we draw a distinction between passion and pleasure; the empire of pleasure, we say,
Clinias: Assuredly.
Athenian: And we should not be wrong if we spoke of ignorance as a third source of misconduct. Though you should note that the legislator will do well to make two kinds of it, ignorance pure and simple, which he will regard as a cause of venial offences, and the more complicated condition in which a man’s folly means that he is suffering not from ignorance alone, but also from a conceit of his own wisdom, and supposes himself to know all about matters of which he knows nothing whatsoever. When such ignorance is accompanied by exceptional capacity or power the lawgiver will regard the combination as a source of grave and monstrous crime; when it is conjoined with impotence, since the consequent misconduct is puerile or senile, he will treat it as an offence, indeed, and make laws against its perpetrator as an offender, but those laws will be the mildest and most indulgent of his whole code.
Clinias: That is no more than sense and reason.
Athenian: Now we all talk of one man as the master of his pleasures or his passion, of another as a slave to them, and this language describes real facts.
Clinias: Most certainly it does.
Athenian: But we have never heard it said that so-and-so is the master of his ignorance, or so-and-so a slave to it.
Clinias: We certainly have not.
Athenian: And yet we speak of all three as frequently impelling a man in one direction at the very time his own will is urging him in the opposite.
Clinias: Ay, times out of mind.
1 The βιαίου, ‘violent,’ of the MSS. text (printed by Burnet) can hardly be right (πειθοῖ μετὰ ἀπάτης βιαίου, 863b 8). The whole point is the contrast between the furious violence of θυμός and the seduction of ἡδονή. (Cf. for the same sort of distinction, Republic 413b ff.) England’s οὐ βίᾳ, a most ingenious suggestion, which merely presupposes that the οὐ was accidentally omitted and subsequently inserted above the line a little too much to the right, may be the true correction; or βιαίου may be a scribe’s error for λαθραίου. Just as at Herc. Fur. 1351 all MSS. read ἐγκαρτερήσω θάνατον, though Euripides must have written ἐγκορτερήσω βίοτον, as given by recent editors.
Athenian: Now at last I am in a position to explain precisely what I mean by right and wrong without any complications. Wrong is the name I give to the domination of the soul by passion, fear, pleasure or pain, envy or cupidity, alike in all cases,
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: The second had its origin in pleasures and cupidities, and the third, which is of a very different kind, in the loss
Clinias: And what are they?
Athenian: Under one head fall all cases of deeds of open violence, under the other those of dark and crafty contrivance; there are also cases of acts in which both are employed, and it is, of course, these with which the law will deal most severely, if it is to have its proper effects.
Clinias: Yes, to be sure.
1 For the unintelligible τούτων of 864a 2, I adopt Hermann’s simple emendation τοτοῦτό γ’.
2 Since the ‘third’ case is that of ‘ignorance’, discussed above, the MSS. text (left by Burnet as it stands) in 864b 7, δόξης τῆς ἀληθοῦς περὶ τὸ ἄριστον ἔφεσις, must be wrong somewhere. There are objections, I think, to all the proposed corrections, but as a stop-gap, which at least gives the general sense, I take Grou’s ἄφεσις for ἔφεσις. (Unfortunately the word is not elsewhere found in the sense here required, loss, though it is used for dismissal, release.) H. Jackson’s ὕφεσις, remission, suits the context, but the word occurs nowhere else in Plato.
3 The five classes of offences are thus: (1) those prompted by furious passions; (2) those caused by the seductions of pleasure; (3) those due to ignorance which may be (c) mere ignorance, or ignorance complicated with a false conceit of knowledge, and may again be found either (d) in important and powerful or (e) in insignificant persons.
Athenian: So we may now revert to the point at which this digression began and continue our law-making. If I am not mistaken, we had already legislated against robbery of heaven and treasonable traffic with the public enemy, and also against subversion of the established constitution by tampering with the laws. Now a man might conceivably commit an act of one of these
1 τὸ μίασμα (866b 3-4), literally ‘the pollution’. The bloodshed is thought of as a kind of physical taint (or infection) clinging to the family to which the deceased belonged.
2 The ‘sufferer’ (the παθών I take it must mean the alien who undergoes the sentence of death just prescribed. Any property he leaves behind will be handed over to the relatives he may leave behind him, not forfeited, on the principle already announced that forfeiture is to have no place in our code. Plato can hardly mean that the property is to go as compensation to relatives of the man whom the alien had killed, since he is speaking here only of a penalty for return from the banishment inflicted for the original homicide.
If the return be involuntary,
If one slay a free man by one’s own act but the deed be done in passion, there are first two cases to be distinguished. It is an act of passion when a man is done away with on the impulse of the moment, by blows or the like, suddenly and without any previous purpose to kill, and remorse instantly follows on the act; it is also an act of passion when a man is roused by insult in words or dishonouring gestures, pursues his revenge, and ends by taking a life with purpose to slay and without subsequent remorse for the deed. I take it we cannot treat these as two distinct forms of homicide; both may fairly be said to be due to passion and to be partially voluntary, partially
Clinias: Most assuredly.
Athenian: Then let us return to our code and continue it thus. If a man slay a free-born person by his own act, but the deed
1 i.e. apparently the ‘purification’ required will be twice as elaborate, and therefore cost twice as much, as would have been the case without the attempt to ignore the law.
2 This rather barbarous enactment is out of keeping with the general considerateness of Plato’s regulations about slaves. It is in keeping, apparently, with Roman republican practice, but not with Attic. The exceptional harshness is, no doubt, explained by the fact that where slavery is a recognized institution, the murder of a master by a slave has the character of mutiny. This explains also the hard treatment of the slave who in self-defence kills a free man (869d).
If a free man be killed in
1 i.e. the law about period of banishment shall be the same as for the unintentional homicide.
But if such forgiveness be not given, the criminal in this sort shall lie in the danger of more laws than one. He shall lie open to heaviest judgment for violent outrage, and for impiety, and sacrilege to boot; he has done despite to the temple of a parent’s
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: Then let us once more begin with an attempt to enumerate their sources.
1 Stallbaum seems to me right in adding [ἐξ] before ἐπιβουλῆς in 869e 7.
2 τῶν τοιούτων (869e 10) refers to the ‘pleasures’, etc. just mentioned. What is proposed is an enumeration of the motives which commonly lead to deliberate murder. They are said to be, in the order of their prevalence: (1) greed, (2) envy and jealousy, (3) fear.
And the source of this perverse education is the credit given to false praise of
1 The procedure is taken from that current in Attica, where the first step in proceeding against a man for homicide, was to serve the ‘excommunication’ just described upon him in the presence of witnesses. Plato improves on Athenian law by permitting any citizen to take the necessary steps, if there is no kinsman able and willing to do so.
2 Here I feel sure we must read with Cornarius τούτῶν (871 d 7) for the που τῶν of the MSS. (and Burnet’s text).
If a man be not the actual assassin, but have purposed the death of another and
Should there arise cases for which it is a grim and repulsive task even to provide in a legislation, though impossible to ignore them, I mean cases of deliberate and purely wicked homicide by act or contrivance between kinsmen—they are mostly to be found in States where the way of life or the system of training is corrupt; still such a thing may happen even in a land where we could least expect it—why, we can but repeat the doctrine we uttered but now, in the hope that it will by its appeal dispose a hearer the more readily to eschew of his own free choice this most abominable of all forms of homicide. That tale, or doctrine—call it what you please—comes to us on the authority of priests of ancient days, and it tells us expressly that there is a justice watching to avenge a kinsman’s blood, and that the law followed by this justice is no other than that we even now stated; it is appointed that he who has dealt in such guilt shall infallibly be done by as he has done: if any man have slain his father, there shall come a time when he shall have to suffer the same violent end at the hands of a child; if his mother, his certain doom in later days is to be born himself
1 I am satisfied by Dr. England’s note that the comma of Burnet’s and other texts after εἴρηται (872b 2) should be deleted, and that the in the next line should either be deleted also or regarded as an unintentional oversight on the part of the writer.
But what of him who takes the life, that is, as they say, ‘nearest and dearest’ to himself? What should be his punishment? I mean the man whose violence frustrates the decree of Destiny by self-slaughter though no sentence of the State has required this of him, no stress of cruel and inevitable calamity driven him to the act, and he has been involved in no desperate and intolerable disgrace, the man who thus gives unrighteous sentence against himself from mere poltroonery and unmanly cowardice. Well, in such a case, what further rites must be observed, in the way of purifications and ceremonies of burial, it is for Heaven to say; the next of kin should consult the official canonists as well as the laws on the subject, and act according to their direction. But the graves of such as perish thus must, in the first place, be solitary; they must have no companions whatsoever in the tomb; further they must be buried ignominiously in waste and nameless spots on the boundaries between the twelve districts, and the tomb shall be marked by neither headstone nor name.
If a beast of draught or other animal cause homicide, except in the case when the deed is done by a beast competing in one of the public sports, the kinsman shall institute proceedings for homicide against the slayer; the case shall be heard by such and as many of the Rural Commissioners as the next of kin may
But if a man have manifestly been murdered, and the murderer is unknown or cannot be discovered after careful inquiry, notice of prosecution shall be given as in other cases, but the prosecutor shall address the notification to ‘the author of the homicide’, and after establishing his right to prosecute shall give public warning in the market-place to ‘the criminal slayer of so-and-so’ to set no foot in the sanctuaries or any other place within the country of his victim, with the threat that if he makes an appearance and is recognized, he shall be put to death and cast out of the country of the victim unburied.
So much then on these matters: the cases wherein and conditions whereon a slayer shall rightly be held guiltless shall be these following: he that slays a thief entering the house by night with intent of robbery shall be guiltless; he that in his own defence slays a footpad shall be guiltless. He that offers hurtful violence to a free woman or boy may be slain without fear of the law by the object of his violent rape, or by father, brother, or son of such party; if a man take one in the act of enforcing his wedded wife and slay him, he shall be clear in the eye of the law. If a man slay in defence of a father’s life—the father not being engaged in a criminal act—or in like defence of child, brother, or mother of his children, he shall be altogether dear.
1 This solemn ‘trial’ of the animal or thing which has caused a death is taken over from Attic law, where, as in the similar instances in medieval Europe, the practice is a consequence of the view of the shedding of man’s blood as involving religious pollution.
2 Here again, Plato is thinking of Attic procedure. At Athens, in the case of a murder by a ‘person or persons unknown’, the ceremonial was that the legal representative of the dead addressed the formal warning to abstain from frequenting a place of public resort, τοῖς δεδρακόσι καὶ κτείνασι, to ‘the murderer, whoever he may be’ ([Demosthenes], xlvii, 69).
Thus much then for the law of the living soul and that nurture and education which it must needs enjoy if it is to live, and
Wounds and maims, then, will be placed next after manslaughter by the veriest dabbler in legislation. Thus, like homicides, wounds must be divided into the involuntary, wounds inflicted in passion, those inflicted in fear, those that are intentional and deliberate. Hence we should begin our treatment of all classes with a prefatory statement to the following effect. Mankind must either give themselves a law and regulate their lives by it, or live no better than the wildest
Clinias: What line, then, are we to take up now?
Athenian: Why, this: something must be left to the discretion of the courts, but not everything; there are things which the law must itself regulate.
Clinias: Then which are the points to be thus dealt with by statute, and which should be entrusted to a court’s discretion?
Athenian: The proper step to take next is to point out that in a State where the courts of law are poor-spirited and inarticulate, where their members keep their convictions to themselves and reach their verdict by a secret vote,
1 Three defects in the procedure of the Attic δικαστήρια are singled out for censure: (1) There is no discussion and comparison of views between the individual dicasts who form a jury; (2) the vote is a secret one, care being taken to prevent any discovery how the individual dicast has voted; (3) the court, which ought to maintain an impartial and judicial silence, encourages or discourages plaintiff and defendant by manifestations of its sympathies, the θόρυβος we find the orators so frequently deprecating.
But in
If any one intend and purpose the death of a person with whom he is on friendly terms, such person not being one against whom the law arms his hand, and fail to kill, but inflict a wound, he who wounds with such intent deserves no mercy, and shall be made to stand his trial for homicide with as little scruple as
1 δαίμων—in effect an imaginative personification of the ‘not wholly unpropitious fortune’ just mentioned.
2 There is no real difficulty about the definite article τὴν in 877b 1, τὴν γείτονα πόλιν means ‘whatever State is nearest’ exactly as τὸν ἐλεύθερον at 882a 2 means ’a free man’, or as ἡδοθεῖσα εὐθεῖα in the language of Greek mathematics, means ‘a given straight line’.
1 I translate the MSS. text retained by Burnet. As I understand the passage, Plato is thinking of the law of Solon which required an Athenian citizen to support his parents in their old age: the point is that the man who has made a murderous assault on his own parents, is punished in kind by forfeiting his claim for such support on his children. Hence I cannot follow Dr. England in accepting W. Jenstedt’s alteration of ἄνδρες, μὴ (877c 6) to ἄνδρες ἤδη, with the sense that ‘if the sons are already grown men, they shall be obliged to support the exile, though the estate shall be in their possession’.
2 δυστυχηθῇ (877e 2) may be a bold formation of Plato’s own suggested by the following ἀσεβηθῇ, but it looks very much as though H. Richards were right in suggesting δυστυχήσῃ.
From such a house they shall adopt one person as a son and successor to the father of the deceased and his line before him, naming him after one of the lineage for the omen’s
It should seem that boundary is not in all cases immediately adjacent to boundary; where there is a border-land, this interposing belt touches either region first and is common ground to both. In particular we have said that deeds of passion form such a borderland between the unintentional and the intentional. Hence our law of wounding in anger shall run thus. On conviction, first the offender shall repay the damage done two-fold, if the wound prove curable, four-fold for an incurable hurt. And if the wound, though curable, cause the injured man some grave and shameful disfigurement, the payment shall be
1 i.e. the adoptive father, who has the misfortune that his actual son is a life-long exile.
2 I depart here from Burnet’s text which has τετραπλασίαν (878c 4), four-fold, the reading of the MSS. The context makes Hermann’s τριπλασίαν a certain emendation.
On conviction, it shall
1 I think it plain that ἀνδραποδισμοῦ (879a 8) is a genitive of the charge on which the collusive complainant is to be indicted, and that the interpretation ‘an action of which the result will be that the defendant is sentenced to slavery’ is impossible.
Assault and battery, in its various forms, is, like the cases of which we have treated, an offence of violence. Apropos of such conduct, it should never be forgotten by any one, man, woman, or child, that seniority is held in highest consideration alike by gods and by men who intend a long and happy life. Hence the public assault of a younger man on his senior is a shameful spectacle and abominable in the eye of heaven; if the younger man is struck by the elder, the seemly course is ever that he should meekly give place to his anger, and thus lay up a capital of the same consideration for his own old age. Hence our rule shall run thus. All shall show their reverence for their seniors in act and speech. A man shall stay his hand from any that is twenty years older than himself, be it man or woman, as he would from his own father or mother; he must spare all who are of an age to have begotten or borne him, in duty to the gods of birth. He must likewise keep his hand from the alien, old-established resident and recent arrival alike; neither in aggression nor in self-defence shall he ever permit himself to admonish one of that class by a blow. If the alien strike him a wanton and insolent blow and he think correction called for, he shall seize him and carry him before the court of the Urban Commissioners, without striking him back, that he may be taught never more to presume to beat a native. The
1 I think England right in suggesting that αὐτὴν (880c 7) is an error for αὐ (due to accidental duplication of the letters of the following τὴν.
Laws, we may say, are made in part for the virtuous, to
1 At 881c 1, the MSS. and Burnet’s text have μέτοικος ἢ ξένος but the context shows that England is right in deleting the ἢ.
Every bystander of native birth, child or woman or man, shall join in the rescue, crying out on the assailant as wretch and monster, and any that takes no part shall be held by the law under the curse of the god of kindred
1 The precaution is necessary to meet the case of a free man condemned to whipping by a court of law. The functionaries who administer the whipping will be slaves of the community.
Laws, Book X
Athenian: Now that we have dealt with assault, we may enunciate a single and comprehensive principle of law in respect of cases of violence, to the following effect. No man shall lift the goods and chattels of others, nor yet make use of a neighbour’s property without the owner’s permission, since such conduct is the beginning whence all the aforesaid mischiefs, past, present, or future, derive by consequence. Now the gravest mischiefs of them all are the licenses and outrages of youth, and the affront is gravest when done to consecrated things, and most singularly grave again when the objects affronted are not only sacred but public, or partly public, as common to a tribe or
Clinias: Then how are we to treat such men, or what should we say to them?
1 The acts of physical violence dealt with in the last book.
2 Supra 854d.
Athenian: Nay, my dear sir, let us begin by giving a hearing to the mockeries in which, as I conceive, their scorn of us would find utterance.
Clinias: And what form would this mockery take?
Athenian: Why, their satire might well run to this effect: ‘Gentlemen of Athens, Lacedaemon, and Cnossus, you are in the right of it. Some of us, in fact, recognize no gods whatsoever, and others gods such as you describe. So we make the same demand of you that you have yourselves made of the laws: before you come to the severities of threats, it is for you to try persuasion; to convince us by sufficient proof that there really are gods, and that they are too good to be diverted from the path of justice by the attraction of gifts. As things are, that, and more to the same effect, is what we have heard from those who have the repute of being our first-rate poets, orators, prophets, and priests, and countless thousands of others, and this is why most of us follow the path not of refusing to do wrong, but of committing it and trying to patch it up. So we expect you, as legislators who make a profession of humanity rather than severity, to try persuasion on us in the first instance. Your case for the existence of gods may not be much better than that of the other side, but persuade us that it is better in the one point of truth, and you may perhaps make converts of us. So if you think our challenge a fair one, you must try to answer it.’
Clinias: Why, surely, sir, it looks easy enough to speak the truth in saying that gods exist.
Athenian: And on what grounds?
Clinias: Why, to begin with, think of the earth, and sun, and planets, and everything! And the wonderful and beautiful order of the seasons with its distinctions of years and months! Besides, there is the fact that all mankind, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, believe in the existence of gods.
Athenian: My dear friend, I have a fear—I will never call it an awe—of these evil men; a fear that they may despise us. You and our friend, in fact, do not understand the ground of their controversy
Clinias: Why, sir, what further cause can there be in the case?
1 Or, if we adopt Cornarius’s plausible emendation διαφορᾶς for the διαφθορᾶς of 886a 9, ‘the cause of their depravity’.
Athenian: One of which your friend and you can be expected to know nothing; you fail to remark it because it does not touch your lives.
Clinias: Now I wonder what it can be to which you allude.
Athenian: Why, folly of a deadly sort that conceits itself to be the height of wisdom.
Clinias: And what is that?
Athenian: We have in my own community literary narratives—the excellence of your civic institutions, I am informed, prevents their appearance among you—which treat of the gods, some of them in verse, and others again in prose: the most ancient of these narratives relate that the primitive realities were the sky, and so forth; when the story has got a little way past this starting-point it recounts the birth of the gods, and their subsequent conduct towards each other. Now whether in other respects the effect of these stories on those who hear them is good or the reverse is not lightly to be decided, in view of their antiquity, but as concerns their bearing on the tendance and reverence due to parents, I could certainly never commend them as salutary, nor as true at all. However, we may dismiss the primitive stories without more ado; let them be told in any way Heaven pleases. But the theories of our modern men of enlightenment must be held to account for the mischief they cause. Now the effect of their compositions is this. When you and I produce our evidence of the existence of gods, and allege this very point—the deity or divinity of sun and moon, planets and earth—the converts of these sages will reply that they are but earth and stones, incapable of minding human conduct, however plausibly we have coated them over with a varnish of sugared eloquence.
Clinias: A dreadful theory this that you are talking of, sir, even if there were only one such; how much more dreadful our present age, when such doctrines are so rife.
Athenian: Well, what answer have we, then? What course should we take? Must we look on ourselves as, so to say, indicted at the bar of the ungodly and defend our incriminated legislation
Clinias: Well, sir, in the little while we have spent together we have repeatedly had occasion to remark that there is no reason to prefer brevity of speech, in our present business to length—the proverbial ‘pursuer’ is not on our traces; so we should make but a sorry and ludicrous show if we chose the shorter course rather than the best. And ’tis of the first importance to give our plea for the existence of gods, and good gods with a super-human reverence for right, such persuasiveness as we can; such a preamble would, in fact, be the noblest and best defence for our whole legislation. Let us, then, show neither reluctance nor impatience, but unreservedly employ whatever gifts of persuasion we may possess in such matters on the task of adequate exposition to the utmost of our powers.
Athenian: The earnestness and passion of your speech are, I feel, an invitation to prayer; they leave no further room for postponement of the argument. Come then; how shall we plead for the existence of gods dispassionately? To be sure, no man can help feeling some resentment and disgust with the parties who now, as in the past, impose the burden of the argument on us by their want of faith in the stories heard so often in earliest infancy, while still at the breast, from their mothers and nurses—stories, you may say, crooned over them, in sport and in earnest, like spells— and heard again in prayers offered over sacrifices, in conjunction with the spectacle which gives such intense delight to the eye and ear of children, as it is enacted at a sacrifice, the spectacle of our parents addressing their gods, with assured belief in their existence, in earnest prayer and supplication for themselves and their children. Then, again, at rising and setting of sun and moon, they have heard and seen the universal prostrations and devotions of mankind, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, in all the varied circumstances of evil fortune and good, with their implication that gods are no fictions, but the most certain of realities, and their being beyond the remotest shadow of a doubt. When we see all this evidence treated with contempt by the persons who are forcing us into our present argument, and that, as any man with a grain of intelligence will admit, without a single respectable reason, how, I ask, is a man to find gentle language in which to combine reproof with instruction in the initial truth about the gods—
Clinias: Admirably said, sir, so far as we have gone yet.
Athenian: Just so, Megillus and Clinias; but we have unconsciously embroiled ourselves with a portentous theory.
Clinias: And what theory may that be?
Athenian: One which is widely held to be the last word of wisdom.
Clinias: You must be still more explicit.
Athenian: We are told, you know, that everything whatever which comes, has come, or will come into existence is a product either of nature, or of art, or of chance.
Clinias: And rightly so told, are we not?
Athenian: Why, there is, of course, a presumption that what wise
Clinias: With all my heart.
Athenian: Evidently, so they say, all the grandest and fairest of things are products of nature and chance, and only the more insignificant of art. Art takes over the grand primary works from the hands of nature, already formed, and then models and fashions the more insignificant, and this is the very reason why we ail call them ‘artificial’.
Clinias: You mean to say?
Athenian: Let me put it more plainly still. Fire and water, earth and air—so they say—all owe their being to nature and chance, none of them to art; they, in turn, are the agents, and the absolutely soulless agents, in the production of the bodies of the next rank, the earth, sun, moon, and stars. They drifted casually, each in virtue of their several tendencies; as they came together in certain fitting and convenient dispositions—hot with cold, dry with moist, soft with hard, and so on in all the inevitable casual combinations which arise from blending of contraries—thus, and on this wise, they gave birth to the whole heavens and all their contents, and, in due course, to all animals and plants, when once all the seasons of the year had been produced from those same causes; not, so they say, by the agency of mind, or any god, or art, but, as I tell you, by nature and chance. Art, the subsequent late-born product of these causes, herself as perishable as her creators, has since given birth to certain toys with little real substance in them, simulacra as shadowy as the arts themselves, such as those which spring from painting, music, and the other fellow crafts. Or if there are arts which really produce anything of genuine worth, they are those which lend their aid to nature, like medicine, husbandry, gymnastic. Statesmanship in especial, they say, is a thing which has a little in common with nature, but is mainly a business of art; legislation, likewise, is altogether an affair not of nature, but of art, and its positions are unreal.
Clinias: Unreal—but how so?
Athenian: Why, my dear sir, to begin with, this party assert that gods have no real and natural, but only an artificial being, in virtue of legal conventions, as they call them, and thus there are different gods for different places, conformably to the convention made by each group among themselves when they drew up their legislation. Then they actually declare that the really and naturally laudable is one thing and the conventionally
Clinias: What an awful creed you describe, sir! What a general corruption of the young people of whole cities and private households!
Athenian: Too true, Clinias, too true. But how would you have the legislator act where such a situation is of long standing? Should he be content to stand up in public and threaten people all round that unless they confess the being of gods, and believe in their hearts that they are such as his law declares—(and the case is the same with the laudable, the right, and everything of highest moment; and all that makes for virtue or vice;
Clinias: Far from it, sir, far from it. If there are indeed persuasives, however weak, in such matters, no legislator who deserves the slightest consideration must ever faint. He should strain every nerve, as they say, to plead in support of the old traditional belief of the being of gods and of all you have just recounted. In especial also, he should defend the claim of law itself and of art to be natural, or no less real than nature, seeing that they are products of mind by a sound argument which I take you to be now propounding and in which I concur.
1 I follow Burnet’s general punctuation of the sentence, but agree with England that it requires the change of ὅσα δὲ at 890c 1 to ὅσα τε (Stephanus), or possibly ὅσα γε. I adopt the former change in the translation.
Athenian: Why, Clinias, here is zeal indeed! But pray, are not statements thus made to a multitude hard to support by argument, and do they not entail an interminable deal of it?
Clinias: Well, sir, and what then? We bore with one another through all those long discourses of the wine-cup and of music, and are we to show less patience now we are treating of gods and kindred themes? And, mark you, such argument will be a most valuable aid to intelligent legislation, because legal enactments, once put into writing, remain always on record,
Megillus: What Clinias says, sir, has my fullest approval.
Athenian: And mine, too, Megillus, and we must do as he bids us. To be sure, if such theories had not been so widely broadcast, as we may fairly say, throughout all mankind, there would have been no need for arguments to defend the being of gods, but, as the case stands, they cannot be dispensed with. So with the highest laws in risk of perishing at the hands of wicked men, whose function can it be to come to the rescue before the legislator?
Megillus: Why, no man’s.
Athenian: Well then, Clinias—for you must be my partner in the argument—let me hear your opinion once more. Presumably one who reasons thus holds that fire and water, earth and air, are the most primitive origins of all things—nature being just the name he gives to them—but the soul is a later derivative from them. Or, more probably, it is no case of a presumption; his argument is an actual declaration to that effect.
Clinias: Precisely.
Athenian: Why, in God’s name then, have we traced the unreason and error of all who have ever busied themselves with research into nature back to what we may call its source? Pray consider the point with careful attention to all their positions, as it will make a vast difference if we can show that those who have taken up with irreligious doctrines and set the tune for others to follow have actually argued their case ill and fallaciously. And I honestly believe this to be the fact.
Clinias: Excellent; but you must try to explain where the fallacy lies.
Athenian: Then I am afraid I shall have to treat of rather unfamiliar matters.
Clinias: There is no need for your hesitation, sir. I see you apprehend you will be going outside the limits of legislation if we are to deal with such matters. But if that is the one and only way to accordance with the truth about gods, as now stated in our law, why, my good man, our argument must take it.
Athenian: Then it seems I must propound my none too familiar thesis at once, and here it is. In the doctrine of which the soul of the ungodly is the product, the primal cause of all coming to be and ceasing to be is pronounced to be not primal but secondary and derivative, the secondary primitive. Hence their error about the veritable being of gods.
Clinias: I am still in the dark.
Athenian: Soul, my friend, soul is that of whose nature and potency all but the few would seem to know nothing; in this general ignorance of it they know not in particular of its origin, how it is among the primal things, elder-born than all bodies and prime source of all their changes and transformations. But if this is indeed so, must not all that is akin to soul needs be of earlier birth than all that is proper to bodies, seeing that soul herself is older than body?
Clinias: Why, necessarily.
Athenian: And so judgment and foresight, wisdom, art and law, must be prior to hard and soft, heavy and light; ay, and the grand primal works and deeds, for the very reason that they are primal, will prove to be those of art; those of nature, and nature herself—wrongly so called—will be secondary and derivative from art and mind.
Clinias: ‘Wrongly so called’; why wrongly?
Athenian: Why, by nature they mean what was there to begin with; but if we can show that soul came first—that it was not fire, nor air, but soul which was there to begin with—it will be perfectly true to say that it is the existence of soul which is most eminently natural. Now this is the case if it can be proved that soul is more ancient than body, and not otherwise.
Clinias: How true that is!
Athenian: Then our next step must be to address ourselves to the proof of that point.
Clinias: Yes, of course.
Athenian: Good; then let us be on our guard against the extreme
Clinias: An admirable proposal, sir; pray, act upon it.
Athenian: To the work, then, and if we are ever to beseech God’s help, let it be done now. Let us take it as understood that the gods have, of course, been invoked in all earnest to assist our proof of their own being, and plunge into the waters of the argument before us with the prayer as a sure guiding-rope for our support. If put to the proof, then, on such a subject, the safest course, I take it, is to meet the following questions with the following answers. Sir—so someone may say—are all things at rest, and nothing in motion? Or is the truth the very reverse? Or are some things in motion, others at rest? Of course, I shall reply, some are moving and others at rest. And those which move are moving, just as those which are at rest are resting, in a space of some kind? Of course. And some of them, you will grant, do this in a single situation, others in more than one? When you speak of moving in a single situation, I shall reply, you refer to things characterized by the immobility of their centres, as is the case with the revolution of so-called ‘sleeping’ circles? Yes. And we observe, in the case
1 e.g. in the revolution of a circular disk every point on the disk, except the centre, is describing a circle. All the circles complete their revolutions in the same time, but they are of different circumference, according to the distances of the several points from the centre, hence the velocities also differ in the same proportion.
2 England observes that Plato ‘must have had some special reason for enlarging on this peculiarity of circular motion’. He had, and it is this. Until Eudoxus devised his famous astronomical hypothesis of concentric spheres, the planetary motions were thought of, as they are always by Plato himself, on the analogy of the revolution of wheels or disks spun round their centre. The ‘orbit’, as we call it, was thought of as carrying round the planet, as a ring turned round the finger carries the stone set in it. This is, for example, the picture presupposed in the myth of Er in Republic X, and throughout the Timaeus. The thought in Plato’s mind is that the velocity of a planet in its orbit is proportional to its distance from the centre of the system.
3 The distinction is between gliding and rolling. As my pencil glides over the paper, the same point of the pencil is successively in contact with different points in the paper; it would be otherwise if the pencil were allowed to roll.
4 The meaning is that when a moving mass collides with a stationary, the former is disintegrated; the result of collision between two masses moving in different directions is taken to be coalescence of the two into a single moving mass, which Plato speaks of as, in some sense, ‘betwixt and between’ its components. I suppose him to mean that the direction and velocity of the new movement are intermediate between those of the original motions.
5 What is meant by the ‘pre-established condition’ (καθεστηκυῖα ἕξις, 893e 7) of the moving things? England says hesitatingly (and Bury without hesitation) its physical state, as solid, liquid, or gaseous. This, I believe, is an error Plato is describing the results of various combination of motions from a purely kinematical—not a physical—point of view. I take him, therefore to mean that so long as the same kinematical configuration, or pattern of motion, is preserved, the ‘integration’ of which he has spoken gives rise to increase in bulk.
But the condition
Clinias: And what are those two?
Athenian: Why, the very pair, my good sir, with an eye to which our whole discussion is now in progress.
Clinias: I must ask you to be plainer.
Athenian: The discussion began with a view to soul, did it not?
Clinias: To be sure, it did.
Athenian: Then let us take for one of our pair the motion which can regularly set other things in movement but not itself; as a second single type in the scheme of motions in general we will take that which can regularly set itself going as well as other things, alike in processes of integration and disintegration, by way of augmentation and its opposite, or by coming into and perishing out of being.
Clinias: And so we will.
Athenian: We may proceed, then, to place the type which regularly moves some object other than itself, and is itself induced by such an object, ninth on our list; that which moves itself as well as other things—it finds its place in all doing and all being-done-to, and is veritably called transformation and motion of all that is—this we will reckon as tenth.
Clinias: Yes, certainly.
Athenian: Now of these ten motions which should we be most right to pronounce most powerful of all, and most superlatively effective?
1 The language is purposely brief and slightly obscure, being meant to be a little ‘over the heads’ of the two old men. The key to it is τρίτη αὔξη, a mathematical technicality for ‘third dimension’. To be perceptible to sense a thing must have volume. Volumes are regarded as generated by the motion of a surface, surfaces by motion of a line or lines, and lines by that of a point.
Clinias: Why, of course, we are bound to say that that which
Athenian: Excellent. Then we should perhaps find one or two mistakes in what has just been said?
Clinias: And what mistakes are they?
Athenian: We were wrong, I think, in using that word ‘tenth’.
Clinias: But why wrong?
Athenian: It is demonstrably first in procedure, as in power, and the next in order is, as we hold, second, though we have just called it—oddly enough—ninth.
Clinias: How am I to understand you?
Athenian: Why, thus. When we have one thing making a change in a second, the second, in turn, in a third, and so on—will there ever, in such a series, be a first source of change? Why, how can what is set moving by something other than itself ever be the first of the causes of alteration? The thing is an impossibility. But when something
Clinias: Admirably put, and the position must be conceded.
Athenian: Besides, let us put the point over again in this way, once more answering our own question. Suppose all things were to come together and stand still—as most of the party have the hardihood to affirm—which of the movements we have specified must be the first to arise in things? Why, of course, that which can move itself; there can be no possible previous origination of change by anything else, since, by hypothesis, change was not previously existent in the system. Consequently as the source of all motions whatsoever, the first to occur among bodies at rest and the first in rank in moving bodies, the motion which initiates itself we shall pronounce to be necessarily the earliest and mightiest of all changes, while that which is altered by something else and sets something else moving is secondary.
Clinias: Unquestionably.
Athenian: Then, now that the discussion has reached this point, we may answer a further question.
Clinias: And what question is it?
1 In 894e 7 Apelt’s ὅ γ’ ἂν seems to me a certain emendation of the MSS. ὅταν.
Athenian: When we see that this motion has shown itself in a thing composed of earth, water, or fire—separately or in combination—how should we describe the character resident in such a thing?
Clinias: Am I right in supposing you to ask whether, when the thing moves itself, we speak of it as alive?
Athenian: Certainly.
Clinias: Alive? Of course it is alive.
Athenian: Very well, and when we see soul in a thing, the case is the same, is it not? We must allow that the thing is alive.
Clinias: Precisely.
Athenian: In Heaven’s name, then, hold; you will grant, I presume, that there are three points to be noted about anything?
Clinias: You mean?
Athenian: I mean, for one, the reality of the thing, what it is; for another the definition of this reality; for another, its name. And thus you see there are two questions we can ask about everything which is.
Clinias: And what are the two?
Athenian: Sometimes a man propounds the bare name and demands the definition; sometimes, again, he propounds the definition by itself and asks for the corresponding name. In other words, we mean something to this effect, do we not?
Clinias: To what effect?
Athenian: There is, as you know, bisection in numbers, as in other things. Well, in the case of a number, the name of the thing is ‘even’, and the definition ‘number divisible into two equal parts’.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: That is the sort of case I have in mind. We are denoting the same thing, are we not, in either case, whether we are asked about the definition and reply with the name, or about the name, and reply with the definition? It is the same thing we describe indifferently by the name ‘even’, and the definition ‘number divided into two equal parts’?
Clinias: Identically the same.
Athenian: Well then, what is the definition of the thing for which soul is the name? Can we find any but the phrase we have just used, ‘the motion which can set itself moving’?
Clinias: You mean that the self-same reality which has the name soul in the vocabulary of all of us has self-movement as its definition?
Athenian: I do. But if this is indeed so, is there anything we can desiderate, anything further towards complete demonstration of the identity of soul with the primal becoming and movement of all that is, has been, or shall be, and of all their contraries, seeing it has disclosed itself as the universal cause of all change and motion?
Clinias: No, indeed. Our proof that soul, since it is found to be the source of movement, is the first-born of all things is absolutely complete.
Athenian: Then must not the motion which, wherever it arises, is induced by something else, but never confers the power of self-motion on anything, come second in the scale, or as low down as you please to put it, being, in fact, change in a truly soulless body?
Clinias: Rightly argued.
Athenian: Consequently it will be a right, decisive, true and final statement to assert, as we did, that soul is prior to body, body secondary and derivative, soul governing in the real order of things, and body being subject to governance.
Clinias: Indeed it would.
Athenian: But we have not, I imagine, forgotten our earlier agreement that if soul could be proved older than body, the characters of soul must also be older than those of body.
Clinias: Not in the least.
Athenian: And so moods and habits of mind, wishes, calculations, and true judgments, purposes,
Clinias: Inevitably so.
Athenian: Hence we are driven, are we not, to agree in the consequence that soul is the cause of good and evil, fair and foul, right and wrong; in fact of all contraries, if we mean to assert it as the universal cause?
Clinias: Certainly we are.
Athenian: Well then, if indwelling soul thus controls all things universally that move anywhere, are we not bound to say it controls heaven itself?
Clinias: Yes, of course.
1 ἐπιμέλειαί (896d 1) ‘tendances’, acts of ‘caring for’ some object. Hence, as coupled with μνῆμαι, purposes for the future, in antithesis with recollections of the past.
Athenian: And is this done by one single soul, or by more than one? I will give the answer for both of you, ‘by more than one’.
Clinias: Decidedly you are in the right of it.
Athenian: So far, so good. Soul, then, by her own motions stirs all things in sky, earth, or sea (and the names of these motions are wish, reflection, foresight, counsel, judgment—true or false
Clinias: Nay, there is no doubt whatsoever.
Athenian: Then which manner of soul, must we say, has control of heaven and earth and their whole circuit? That which is prudent and replete with goodness, or that which has neither virtue? Shall we, if you please, give the question this answer?
Clinias: What answer?
Athenian: Why, man, if the whole path and movement of heaven and all its contents are of like nature with the motion, revolution, and calculations of wisdom, and proceed after that kind, plainly we must say it is the supremely good soul that takes forethought for the universe and guides it along that path.
Clinias: True.
1 It was on these words that Plutarch and Atticus in antiquity, like some modern interpreters, based their theory that Plato believed in two ‘souls of the world’, or at least two conflicting factors in the ‘soul of the world’, a good and an evil. But there is nothing said here about an evil ‘soul of the world’. The question is only whether all that takes place can be due to the initiation of one and the same soul, and the answer is no, on the ground that good and evil, right and wrong, are equally actual. Thus the minimum number of souls required to account for this would be two, one good, and one ‘capable of the contrary’.
Athenian: But the evil, if the procedure is distraught and without order.
Clinias: That is true, too.
Athenian: Then of what nature, pray, is the movement of wisdom? There, my friends, we reach a question hard to be answered with due understanding. So it is only fair that I too should have a hand in your present reply.
Clinias: A welcome proposal.
Athenian: Then let us beware of creating a darkness at noonday for ourselves by gazing, so to say, direct at the sun as we give our answer, as though we could hope to attain adequate vision and perception of wisdom with mortal eyes. ‘Twill be the safer course to turn our gaze on an image of the object of our quest.
Clinias: You mean to say?
Athenian: Let us take as that image the motion in our list of ten to which wisdom bears a resemblance. We will all recall it, as I join you in giving our answer.
Clinias: An excellent proposal.
Athenian: Then do we still remember this much of what we said, that we decided that some things are in motion and others at rest?
Clinias: We do.
Athenian: And that some of those in motion move in one place,
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: Of these two movements, that confined to one place must in every case be performed about a centre, after the fashion of a well-turned cartwheel, and it is this which must surely have the closest affinity and resemblance that may be to the revolution of intelligence.
Clinias: Your meaning is?
Athenian: Why, of course, that if we say that intelligence and movement performed in one place are both like the revolutions of a well-made globe, in moving regularly and uniformly in one compass about one centre, and in one sense, according to one single law and plan, we need have no fear of proving unskilled artists in imagery.
Clinias: Very true.
Athenian: And again, motion which is never regular or uniform, never in the same compass, nor about the same centre, or in one place, motion which has no order, plan, or law, will have kinship with folly of every kind.
Clinias: Indeed it will.
Athenian: Now there can be no further obstacle to positive assertion, since we have found that it is soul which conducts the revolutions of all things, and are also bound to say that the soul by which the circle of the heavens is turned about with all foresight and order is either the supremely good, or its contrary—
Clinias: Nay, sir, if what has gone before is true, it were blasphemy to ascribe the work to aught but a soul or souls—one or more than one—of absolute goodness.
Athenian: You have followed the argument to good purpose indeed, Clinias, but I would have you follow it a step farther still.
Clinias: And what is that step?
Athenian: Take sun, and moon, and the other heavenly bodies: if the revolution of all is due to soul, so also is that of each singly, is it not?
Clinias: Why, of course.
Athenian: Thus we may take one of them in particular as the subject of an argument we shall find no less applicable to all these celestial bodies.
Clinias: And which of them shall we take?
Athenian: The sun, whose body can be seen by any man, but his soul by no man, any more than that of any other creature’s body is to be seen, during life or at the time of death. We have every reason to believe that it enfolds us in a fashion utterly imperceptible to all bodily senses, and is only to be discerned by the understanding. So here is a relevant consideration which we must apprehend by an act of pure understanding and thought.
Clinias: And what is it?
Athenian: Since soul guides the sun on his course, we cannot well go wrong in saying that she must act in one of three ways.
Clinias: And what are the three?
1 I follow England in the view that the intended speech of the Athenian is interrupted by Clinias.
2 Taking, with Burnet and most editors, the reading τίνος from Eusebius in 898d 8. But the τίνας of the MSS. also gives an excellent sense. ‘What argument is this?—The sun’s body is visible to every one, but his soul to no one, any more than….’
Athenian: Either she dwells within this visible round body and conveys it hither and thither, as our soul carries us wherever we go; or, as some hold, she provides herself a body of her own, of fire, or it may be, of air, and pushes body from without
Clinias: Yes, one of these ways is that by which soul transacts the whole business; so much is sure.
Athenian: …
Clinias: He should, if not sunk in the very depths of folly.
Athenian: Of all the planets, of the moon, of years and months and all seasons, what other story shall we have to tell than just this same, that since soul, or souls, and those souls good with perfect goodness, have proved to be the causes of all, these souls we hold to be gods, whether they direct the universe by inhabiting bodies, like animated beings, or whatever the manner of their action? Will any man who shares this belief bear to hear it said that all things are not ‘full of gods’?
Clinias: No man, sir, can be so much beside himself.
Athenian: Then, my dear Megillus and Clinias, we may state our terms to him who has hitherto declined to acknowledge gods and dispose of him.
Clinias: What terms shall we offer?
Athenian: Either he must show us that we are wrong in pronouncing soul the primary source of all things, and in the further consequences we drew, or if unable to get the better of our reasoning, he must yield to us and live henceforth a believer in gods. Let us consider, then, whether our defence of the being of gods against the unbeliever is now duly complete or defective.
Clinias: Defective, sir? Anything but that.
Athenian: Then, so far as concerns that party, let our discourse come to its end; we are now to admonish him who confesses the being of gods but denies that they take any heed of the affairs of men. ‘Fair sir,’ we will say, ‘as to your belief in gods, ’tis perhaps some kinship with the divine that draws you to your native stock in worship and acknowledgment; on the other side there are private and public fortunes of ill and wicked men—fortunes truly unblessed, but passionately, though tastelessly, extolled as blessed by the voice of public repute—and these draw you towards irreligion when you hear them wrongly harped upon in poetry and literature of ail kinds.
1 I have left untranslated the opening words of 899a 7, αὐτοῦ δὴ ἄμεινον. They make neither sense nor satisfactory grammar, and the proposed ‘emendations’ are unhappy. With misgiving I suggest as a possibility αὐτοῦ δὴ ἄμεινον [όν] or ἀμείνονα, ‘a man should regard this soul, a thing so much better than himself, as a god.’
Or, it may
Clinias: A sound proposal. Act on it, then, and we, too, will do our best to carry out your suggestions.
Athenian: Well, perhaps it would not be hard to establish as much as this, that the gods are more, not less, careful for small things than for great. The man was present, you know, at our recent discussion and was told that the gods, who are good with perfect goodness, have the universal charge of all things as their special and proper function.
Clinias: He was most certainly told so.
Athenian: Then let them join us in asking what we mean by the goodness in virtue of which we confess the gods to be good. Come, now; prudence, may we say, and understanding belong to goodness, their opposites to badness?
Clinias: We may.
Athenian: And again that valour is part of goodness, cowardice of badness?
Clinias: Assuredly.
Athenian: And the latter qualities we shall call shameful, the former noble?
Clinias: No doubt we must.
Athenian: And all the baser qualities, we shall say, belong, if to any one, to ourselves; gods have no part in them, great or small.
Clinias: That, too, will be universally conceded.
Athenian: Well, then, shall we set down negligence, indolence, petulance as goodness of soul? How say you?
Clinias: Nay, how could we?
Athenian: As its opposite, then?
Clinias: Yes.
Athenian: Then their opposites will be referred to its opposite?
Clinias: They will.
Athenian: Very well, then. Any one who is petulant, negligent, or indolent must be pronounced such a character as that the poet
Clinias: And an excellent comparison it is.
Athenian: Then it must never be said that God has such a character as this, a character God himself abhors, or if any one ventures on such a speech, we must forbid him.
Clinias: Indeed we must; how could we do otherwise?
Athenian: If one has the office of action and peculiar care of some charge, and his mind, though careful in great matters, is negligent in small, what ground could we find for commendation of such a one that would not ring false? We may look at the case thus. The conduct of him who behaves thus, be he god or man, may take either of two forms, may it not?
Clinias: Either of what two forms?
Athenian: Either he thinks neglect of little details makes no difference to the total result, or if it makes a difference which he disregards, he shows indolence or petulance. Can we, in fact, ascribe negligence to any other causes? For, of course, where concern for a whole is impossible, it is no negligence of the little or the great, in god or in ordinary mortal, to make no provision for that to which one’s powers are not equal, and for which one is thus unable to provide.
Clinias: Of course not.
Athenian: Very well; now for an answer to the interrogation of the three of us from the two parties who both confess the being of gods, but gods whom the one holds to be venal and the other negligent of little details. You both admit, to begin with, that the gods perceive, see, and hear everything, that nothing within the compass of sense or knowledge can fall outside their cognizance. That is your position, is it not?
Clinias: It is.
1 The poet is Hesiod, Works and Days, 303 ff. ‘Gods and men alike are wroth with him who lives without working, with a temper like the stingless drones’.
Athenian: And further that they can do all that is possible to be done by mortal or immortal?
Clinias: Why, of course, they will concede that admission too.
Athenian: Besides, all five of us have already agreed that they are good, and superlatively good.
Clinias: Beyond all doubt.
Athenian: Must we not then confess it a sheer impossibility that there should be any indolence or petulance in their conduct, so long as their character is such as we concede it to be. In ourselves, you know, want of courage gives birth to sloth, and sloth and petulance to indolence.
Clinias: True, indeed.
Athenian: No god, then, can be negligent from sloth or indolence, for none, we may presume, has any lack of courage.
Clinias: Rightly argued, indeed.
Athenian: Then if they indeed neglect the trivial matters and minor details of the universe, we must conclude either that they do so with the knowledge that there is no need whatsoever of attention to such points or—what other alternative is left but the contrary of knowledge?
Clinias: None whatever.
Athenian: Well, then, my dear good man, which view must we take you to hold? That they act in ignorance and neglect due to ignorance where attention ought to be shown, or that they are aware that attention is needed, and yet behave as the sorriest sort of men are said to do—men who know a better course than that they actually take, but leave it alone from some inferiority to pleasures or pains?
Clinias: Out of the question altogether.
Athenian: Well, then, is not human life a part of animated nature, and man himself moreover the most god-fearing of all living creatures?
Clinias: Why, yes, to all appearances.
Athenian: And surely we hold that all living creatures, like the world as a whole, are chattels of the gods?
Clinias: To be sure we do.
Athenian: ’ all one, then, whether a man counts such things small or great in the eyes of Heaven; in neither case can it become our owners, provident and all-good as they are, to neglect them. For here is a still further point for our consideration.
Clinias: And what may it be?
Athenian: Whether there is not a natural opposition between perception and power in respect of their ease or difficulty.
Clinias: In what way?
Athenian: Why, that ’tis harder to see or hear the little than the great, whereas every one finds it easier to move, wield, super-intend the small and few than their contraries.
Clinias: Emphatically so.
Athenian: But suppose a physician who has the task of treating a whole body is willing and able to give his attention to the large masses but neglects the minor members and parts, will his whole subject ever be in good condition?
Clinias: No, never.
Athenian: Nor yet will seamen, captains, householders, or again statesmen, as they are called, or persons with any other such functions make a success of the many or the great tasks apart from the few and the little; why, even the hedger will tell you that the large stones will not lie well without the small.
Clinias: Of course they will not.
Athenian: We are never, then, to fancy God the inferior of human workmen. The better they are at their work, the more exactly and perfectly do they accomplish their proper tasks, small or great, in virtue of one and the same skill, and we must never suppose that God, who is at once supremely wise and both
Clinias: Nay, sir, let us never entertain such a belief about gods; the thought would be wholly impious and utterly false.
Athenian: And now, I take it, we have had quite enough of controversy with him who is prone to charge the gods with negligence.
Clinias: We have.
Athenian: I mean so far as forcing him by argument to confess his error will go. Still something more, I believe, needs to be said by way of a charm for him.
Clinias: And what shall it be, my friend?
Athenian: Why, our discourse must persuade the young man that he who provides for the world has disposed all things with a view to the preservation and perfection of the whole, wherefore each several thing also, so far as may be, does and has done to it what is meet. And for each and all there are, in every case, governors appointed of all doing and being done to, down to the least detail, who have achieved perfection even to the minute particulars. Thine own being also, fond man, is one
Clinias: Shift it—but how?
Athenian: Why, I believe I can show you how universal super-intendence may be easy enough for gods. In fact, if in his constant regard for the whole, an artificer were to mould everything by new transformations—fashioning fire, for example, into (?) cold
Clinias: Once more—your meaning?
Athenian: I mean this. Since our King perceived that all our actions have soul in them and contain much virtue and likewise much vice, and that the complex of soul and body when once it has come to be, though not eternal, is, like the gods recognized by law, imperishable—for there would be no procreation of living creatures were either of the pair to be destroyed—and since he considered that ’tis ever the nature of such soul as is good to work blessing and of such as is evil to work harm—since he saw all this, I say, he contrived where to post each several item so as to provide most utterly, easily, and well for the triumph of virtue and rout of vice throughout the whole.
1 ἐκ πυρὸς ὕδωρ ἔμψυχον, 903e 6. If the word ἔμψυχον is sound here—and I do not see how it could otherwise have got into the text—I think it probably means not ‘animate’ (from ἐν and ψυχή), but ‘cold’ (from ἐν and ψῦχος). ἔμψυχον, in this sense, is a genuine Greek word.
Thus
Clinias: ’Tis a fair presumption.
Athenian: Thus all things that have part in soul change, for the cause of change lies within themselves; and as they change they move in accord with the ordinance and law of destiny. If their changes of character are unimportant and few, they are transferred over the surface of the soil; if they are more and in the direction of grave wickedness, they fall into the depths and the so-called underworld, the region known by the name of Hades and the like appellations, which fill the fancy of quick and departed alike with dreams of dismay. If a soul have drunk still deeper of vice or virtue, by reason of its own volition and the potent influence of past converse with others, when near contact with divine goodness has made it itself especially godlike, so surely is it removed to a special place of utter holiness, and translated to another and a better world, or, in the contrary case, transported to live in the opposite realm. This, my boy—or my lad—who deemest thyself forgotten by Heaven,
is the doom of the gods who dwell on Olympus,
that he that grows better shall make his way to the better souls and he that has grown worse to the worser, and so, in life, and throughout the series of deaths, do and have done to him what it is meet the like-minded should do to their likes.
1 Odyssey, τ 43.
’Twill be the same, thou must know, with them also whom thou hast seen raised from small beginnings to greatness by deeds of sacrilege or the like, and fancied to have passed from misery to blessedness, whence thou thoughtest their fortunes
Clinias: Well said; let us do so.
Athenian: Why, then, I ask you, in the name of these same gods, what can be the mode of the perversion, if indeed they are to be perverted? And what or what manner of beings must they be themselves? Governors, to be sure, they must be supposed to be, if they are to have effective control of the whole universe.
Clinias: No doubt.
Athenian: But what kind of governors are they like? Or what kind whom we can by any possibility compare rightly with them, as less with greater, are like them? Would drivers of contending teams, or captains of competing vessels, be a proper parallel? Or we might perhaps compare them with commanders of armies in the field, or they may even resemble physicians defending the body from the onslaughts of disease, or husbandmen anxiously apprehending recurrent seasons of danger for
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: So the case of one who teaches that the gods are always indulgent to the unrighteous and the wrong-doer, if a share of the plunder is assigned them, comes inevitably to this: ’tis as though the wolf should assign some small part of his spoil to the sheep-dog, and the dog, pacified by the present, agree to the ravaging of the flock. That is the case of those who hold the gods to be venal, is it not?
Clinias: It is indeed.
Athenian: Well, then, with which of our former list of guardians can a man compare the gods without absurdity? With seamen who are ‘turned from their course by “flow and fragrance” of wine’
Clinias: Surely not.
Athenian: And surely not with charioteers placed for the race but won over by a bribe to forfeit the victory to another team?
Clinias: Nay, your comparison will be a shocking one if you say that.
Athenian: And certainly not with commanders, physicians, or husbandmen, nor yet with herdsmen nor with sheep-dogs on whom wolves have cast a spell?
Clinias: Flat blasphemy! Quite impossible!
Athenian: Now are not the gods, one and all, our chiefest guardians, and the interests they guard our chief interests?
Clinias: Ay, and by far.
Athenian: And shall we pronounce those who have the noblest of things to guard and are themselves supremely skillful in the task of guarding inferior to sheep-dogs or average men, who will never betray the right for the sinful offer of a bribe from the unrighteous?
1 Iliad, I 300 (from the famous speech of Phoenix).
Clinias: Assuredly not; the thought is not to be borne. Of all reprobates who are given to any form of ungodliness the defender of such a creed may well be most righteously condemned as the very worst and most ungodly.
Athenian: Then I presume we may say our three propositions, that there are gods, that they are mindful of us, that they are never to be seduced from the path of right, are sufficiently demonstrated.
Clinias: Indeed you may, and my friend and I concur with your arguments.
Athenian: Still I confess they have been delivered with some heat due to eagerness to triumph over these bad men. But the source of this zeal, my dear Clinias, was apprehension that if they get the better of the argument, the wicked may fancy themselves free to act as they will, seeing how many strange ideas they entertain about the gods. This is what prompted me to speak with more than common vigour; if I have done never so little to influence such men towards self-reprobation and attraction towards the opposite type of character, the prelude to our laws against impiety will have been spoken to good purpose.
Clinias: Well, let us hope so; but if not, at least the cause will bring no discredit on a legislator.
Athenian: So our preamble may properly be followed by a sentence which will express the sense of our laws, a general injunction to the ungodly to turn from their ways to those of godliness. For the disobedient our law against impiety may run as follows: If any man commit impiety of word or act, any person present shall defend the law by giving information to the magistrates, and the first magistrates under whose notice the matter comes shall bring the case before the court appointed to deal with such offences as the law directs. Any official failing to take action on information received shall himself be liable to be proceeded against for impiety at the suit of any one willing to vindicate the law. In the case of conviction, the court shall impose a particular penalty on the offender for each act of impiety. Imprisonment
1 This is a departure from Attic practice which has, therefore, to be specially noted. Imprisonment, except in the form of detention until a fine inflicted by the courts has been discharged, was not a penalty inflicted on Attic citizens. The proposed grading of prisons is an interesting anticipation of an important modern reform.
And whereas there are three prisons in the State, a common gaol in
1 This is the first allusion in the Laws to this body, which acts as a sort of extraordinary ‘Committee of Public Safety’ in permanent session. It gets its name from the provision that its daily meetings are to be held before daybreak. Its constitution will be described later at XII, 951c-e, and 961a-b.
Throughout this period they shall have no communication with any citizen except the members of the Nocturnal
Moreover we must frame a law applicable to all these offenders alike, and designed to alleviate the sin of most of them against religion in word or act—to say nothing of the folly of the sinners—by the prohibition of illegal ceremonial. In fact the following law should be enacted for all cases without exception. No man shall possess a shrine in his private house; when a man feels himself moved to offer sacrifice, he shall go to the public temples for that purpose and deliver his offerings to the priests of either sex whose business it is to consecrate them. He may join with himself in the prayers any persons whose company he may desire. This regulation shall be adopted for the reasons following.
1 This may mean that the offender who is not believed to have been converted by the imprisonment and the admonitions addressed to him is pronounced contumacious at the end of his term of confinement, and put to death as an obstinate heretic. But since even the hypocritical villain of 909c is allowed to die in the course of nature, more probably Plato means that the milder offence is presumed to have been purged by imprisonment, and death only inflicted if a repetition and a second conviction prove a man not to have been ‘brought back to sanity’.
The founding of a sanctuary or cult is no light task; to discharge it properly demands some serious
Laws, Book XI
Athenian: Our next need will, of course, be a proper regulation of our business transactions with each other. A simple general rule, I take it, might be expressed thus. I would have no one touch my property, if I can help it, or disturb it in the slightest way without some kind of consent on my part; if I am a man of sense, I must treat the property of others in the same way. We will take as a first instance treasure which someone, not being an ancestor of my own, has amassed as store for himself and his descendants. I must never pray to find such treasure; if I do find it, I must not meddle with it, I must breathe no word of it to diviners, as they are called, who are certain to recommend me
1 Accepting Stephanus’s συμβουλεύσουσιν for συμβουλεύουσιν (MSS. and Burnet) at 913b 3.
2 The author to whom the saying was popularly ascribed is Solon (Diogenes Laertius I. 57). The ‘two legislators’ of the next words are, of course, Solon and the legislator of the supposed Cretan city.
What Heaven will do to him, of course, is God’s concern; but the first
Any man, provided he be sane, shall be at liberty to lay hands on his own slave for such purpose as he may please in the way of lawful business, and at liberty likewise to lay hands on the fugitive slave of any kinsman or friend, with a view to his safe-keeping. If a man be thus seized as a slave and any person claim him as free and resist his detention, the captor shall let the man go, and the party opposing the detention shall provide three substantial sureties and stay the detention on these conditions aforesaid, and on no others. If capture is stayed otherwise than on these conditions, there shall be an action for assault, and the defendant, if convicted, shall pay the
If a man claim any other man’s beast, or any other of his goods, as his own property,
1 In 915c 8 it seems to me we must write αὐτοῦ (Ast, Stallbaum), against the αὑτοῦ of our MSS. and many editors, including Burnet. In any case, the pronoun stands for the party who is in possession of the article but whose right to it is disputed.
1 In 915d 5 I assume England to be right in substituting οἷς for the ἧς of the MSS. and the other editors; the antecedent must surely be μηνῶν. It is assumed that business with overseas traders will be confined to the summer. For this cf. what is said of these traders as ‘birds of passage’ at 961d-c.
2 Or possibly we should transfer the comma in 915e 4 to follow ταῦτα, and translate, ‘he must trust to the other party to the exchange in acting thus, since the law will not grant an action’, etc.
3 Ἕρανοι, ‘clubs’, means associations of a kind common at Athens; their ostensible outward and visible purpose was the social and religious one of a common dinner, but they also served as ‘benefit-clubs’, which advanced loans to members to set them up in business.
4 i.e. epilepsy, a disorder which might go undetected longer than the others.
But where a professional man vends such an article to a layman, the purchaser shall have the right to return it within six months, except in the case of
He that exchanges against coin other coin or any article whatsoever, animate or inanimate, shall be expected by the law in all cases to give genuine value and demand the same. But, as elsewhere in our code, let us make room for a preamble dealing with roguery of this sort at large. Every one should understand that imposture, false pretences, fraud, are all things of one kind, the kind which is unhappily credited in current popular parlance with being often enough an excellent thing ‘if practised at the proper juncture’. When and where this juncture occurs is left vague and indefinite, and thus the proverb works no little mischief to the believer and the rest of society. A legislator cannot be allowed to leave the point in this uncertainty. He should always draw definite boundary-lines, wider or narrower, as we shall now proceed to do. No man shall practise any imposture or fraud of word or act with the name of a god on his lips, but one that would encounter God’s
1 The dedicated object would be set up in public view; this is the reason for the clause.
The consideration of fraudulent practices and business leads direct to that of retail trade. We shall first deal with the subject as a whole in the way of reasoned counsel, and then propose legal regulation for it. Internal retail trade, when one considers its essential function, is not a mischievous thing, but much the reverse. Can a man be other than a benefactor if he effects the even and proportionate diffusion of anything in its own nature so disproportionately and unevenly diffused as commodities of all sorts? This, we should remind ourselves, is the very result achieved by a currency, and this, as we should recognize, the function assigned to the trader. Similarly the wage-earner, the tavern-keeper, and other callings, some more and some less reputable, all have the common function of meeting various demands with supply and distributing commodities more evenly. What, then, can be the reason why the calling is of no good credit or repute? What makes it generally unpopular? We must look into the question if we are to provide a partial remedy (a total cure would be beyond us) by our legislation. The thing is well worth doing, I fancy, and calls for no common abilities.
Clinias: How so?
Athenian: Why, Clinias my friend, Tis but a small section of mankind, a few of exceptional natural parts disciplined by consummate training, who have the resolution to prove true to moderation when they find themselves in the full current of demands and desires; there are not many of us who remain sober when they have the opportunity to grow wealthy, or prefer measure to abundance. The great multitude of men are of a clean contrary temper: what they desire they desire out of all measure; when they have the option of making a reasonable profit, they prefer to make an exorbitant one. This is why all classes of retailers, business men, tavern-keepers, are so unpopular and under so severe a social stigma. And yet, only suppose—an impossible supposition and Heaven forbid it should be anything else!—but suppose the very best of men could be compelled—the fancy will sound ludicrous, I know, but I must give it utterance—suppose they could be compelled to take for a time to inn-keeping, or retail trade, or some such calling; or suppose, for the matter of that, that some unavoidable destiny were to drive the best women into such professions: then we should discover that all are humane and beneficent occupations; if they were only conducted on principles of strict integrity, we should respect them as we
1 I agree with England that the comma in 919e 2 should be placed after ἐλεύθεροι, not after πρεσβυτέροις (as in Burnet’s text).
What services are thus consistent with gentle lineage and what are not can hardly be stated with precision in a law;
1 The text of the MSS. (and Burnet) may just possibly be construed, but I think it more probable that we should, with Ast, read τοῦ χρόνου for τὸν χρόνον in 920a 2-3.
In the case of failure to execute an admitted contract—save and except a contract to do what is prohibited by statute or by executive decree of the Assembly, a contract extorted by wrongful constraint, a contract unintentionally frustrated by
As we have raised this topic of artificers, it is only right to say a passing word about the artificers of our preservation in war, generals and other military experts. In their case also—for they too, like the others, are craftsmen, though of a different sort—if any of them undertake work for the public, whether as a volunteer or under orders, and perform it well and truly, the law will never tire in commendation of the citizen who loyally pays him the soldier’s wages—honours; but if the citizen receive delivery of the fine piece of military work and withhold the payment, the law shall censure him. We shall accordingly enact, and couple with our commendation of these heroes, the following law, which we address to the populace rather by way of counsel than by way of compulsion: The brave men who preserve our whole State by deeds of valour or 922 military skill shall receive honours of the second class. (Our supreme distinctions must be understood to have been assigned to those who stand first of all in merit, those who have proved pre-eminent in reverence for the precepts of good legislators.)
We have now, we may say, completed our regulation of the more important business relations of man with man, except for those which concern orphans and their supervision by their guardians. These are the sphere we are next driven to regulate as best we can. The foundations of the whole subject are laid by the desire of the dying to make a disposition of their estates and the accident of deaths without any such settlement; and the reason why I spoke of being ‘driven’ to treat of it, Clinias, was that I saw the intricacies and difficulties involved. We certainly cannot leave such matters without all regulation. Were we to concede the unqualified validity of any testamentary disposition made at the end of life, irrespective of the testator’s condition, men would often make disposals inconsistent in themselves and repugnant to law, or to the moral sense of the living, or of the testator himself at an earlier time of life. For in most of us, as you know, when in imminent expectation of death, the mental powers are in abeyance, broken, as I may say.
Clinias: Yes, sir, and what of it?
Athenian: A man at the point of death, Clinias, is not easy to handle;
Clinias: How so, pray?
Athenian: He wants to have his own way about everything, and so there is commonly a touch of passion in his language.
Clinias: Language—what language?
Athenian: ‘Lord!’ he will say, ‘I call it a shame if I am not to be perfectly free to give my own property to a man or not, exactly as I please, and not free to give more of it to one man, less to another, according as I have found them treating me well or ill under the searching test of sickness, old age, and the other varied circumstances of life.’
Clinias: A perfectly proper thing to say, too, sir; don’t you think so?
Athenian: Why, Clinias, I think our legislators in the past have been too soft; their codes have been based on short views of human life and imperfect understanding of it.
Clinias: But in what way?
Athenian: Why, my dear sir, they were afraid of such complaints, and that is why they made the law which permits of the absolute
1 i.e. to inherit the family landed estate, which, as we learned in Book V, is never to be either alienated or divided. The law in this respect is like our own of primogeniture, except that the selection of the heir is left to the father’s discretion.
2 ‘House’, οἶκος (923d 8), means ‘family’, not ‘dwelling-place’. The sense is that a son who is either adopted under the will as heir to the patrimony of a citizen, or has been so adopted during his father’s life, is already provided for, and so has no rightful claim to any part of the ‘personal property’.
3 This is to meet the case of a son adopted by some landholder, or daughter contracted to such landholder, after the making of the will. The spirit of the law demands that a legacy shall, in this case, ‘revert to the testator’s estate’.
4 i.e. a testator who names as his heir a son under full age is to provide for the possibility of the heir’s dying a minor, by naming an eventual successor.
5 i.e. exclusive of the patrimony and its ‘plenishing’. This is the only case of free bequest permitted by Plato’s law.
1 i.e. when there are no relatives near enough to have a right to the position by kinship.
If a man die absolutely intestate but leaving children who need the care of a guardian, his children’s distress shall share the benefit of these same laws. But if he meet his end by some incalculable accident and leave daughters behind him, he must make allowances for the legislator’s disposal of his daughters’ hands if it takes two points out of three into account, nearness in blood, and protection of the patrimony; the third point—and this is what would have engaged a father’s attention—the selection of the person out of the whole citizen-body most congenial in character and disposition as a son for himself and bridegroom for his daughter, the legislator will pretermit as an impossible task. Here, then, is the best law we can devise for the case. If an intestate person leave daughters, a brother of the deceased on the father’s side, or a brother on the mother’s side having no patrimony of his own, shall take his daughter and inherit his patrimony; the same shall be the case if there be a brother’s son but no brother, provided the parties are of suitable age; if there be none of these, the rule shall hold for a sister’s son. Father’s brother shall be fourth in succession, his son fifth, father’s sister’s son sixth. In all cases where female
Clinias: Then, let me ask you, sir, what would be the fairest way to act in such a situation?
Athenian: In such a case, Clinias, we must appoint arbitrators between the law and the persons it commands.
Clinias: Pray explain yourself.
Athenian: Sometimes a nephew whose father is a wealthy man might make difficulties about marrying his uncle’s daughter because he has high notions and aspires to a more splendid match. Sometimes, again, a man might be driven to disobey the law because what the legislator requires is disastrous, as when he would constrain you to connect yourself with a house in which there is insanity, or other grievous bodily or mental affliction, such as renders life positively intolerable. So what I have to say on the subject shall be couched in the form of a law to this effect: If a party complain of being aggrieved by the laws now enacted, the law of testamentary dispositions or another, and in particular by the law of marriage, and emit a solemn declaration to the effect that the legislator, if now alive and present in person, would never have required the action—the taking or giving in marriage—of either party from whom it is now demanded; and if a relative or guardian make affirmation to the contrary: the law shall take the view that the legislator has bequeathed the fifteen Curators to our orphans of both sexes as arbitrators and parents; litigants on these issues shall have recourse to them for the determination of their disputes, and shall act on their verdict as final. If the powers thus conferred on the Curators be deemed too extensive by any party, he shall bring the Curators before the court of selected judges and take its decision on the issue. If he lose his case, the legislator shall visit him with censure and disgrace, penalties heavier in the judgment of intelligence than the most grievous fine.
Our orphan children will thus experience a kind of second birth. How they should all be reared and trained after their first birth has already been explained. What we have to do after this second birth, a birth without a parent, is to discover the plan by which their unfortunate bereavement will entail least distress on the sufferers. First, then, to make laws for their conduct, in place of their fleshly begetters we appoint the Curators, parents at least as good as they; moreover we especially charge [three of?]
1 It is not necessary, but highly tempting, since the reference is to the annual acting committees of three of whom we heard at 924c, to follow Susemihl in assuming the numeral τρεῖς (Γ) to have fallen out of the text in this clause.
them every year to care for them
Graver differences are found to arise between fathers and sons, sons and fathers, than ought to be possible; as a consequence, fathers are disposed to take the view that the legislator should empower them, if they see fit, to make public and legal notification through the crier that they will no longer hold a son as their son, and sons, on their part, to expect legal authorization to take proceedings in lunacy against a father discredited by years or disease. The cause of such variance is commonly to be found in utter unqualified badness of character; where
1 Some small correction needs to be made in the MSS. text (that given by Burnet). Paleographically the most probable correction, I believe, is to read διαψηφιζομένους for διαψηφιζομένου in 929b 7 (Ast), and to insert [μὴ] before τέλειοι in c 2 (England). The sense is fortunately certain.
If disease, age, sullen temper, or all together derange a man’s mind with more than common violence, though the fact go undiscovered by all but those who share his daily life, so that he waste the family estate as one that is absolute lord of it, while his son knows not where to turn, and scruples to bring his action of lunacy; in such case, the law shall be that
If man and wife be utterly estranged by their unhappy temper,
Neglect of parents is that to which neither god nor right-thinking man will ever counsel any. A man should have the wit to see how pat the preamble now to be delivered on divine worship is like to fit this theme of respect and disrespect of parents. All the world over the primitive rules of worship are two-fold. Some of the gods of our worship are manifest to
Clinias: Now what may you mean by this ‘rightful’ worship?
Athenian: Why, I will tell you; indeed, my friends, ’tis a theme well deserving our attention.
Clinias: Say on, then.
Athenian: Oedipus, so we commonly say, called down a curse on his sons when they showed him disrespect, and it is a familiar tale with us all, as you know, how fully heaven answered his prayer. And we have the stories of the cursing of Phoenix by his angry father Amyntor,
1 The object is, in the first instance, to prevent children of servile origin from getting any footing in a citizen family. Plato is also anxious to discourage clandestine concubinage itself; hence the deportation of the slave lover or mistress.
2 Cf. the similar distinction at Timaeus, 41a, Epinomis, 984d. The visible divinities are the stars, the ‘invisible’ the beings of the popular mythology.
3 See Iliad, I, 447 ff. for the story of Amyntor and Phoenix. The curse inflicted on Phoenix was that of childlessness.
In fact, the curse of the parent on the offspring is more effectual than any other, and ’tis only right it should be so. If, then, ’tis the order of things that God is so exceeding quick to hear the prayer of father or mother when their children show them dishonour, let none conceit himself that when the parent receives his honours, rejoices and delights in them, and is moved to fervent prayer for blessings on the children—must we not think, I say, that Heaven hears that prayer no less than the other, and
Clinias: Most unworthy indeed.
Athenian: And so, as I have just said, we must believe that no image we can procure is more precious in Heaven’s eye than a father or forefather in the weakness of his age, or a mother in like case; when a man does them worship and honour, there is joy in Heaven, or their prayers would not be heard. An ancestor’s person is, in truth, an image of God more marvellous than any lifeless statue; these living images will always second our prayers for ourselves when we pay them worship, and pray in the opposite sense when we show them dishonour, but the others can do neither the one thing nor the other. And so the man who bears himself as he ought to father, father’s father, and the rest of his ancestors will find no other image so effectual to assure the favour of heaven as this which he has got.
Clinias: Most admirably said.
Athenian: And thus all right-thinking men treat a parent’s prayer with fear and reverence; they know how time and again such
1 I depart here by one letter from the text of the MSS (and Burnet). Winckelmann’s νέοις for νέοι in 932a 3 seems to me nearly certain.
2 England’s emendation of κωφὴ (932a 6) to κωφὸν seems to me certain.
If persons beyond these years still persistently neglect their parents, or, it may be treat them ill, they shall cite them before a court of one hundred and one citizens, the
1 i.e. for the ill-treatment against which he might have given information. His silence about it is treated as making him responsible for it.
To come to injury inflicted by poisons: we have dealt at large with the cases where death results, but not, as yet, with lesser injuries arising from deliberate and intentional administration of articles of meat or drink, or unguents. What gives us pause here is that mankind practice poisoning in two different ways. The form we have just expressly named is that in which the body is hurt by the action of some other body in normal ways.
In all cases of injury by theft or robbery with violence, the culprit shall pay compensation to the party injured, greater or less, according to the gravity of the mischief done, but in any case sufficient to cover completely the whole loss occasioned by his act; further, each such culprit shall pay a penalty imposed
1 In 933e 10 I think we should probably delete πρὸς ἑκάστῳ (as suggested by England). I suspect the words originated from a form of the text in which the προσεκτεισάτω of the next line was placed here.
No lunatic shall be allowed to be at large in the community; the relatives of such persons shall keep them in safe custody at home by such methods as they can contrive, on penalty of fine. The fine for failure to control the lunatic, whether slave or free man, shall be for offenders of the highest property-class one mina,
1 1 mina = 100 drachmas.
2 I have followed England in omitting the word ἀνατί (935b 8), ‘with impunity’. It makes no good sense here and was absent from the original text of A and O.
If a man indulge in such scurrilities elsewhere,
1 In 935c 6 England’s ἑταίρῳ seems to me a necessary emendation for the ἑτέρῳ of the MSS. and previous editors. If trepw is kept, the sense seems to be ‘him who humours his angry passion by another evil thing’ (viz. mockery of his adversary). But this is intolerably frigid.
2 ‘Iambic’ verse is specified as a form historically appropriated to lampoons. There is apparently some small error in the text of 935e 4, and Ast’s transposition of the τινος (to stand before μουσῶν) is highly attractive.
3 See 829c supra The uncertainty whether the comma should be placed after ποιεῖν, as by Burnet, or after ἀλλήλους, does not affect the sense of the regulation.
The true object of pity is not the man who is hungry or in some similar needy case, but the man who has sobriety of soul
If damage be done to a man’s property of any kind by another’s slave, male or female, such person not being himself contributory to the charge by awkwardness or other ill-management,
If a man refuse to give evidence, he shall be served with a citation by the party desiring his testimony, on receipt whereof, he shall present himself at the trial of the case. If he have knowledge of the facts and is ready to depose to them, he shall then make his deposition; if he deny all knowledge, he shall profess his denial on oath by three gods, Zeus, Apollo, and Themis, and be dismissed from the case. Any person cited in
1 ‘Other ill-management’, as England says, means here much what we call ‘culpable negligence’.
2 The ‘support of the case’ ( συνηγορεῖν 937a 9) appears to mean the support given to it by the very act of making a deposition, since all ‘advocacy’ is expressly forbidden.
Life abounds in good things, but most of those good things are infested by polluting and defiling parasites. Justice, for example, is undeniably a boon to mankind; it has humanized the whole of life. And if justice is such a blessing, how can advocacy be other than a blessing too? Well, both blessings are brought into ill-repute by a vice which cloaks itself under the specious name of an ‘art’. It begins by professing that there is a device for managing one’s legal business—in fact that it is itself a device for managing such business of one’s own and assisting another to manage his—and that this device will ensure victory equally whether the conduct at issue in the case, whatever it is, has been rightful or not.
1 The procedure is Attic. A party to a case claiming that testimony put in at the ‘pre-cognition’ by the other side is false enters a demurrer (ἐπισκήψεις ψευδομαρτυρίου) against it, and the issue thus raised has to be tried. The ‘trial’ which the slave or minor has here to give security to await is that on this allegation of perjury, not that of the original issue in connection with which the incriminating deposition was made.
And it then adds that this art itself and the eloquence it teaches are to be had as
Laws, Book XII
Athenian: If an ambassador or envoy to a foreign State behave disloyally in his office, whether by falsification of the despatch he is commissioned to deliver or by proved distortion of messages entrusted to him by such State, friendly or hostile, as ambassador or envoy, all such persons shall lie open to impeachment of the crime of sacrilege against the function and ordinances of Hermes and Zeus, and it shall be determined what sentence or fine shall follow conviction.
Larceny is a sordid thing and open robbery a flagitious.
1 Theft from private persons has already been dealt with; the present paragraph is concerned with the graver crime of peculation from the State. But it is noticeable that the severity of 942a is quite inconsistent with the milder anticipatory treatment of the crime of theft from the public at 857b.
Whence, if a conviction for theft of the public property be gained in the courts against an alien or slave, seeing he may yet, in all likelihood, be recovered, the court
The organization of our forces is a thing calling in its nature for much advice and the framing of many rules, but the principal is this—that no man, and no woman, be ever suffered to live without an officer set over them, and no soul of man to learn the trick of doing one single thing of its own sole motion, in play or in earnest, but, in peace as in war, ever to live with the commander in sight, to follow his leading, and take its motions from him to the least detail; to halt or advance, to drill, to bathe, to dine, to keep wakeful hours o’ nights as sentry or despatch-carrier, all at his bidding; in the stricken field itself neither to pursue nor to retire without the captain’s signal; in a word, to teach one’s soul the habit of never so much as thinking to do one single act apart from one’s fellows, of making life, to the very uttermost, an unbroken consort, society, and community of all with all (a wiser and better rule than this man neither has discovered, nor ever will, nor a truer art of military salvation and victory). ’Tis this lesson of commanding our fellows and being commanded by them we should rehearse in the times of peace, from our very cradles; anarchy—the absence of the commander—is what we should expel root and branch from the lives of all mankind, ay, and all beast-kind that is under man’s dominion. In especial, all the choric dances our people are to learn must look to gallantry in the field; the same must be the end of all their training in easy and nimble movement, all their endurance of hunger and thirst, cold and heat, and lying hard; above all, they must, to the same end, learn not to corrupt the native strength of the head and feet by swathing them in artificial coverings, and so tampering with the growth and function of the head-cover and footwear of nature’s providing. For head and feet are the body’s extremities, and due care of them affects the whole body most potently for good, neglect for ill; the foot is the whole body’s servant of servants, the head the master-member made by nature to contain all its principal organs of sense. So much,
1 I enclose the words ‘in fancy’ in square brackets to indicate my feeling that Stallbaum was right in regarding the δοκεῖν of 943a 2 as a scribal error for δεῖν.
A man put on the roll or assigned to any arm of the forces shall perform
1 In the well-known story of the Iliad, Patroclus is, of course, only brought back to the tent of Achilles as a corpse. The armour which was stripped from his body by Hector was that of Achilles.
2 For the transformation of the girl Caenis into the man Caeneus, see Ovid, Metamorphoses xii. 189-209.
Now as to auditors,
1 1000 dr. = 10 minae.
2 The regulation is taken from Attic practice, but Plato’s method of appointing his auditors, and the extraordinary powers and honours he bestows on them are his own.
3 The text of 945b 6-7 seems to me not capable of absolutely certain reconstruction. With some hesitation, I follow England in accepting Baiter’s πῃ for εἴπῃ in 945b 6, rejecting Cornarius’s addition of [ἢ] at the end of the same line, and the τὴν ἀρχὴν (absent from the original text of A and O) in 945b 7.
For if the censors who are to approve our magistrates are better men than themselves, and do their work with flawless and irreproachable justice, then there will be prosperity and true happiness for the whole of nation and society; but if aught is amiss with the auditing of our magistrates, then the bonds of right which hold all branches of our social fabric together in one will be loosened;
1 According to England πάντας, not the πάντως of earlier editions, is the reading of A in 945e 2, as it certainly makes the better sense.
2 It is plain that the meaning is that at the first institution of the proposed system twelve of these officials are to be elected, but annually in future only three in any one year, and that there is no question, as has been sometimes supposed, of an original election of three men, who then co-opt others. Hence I believe England right in reading τ[οι]ούτους for τούτους in 946c 2.
For their term of office they shall have their residence in the
We may well admire one thing in Rhadamanthys’ manner of deciding issues at law, as the tale describes it—his perception that the men of his day were so confident of the manifest existence of gods—as well they might be, according to the story, since most of them at that time, and Rhadamanthys among them, had gods for their parents. Apparently he held that a judge’s work should not be entrusted to any mere man, but only to gods, and this is why he could decide the cases that came before him so simply and rapidly. He put the litigants in a case to their oath about their assertions, and so had his business speedily and surely despatched. In these days of ours, when, as we have said, some men have no belief whatever in gods, others hold that they give themselves no concern about us, and the creed of the worst, who are the majority, is that if they pay the gods a trifle in the way of sacrifice and flattery,
1 i.e. to use for voting purposes a pebble brought from a god’s altar, a ‘consecrated’ pebble. This is tantamount to the taking of an oath, as it equally exposes the voter to the wrath of the god whose altar has been profaned, if the vote is corruptly given.
In cases of disobedience to the State on the part of a free citizen—I mean cases not grave enough to call for whipping, imprisonment, or death—neglect to present oneself at the meetings of a choir, or to take part in a procession, or some other ceremonial or act of public service
A State which has no revenues except those it derives from its own soil, and no commerce is bound to make up its mind what course it should take as regards foreign travel on the part of its citizens and admission of aliens to its own dominions. So a legislator has to open his treatment of the subject with counsels which he must make as persuasive as he can. Now free intercourse between different States has the tendency to produce all manner of admixture of characters, as the itch for innovation is caught by host from visitor or visitor from host. Now this
1 Literally ‘liturgy’ (λῃτουργιῶν, 949d 1), i.e. a public burden of any kind laid upon the richer citizen as due to the State on account of his superior affluence.
2 The MSS. text of 949d 2-3, given by Burnet, τὴν πρώτην ἀνάγκην ἰατὴν εἶναι τῆς ζημίας, can hardly be correct, unless ἰατὴν is the accusative of an otherwise unknown ἰατής. I suggest ἰατῆρ’, ‘the first necessity must be to make good the loss’.
Clinias: Then how would you secure this pair of results?
Athenian: Why, thus. This observer of whom we are speaking shall, in the first place, be a man of fifty or upwards. Next, if our Curators are to let him reach other lands as a sample of what they can produce, he must be of high repute, military and otherwise; and the period of his observations shall not be prolonged beyond his sixtieth year. He shall spend such part of these ten years as he pleases in his observations, and, on his return from them, shall report himself to the Council entrusted with supervision of the laws. This shall be a body composed of younger and senior members, and shall be required to hold daily sessions from daybreak until after sunrise. It shall contain, first, the priests who have won distinctions of the first rank;
1 For further details about this perpetual ‘Council of Public Safety’, see 961 infra.
So much, then, of parties who shall have leave of foreign travel and the terms of their leave; we are next to consider the welcome to be given to a visitor from abroad. The foreign visitors of whom account must be taken are of four sorts. First, and everlastingly, a guest who will pay his incessant calls, for the most part, in the summer, like a bird of passage; most of his kind are, in fact, just like winged creatures in the way they come flying overseas, at the proper season, on their profitable business errands. He shall be admitted by officials appointed for his benefit, to our market-place, harbours, and certain public buildings erected near the city but outside its walls.
1 The persons intended by this Attic technical name are the members of the committees described above at 758b-d.
2 Cf. Genesis, xliii 33: ‘the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.’
Any person giving a security shall do so in explicit terms; he shall set down the whole transaction in a legal document, and
A person proposing to search for stolen goods on another’s premises shall first strip to his shirt and lay aside his belt, and shall also have made oath by the gods, as required by law, that he honestly expects to find his goods. The other party shall permit the search, which shall extend to sealed, as well as to unsealed, receptacles. If one party desire to make a search and the other refuse permission, the party so repelled shall lay an action, specifying the value of the missing goods, and the defendant shall, on conviction, pay twice the amount as specified. If the owner of the house be absent from home, the occupants shall permit the search of unsealed receptacles; sealed receptacles shall be counter-sealed by the searcher and left for five days under such guard as he pleases. If the absence of the owner is further prolonged, the searcher shall call in the Urban Commissioners and prosecute his search; the sealed receptacles themselves shall be opened, but shall be afterwards re-sealed as before in the presence of the household and the Commissioners.
In cases of disputed title there shall be the following
1 The sentence as it stands in the MSS. has no predicate, and would have to be regarded as a mere ‘heading’, Prescription. But the δὲ found after χρόνον in 954c 3 seems to be, as remarked by W. R. Paton, the trace of a predicative ὅδε, and I translate accordingly.
If a man forcibly hinder the presence of a litigant or his witnesses in the courts, and the party thus hindered be a slave, his own or another’s, the suit shall be declared null and void; if the party
If a man knowingly receive stolen goods, he shall be liable to the same penalties as the thief; the sentence for reception of an exile shall be death.
All citizens shall regard a friend or enemy of the State as their own personal friend or enemy. Any person making peace or war with any parties independently of the commonwealth shall likewise incur the pain of death. If a section of the State make peace or war with any on its own account, the generals shall bring the authors of the measure before a court, and the penalty for conviction shall be death.
The servants of the nation are to render their services without any taking of presents, and there shall be no glosing {false witness} of the practice, nor accepting of the principle that ‘a present should be taken for a good deed, though not for an ill’. To form your judgment and then abide by it is no easy task, and ’tis a man’s surest course to give loyal obedience to the law which commands ‘do no service for a present’. The disobedient shall, if convicted, die without ceremony.
As concerns payment to the public Treasury, every man must have his estate valued, and that for more reasons than one, but the members of every tribe shall also furnish the Rural Commission with a written record of each year’s produce that
A modest man’s gifts in the way of offerings to the gods should themselves be modest. Now the soil and the household hearthstone are sacred, in our universal conviction, to all gods that are. No man, then, shall reconsecrate what is dedicated already. In other societies you will find gold and silver in temples as well as in private houses, but they are possessions which breed
We have now spoken of the sections into which our whole city must be divided—their number and nature—and done what we may to prescribe laws for all its chief business transactions; it remains to constitute our justiciary. Our tribunal of first instance will consist of judges appointed by the concurrent choice of defendant and plaintiff; arbitrators would be a more appropriate name for them. The second court shall be formed from fellow-villagers and tribesmen (each tribe being subdivided into twelve). If no decision can be reached at the first stage, the litigants shall continue their contention before these judges, but the stake will be increased; the defendant, if worsted a second time, shall pay the award imposed in the original suit with an additional fifth. If he be ill-content with his judges and desire to contest the case a third time, he shall take it before the select judges, and shall, if worsted once more, pay the original award with an additional half. A plaintiff who will not sit down with a defeat in the primary court but carries the case to the second shall, if successful, receive the additional fifth, but, if defeated, shall pay the same fraction of the sum under dispute. If the antagonists refuse to submit to the earlier judgments and take the case to the
1 The meaning of the word used here, παρακαταβάσεων, a word which occurs nowhere else, is not certainly known.
2 See especially 846b-c.
Furthermore, consider all other discourse, poesy with its eulogies and its satires, or utterances in prose (whether in literature or in the common converse of daily life), with their contentious disagreements and their
When the suits of the year have been carried through to their final adjudication, the law as to execution of judgment shall be this. First, the magistrate delivering judgment shall make an assignment to the successful litigant of all the goods of the unsuccessful party, except such as he must necessarily be allowed to retain, and this shall be done, in every case, immediately upon the delivery of the verdict, through the crier of the court, in the presence of the judges. On the expiry of the month following that wherein a suit is tried, if no discharge have been obtained from the victorious litigant to the satisfaction of both parties, the magistrate before whom the suit was tried shall, at the instance of the victor, enforce delivery to him of the goods of the loser. If these prove insufficient to meet the obligation, and the deficiency amount to one drachma or upwards, the loser shall be deprived of all right to institute a suit against any person whatsoever, until he have first discharged in full his debt to the victor, other parties retaining their full rights to institute proceedings against such debtor. Any person thus cast obstructing the action of the court which condemned him shall be brought by the magistrates so obstructed before the court of the Curators, and any person convicted on such a charge shall suffer death as one that would undo our whole society and its law.
Now to proceed: when a man has been born into the world and brought up to manhood, has begotten his children and brought them up, has played his part duly in the transaction of affairs, offering compensation to any to whom he had done an injury and accepting
1 As a point of syntax ought not ἐκλαβόντι (958d 2) to be corrected to ἐκλα[μ]β[άν]οντι.
such compensation from another, and
Clinias: Very true, sir. But I could wish for further light on the application of that last observation.
Athenian: Why, look you, Clinias, there is good sense in many of our old household phrases, and not least in the designations men have given to the Fates.
Clinias: How so?
Athenian: We are told that the first of them is called Lachesis, the second Clotho, and the third, she who, in fact, makes the result fast, Atropos, with an allusion to the…
Clinias: A serious deficiency, too, in any achievement, if it is really impossible to give it such a character.
Athenian: Nay, the thing is certainly possible, as I can now see quite plainly.
Clinias: Then we must on no account relinquish our work without performing this same service for our proposed code; you know it is always ridiculous to waste one’s pains by building on insecurely laid foundations.
Athenian: Well reminded; you will find me in accord with you there.
Clinias: I am very glad to hear it. Well then, what, let me ask you, is to be this safeguard for our system and its laws? How do you propose to effect it?
Athenian: Why, did we not say that our State must have a Council
1 ἀπῃκασμένα τῇ τῶν κλωσθέντων τῷ πυρὶ τὴν ἀμετάστροφον ἀπεργαζομένων δύναμιν, 960c 9–960d 1. The words cannot be construed and there is some corruption. I believe Ast was right in reading ἀπεργαζομένῃ, and that otherwise the text is sound except for the unintelligible τῷ πυρὶ. No ‘emendation’ of these words convinces me, and I therefore leave a gap.
2 In 961a 6 I retain the text of the MSS. with Burnet, but remove his comma after δόξαι.
Furthermore, each member was to bring with him one younger man, not being under the age of thirty, and present him to his colleagues, though not until he had personally judged him worthy of the honour by his parts and education: if the approval of the whole board were obtained, the young man was to be received as an associate; if not, his original nomination
Clinias: You are right, it was.
Athenian: Then I will go back to the subject of this Council and this is what I would affirm about it. If it is cast out, so to say, as a sheet-anchor of State, furnished with all its proper appurtenances, it will prove the safeguard of all our hopes.
Clinias: And how so?
Athenian: Ah, there is the critical point at which you and I have to do our uttermost to advise rightly.
Clinias: Admirably said; but pray put the purpose into execution.
Athenian: Well then, Clinias, we have to discover what is the fitting protector for anything in all its various activities. In a living organism, for instance, it is, above everything else, the soul and head which are designed to this function.
Clinias: Once more, how so?
Athenian: Why, you know, it is the perfection of these two that guarantees the preservation of the whole creature.
Clinias: How so?
Athenian: By the development of intelligence in the soul and vision and hearing in the head as the crowning endowment of each. To put it concisely, when intelligence is fused into a unity with these noblest of the senses, they constitute what we have every right to call a creature’s salvation.
Clinias: That certainly sounds like the truth.
Athenian: If does indeed. But what in particular is the object envisaged by the blended intelligence and sense which is to be the salvation of a vessel in storm and calm? In this case of the ship, it is the fusion of the sharp senses of captain and crew alike with the captain’s intelligence that preserves ship and ship’s company together, is it not?
Clinias: To be sure.
Athenian: Well the point surely calls for no great number of illustrative examples. Take the case of a military expedition; we have to ask ourselves what must be the mark aimed at by its commanders—or again, by any medical service—if they are to
Clinias: Why, of course.
Athenian: Well then, if a physician knew nothing of the nature of bodily health, as we have just called it, or a commander nothing of the nature of victory and the other results we mentioned, it would surely be clear that he had no understanding of his subject whatsoever.
Clinias: Why, certainly.
Athenian: Well, then, to come to the case of a State: if a man plainly knows nothing of the mark a statesman must keep before his view, has he, for one thing, any right to the style of a magistrate, and will he, for another, have any capacity for the preservation of that of whose aim he is so utterly ignorant?
Clinias: None whatsoever.
Athenian: Why then, mark the inference. If our present disposition of our territory is to be completed, it must provide for the presence there of some body which understands, in the first place, the true nature of this mark of statesmanship, as we have called it, and next, the methods by which it may be attained, and the counsels—emanating principally from the laws themselves, secondarily from individual men—which make for or against it. If a State leave no room for such a body, we should not be surprised that a society so unintelligent and so imperceptive habitually finds itself drifting at the mercy of circumstance in its various undertakings.
Clinias: Just so.
Athenian: Now where in our society, in which of its sections or institutions as so far prescribed, have we made any adequate provision for such a safeguard? Can we specify anything of the kind?
Clinias: No indeed, sir, not with any certainty. But if I may hazard a guess, your observations seem to be pointing to the Committee which, as you just said, will be expected to meet in the small hours.
Athenian: You understand me perfectly, Clinias. That body, as our present observations prefigure, will, indeed, need to be equipped with all virtue. And the first point of such virtue will be that its aim must not wander from object to object; it must have a single mark always before its eye and make it the target of all its shafts.
Clinias: Assuredly it must.
Athenian: Now we have reached this point, we shall understand that there is nothing surprising in the fact that the laws of our
Clinias: Surely then, sir, the position we took so long ago was the sound one. We said there was one end to be kept in view in all our own laws, and we were agreed, I believe, that the right name for the thing is virtue.
Athenian: We were so.
Clinias: And virtue, as I remember, we said has four parts.
Athenian: Precisely.
Clinias: But the chief of them all is understanding, and it should be the aim of the three other parts, as well as of everything else.
Athenian: You follow my argument perfectly, Clinias; pray keep me company in the next step. As to this matter of the single aim, we have specified the mark on which the understanding of navigator, physician, military commander should direct its gaze and are now in the act of examining that of the statesman. If we like to personify his wisdom, we may address it with these words: ‘In the name of all that is wonderful, what is it you have in view? What is your one aim? The physician’s wisdom can give us a definite answer: you, the wisest of all the wise, by your own account, have you no answer?’ Now Megillus and Clinias, can you, between you, act as his spokesmen? Can you give me a definition stating what you take this object to be, like the definitions I have so often given you as spokesman for other parties?
Clinias: Nay sir, there we are at a loss.
Athenian: Now what is it that we must be so anxious to discern, in itself as in its various manifestations?
Clinias: I should like some illustration of what you mean by ‘manifestations’.
Athenian: As an illustration, then, take our language about the
Clinias: Obviously.
Athenian: And yet we give one name to all of them. In fact, we speak of courage as virtue, of wisdom as virtue, and similarly with the other two, and this implies that they are not really several things, but just this one thing—virtue.
Clinias: Certainly.
Athenian: Now it is easy enough to point out where these two, or the others, differ and why they have received two distinct names; it is not so light a matter to show why we have given both of them, and the rest, the one common name, virtue.
Clinias: Now what is your point?
Athenian: One which I can explain readily enough. Suppose we divide the parts of questioner and respondent between us.
Clinias: Again, I must ask you to explain yourself.
Athenian: Ask me the question why we first call both things by the one name virtue, and then speak of them as two—courage and wisdom. I will give you the reason. One of them—courage—is concerned with fears, and so is to be found in the brutes and in the behaviour of mere infants. In fact, a soul may attain to courage by mere native temperament independently of discourse of reason, but without such discourse no soul ever comes by understanding or wisdom; none has ever done so, and none ever will; the cases are utterly different.
Clinias: That is true enough.
Athenian: Very good; my statement has told you where the things differ and why they are two; it is now your turn to tell me in what respects they are one and the same. Remember that you will also have to explain in what way the four things can be one thing, and that when you have given your explanation you are once more to ask me in what way they are four. And there will be still a further point to investigate: if a man is to have competent knowledge of anything whatsoever which has not only a name but a definition, is it enough that he should know its bare name, but be unaware of its definition? Is not any such ignorance in a man of any account disgraceful, when the matter at issue is one of paramount importance and dignity?
Clinias: So I should presume.
Athenian: In the eye of an author or custodian of law, a man who believes in his own pre-eminence in virtue and has won the prize
Clinias: There surely cannot.
Athenian: Then where these are the issues at stake, is it to be believed
Clinias: Why no, I suppose not.
Athenian: What follows? Shall we act, as we are now proposing, or how? Shall we equip our guardians with a more finished mastery in the theory and practice of virtue than the mass of their neighbours? How else is our own city to resemble an intelligent man’s head with its sense-organs in its possession of such a defence within itself?
Clinias: Pray, sir, how are we to understand the comparison? In what does the likeness consist?
Athenian: Why manifestly the city at large is the trunk of the body: the younger guardians—we selected them for their superior parts, for the quickness of all their faculties—are stationed, so to say, at its summit, their vision ranges over the whole compass of the State, they commit what they perceive in their watch to memory, and serve their elders as scouts in
1 The sentence as Plato appears to have left it has no main finite verb, the δεῖ of 964c 2 being apparently a ‘corrector’s emendation of δέ.
Are Clinias: My dear sir! We cannot possibly take such a course.
Athenian: Then we shall have to proceed to an education of a more exacting kind than we have so for contemplated.
Clinias: I dare say we shall.
Athenian: And that on which we have just touched may perhaps prove to be the very one we need?
Clinias: Indeed it may.
Athenian: I believe we said that a consummate craftsman or guardian in any sphere will need the ability not merely to fix his regard on the Many, but to advance to the recognition of the One and the organization of all other detail in the light of that recognition?
Clinias: Yes, and it was the truth.
Athenian: Now whose vision and view of his object can be more intimate than his who has learned to look from the dissimilar Many to the One Form?
Clinias: You may be right.
Athenian: Not ‘may be’, bless you! There is no surer path for a man’s steps, and can be none.
Clinias: Well, sir, I admit it on your assurance; so we may let the argument take that course.
Athenian: Then it looks as though the guardians of our god-given constitution too must be constrained, first and foremost, to see exactly what is the identity permeating all the four, the unity to be found, as we hold, alike in courage, in purity, in rectitude, in wisdom, and entitling them all to be called by the one name, virtue. This, my friends, if you please, is what we must now close upon with a firm and unyielding grip, until we are content with our account of the real character of the mark on which our gaze shall be fixed, whether it prove to be a unit or a whole, or both at once, or what you please. If we let this slip through our fingers, can we suppose we shall ever be fully equipped for a virtue of which we cannot tell whether it is many things, or four, or one? No, if we are to follow our own advice, we must find some other way of securing this result in our society. But of course we must consider whether we should leave the whole subject alone.
1 The MSS. κεκτημένους in 965a 6 gives a satisfactory sense, and I therefore translate it. But it is very possible that Wilainowitz-Moellendorf’s κεκτημένην should be accepted. (’ Is the city to have all its members on one level, etc.’)
Clinias: Nay, sir, in the name of the god of strangers, you cannot
Athenian: Ah, that is a question we are not yet ready to ask. We must first be sure we are agreed whether or not the thing must be done.
Clinias: Indeed it must, if only it can be done.
Athenian: Then what say you to this? Do we take this same view when it comes to the fine, or to the good? Will our guardians have merely to know that each of them is many, or must they know further how and in what way each is a unit?
Clinias: Why, we seem fairly driven to hold that they will actually have to understand their unity.
Athenian: And suppose they can perceive this, but are unable to give any articulate demonstration of it?
Clinias: Out of the question! A condition only fit for a slave!
Athenian: Well, once more, must we say the same of all matters of moment? Men who are to be real guardians of the law
Clinias: Indubitably.
Athenian: Now among these matters of high import is not the subject of divinity which we treated so earnestly pre-eminent? ’Tis of supreme moment for us, is it not, to know with all the certainty permitted to man that there are gods, and with what evident might they are invested? In the great mass of our citizens we may tolerate mere conformity to the tradition embodied in the laws, but we shall do well to deny all access to the body of our guardians to any man who has not made it his serious business to master every proof there is of the being of gods. And by denial of access I mean that no man who is not divinely gifted or has not laboured at divinity shall ever be chosen for a Curator, nor ever be numbered among those who win the distinction for virtue.
Clinias: As you say, it will be only right that the slothful or incompetent in such matters should be hopelessly excluded from high distinction.
Athenian: May we say, then, that we know of two motives—those we have already rehearsed—of credibility in divinity?
1 The ‘real guardians’ are the more select body constituting the ‘Nocturnal Council’, as distinguished from the thirty-seven magistrates officially entitled νομοφύλακες ‘Curators of the Laws’.
Clinias: And what are these two?
Athenian: One of them is our theory of the soul, our doctrine that it is more ancient and more divine than anything that draws perennial being from a motion that once had a beginning; the other our doctrine of the orderliness in the movements of the planets and other bodies swayed by the mind that has set this whole frame of things in comely array. No man who has once turned a careful and practised gaze on this spectacle has ever been so ungodly at heart that its effect has not been the very reverse of that currently expected. ’Tis the common
Clinias: And what is the true state of the matter?
Athenian: As I told you, the situation has been precisely reversed since the days when observers of these bodies conceived them to be without souls. Even then, they awakened wonder, and aroused in the breasts of close students the suspicion, which has now been converted into an accepted doctrine,
Clinias: In what way?
1 The contrast is between the spirit of the early ‘pre-Socratic’ cosmology and that of the astronomy and cosmology of Plato’s Academy. The ‘thinker’ alluded to in what follows is Anaxagoras.
Athenian: No son of man will ever come to a settled fear of God until he has grasped the two truths we are now affirming, the soul’s dateless anteriority to all things generable, her immortality
Clinias: How, my dear friend, can we do other than make the addition, if we have the power, in however low degree?
Athenian: Then let us indeed, one and all, throw our powers into so worthy an undertaking. This at least is a task in which you will find me eager to help—and I may possibly discover other co-operators besides myself—from my copious experience of such matters and meditation upon them.
Clinias: Out of all question, sir, we must take the road along which God himself is so plainly guiding us. But what is our right way to set about it? That is what our present conference has to discover.
Athenian: As to laws on such a point, Megillus and Clinias, it is impossible to lay them down now, before the institution has been framed—it will be time to define its statutory powers when it exists—all that can be done at present towards fashioning such a body, if the work is to be done rightly, is instruction by repeated conferences.
Clinias: How so? What is the meaning of that remark?
Athenian: Well, we must obviously begin by compiling a list of persons qualified for the post of guardian in respect of age, intellectual ability, character and habits. When we come to the next point, that of the subjects to be studied, it is no easy matter to invent them ourselves, nor yet to go to school to some other inventor.
1 Because the mathematics necessary for dealing with the problems are still only in course of creation—an allusion to the progress being actually made in the study by the Academy. So the allusion in the phrase about ‘modern legislators’ in 969c below is to the scientific jurisprudence which was being created in the Academy.
Further, it would be futile to give regulations
Clinias: Why, sir, if the case stands so, what, I ask you, are we to do?
Athenian: As the phrase goes, my friends, we have a ‘fair field and no favour’; if we are ready, as they say, to stake the whole future of our polity on a throw of triple six or triple ace, why, so we must, and I, for one, will take my share in the risk; my
Megillus: My dear Clinias, after all that has now been said, we shall either have to abandon the foundation of your city or else to be deaf to our friend’s excuses, and try every entreaty and inducement to secure him as a co-operator in the foundation.
Clinias: Very true, Megillus. I will do as you wish, and you must assist me.
Megillus: Count upon me.
Alfred Edward Taylor
1869 – 1945
British Idealist philosopher
Fellow, Merton College, Oxford, Lecturer in Greek and Philosophy, University of Manchester, Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, McGill University, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of St. Andrews and University of Edinburgh.
I desire to take this opportunity of expressing my very sincere gratitude to the trustees of the Jowett Copyright Fund, whose financial assistance has made the appearance of this volume possible. I have also to thank the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for the use I have made of Professor Burnet’s text of the Laws. Nor must I fail to thank the press reader of Messrs. Dent and Sons for the pains which he has lavished on the proofs of the volume.
A. E. Taylor
Reference
Plato. The Laws of Plato, A. E. Taylor, trans. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1934.