Laws
Hesiod spoke when he said that the half is often more than the whole?
His meaning was, that when to take the whole would be dangerous, and to
take the half would be the safe and moderate course, then the moderate
or better was more than the immoderate or worse.'
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: And may we suppose this immoderate spirit to be more fatal
when found among kings than when among peoples?
CLEINIAS: The probability is that ignorance will be a disorder
especially prevalent among kings, because they lead a proud and
luxurious life.
ATHENIAN: Is it not palpable that the chief aim of the kings of that
time was to get the better of the established laws, and that they were
not in harmony with the principles which they had agreed to observe
by word and oath? This want of harmony may have had the appearance
of wisdom, but was really, as we assert, the greatest ignorance, and
utterly overthrew the whole empire by dissonance and harsh discord.
CLEINIAS: Very likely.
ATHENIAN: Good; and what measures ought the legislator to have then
taken in order to avert this calamity? Truly there is no great wisdom
in knowing, and no great difficulty in telling, after the evil has
happened; but to have foreseen the remedy at the time would have taken a
much wiser head than ours.
MEGILLUS: What do you mean?
ATHENIAN: Any one who looks at what has occurred with you
Lacedaemonians, Megillus, may easily know and may easily say what ought
to have been done at that time.
MEGILLUS: Speak a little more clearly.
ATHENIAN: Nothing can be clearer than the observation which I am about
to make.
MEGILLUS: What is it?
ATHENIAN: That if any one gives too great a power to anything, too large
a sail to a vessel, too much food to the body, too much authority to the
mind, and does not observe the mean, everything is overthrown, and, in
the wantonness of excess, runs in the one case to disorders, and in the
other to injustice, which is the child of excess. I mean to say, my dear
friends, that there is no soul of man, young and irresponsible, who will
be able to sustain the temptation of arbitrary power--no one who will
not, under such circumstances, become filled with folly, that worst of
diseases, and be hated by his nearest and dearest friends: when this
happens his kingdom is undermined, and all his power vanishes from him.
And great legislators who know the mean should take heed of the danger.
As far as we can guess at this distance of time, what happened was as
follows:--
MEGILLUS: What?
ATHENIAN: A God, who watched over Sparta, seeing into the future, gave
you two families of kings instead of one; and thus brought you more
within the limits of moderation. In the next place, some human wisdom
mingled with divine power, observing that the constitution of your
government was still feverish and excited, tempered your inborn strength
and pride of birth with the moderation which comes of age, making the
power of your twenty-eight elders equal with that of the kings in the
most important matters. But your third saviour, perceiving that your
government was still swelling and foaming, and desirous to impose a curb
upon it, instituted the Ephors, whose power he made to resemble that of
magistrates elected by lot; and by this arrangement the kingly
office, being compounded of the right elements and duly moderated, was
preserved, and was the means of preserving all the rest. Since, if there
had been only the original legislators, Temenus, Cresphontes, and their
contemporaries, as far as they were concerned not even the portion of
Aristodemus would have been preserved; for they had no proper experience
in legislation, or they would surely not have imagined that oaths
would moderate a youthful spirit invested with a power which might be
converted into a tyranny. Now that God has instructed us what sort of
government would have been or will be lasting, there is no wisdom, as I
have already said, in judging after the event; there is no difficulty
in learning from an example which has already occurred. But if any one
could have foreseen all this at the time, and had been able to moderate
the government of the three kingdoms and unite them into one, he might
have saved all the excellent institutions which were then conceived; and
no Persian or any other armament would have dared to attack us, or would
have regarded Hellas as a power to be despised.
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: There was small credit to us, Cleinias, in defeating them;
and the discredit was, not that the conquerors did not win glorious
victories both by land and sea, but what, in my opinion, brought
discredit was, first of all, the circumstance that of the three cities
one only fought on behalf of Hellas, and the two others were so
utterly good for nothing that the one was waging a mighty war against
Lacedaemon, and was thus preventing her from rendering assistance,
while the city of Argos, which had the precedence at the time of the
distribution, when asked to aid in repelling the barbarian, would not
answer to the call, or give aid. Many things might be told about Hellas
in connexion with that war which are far from honourable; nor, indeed,
can we rightly say that Hellas repelled the invader; for the truth is,
that unless the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, acting in concert, had
warded off the impending yoke, all the tribes of Hellas would have been
fused in a chaos of Hellenes mingling with one another, of barbarians
mingling with Hellenes, and Hellenes with barbarians; just as nations
who are now subject to the Persian power, owing to unnatural separations
and combinations of them, are dispersed and scattered, and live
miserably. These, Cleinias and Megillus, are the reproaches which we
have to make against statesmen and legislators, as they are called, past
and present, if we would analyse the causes of their failure, and find
out what else might have been done. We said, for instance, just now,
that there ought to be no great and unmixed powers; and this was under
the idea that a state ought to be free and wise and harmonious, and that
a legislator ought to legislate with a view to this end. Nor is there
any reason to be surprised at our continually proposing aims for
the legislator which appear not to be always the same; but we should
consider when we say that temperance is to be the aim, or wisdom is
to be the aim, or friendship is to be the aim, that all these aims are
really the same; and if so, a variety in the modes of expression ought
not to disturb us.
CLEINIAS: Let us resume the argument in that spirit. And now, speaking
of friendship and wisdom and freedom, I wish that you would tell me at
what, in your opinion, the legislator should aim.
ATHENIAN: Hear me, then: there are two mother forms of states from which
the rest may be truly said to be derived; and one of them may be called
monarchy and the other democracy: the Persians have the highest form of
the one, and we of the other; almost all the rest, as I was saying, are
variations of these. Now, if you are to have liberty and the combination
of friendship with wisdom, you must have both these forms of government
in a measure; the argument emphatically declares that no city can be
well governed which is not made up of both.
CLEINIAS: Impossible.
ATHENIAN: Neither the one, if it be exclusively and excessively attached
to monarchy, nor the other, if it be similarly attached to freedom,
observes moderation; but your states, the Laconian and Cretan, have more
of it; and the same was the case with the Athenians and Persians of old
time, but now they have less. Shall I tell you why?
CLEINIAS: By all means, if it will tend to elucidate our subject.
ATHENIAN: Hear, then:--There was a time when the Persians had more of
the state which is a mean between slavery and freedom. In the reign of
Cyrus they were freemen and also lords of many others: the rulers gave
a share of freedom to the subjects, and being treated as equals, the
soldiers were on better terms with their generals, and showed themselves
more ready in the hour of danger. And if there was any wise man among
them, who was able to give good counsel, he imparted his wisdom to the
public; for the king was not jealous, but allowed him full liberty of
speech, and gave honour to those who could advise him in any matter.
And the nation waxed in all respects, because there was freedom and
friendship and communion of mind among them.
CLEINIAS: That certainly appears to have been the case.
ATHENIAN: How, then, was this advantage lost under Cambyses, and again
recovered under Darius? Shall I try to divine?
CLEINIAS: The enquiry, no doubt, has a bearing upon our subject.
ATHENIAN: I imagine that Cyrus, though a great and patriotic general,
had never given his mind to education, and never attended to the order
of his household.
CLEINIAS: What makes you say so?
ATHENIAN: I think that from his youth upwards he was a soldier, and
entrusted the education of his children to the women; and they brought
them up from their childhood as the favourites of fortune, who were
blessed already, and needed no more blessings. They thought that they
were happy enough, and that no one should be allowed to oppose them in
any way, and they compelled every one to praise all that they said or
did. This was how they brought them up.
CLEINIAS: A splendid education truly!
ATHENIAN: Such an one as women were likely to give them, and especially
princesses who had recently grown rich, and in the absence of the men,
too, who were occupied in wars and dangers, and had no time to look
after them.
CLEINIAS: What would you expect?
ATHENIAN: Their father had possessions of cattle and sheep, and many
herds of men and other animals, but he did not consider that those to
whom he was about to make them over were not trained in his own calling,
which was Persian; for the Persians are shepherds--sons of a rugged
land, which is a stern mother, and well fitted to produce a sturdy race
able to live in the open air and go without sleep, and also to fight, if
fighting is required (compare Arist. Pol.). He did not observe that his
sons were trained differently; through the so-called blessing of being
royal they were educated in the Median fashion by women and eunuchs,
which led to their becoming such as people do become when they are
brought up unreproved. And so, after the death of Cyrus, his sons, in
the fulness of luxury and licence, took the kingdom, and first one slew
the other because he could not endure a rival; and, afterwards, the
slayer himself, mad with wine and brutality, lost his kingdom through
the Medes and the Eunuch, as they called him, who despised the folly of
Cambyses.
CLEINIAS: So runs the tale, and such probably were the facts.
ATHENIAN: Yes; and the tradition says, that the empire came back to the
Persians, through Darius and the seven chiefs.
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: Let us note the rest of the story. Observe, that Darius was
not the son of a king, and had not received a luxurious education. When
he came to the throne, being one of the seven, he divided the country
into seven portions, and of this arrangement there are some shadowy
traces still remaining; he made laws upon the principle of introducing
universal equality in the order of the state, and he embodied in his
laws the settlement of the tribute which Cyrus promised,--thus creating
a feeling of friendship and community among all the Persians, and
attaching the people to him with money and gifts. Hence his armies
cheerfully acquired for him countries as large as those which Cyrus had
left behind him. Darius was succeeded by his son Xerxes; and he again
was brought up in the royal and luxurious fashion. Might we not most