Laws

Ath. So much for that, then! Now, what are we to say about the origin of government? Would not the best and easiest way of discerning it be from this standpoint?

Clin. What standpoint?

Ath. That from which one should always observe the progress of States as they move towards either goodness or badness.

Clin. What point is that?

Ath. The observation, as I suppose, of an infinitely long period of time and of the variations therein occurring.

Clin. Explain your meaning.

Ath. Tell me now: do you think you could ever ascertain the space of time that has passed since cities came into existence and men lived under civic rule?

Clin. Certainly it would be no easy task.

Ath. But you can easily see that it is vast and immeasurable?

Clin. That I most certainly can do.

Ath. During this time, have not thousands upon thousands of States come into existence, and, on a similar computation, just as many perished? And have they not in each case exhibited all kinds of constitutions over and over again? And have they not changed at one time from small to great, at another from great to small, and changed also from good to bad and from bad to good?

Clin. Necessarily.

Ath. Of this process of change let us discover, if we can, the cause; for this, perhaps, would show us what is the primary origin of constitutions, as well as their transformation.

Clin. You are right; and we must all exert ourselves,—you to expound your view about them, and we to keep pace with you.

Ath. Do you consider that there is any truth in the ancient tales?

Clin. What tales?

Ath. That the world of men has often been destroyed by floods, plagues, and many other things, in such a way that only a small portion of the human race has survived.

Clin. Everyone would regard such accounts as perfectly credible.

Ath. Come now, let us picture to ourselves one of the many catastrophes,—namely, that which occurred once upon a time through the Deluge.[*](Deucalion’s Flood: cp. Polit. 270 C.)

Clin. And what are we to imagine about it?

Ath. That the men who then escaped destruction must have been mostly herdsmen of the hills, scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops.

Clin. Evidently.

Ath. Moreover, men of this kind must necessarily have been unskilled in the arts generally, and especially in such contrivances as men use against one another in cities for purposes of greed and rivalry and all the other villainies which they devise one against another.

Clin. It is certainly probable.

Ath. Shall we assume that the cities situated in the plains and near the sea were totally destroyed at the time?

Clin. Let us assume it.

Ath. And shall we say that all implements were lost, and that everything in the way of important arts or inventions that they may have had,—whether concerned with politics or other sciences,— perished at that time? For, supposing that things had remained all that time ordered just as they are now, how, my good sir, could anything new have ever been invented?

Clin. Do you mean that these things were unknown to the men of those days for thousands upon thousands of years, and that one or two thousand years ago some of them were revealed to Daedalus, some to Orpheus, some to Palamedes, musical arts to Marsyas and Olympus, lyric to Amphion, and, in short, a vast number of others to other persons—all dating, so to say, from yesterday or the day before?

Ath. Are you aware, Clinias, that you have left out your friend who was literally a man of yesterday?

Clin. Is it Epimenides[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 642d.) you mean?

Ath. Yes, I mean him. For he far outstripped everybody you had, my friend, by that invention of his of which he was the actual producer, as you Cretans say, although Hesiod[*](Hes. WD 640f. νήπιοι, οὐδὲ ἴασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντός, οὐδʼ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγʼ ὄνειαρ. Hesiod’s allusion to the great virtue residing in mallow and asphodel is supposed to have suggested to Epimenides his invention of a herbal concoction, or elixir of life.) had divined it and spoken of it long before.

Clin. We do say so.

Ath. Shall we, then, state that, at the time when the destruction took place, human affairs were in this position: there was fearful and widespread desolation over a vast tract of land; most of the animals were destroyed, and the few herds of oxen and flocks of goats that happened to survive afforded at the first but scanty sustenance to their herdsmen?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. And as to the matters with which our present discourse is concerned—States and statecraft and legislation,—do we think they could have retained any memory whatsoever, broadly speaking, of such matters?

Clin. By no means.

Ath. So from those men, in that situation, there has sprung the whole of our present order—States and constitutions, arts and laws, with a great amount both of evil and of good?

Clin. How do you mean?

Ath. Do we imagine, my good Sir, that the men of that age, who were unversed in the ways of city life—many of them noble, many ignoble,—were perfect either in virtue or in vice?

Clin. Well said! We grasp your meaning.

Ath. As time went on and our race multiplied, all things advanced—did they not?—to the condition which now exists.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. But, in all probability, they advanced, not all at once, but by small degrees, during an immense space of time.

Clin. Yes, that is most likely.

Ath. For they all, I fancy, felt as it were still ringing in their ears a dread of going down from the highlands to the plains.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And because there were so few of them round about in those days, were they not delighted to see one another, but for the fact that means of transport, whereby they might visit one another by sea or land, had practically all perished along with the arts? Hence intercourse, I imagine, was not very easy. For iron and bronze and all the metals in the mines had been flooded and had disappeared; so that it was extremely difficult to extract fresh metal; and there was a dearth, in consequence, of felled timber. For even if there happened to be some few tools still left somewhere on the mountains, these were soon worn out, and they could not be replaced by others until men had rediscovered the art of metal-working.

Clin. They could not.

Ath. Now, how many generations, do we suppose, had passed before this took place?

Clin. A great many, evidently.

Ath. And during all this period, or even longer, all the arts that require iron and bronze and all such metals must have remained in abeyance?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Moreover, civil strife and war also disappeared during that time, and that for many reasons.

Clin. How so?