Laws
Some actions are intermediate between the voluntary and involuntary.
Those done from anger are of this class. If a man wound another in
anger, let him pay double the damage, if the injury is curable; or
fourfold, if curable, and at the same time dishonourable; and fourfold,
if incurable; the amount is to be assessed by the judges. If the wounded
person is rendered incapable of military service, the injurer, besides
the other penalties, shall serve in his stead, or be liable to a suit
for refusing to serve. If brother wounds brother, then their parents
and kindred, of both sexes, shall meet and judge the crime. The damages
shall be assessed by the parents; and if the amount fixed by them is
disputed, an appeal shall be made to the male kindred; or in the last
resort to the guardians of the law. Parents who wound their children are
to be tried by judges of at least sixty years of age, who have children
of their own; and they are to determine whether death, or some lesser
punishment, is to be inflicted upon them--no relatives are to take part
in the trial. If a slave in anger smite a freeman, he is to be delivered
up by his master to the injured person. If the master suspect collusion
between the slave and the injured person, he may bring the matter to
trial: and if he fail he shall pay three times the injury; or if he
obtain a conviction, the contriver of the conspiracy shall be liable to
an action for kidnapping. He who wounds another unintentionally shall
only pay for the actual harm done.
In all outrages and acts of violence, the elder is to be more regarded
than the younger. An injury done by a younger man to an elder is
abominable and hateful; but the younger man who is struck by an elder
is to bear with him patiently, considering that he who is twenty years
older is loco parentis, and remembering the reverence which is due to
the Gods who preside over birth. Let him keep his hands, too, from the
stranger; instead of taking upon himself to chastise him when he is
insolent, he shall bring him before the wardens of the city, who shall
examine into the case, and if they find him guilty, shall scourge him
with as many blows as he has given; or if he be innocent, they shall
warn and threaten his accuser. When an equal strikes an equal, whether
an old man an old man, or a young man a young man, let them use only
their fists and have no weapons. He who being above forty years of age
commences a fight, or retaliates, shall be counted mean and base.
To this preamble, let the law be added: If a man smite another who is
his elder by twenty years or more, let the bystander, in case he be
older than the combatants, part them; or if he be younger than the
person struck, or of the same age with him, let him defend him as he
would a father or brother; and let the striker be brought to trial,
and if convicted imprisoned for a year or more at the discretion of
the judges. If a stranger smite one who is his elder by twenty years or
more, he shall be imprisoned for two years, and a metic, in like case,
shall suffer three years' imprisonment. He who is standing by and gives
no assistance, shall be punished according to his class in one of four
penalties--a mina, fifty, thirty, twenty drachmas. The generals and
other superior officers of the army shall form the court which tries
this class of offences.
Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no
need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not
be hindered from crime. The uttermost penalty will fall upon those who
lay violent hands upon a parent, having no fear of the Gods above, or of
the punishments which will pursue them in the world below. They are
too wise in their own conceits to believe in such things: wherefore the
tortures which await them in another life must be anticipated in this.
Let the law be as follows:--
If a man, being in his right mind, dare to smite his father and mother,
or his grandfather and grandmother, let the passer-by come to the
rescue; and if he be a metic or stranger who comes to the rescue, he
shall have the first place at the games; or if he do not come to the
rescue, he shall be a perpetual exile. Let the citizen in the like
case be praised or blamed, and the slave receive freedom or a hundred
stripes. The wardens of the agora, the city, or the country, as the
case may be, shall see to the execution of the law. And he who is an
inhabitant of the same place and is present shall come to the rescue, or
he shall fall under a curse.
If a man be convicted of assaulting his parents, let him be banished for
ever from the city into the country, and let him abstain from all sacred
rites; and if he do not abstain, let him be punished by the wardens of
the country; and if he return to the city, let him be put to death. If
any freeman consort with him, let him be purified before he returns to
the city. If a slave strike a freeman, whether citizen or stranger, let
the bystander be obliged to seize and deliver him into the hands of the
injured person, who may inflict upon him as many blows as he
pleases, and shall then return him to his master. The law will be as
follows:--The slave who strikes a freeman shall be bound by his master,
and not set at liberty without the consent of the person whom he has
injured. All these laws apply to women as well as to men.
BOOK X. The greatest wrongs arise out of youthful insolence, and the
greatest of all are committed against public temples; they are in the
second degree great when private rites and sepulchres are insulted; in
the third degree, when committed against parents; in the fourth degree,
when they are done against the authority or property of the rulers; in
the fifth degree, when the rights of individuals are violated. Most
of these offences have been already considered; but there remains the
question of admonition and punishment of offences against the Gods. Let
the admonition be in the following terms:--No man who ever intentionally
did or said anything impious, had a true belief in the existence of the
Gods; but either he thought that there were no Gods, or that they did
not care about men, or that they were easily appeased by sacrifices and
prayers. 'What shall we say or do to such persons?' My good sir, let us
first hear the jests which they in their superiority will make upon us.
'What will they say?' Probably something of this kind:--'Strangers you
are right in thinking that some of us do not believe in the existence of
the Gods; while others assert that they do not care for us, and others
that they are propitiated by prayers and offerings. But we want you to
argue with us before you threaten; you should prove to us by reasonable
evidence that there are Gods, and that they are too good to be bribed.
Poets, priests, prophets, rhetoricians, even the best of them, speak
to us of atoning for evil, and not of avoiding it. From legislators who
profess to be gentle we ask for instruction, which may, at least, have
the persuasive power of truth, if no other.' What have you to say?
'Well, there is no difficulty in proving the being of the Gods. The sun,
and earth, and stars, moving in their courses, the recurring seasons,
furnish proofs of their existence; and there is the general opinion
of mankind.' I fear that the unbelievers--not that I care for their
opinion--will despise us. You are not aware that their impiety proceeds,
not from sensuality, but from ignorance taking the garb of wisdom. 'What
do you mean?' At Athens there are tales current both in prose and verse
of a kind which are not tolerated in a well-regulated state like yours.
The oldest of them relate the origin of the world, and the birth and
life of the Gods. These narratives have a bad influence on family
relations; but as they are old we will let them pass, and consider
another kind of tales, invented by the wisdom of a younger generation,
who, if any one argues for the existence of the Gods and claims that the
stars have a divine being, insist that these are mere earth and stones,
which can have no care of human things, and that all theology is a
cooking up of words. Now what course ought we to take? Shall we suppose
some impious man to charge us with assuming the existence of the Gods,
and make a defence? Or shall we leave the preamble and go on to the
laws? 'There is no hurry, and we have often said that the shorter and
worse method should not be preferred to the longer and better. The proof
that there are Gods who are good, and the friends of justice, is the
best preamble of all our laws.' Come, let us talk with the impious, who
have been brought up from their infancy in the belief of religion, and
have heard their own fathers and mothers praying for them and talking
with the Gods as if they were absolutely convinced of their existence;
who have seen mankind prostrate in prayer at the rising and setting of
the sun and moon and at every turn of fortune, and have dared to despise
and disbelieve all this. Can we keep our temper with them, when they
compel us to argue on such a theme? We must; or like them we shall go
mad, though with more reason. Let us select one of them and address him
as follows:
O my son, you are young; time and experience will make you change many
of your opinions. Do not be hasty in forming a conclusion about the
divine nature; and let me mention to you a fact which I know. You and
your friends are not the first or the only persons who have had these
notions about the Gods. There are always a considerable number who are
infected by them: I have known many myself, and can assure you that no
one who was an unbeliever in his youth ever persisted till he was old in
denying the existence of the Gods. The two other opinions, first, that
the Gods exist and have no care of men, secondly, that they care for
men, but may be propitiated by sacrifices and prayers, may indeed last
through life in a few instances, but even this is not common. I would
beg of you to be patient, and learn the truth of the legislator and
others; in the mean time abstain from impiety. 'So far, our discourse
has gone well.'
I will now speak of a strange doctrine, which is regarded by many as the
crown of philosophy. They affirm that all things come into being either
by art or nature or chance, and that the greater things are done by
nature and chance, and the lesser things by art, which receiving from
nature the greater creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works
which are termed works of art. Their meaning is that fire, water, earth,
and air all exist by nature and chance, and not by art; and that out of
these, according to certain chance affinities of opposites, the sun, the
moon, the stars, and the earth have been framed, not by any action of
mind, but by nature and chance only. Thus, in their opinion, the heaven
and earth were created, as well as the animals and plants. Art came
later, and is of mortal birth; by her power were invented certain
images and very partial imitations of the truth, of which kind are the
creations of musicians and painters: but they say that there are
other arts which combine with nature, and have a deeper truth, such as
medicine, husbandry, gymnastic. Also the greater part of politics they
imagine to co-operate with nature, but in a less degree, having more of
art, while legislation is declared by them to be wholly a work of art.
'How do you mean?' In the first place, they say that the Gods exist
neither by nature nor by art, but by the laws of states, which are
different in different countries; and that virtue is one thing by nature
and another by convention; and that justice is altogether conventional,
made by law, and having authority for the moment only. This is repeated
to young men by sages and poets, and leads to impiety, and the pretended