Laws

Ath. In the next place our business transactions one with another will require proper regulation. The following will serve for a comprehensive rule:—as far as possible, no one shall touch my goods nor move them in the slightest degree, if he has in no wise at all got my consent; and I must act in like manner regarding the goods of all other men, keeping prudent mind. As the first of such things let us mention treasure: that which a man has laid by in store for himself and his family (he not being one of my parents), I must never pray to the gods to find, nor, if I do find it, may I move it, nor may I ever tell of it to the soothsayers (so-called), who are certain to counsel me to take up what is laid down in the ground. For never should I gain so much pecuniary profit by its removal, as I should win increase in virtue of soul and in justice by not removing it; and by preferring to gain justice in my soul rather than money in my purse, I should be winning a greater in place of a lesser gain, and that too in a better part of me. The rule,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 684e, Plat. Laws 843a.) Thou shalt not move the immovable, is rightly applicable to many cases; and the case before us is one of them. And men ought also to believe the stories told about these matters,—how that such conduct is injurious to the getting of children. But if any man proves to be both regardless of children and neglectful of the legislator, and, without the consent of the depositor, takes up a treasure which neither he himself nor any of his forefathers has deposited, and thus breaks a law most fair, and that most comprehensive ordinance of the noble man[*](Solon.) who said, Take not up what you laid not down,—the man who despises these two lawgivers and takes up what he has not laid down himself, it being no small thing but sometimes a vast quantity of treasure,—what penalty should such a man suffer?

Ath. God knows what, at the hands of gods; but the man that first notices an act of this kind shall report it, if it occur in the city, to the city-stewards, or if in a public market, to the market-stewards; and if it occur in the country outside, he shall declare it to the rural stewards and their officers. And when such declarations are made, the State shall send to Delphi;[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 759c., Plat. Laws 772d.) and whatever the god pronounces concerning the goods and him that moved them, that the State shall execute, acting as agent on behalf of the oracles of the god. And if the informer be a free man, he shall win a reputation for virtue, but for vice if he fail to inform; and if he be a slave, as a reward for informing it will be right that he should be set free, by the State offering his price to his master, whereas he shall be punished by death if he fail to give information. Following on this there should come next a similar rule about matters great and small, to reinforce it. If a man, whether willingly or unwillingly, leaves any of his goods behind, he that happens on them shall let them lie, believing that the Goddess of the Wayside[*](Hecate (=Artemis)) guards them, as things dedicated to her divinity by the law. Should anyone transgress this rule and disobediently take such things and carry them home, he being a slave and the article of small value, then the man who meets with him, being over thirty years old, shall scourge him with many stripes; but if he be a free man, he shall not only be accounted illiberal and a rebel against the laws, but he shall in addition buy back ten times the value of the article moved to the man who left it behind. And if one man charges another with possessing any of his goods, be it great or small, and the man so charged allows that he has the article, but denies that it is the other man’s,—then, if the article in question has been registered[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 745a, Plat. Laws 745b.) with the magistrates according to law, the plaintiff shall summon the man who possesses it before the magistrate, and he shall produce it in court. And the article being thus exhibited, if it be clearly recorded in the records to which of the disputants it belongs, he shall take it and depart; but should it belong to another third party, not then present, whichever of the two claimants produces a sufficient guarantor shall take it away on behalf of the absent party, in pursuance of his right of removal, to hand it over to him. But if the article in dispute be not registered with the magistrates, it will be kept in charge of the three senior magistrates up to the time of the trial; and if the article in pledge be a beast, the man that loses the case concerning it shall pay the magistrates for its keep; and the magistrates shall decide the case within three days. Any person—provided that he be in his senses—may lay hands, if he wishes, on his own slave, to employ him for any lawful purpose; and on behalf of another man (one of his relatives or friends) he may lay hands on the runaway slave, to secure his safe-keeping. And if a man tries to remove to freedom anyone who is being carried off as a slave, the man who is carrying him off shall let him go, and he that is removing him shall do so on the production of three substantial sureties, but not otherwise;

Ath. and if anyone removes a slave contrary to these conditions, he shall be liable for assault, and if convicted he shall pay double his registered due to the man deprived. And a man may arrest also a freedman, if in any case he fails to attend, or to attend sufficiently, on those who have freed him; and such tendance shall consist in the coming of the freedman three times a month to the home of the man that freed him, and there undertaking to do those duties which are both just and feasible, and in regard to marriage also to act as may seem good also to his former master. The freedman shall not be permitted to be more wealthy than the man who freed him; and, if he is, the excess shall be made to his master. He that is let go free shall not remain in the country more than twenty years, but shall depart, like all other foreigners,[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 850b.) taking with him all the property he owns, unless he gains the consent of the magistrates and also of the man who freed him. And if a freedman, or any other foreigner, acquired property exceeding in amount the third evaluation,[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 744c, Plat. Laws 744e, Plat. Laws 756d.) within thirty days from the day on which he acquires this excess he shall take his own property and depart, and he shall have no further right to request from the magistrates permission to remain; and if he disobeys these rules and is summoned before the court and convicted, he shall be punished by death, and his goods shall be confiscated. Such cases shall be tried before the tribal courts, unless the parties first get a settlement of their charges against one another before neighbors or chosen jurors. If anyone claims as his own the beast of any other man, or any other of his chattels, the man who holds it shall refer the matter to the person who, as being its substantial and lawful owner, sold it, or gave it, or made it over to him in some other way; and this he shall do within thirty days, if the reference be made to a citizen or metic in the city, or, in the case of a foreign delivery, within three months, of which the middle month shall be at which includes the summer solstice.[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 952e.) And when the man makes an exchange with another by an act buying or selling, the exchange shall be made by transfer of the article in the place appointed therefore in the market, and nowhere else, and by payment the price on the spot, and no purchase or sale shall be made on credit;[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 849e.) and if anyone makes an exchange with another otherwise or in other places, trusting the man with whom he is dealing, he shall do so on the understanding that there are no suits by law touching things not sold according to the laws now prescribed.[*]( Cp. Plat. Rep. 556b.) As regards club-collections,[*]( i.e. of subscriptions due from members of a (dining) club, or of money raised as a loan to a member in time of need.) whoso wishes may collect as a friend among friends; but if any dispute arises concerning the collection, they must act on the understanding that in regard to these matters no legal actions are possible.

Ath. If any man receives for the sale of any article a price not less than fifty drachmae, he shall be compelled to remain in the city for ten days, and the seller’s residence shall be made known to the buyer, because of the charges which are commonly brought in connection with such transactions, and because of the acts of restitution permitted by law. Such legal restitution, or non-restitution, shall be on this wise:—If a man sell a slave who is suffering from phthisis or stone or strangury or the sacred disease[*]( i.e. epilepsy.) (as it is called), or from any other complaint, mental or physical, which most men would fail to notice, although it be prolonged and hard to cure,—in case the purchaser be a doctor or a trainer, it shall not be possible for him to gain restitution for such a case, nor yet if the seller warned the purchaser of the facts. But if any professional person sell any such slave to a lay person, the buyer shall claim restitution within six months, saving only in the case of epilepsy, for which disease he shall be permitted to claim within twelve months. The action shall be tried before a bench of doctors nominated and chosen by both the parties; and the party that loses his case shall pay double the selling price of the slave. If a lay person sells to a lay person, there shall be the same right of restitution and trial as in the cases just mentioned; but the losing party shall pay the selling price only. If a man wittingly sells a murderer, if the buyer is aware of the fact, he shall have no claim to restitution for the purchase of such an one; but if the buyer be ignorant, he shall have right of restitution as soon as the fact is perceived, and the trial shall take place before a court of the five youngest Law-wardens, and if it be decided that the seller acted wittingly, he shall purify the houses of the buyer as ordained by the interpreters,[*]( The officials in charge of (Delphic) religious rites; cp. Plat. Laws 759c, Plat. Laws 828b.) and he shall pay three times the selling price to the buyer. He that exchanges for money either money or anything else, living or not living, shall give and receive every such article unadulterated, conforming to the law; and touching all knavery of this sort, as in the case of other laws, let us hearken to a prelude. Adulteration should be regarded by every man as coming under the same head as falsehood and fraud—a class of actions concerning which the mob are wont to say, wrongly, that any such action will generally be right if it be done opportunely: but the proper opportunity, the when and the where, they leave unprescribed and undefined, so that by this saying they often bring loss both to themselves and to others. But it is not fitting for the lawgiver to leave this matter undefined; he must always declare clearly the limitations, great or small, and this shall now be, done:—

Ath. No man, calling the gods to witness, shall commit, either by word or deed, any falsehood, fraud or adulteration, if he does not mean to be most hateful to the gods; and such an one is he who without regard of the gods swears oaths falsely, and also who lies in the presence of his superiors. Now the better are the superiors of the worse, and the older in general of the younger; wherefore also parents are superior to their offspring, men to women and children, rulers to ruled.[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 690a.) And it will be proper for all to revere all these classes of superiors, whether they be in other positions of authority or in offices of State above all; and to enforce this is just the purpose of our present discourse. For everyone who adulterates any market commodity, lies and deceives and, calling Heaven to witness, takes an oath in front of the laws and cautions of the market-stewards, neither regarding men nor revering gods. Certainly it is a good practice to refrain from sullying lightly divine names, and to behave with such purity and holiness as most of us generally exhibit in matters of religion; if however this rule is disobeyed, the law runs thus:—He that sells any article in the market shall never name two prices for what he is selling; he shall name one price only, and if he fails to get this, he will be entitled to take the article away; but he shall not put any other price, greater or less, upon it on that day; and there shall be no puffing or taking of oaths about anything put up for sale. If any man disobeys these rules, any townsman who is present, not being under thirty years of age, shall punish with a beating the seller who swears, and he shall do so with impunity; but if he is disobedient and neglects to do so, he shall be liable to reprobation for betraying the laws. And if a man is selling an adulterated article, and is incapable of obeying our present rules, any person who is present and aware of the fact and able to expose him shall take for himself the adulterated article, if he expose him before a magistrate, he being himself a slave or a metic,—but if he be a citizen, he shall be declared to be wicked, as a robber of the gods, if he fail to expose the guilty man; while if he does expose him, he shall offer the article to the gods who preside over the market. He that is found out in selling any such article, in addition to being deprived of the adulterated article, shall be beaten in the market-place with stripes—one stripe for every drachma in the price he asks for the article— after that the herald has first proclaimed the crimes for which the seller is to be beaten. Touching acts of fraud and wrongful acts done by sellers, the market-stewards and the Law-wardens, after making enquiry from experts in each trade, shall write out rules as to what the seller ought to do or avoid doing, and shall post them up on a pillar in front of the stewards office, to serve as written laws and clear instructors for those engaged in business in the market.

Ath. The duties of the city-stewards have been fully stated already;[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 759a., Plat. Laws 849e., Plat. Laws 881c.) in case any addition seems to be required, they shall inform the Law-wardens, and write out what seems to be wanting; and they shall post up on the pillar at the city-stewards office both the primary and the secondary regulations pertaining to their office. Following close upon practices of adulteration follow practices of retail trading; concerning which, as a whole, we shall first offer counsel and argument, and then impose on it a law. The natural purpose for which all retail trading comes into existence in a State is not loss, but precisely the opposite; for how can any man be anything but a benefactor if he renders even and symmetrical the distribution of any kind of goods which before was unsymmetrical and uneven? And this is, we must say, the effect produced by the power of money, and we must declare that the merchant is ordained for this purpose. And the hireling and the innkeeper and the rest—some more and some less respectable trades,—all have this function, namely, to provide all men with full satisfaction of their needs and with evenness in their properties.[*]( i.e. by equalizing the distribution of goods throughout the community. Cp. Aristot. Pol. 1257a 14 ff.) Let us see then wherein trade is reputed to be a thing not noble nor even respectable, and what has caused it to be disparaged, in order that we may remedy by law parts of it at least, if not the whole. This is an undertaking, it would seem, of no slight importance, and one that calls for no little virtue.

Clin. How do you mean?

Ath. My dear Clinias, small is the class of men—rare by nature and trained, too, with a superlative training—who, when they fall into diverse needs and lusts, are able to stand out firmly for moderation, and who, when they have the power of taking much wealth, are sober, and choose what is of due measure rather than what is large. The disposition of the mass of mankind is exactly the opposite of this; when they desire, they desire without limit, and when they can make moderate gains, they prefer to gain insatiably; and it is because of this that all the classes concerned with retail trade, commerce, and inn-keeping are disparaged and subjected to violent abuse. Now if anyone were to do what never will be done (Heaven forbid !)—but I shall make the supposition, ridiculous though it is— namely, compel the best men everywhere for a certain period to keep inns or to peddle or to carry on any such trade, or even to compel women by some necessity of fate to take part in such a mode of life,—then we should learn how that each of these callings is friendly and desirable; and if all these callings were carried on according to a rule free from corruption, they would be honored with the honor which one pays to a mother or a nurse.

Ath. But as things are now, whenever a man has planted his house, with a view to retail trade, in a desert place and with all the roads from it lengthy, if in this welcome lodging he receives travellers in distress, providing tranquillity and calm to those buffeted by fierce storms or restful coolness after torrid heat,—the next thing is that, instead of treating them as comrades and providing friendly gifts as well as entertainment, he holds them ransom, as if they were captive foemen in his hands, demanding very high sums of unjust and unclean ransom-money; it is criminal practices such as this, in the case of all these trades, that afford grounds of complaint against this way of succoring distress. For these evils, then, the lawgiver must in each case provide a medicine. It is an old and true saying that it is hard to fight against the attack of two foes[*]( Cp. Plat. Phaedo 89c ff: πρὸς δύο λέγεται οὐδ’ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς οἷός τε εἶναι.) of opposite quarters, as in the case of diseases and many other things; and indeed our present fight in this matter is against two foes, poverty and plenty,[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 679b, Plat. Laws 705b.) of which the one corrupts the soul of men with luxury, while the other by means of pain plunges it into shamelessness. What remedy, then, is to be found for this disease in a State gifted with understanding? The first is to employ the trading class as little as possible; the second, to assign to that class those men whose corruption would prove no great loss to the State; the third, to find a means whereby the dispositions of those engaged in these callings may not quite so easily become infected by shamelessness and meanness of soul. After the declarations now made, let our law on these matters (Heaven prosper it!) run in this wise:—Amongst the Magnesians,[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 702b ff., Plat. Laws 848c.) whom the god is restoring and founding afresh, none of all the landholders who belong to the houses shall, either willingly or unwillingly, become a retail trader or a merchant, or engage in any menial service for private persons who do not make an equal return to himself, save only for his father and mother and those of a still earlier generation, and all that are elder than himself, they being gentlemen[*]( Literally free men,—the Greek word connoting generosity, culture and dignity, like our gentle.) and his a gentleman’s service. What is becoming, what unbecoming a gentleman it is not easy to fix by law; it shall, however, be decided by those persons who have achieved public distinction[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 914a, Plat. Laws 922a ff.) for their aversion to the one and their devotion to the other.