De Specialibus Legibus (lib. i‑iv)

For in such a case, not only are their daughters themselves in danger, as to their reputation as having preserved the chastity of their bodies, but their guardians are likewise imperilled, not only because they have not kept them safe till the important period of their marriageable age, but because they have given in marriage as virgins those who have been defiled by others, deceiving and imposing upon those who have taken them to wife.

Then if they appear to have justice on their side, let the judges impose a pecuniary fine on those who have invented these false accusations, and let them also sentence those who have assaulted them to corporal punishment, and let them also pronounce, what to those men will be the most unpleasant of all things, a confirmation of their marriage, if their wives will still endure to cohabit with them; for the law permits them [*]( Deuteronomy xxii. 13.)

The name of homicide is that affixed to him who has slain a man; but in real truth it is a sacrilege, and the very greatest of all sacrileges, because, of all the possessions and sacred treasures in the whole world, there is nothing more holy in appearance, nor more godlike than man, the all-beautiful copy of an all-beautiful model, a representation admirably made after an archetypal rational idea.

We must therefore, without hesitation, pronounce the homicide or murderer an impious and atrociously wicked person, committing as he does the greatest of all atrocities and impieties, and he ought to be put to death as having done things which can never be pardoned, since, being worthy of ten thousand deaths, he escapes by one only, because the way to death being easy, does not permit his existence to be protracted, so as to endure a multitude of punishments; but there can be nothing wrong in his suffering the same treatment as that which he has inflicted on others,

and yet how can it be the same, if it be different as to its time, as to its mode of infliction, as to the intention, and as to the persons? Does not the beginning of acts of violence come first, and the repelling or retaliating them come subsequently? And is not murder the most lawless of all things, but the punishment of murderers the most lawful action possible? Again, he who has slain a man has satisfied his desire which he entertained when he slew him; but he who has been slain, inasmuch as he is now put out of the way, can neither attack him in retaliation, nor can he gratify himself by taking revenge. Moreover, the one was able by his own hands to carry out the designs which he conceived by himself; but the other can never succeed in procuring his punishment, unless his relations and friends become his champions, taking compassion on him for the calamity which has befallen him.

If now any one aims a blow with a sword at any one, with the intention of killing him, and does not kill him, he will still be guilty of murder, since he was a

for as, in my opinion, one must not only look upon those people as enemies who fight against us by sea or by land, but also those who are prepared for either kind of warfare, and who are erecting battering rams and engines against our harbours and our walls; and as we do in fact judge thus of them, even though they come to no actual conflict, so also we must consider murderers, not only those who perform the mere act of killing, but those who do anything which tends to slaying, whether openly or secretly, even if they do not eventually perpetrate the action.

And if out of fear or out of audacity, two very contrary feelings, but both blameable, they venture to flee to the temple as if they would there find an asylum, we must prevent their doing so, if we can: but if they are beforehand with us, and do effect their entrance, then we must take them out and give them up for execution, affirming the principle that the temple does not give an asylum to impious men; for every one who commits actions of incurable guilt is an enemy to God; and murderers do commit such actions, since those who are murdered have suffered disasters which are incurable.

Or shall we say that to those who have done no wrong the temple is still inaccessible until they have washed themselves, and sprinkled themselves, and purified themselves with the accustomed purifications; but that those who are guilty of indelible crimes, the pollution of which no length of time will ever efface, may approach and dwell among those holy seats; though no decent person, who has any regard for holy things would even receive them in his house?

Therefore, since they have heaped iniquity upon iniquity, adding lawlessness and impiety to murder, they must be dragged out of the temple to undergo their

And perhaps, indeed, the lawgiver seeing far into futurity by the acuteness of his reasoning powers, was, by such commandments, providing against any bloodshed ever taking place in the temple by the entrance of any of the friends of the murdered man into it, whom natural affection, a very ungovernable feeling, would urge, full of enthusiasm and violent rage as they would be, almost to slay the murderer with their own hands, while if such an event were to take place it would be most impious sacrilege; for then the blood of the sacrifices would be mingled with the blood of murderers; that which has been consecrated to God with that which is wholly impure. It is on this account that Moses commands that the murderer shall be given up, even from the altar itself.

But some persons who have slain others with swords, or spears, or darts, or clubs, or stones, or something of that kind, may possibly have done so without any previous design, and without having for some time before planned this deed in their hearts, but may have been excited at the moment, yielding to passion more powerful than their reason, to commit the homicide; so that it is but half a crime, inasmuch as the mind was not for some long time before occupied by the pollution.

But there are others also of the greatest wickedness, men polluted both in hands and mind, who, being sorcerers and poisoners, devoting all their leisure and all their solitude to planning seasonable attacks upon others, who invent all kinds of contrivances and devices to bring about calamities on their neighbours.

On which account, Moses commands that poisoners and sorceresses shall not be allowed to live one day or even one hour, but that they shall be put to death the moment that they are taken, no pretext being for a moment allowed them for putting off or delaying their punishment. For those who attack one openly and to one’s face, any body may guard against; but of those who plot against one secretly, and who disguise their attacks by the concealed approaches of poison, it is not easy to see the cunning beforehand.

It is necessary, therefore, to anticipate them, inflicting upon them that death which other persons would else have suffered by their means. And again, besides this, he who openly slays a man with a sword, or with any similar weapon, can only kill a few persons at one time; but one who mixes and compounds poisonous drugs with food, may destroy innumerable companies at once who have no suspicion of his treachery.

Accordingly, it has happened before now that very numerous parties of men who have come together in good fellowship to eat of the same salt and to sit at the same table, have suffered at such a time of harmony things wholly incompatible with it, being suddenly killed, and have thus met with death instead of feasting. On which account it is fitting that even the most merciful, and gentle, and moderate of men should approve of such persons being put to death, who are all but the same as murderers who slay with their own hand; and that they should think it consistent with holiness, not to commit their punishment to others, but to execute it themselves.

For how can it be anything but a most terrible evil for any one to contrive the death of another by that food which is given as the cause of life, and to work such a change in that which is nutritious by nature as to render it destructive; so that those who, in obedience to the necessities of nature, have recourse to eating and drinking, having no previous idea of any treachery, take destructive food as though it were salutary?

Again, let those persons meet with the same punishment who, though they do not compound drugs which are actually deadly, nevertheless administer such as long diseases are caused by; for death is often a lesser evil than diseases; and especially than such as extend over a long time and have no fortunate or favourable end. For the illnesses

Moreover, in the case of men who have been exposed to machinations of this kind, it often happens that diseases of the mind ensue which are worse even than the afflictions of the body; for they are often attacked by delirium and insanity, and intolerable frenzy, by means of which the mind, the greatest blessing which God has bestowed upon mankind, is impaired in every possible manner, despairing of any safety or cure, and so is utterly removed from its seat, and expelled, as it were, leaving in the body only the inferior portion of the soul, namely, its irrational part, of which even beasts partake, since every person who is deprived of reason, which is the better part of the soul, is changed into the nature of a beast, even though the characteristics of the human form remain.

Now the true magical art, being a science of discernment, which contemplates and beholds the books of nature with a more acute and distinct perception than usual, and appearing as such to be a dignified and desirable branch of knowledge, is studied not merely by private individuals, but even by kings, and the very greatest of kings, and especially by the Persian monarchs, to such a degree, that they say that among that people no one can possibly succeed to the kingdom if he has not previously been initiated into the mysteries of the magi.