Laws
fulfilling against his will by some unexpected chance,--the other party
may go to law with him,' according to Pollux (quoted in Telfy's note)
prevailed also at Athens.
(20) Trade regulations. (a) Lying was forbidden in the agora both by
Plato and at Athens (Telfy). (b) Athenian law allowed an action of
recovery against a man who sold an unsound slave as sound (Telfy).
Plato's enactment is more explicit: he allows only an unskilled person
(i.e. one who is not a trainer or physician) to take proceedings in such
a case. (c) Plato diverges from Athenian practice in the disapproval of
credit, and does not even allow the supply of goods on the deposit of
a percentage of their value (Telfy). He enacts that 'when goods are
exchanged by buying and selling, a man shall deliver them and receive
the price of them at a fixed place in the agora, and have done with
the matter,' and that 'he who gives credit must be satisfied whether he
obtain his money or not, for in such exchanges he will not be protected
by law. (d) Athenian law forbad an extortionate rate of interest
(Telfy); Plato allows interest in one case only--if a contractor does
not receive the price of his work within a year of the time agreed--and
at the rate of 200 per cent. per annum for every drachma a monthly
interest of an obol. (e) Both at Athens and in the Laws sales were to be
registered (Telfy), as well as births (Telfy).
(21) Sumptuary laws. Extravagance at weddings (Telfy), and at funerals
(Telfy) was forbidden at Athens and also in the Magnesian state.
There remains the subject of family life, which in Plato's Laws
partakes both of an Athenian and Spartan character. Under this head may
conveniently be included the condition of women and of slaves. To family
life may be added citizenship.
As at Sparta, marriages are to be contracted for the good of the state;
and they may be dissolved on the same ground, where there is a failure
of issue,--the interest of the state requiring that every one of the
5040 lots should have an heir. Divorces are likewise permitted by Plato
where there is an incompatibility of temper, as at Athens by mutual
consent. The duty of having children is also enforced by a still higher
motive, expressed by Plato in the noble words:--'A man should cling to
immortality, and leave behind him children's children to be the servants
of God in his place.' Again, as at Athens, the father is allowed to put
away his undutiful son, but only with the consent of impartial persons
(Telfy), and the only suit which may be brought by a son against a
father is for imbecility. The class of elder and younger men and women
are still to regard one another, as in the Republic, as standing in the
relation of parents and children. This is a trait of Spartan character
rather than of Athenian. A peculiar sanctity and tenderness was to be
shown towards the aged; the parent or grandparent stricken with years
was to be loved and worshipped like the image of a God, and was to be
deemed far more able than any lifeless statue to bring good or ill
to his descendants. Great care is to be taken of orphans: they are
entrusted to the fifteen eldest Guardians of the Law, who are to be
'lawgivers and fathers to them not inferior to their natural fathers,'
as at Athens they were entrusted to the Archons. Plato wishes to make
the misfortune of orphanhood as little sad to them as possible.
Plato, seeing the disorder into which half the human race had fallen at
Athens and Sparta, is minded to frame for them a new rule of life. He
renounces his fanciful theory of communism, but still desires to place
women as far as possible on an equality with men. They were to be
trained in the use of arms, they are to live in public. Their time was
partly taken up with gymnastic exercises; there could have been little
family or private life among them. Their lot was to be neither like that
of Spartan women, who were made hard and common by excessive practice
of gymnastic and the want of all other education,--nor yet like that of
Athenian women, who, at least among the upper classes, retired into a
sort of oriental seclusion,--but something better than either. They were
to be the perfect mothers of perfect children, yet not wholly taken up
with the duties of motherhood, which were to be made easy to them as far
as possible (compare Republic), but able to share in the perils of war
and to be the companions of their husbands. Here, more than anywhere
else, the spirit of the Laws reverts to the Republic. In speaking of
them as the companions of their husbands we must remember that it is an
Athenian and not a Spartan way of life which they are invited to share,
a life of gaiety and brightness, not of austerity and abstinence, which
often by a reaction degenerated into licence and grossness.
In Plato's age the subject of slavery greatly interested the minds of
thoughtful men; and how best to manage this 'troublesome piece of goods'
exercised his own mind a good deal. He admits that they have often
been found better than brethren or sons in the hour of danger, and are
capable of rendering important public services by informing against
offenders--for this they are to be rewarded; and the master who puts
a slave to death for the sake of concealing some crime which he has
committed, is held guilty of murder. But they are not always treated
with equal consideration. The punishments inflicted on them bear
no proportion to their crimes. They are to be addressed only in the
language of command. Their masters are not to jest with them, lest they
should increase the hardship of their lot. Some privileges were granted
to them by Athenian law of which there is no mention in Plato; they
were allowed to purchase their freedom from their master, and if they
despaired of being liberated by him they could demand to be sold, on the
chance of falling into better hands. But there is no suggestion in
the Laws that a slave who tried to escape should be branded with the
words--kateche me, pheugo, or that evidence should be extracted from him
by torture, that the whole household was to be executed if the master
was murdered and the perpetrator remained undetected: all these were
provisions of Athenian law. Plato is more consistent than either the
Athenians or the Spartans; for at Sparta too the Helots were treated in
a manner almost unintelligible to us. On the one hand, they had arms put
into their hands, and served in the army, not only, as at Plataea, in
attendance on their masters, but, after they had been manumitted, as a
separate body of troops called Neodamodes: on the other hand, they were
the victims of one of the greatest crimes recorded in Greek history
(Thucyd.). The two great philosophers of Hellas sought to extricate
themselves from this cruel condition of human life, but acquiesced in
the necessity of it. A noble and pathetic sentiment of Plato, suggested
by the thought of their misery, may be quoted in this place:--'The right
treatment of slaves is to behave properly to them, and to do to them, if
possible, even more justice than to those who are our equals; for he
who naturally and genuinely reverences justice, and hates injustice, is
discovered in his dealings with any class of men to whom he can easily
be unjust. And he who in regard to the natures and actions of his slaves
is undefiled by impiety and injustice, will best sow the seeds of virtue
in them; and this may be truly said of every master, and tyrant, and of
every other having authority in relation to his inferiors.'
All the citizens of the Magnesian state were free and equal; there was
no distinction of rank among them, such as is believed to have prevailed
at Sparta. Their number was a fixed one, corresponding to the 5040 lots.
One of the results of this is the requirement that younger sons or those
who have been disinherited shall go out to a colony. At Athens, where
there was not the same religious feeling against increasing the size of
the city, the number of citizens must have been liable to considerable
fluctuations. Several classes of persons, who were not citizens by
birth, were admitted to the privilege. Perpetual exiles from other
countries, people who settled there to practise a trade (Telfy), any one
who had shown distinguished valour in the cause of Athens, the Plataeans
who escaped from the siege, metics and strangers who offered to serve
in the army, the slaves who fought at Arginusae,--all these could or
did become citizens. Even those who were only on one side of Athenian
parentage were at more than one period accounted citizens. But at times
there seems to have arisen a feeling against this promiscuous extension
of the citizen body, an expression of which is to be found in the law
of Pericles--monous Athenaious einai tous ek duoin Athenaion gegonotas
(Plutarch, Pericles); and at no time did the adopted citizen enjoy the
full rights of citizenship--e.g. he might not be elected archon or to
the office of priest (Telfy), although this prohibition did not extend
to his children, if born of a citizen wife. Plato never thinks of making
the metic, much less the slave, a citizen. His treatment of the former
class is at once more gentle and more severe than that which prevailed
at Athens. He imposes upon them no tax but good behaviour, whereas at
Athens they were required to pay twelve drachmae per annum, and to
have a patron: on the other hand, he only allows them to reside in the
Magnesian state on condition of following a trade; they were required to
depart when their property exceeded that of the third class, and in any
case after a residence of twenty years, unless they could show that they
had conferred some great benefit on the state. This privileged position
reflects that of the isoteleis at Athens, who were excused from the
metoikion. It is Plato's greatest concession to the metic, as the
bestowal of freedom is his greatest concession to the slave.
Lastly, there is a more general point of view under which the Laws of
Plato may be considered,--the principles of Jurisprudence which are
contained in them. These are not formally announced, but are scattered
up and down, to be observed by the reflective reader for himself. Some
of them are only the common principles which all courts of justice have
gathered from experience; others are peculiar and characteristic. That
judges should sit at fixed times and hear causes in a regular order,
that evidence should be laid before them, that false witnesses should
be disallowed, and corruption punished, that defendants should be
heard before they are convicted,--these are the rules, not only of the
Hellenic courts, but of courts of law in all ages and countries.
But there are also points which are peculiar, and in which ancient
jurisprudence differs considerably from modern; some of them are of
great importance...It could not be said at Athens, nor was it ever
contemplated by Plato, that all men, including metics and slaves, should
be equal 'in the eye of the law.' There was some law for the slave, but
not much; no adequate protection was given him against the cruelty of
his master...It was a singular privilege granted, both by the Athenian
and Magnesian law, to a murdered man, that he might, before he died,
pardon his murderer, in which case no legal steps were afterwards to
be taken against him. This law is the remnant of an age in which the
punishment of offences against the person was the concern rather of
the individual and his kinsmen than of the state...Plato's division of
crimes into voluntary and involuntary and those done from passion, only
partially agrees with the distinction which modern law has drawn between
murder and manslaughter; his attempt to analyze them is confused by the
Socratic paradox, that 'All vice is involuntary'...It is singular that