Laws

Ath. And, as our argument asserts, the cause of this does not lie in luck, but in the evil life which is usually lived by the sons of excessively rich monarchs; for such an upbringing can never produce either boy or man or greybeard of surpassing goodness. To this, we say, the lawgiver must give heed,—as must we ourselves on the present occasion. It is proper, however, my Lacedaemonian friends, to give your State credit for this at least,—that you assign no different honor or training whatsoever to poverty or wealth, to the commoner or the king, beyond what your original oracle[*](The laws of Lycurgus.) declared at the bidding of some god. Nor indeed is it right that pre-eminent honors in a State should be conferred on a man because he is specially wealthy, any more than it is right to confer them because he is swift or comely or strong without any virtue, or with a virtue devoid of temperance.

Meg. What do you mean by that, Stranger?

Ath. Courage is, presumably, one part of virtue.

Meg. Certainly.

Ath. Now that you have heard the argument, judge for yourself whether you would welcome as housemate or neighbor a man who is extremely courageous, but licentious rather than temperate.

Meg. Don’t suggest such a thing!

Ath. Well then,—a man wise in arts and crafts, but unjust.

Meg. Certainly not.

Ath. But justice, surely, is not bred apart from temperance.

Meg. Impossible.

Ath. Nor is he whom we recently proposed[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 689d.) as our type of wisdom,—the man who has his feelings of pleasure and pain in accord with the dictates of right reason and obedient thereto.

Meg. No, indeed.

Ath. Here is a further point we must consider, in order to judge about the conferment of honors in States, when they are right and when wrong.

Meg. What point?

Ath. If temperance existed alone in a man’s soul, divorced from all the rest of virtue, would it justly be held in honor or the reverse?

Meg. I cannot tell what reply to make.

Ath. Yet, in truth, you have made a reply, and a reasonable one. For if you had declared for either of the alternatives in my question, you would have said what is, to my mind, quite out of tune.

Meg. So it has turned out to be all right.

Ath. Very good. Accordingly, the additional element in objects deserving of honor or dishonor will be one that demands not speech so much as a kind of speechless silence.[*](i.e., temperance, regarded as merely an adjunct to civic merit, requires no further discussion at this point.)

Meg. I suppose you mean temperance.

Ath. Yes. And of the rest, that which, with the addition of temperance, benefits us most would best deserve to be held in the highest honor, and the second in degree of benefit put second in order of honor; and so with each of the others in succession—to each it will be proper to assign the honor due to its rank.

Meg. Just so.

Ath. Well then, shall we not declare that the distribution of these things is the lawgiver’s task?

Meg. Certainly.

Ath. Is it your wish that we should hand over the whole distribution to him, to deal with every case and all the details, while we—as legal enthusiasts ourselves also—confine ourselves to making a threefold division, and endeavor to distinguish what comes first in importance, and what second and third?[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 631b, c; Plat. Laws 661a ff.; Plat. Laws 726a ff.; Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1098b 12 ff.)

Meg. By all means.

Ath. We declare, then, that a State which is to endure, and to be as happy as it is possible for man to be, must of necessity dispense honors rightly. And the right way is this: it shall be laid down that the goods of the soul are highest in honor and come first, provided that the soul possesses temperance; second come the good and fair things of the body; and third the so-called goods of substance and property. And if any law-giver or State transgresses these rules, either by promoting wealth to honors, or by raising one of the lower goods to a higher rank by means of honors, he will be guilty of a breach both of religion and of statesmanship. Shall this be our declaration, or what?

Meg. By all means let us declare this plainly.

Ath. It was our investigation of the polity of the Persians that caused us to discuss these matters at greater length. We find that they grew still worse, the reason being, as we say, that by robbing the commons unduly of their liberty and introducing despotism in excess, they destroyed in the State the bonds of friendliness and fellowship. And when these are destroyed, the policy of the rulers no longer consults for the good of the subjects and the commons, but solely for the maintenance of their own power; if they think that it will profit them in the least degree, they are ready at any time to overturn States and to overturn and burn up friendly nations; and thus they both hate and are hated with a fierce and ruthless hatred. And when they come to need the commons, to fight in their support, they find in them no patriotism or readiness to endanger their lives in battle; so that, although they possess countless myriads of men, they are all useless for war, and they hire soldiers from abroad as though they were short of men, and imagine that their safety will be secured by hirelings and aliens.

Ath. And besides all this, they inevitably display their ignorance, inasmuch as by their acts they declare that the things reputed to be honorable and noble in a State are never anything but dross compared to silver and gold.

Meg. Very true.

Ath. So let this be the conclusion of our account of the Persian empire, and how its present evil administration is due to excess of slavery and of despotism.

Meg. By all means.

Ath. We ought to examine next, in like manner, the Attic polity, and show how complete liberty, unfettered by any authority, is vastly inferior to a moderate form of government under elected magistrates. At the time when the Persians made their onslaught upon the Greeks—and indeed one might say on nearly all the nations of Europe—we Athenians had an ancient constitution,[*](That of Solon.) and magistrates based on a fourfold grading; and we had Reverence, which acted as a kind of queen, causing us to live as the willing slaves of the existing laws. Moreover, the vastness of the Persian armament that threatened us both by sea and land, by the desperate fear it inspired, bound us still more closely in the bonds of slavery to our rulers and our laws; and because of all this, our mutual friendliness and patriotism was greatly intensified. It was just about ten years before the seafight at Salamis that the Persian force arrived under Datis, whom Darius had despatched expressly against the Athenians and Eretrians, with orders to bring them back in chains, and with the warning that death would be the penalty of failure. So within a very short time Datis, with his many myriads, captured by force the whole of the Eretrians; and to Athens he sent on an alarming account of how not a man of the Eretrians had escaped him: the soldiers of Datis had joined hands and swept the whole of Eretria clean as with a draw-net. This account—whether true, or whatever its origin—struck terror into the Greeks generally, and especially the Athenians; but when they sent out embassies in every direction to seek aid, all refused, except the Lacedaemonians; and they were hindered by the war they were then waging against Messene, and possibly by other obstacles, about which we have no information, with the result that they arrived too late by one single day for the battle which took place at Marathon. After this, endless threats and stories of huge preparations kept arriving from the Persian king.

Ath. Then, as time went on, news came that Darius was dead, and that his son, who had succeeded to the throne, was a young hothead, and still keen on the projected expedition. The Athenians imagined that all these preparations were aimed against them because of the affair at Marathon; and when they heard of how the canal had been made through Athos, and the bridge thrown over the Hellespont, and were told of the vast number of vessels in the Persian flotilla, then they felt that there was no salvation for them by land, nor yet by sea. By land they had no hopes that anyone would come to their aid; for they remembered how, on the first arrival of the Persians and their subjugation of Eretria, nobody helped them or ventured to join in the fight with them; and so they expected that the same thing would happen again on this occasion. By sea, too, they saw no hope of safety, with more than a thousand war-ships bearing down against them. One solitary hope of safety did they perceive—a slight one, it is true, and a desperate, yet the only hope—and it they derived from the events of the past, when victory in battle appeared to spring out of a desperate situation; and buoyed up by this hope, they discovered that they must rely for refuge on themselves only and on the gods. So all this created in them a state of friendliness one towards another—both the fear which then possessed them, and that begotten of the past, which they had acquired by their subjection to the former laws—the fear to which, in our previous discussions,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 646e, 647c, 671d.) we have often given the name of reverence, saying that a man must be subject to this if he is to be good (though the coward is unfettered and unaffrighted by it). Unless this fear had then seized upon our people, they would never have united in self-defence, nor would they have defended their temples and tombs and fatherland, and their relatives and friends as well, in the way in which they then came to the rescue; but we would all have been broken up at that time and dispersed one by one in all directions.

Meg. What you say, Stranger, is perfectly true, and worthy of your country as well as of yourself.

Ath. That is so, Megillus: it is proper to mention the events of that period to you, since you share in the native character of your ancestors. But both you and Clinias must now consider whether what we are saying is at all pertinent to our law-making; for my narrative is not related for its own sake, but for the sake of the law-making I speak of. Just reflect: seeing that we Athenians suffered practically the same fate as the Persians—they through reducing their people to the extreme of slavery, we, on the contrary, by urging on our populace to the extreme of liberty—what are we to say was the sequel, if our earlier statements have been at all nearly correct?

Meg. Well said! Try, however, to make your meaning still more clear to us.

Ath. I will. Under the old laws, my friends, our commons had no control over anything, but were, so to say, voluntary slaves to the laws.

Meg. What laws do you mean?

Ath. Those dealing with the music of that age, in the first place,—to describe from its commencement how the life of excessive liberty grew up. Among us, at that time, music was divided into various classes and styles: one class of song was that of prayers to the gods, which bore the name of hymns; contrasted with this was another class, best called dirges; paeans formed another; and yet another was the dithyramb, named, I fancy, after Dionysus. Nomes also were so called as being a distinct class of song; and these were further described as citharoedic nomes.[*](i.e., solemn chants sung to the cithara or lyre. Dithyrambs were choral odes to Dionysus; paeans were mostly hymns of praise to Apollo.) So these and other kinds being classified and fixed, it was forbidden to set one kind of words to a different class of tune.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 657c ff., 699c ff.) The authority whose duty it was to know these regulations, and, when known, to apply them in its judgments and to penalize the disobedient, was not a pipe nor, as now, the mob’s unmusical shoutings, nor yet the clappings which mark applause: in place of this, it was a rule made by those in control of education that they themselves should listen throughout in silence, while the children and their ushers and the general crowd were kept in order by the discipline of the rod. In the matter of music the populace willingly submitted to orderly control and abstained from outrageously judging by clamor; but later on, with the progress of time, there arose as leaders of unmusical illegality poets who, though by nature poetical, were ignorant of what was just and lawful in music; and they, being frenzied and unduly possessed by a spirit of pleasure, mixed dirges with hymns and paeans with dithyrambs, and imitated flute-tunes with harp-tunes, and blended every kind of music with every other; and thus, through their folly, they unwittingly bore false witness against music, as a thing without any standard of correctness, of which the best criterion is the pleasure of the auditor, be he a good man or a bad.[*](Cp. Plat. Rep. 3.397a ff.)

Ath.By compositions of such a character, set to similar words, they bred in the populace a spirit of lawlessness in regard to music, and the effrontery of supposing themselves capable of passing judgment on it. Hence the theater-goers became noisy instead of silent, as though they knew the difference between good and bad music, and in place of an aristocracy in music there sprang up a kind of base theatrocracy.[*](i.e., rule of the audience; as we might say, the pit and gallery sat in judgment. Cp. Aristot. Pol. 8.6.) For if in music, and music only, there had arisen a democracy of free men, such a result would not have been so very alarming; but as it was, the universal conceit of universal wisdom and the contempt for law originated in the music, and on the heels of these came liberty. For, thinking themselves knowing, men became fearless; and audacity begat effrontery. For to be fearless of the opinion of a better man, owing to self-confidence, is nothing else than base effrontery; and it is brought about by a liberty that is audacious to excess.

Meg. Most true.

Ath. Next after this form of liberty would come that which refuses to be subject to the rulers;[*](Cp. Plat. Rep. 4.424e.) and, following on that, the shirking of submission to one’s parents and elders and their admonitions; then, as the penultimate stage, comes the effort to disregard the laws; while the last stage of all is to lose all respect for oaths or pledges or divinities,—wherein men display and reproduce the character of the Titans of story, who are said to have reverted to their original state, dragging out a painful existence with never any rest from woe. What, again, is our object in saying all this? Evidently, I must, every time, rein in my discourse, like a horse, and not let it run away with me as though it had no bridle[*](Cp. Eur. Ba. 385.) in its mouth, and so get a toss off the donkey[*](A play on ἀπ’ ὄνου=ἀπὸ νοῦ: to show oneself a fool: cr. Artist. Nubes 1274: τί δῆτα ληρεῖς, ὥσπερ ἀπ’ ὄνου καταπεσών.) (as the saying goes): consequently, I must once more repeat my question, and ask—With what object has all this been said?

Meg. Very good.

Ath. What has now been said bears on the objects previously stated.

Meg. What were they?

Ath. We said[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 693b.) that the lawgiver must aim, in his legislation, at three objectives—to make the State he is legislating for free, and at unity with itself, and possessed of sense. That was so, was it not?

Meg. Certainly.

Ath. With these objects in view, we selected the most despotic of polities and the most absolutely free, and are now enquiring which of these is rightly constituted. When we took a moderate example of each—of despotic rule on the one hand, and liberty on the other,—we observed that there they enjoyed prosperity in the highest degree but when they advanced, the one to the extreme of slavery, the other to the extreme of liberty, then there was no gain to either the one or the other.

Meg. Most true.

Ath. With the same objects in view we surveyed,[*](i.e., in Bk. iii. 676-693 (taken in the reverse order).) also, the settling of the Doric host and the homes of Dardanus at the foot of the hills and the colony by the sea and the first men who survived the Flood, together with our previous discourses[*](i.e., in Books i. and ii.) concerning music and revelry, as well as all that preceded these. The object of all these discourses was to discover how best a State might be managed, and how best the individual citizen might pass his life. But as to the value of our conclusions, what test can we apply in conversing among ourselves, O Megillus and Clinias?

Clin. I think, Stranger, that I can perceive one. It is a piece of good luck for me that we have dealt with all these matters in our discourse. For I myself have now come nearly to the point when I shall need them, and my meeting with you and Megillus here was quite opportune. I will make no secret to you of what has befallen me; nay, more, I count it to be a sign from Heaven. The most part of Crete is undertaking to found a colony, and it has given charge of the undertaking to the Cnosians, and the city of Cnosus has entrusted it to me and nine others. We are bidden also to frame laws, choosing such as we please either from our own local laws or from those of other countries, taking no exception to their alien character, provided only that they seem superior. Let us, then, grant this favour to me, and yourselves also; let us select from the statements we have made, and build up by arguments the framework of a State, as though we were erecting it from the foundation. In this way we shall be at once investigating our theme, and possibly I may also make use of our framework for the State that is to be formed.

Ath. Your proclamation, Clinias, is certainly not a proclamation of war! So, if Megillus has no objection, you may count on me to do all I can to gratify your wish.

Clin. It is good to hear that.

Meg. And you can count on me too.

Clin. Splendid of you both! But, in the first place, let us try to found the State by word.

Ath. Come now, what is this State going to be, shall we suppose I am not asking for its present name or the name it will have to go by in the future; for this might be derived from the conditions of its settlement, or from some locality, or a river or spring or some local deity might bestow its sacred title on the new State. The point of my question about it is rather this,—is it to be an inland State, or situated on the sea-coast?

Clin. The State which I mentioned just now, Stranger, lies about eighty stades, roughly speaking, from the sea.

Ath. Well, has it harbors on the sea-board side, or is it quite without harbors?

Clin. It has excellent harbors on that side, Stranger, none better.

Ath. Dear me! how unfortunate But what of the surrounding country? Is it productive in all respects, or deficient in some products?

Clin. There is practically nothing that it is deficient in.

Ath. Will there be any State bordering close on it?

Clin. None at all, and that is the reason for settling it. Owing to emigration from this district long ago, the country has lain desolate for ever so long.

Ath. How about plains, mountains and forests? What extent of each of these does it contain?

Clin. As a whole, it resembles in character the rest of Crete.

Ath. You would call it hilly rather than level?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Then it would not be incurably unfit for the acquisition of virtue. For if the State was to be on the sea-coast, and to have fine harbors, and to be deficient in many products, instead of productive of everything,—in that case it would need a mighty savior and divine lawgivers, if, with such a character, it was to avoid having a variety of luxurious and depraved habits.[*](Cp. Aristot. Pol. 7.6.) As things are, however, there is consolation in the fact of that eighty stades. Still, it lies unduly near the sea, and the more so because, as you say, its harbors are good; that, however, we must make the best of. For the sea is, in very truth,

a right briny and bitter neighbor,

Clin. We remember, and we endorse what you said both then and now.

Ath. Well, then, how is our district off for timber for ship-building?

Clin. There is no fir to speak of, nor pine, and but little cypress; nor could one find much larch or plane, which shipwrights are always obliged to use for the interior fittings of ships.

Ath. Those, two, are natural features which would not be bad for the country.

Clin. Why so?

Ath. That a State should not find it easy to copy its enemies in bad habits is a good thing.

Clin. To which of our statements does this observation allude?

Ath. My dear Sir, keep a watch on me, with an eye cast back on our opening[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 625e.) statement about the Cretan laws. It asserted that those laws aimed at one single object; and whereas you declared that this object was military strength, I made the rejoinder that, while it was right that such enactments should have virtue for their aim, I did not at all approve of that aim being restricted to a part, instead of applying to the whole. So do you now, in turn, keep a watch on my present lawmaking, as you follow it, in case I should enact any law either not tending to virtue at all, or tending only to a part of it.

Ath. For I lay it down as an axiom that no law is rightly enacted which does not aim always, like an archer, at that object, and that alone, which is constantly accompanied by something ever-beautiful,—passing over every other object, be it wealth or anything else of the kind that is devoid of beauty. To illustrate how the evil imitation of enemies, which I spoke of, comes about, when people dwell by the sea and are vexed by enemies, I will give you an example (though with no wish, of course, to recall to you painful memories). When Minos, once upon a time, reduced the people of Attica to a grievous payment of tribute, he was very powerful by sea, whereas they possessed no warships at that time such as they have now, nor was their country so rich in timber that they could easily supply themselves with a naval force. Hence they were unable quickly to copy the naval methods of their enemies and drive them off by becoming sailors themselves. And indeed it would have profited them to lose seventy times seven children rather than to become marines instead of staunch foot-soldiers; for marines are habituated to jumping ashore frequently and running back at full speed to their ships, and they think no shame of not dying boldly at their posts when the enemy attack; and excuses are readily made for them, as a matter of course, when they fling away their arms and betake themselves to what they describe as no dishonorable flight. These exploits are the usual result of employing naval soldiery, and they merit, not infinite praise, but precisely the opposite; for one ought never to habituate men to base habits, and least of all the noblest section of the citizens. That such an institution is not a noble one might have been learnt even from Homer. For he makes Odysseus abuse Agamemnon for ordering the Achaeans to haul down their ships to the sea, when they were being pressed in fight by the Trojans; and in his wrath he speaks thus:—

1. Dost bid our people hale their fair-benched ships
2. Seaward, when war and shouting close us round?
3. So shall the Trojans see their prayers fulfilled,
4. And so on us shall sheer destruction fall!
5. For, when the ships are seaward drawn, no more
6. Will our Achaeans hold the battle up,
7. But, backward glancing, they will quit the fray:

1. Thus baneful counsel such as thine will prove.

Ath. So Homer, too, was aware of the fact that triremes lined up in the sea alongside of infantry fighting on land are a bad thing: why, even lions, if they had habits such as these, would grow used to running away from does! Moreover, States dependent upon navies for their power give honors, as rewards for their safety, to a section of their forces that is not the finest; for they owe their safety to the arts of the pilot, the captain and the rower— men of all kinds and not too respectable,—so that it would be impossible to assign the honors to each of them rightly. Yet, without rectitude in this, how can it still be right with a State?[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 697b, 757a.)

Clin. It is well-nigh impossible. None the less, Stranger, it was the sea-fight at Salamis, fought by the Greeks against the barbarians, which, as we Cretans at least affirm, saved Greece.

Ath. Yes, that is what is said by most of the Greeks and barbarians. But we—that is, I myself and our friend Megillus—affirm that it was the land-battle of Marathon which began the salvation of Greece, and that of Plataea which completed it; and we affirm also that, whereas these battles made the Greeks better, the sea-fights made them worse,—if one may use such an expression about battles that helped at that time to save us (for I will let you count Artemisium also as a sea-fight, as well as Salamis). Since, however, our present object is political excellence, it is the natural character of a country and its legal arrangements that we are considering; so that we differ from most people in not regarding mere safety and existence as the most precious thing men can possess, but rather the gaining of all possible goodness and the keeping of it throughout life. This too, I believe, was stated by us before.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 637c.)

Clin. It was.

Ath. Then let us consider only this,—whether we are traversing by the same road which we took then, as being the best for states in the matter of settlements and modes of legislation.

Clin. The best by far.

Ath. In the next place tell me this: who are the people that are to be settled? Will they comprise all that wish to go from any part of Crete, supposing that there has grown up in every city a surplus population too great for the country’s food supply? For you are not; I presume, collecting all who wish to go from Greece;

Ath. although I do, indeed, see in your country settlers from Argos, Aegina, and other parts of Greece. So tell us now from what quarters the present expedition of citizens is likely to be drawn.

Clin. It will probably be from the whole of Crete and of the rest of the Greeks, they seem most ready to admit people from the Peloponnese as fellow-settlers. For it is quite true, as you said just now, that we have some here from Argos, amongst them being the most famous of our clans, the Gortynian, which is a colony from Gortys, in the Peloponnese.

Ath. It would not be equally easy for States to conduct settlements in other cases as in those when, like a swarm of bees, a single clan goes out from a single country and settles, as a friend coming from friends, being either squeezed out by lack of room or forced by some other such pressing need. At times, too, the violence of civil strife might compel a whole section of a State to emigrate; and on one occasion an entire State went into exile, when it was totally crushed by an overpowering attack. All such cases are in one way easier to manage, as regards settling and legislation, but in another way harder. In the case where the race is one, with the same language and laws, this unity makes for friendliness, since it shares also in sacred rites and all matters of religion; but such a body does not easily tolerate laws or polities which differ from those of its homeland. Again, where such a body has seceded owing to civil strife due to the badness of the laws, but still strives to retain, owing to long habit, the very customs which caused its former ruin, then, because of this, it proves a difficult and intractable subject for the person who has control of its settlement and its laws. On the other hand, the clan that is formed by fusion of various elements would perhaps be more ready to submit to new laws, but to cause it to share in one spirit and pant (as they say) in unison like a team of horses would be a lengthy task and most difficult. But in truth legislation and the settlement of States are tasks that require men perfect above all other men in goodness.

Clin. Very probably; but tell us still more clearly the purport of these observations.

Ath. My good Sir, in returning to the subject of lawgivers in our investigation, I may probably have to cast a slur on them; but if what I say is to the point, then there will be no harm in it. Yet why should I vex myself? For practically all human affairs seem to be in this same plight.

Clin. What is it you refer to?

Ath. I was on the point of saying that no man ever makes laws, but chances and accidents of all kinds, occurring in all sorts of ways, make all our laws for us. For either it is a war that violently upsets polities and changes laws, or it is the distress due to grievous poverty. Diseases, too, often force on revolutions, owing to the inroads of pestilences and recurring bad seasons prolonged over many years. Foreseeing all this, one might deem it proper to say—as I said just now—that no mortal man frames any law, but human affairs are nearly all matters of pure chance. But the fact is that, although one may appear to be quite right in saying this about sea-faring and the arts of the pilot, the physician, and the general, yet there really is something else that we may say with equal truth about these same things.

Clin. What is that?

Ath. That God controls all that is, and that Chance and Occasion co-operate with God in the control of all human affairs. It is, however, less harsh to admit that these two must be accompanied by a third factor, which is Art. For that the pilots’ art should cooperate with Occasion—verily I, for one, should esteem that a great advantage. Is it not so?

Clin. It is.

Ath. Then we must grant that this is equally true in the other cases also, by parity of reasoning, including the case of legislation. When all the other conditions are present which a country needs to possess in the way of fortune if it is ever to be happily settled, then every such State needs to meet with a lawgiver who holds fast to truth.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Would not, then, the man who possessed art in regard to each of the crafts mentioned be able to pray aright for that condition which, if it were given by Chance, would need only the supplement of his own art?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. And if all the other craftsmen mentioned just now were bidden to state the object of their prayers, they could do so, could they not?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And the lawgiver, I suppose, could do likewise?

Clin. I suppose so.

Ath.Come now, O lawgiver, let us say to him, what are we to give you, and what condition of State, to enable you, when you receive it, thence-forward to manage the State by yourself satisfactorily?

Clin. What is the next thing that can rightly be said?

Ath. You mean, do you not, on the side of the lawgiver?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. This is what he will say: Give me the State under a monarchy;[*](Cp. Plat. Rep. 473c ff., 486a ff.) and let the monarch be young, and possessed by nature of a good memory, quick intelligence, courage and nobility of manner; and let that quality, which we formerly mentioned[*](Plat. Laws 696d.) as the necessary accompaniment of all the parts of virtue, attend now also on our monarch’s soul, if the rest of his qualities are to be of any value.

Clin. Temperance, as I think, Megillus, is what the Stranger indicates as the necessary accompaniment. Is it not?

Ath. Yes, Clinias; temperance, that is, of the ordinary kind[*](Plat. Laws 698a;Plat. Phaedo 82a ff. The academic (or philosophic) identification of virtue with wisdom was a main feature in the ethics of Socrates; cp.Plat. Rep. 430d ff.) not the kind men mean when they use academic language and identify temperance with wisdom, but that kind which by natural instinct springs up at birth in children and animals, so that some are not incontinent, others continent, in respect of pleasures; and of this we said[*](Plat. Laws 696d.) that, when isolated from the numerous so-called goods, it was of no account. You understand, of course, what I mean.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Let our monarch, then, possess this natural quality in addition to the other qualities mentioned, if the State is to acquire in the quickest and best way possible the constitution it needs for the happiest kind of life. For there does not exist, nor could there ever arise, a quicker and better form of constitution than this.

Clin. How and by what argument, Stranger, could one convince oneself that to say this is to speak the truth?

Ath. It is quite easy to perceive at least this, Clinias, that the facts stand by nature’s ordinance in the way described.

Clin. In what way do you mean? On condition, do you say, that there should be a monarch who was young, temperate, quick at learning, with a good memory, brave and of a noble manner?

Ath. Add also fortunate,—not in other respects, but only in this, that in his time there should arise a praiseworthy lawgiver, and that, by a piece of good fortune, the two of them should meet; for if this were so, then God would have done nearly everything that he does when he desires that a State should be eminently prosperous. The second best condition is that there should arise two such rulers; then comes the third best, with three rulers; and so on, the difficulty increasing in proportion as the number becomes greater, and vice versa.

Clin. You mean, apparently, that the best State would arise from a monarchy, when it has a first-rate lawgiver and a virtuous monarch, and these are the conditions under which the change into such a State could be effected most easily and quickly; and, next to this, from an oligarchy— or what is it you mean?

Ath. Not at all: the easiest step is from a monarchy, the next easiest from a monarchic constitution, the third from some form of democracy. An oligarchy, which comes fourth in order, would admit of the growth of the best State only with the greatest difficulty, since it has the largest number of rulers.

Ath. What I say is that the change takes place when nature supplies a true lawgiver, and when it happens that his policy is shared by the most powerful persons in the State; and wherever the State authorities are at once strongest and fewest in number, then and there the changes are usually carried out with speed and facility.

Clin. How so? We do not understand.

Ath. Yet surely it has been stated not once, I imagine, but many times over. But you, very likely, have never so much as set eyes on a monarchical State.

Clin. No, nor have I any craving for such a sight.

Ath. You would, however, see in it an illustration of what we spoke of just now.

Clin. What was that?

Ath. The fact that a monarch, when he decides to change the moral habits of a State, needs no great efforts nor a vast length of time, but what he does need is to lead the way himself first along the desired path, whether it be to urge the citizens towards virtue’s practices or the contrary; by his personal example he should first trace out the right lines, giving praise and honor to these things, blame to those, and degrading the disobedient according to their several deeds.

Clin. Yes, we may perhaps suppose that the rest of the citizens will quickly follow the ruler who adopts such a combination of persuasion and force.

Ath. Let none, my friends, persuade us that a State could ever change its laws more quickly or more easily by any other way than by the personal guidance of the rulers: no such thing could ever occur, either now or hereafter. Indeed, that is not the result which we find it difficult or impossible to bring about; what is difficult to bring about is rather that result which has taken place but rarely throughout long ages, and which, whenever it does take place in a State, produces in that State countless blessings of every kind.

Clin. What result do you mean?

Ath. Whenever a heaven-sent desire for temperate and just institutions arises in those who hold high positions,—whether as monarchs, or because of conspicuous eminence of wealth or birth, or, haply, as displaying the character of Nestor, of whom it is said that, while he surpassed all men in the force of his eloquence, still more did he surpass them in temperance. That was, as they say, in the Trojan age, certainly not in our time; still, if any such man existed, or shall exist, or exists among us now, blessed is the life he leads, and blessed are they who join in listening to the words of temperance that proceed out of his mouth.

Ath. So likewise of power in general, the same rule holds good: whenever the greatest power coincides in man with wisdom and temperance, then the germ of the best polity is planted;[*](Cp. Plat. Rep. 473d.) but in no other way will it ever come about. Regard this as a myth oracularly uttered, and let us take it as proved that the rise of a well-governed State is in one way difficult, but in another way—given, that is, the condition we mention—it is easier by far and quicker than anything else.

Clin. No doubt.

Ath. Let us apply the oracle to your State, and so try, like greybeard boys, to model its laws by our discourse.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 746a.)

Clin. Yes, let us proceed, and delay no longer.

Ath. Let us invoke the presence of the God at the establishment of the State; and may he hearken, and hearkening may he come, propitious and kindly to us-ward, to help us in the fashioning of the State and its laws.

Clin. Yes, may he come!

Ath. Well, what form of polity is it that we intend to impose upon the State?

Clin. What, in particular, do you refer to? Explain still more clearly. I mean, is it a democracy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy? For certainly you cannot mean a tyranny: that we can never suppose.

Ath. Come now, which of you two would like to answer me first and tell me to which of these kinds his own polity at home belongs?

Meg. Is it not proper that I, as the elder, should answer first?

Clin. No doubt.

Meg. In truth, Stranger, when I reflect on the Lacedaemonian polity, I am at a loss to tell you by what name one should describe it. It seems to me to resemble a tyranny, since the board of ephors it contains is a marvellously tyrannical feature; yet sometimes it strikes me as, of all States, the nearest to a democracy. Still, it would be totally absurd to deny that it is an aristocracy; while it includes, moreover, a life monarchy, and that the most ancient of monarchies, as is affirmed, not only by ourselves, but by all the world. But now that I am questioned thus suddenly, I am really, as I said, at a loss to say definitely to which of these polities it belongs.

Clin. And I, Megillus, find myself equally perplexed; for I find it very difficult to affirm that our Cnosian polity is any one of these.

Ath. Yes, my good Sirs; for you do, in fact, partake in a number of polities. But those we named just now are not polities, but arrangements of States which rule or serve parts of themselves, and each is named after the ruling power. But if the State ought to be named after any such thing, the name it should have borne is that of the God who is the true ruler of rational men.

Clin. Who is that God?

Ath. May we, then, do a little more story-telling, if we are to answer this question suitably?

Clin. Should we not do so?

Ath. We should. Long ages before even those cities existed whose formation we have described above, there existed in the time of Cronos, it is said, a most prosperous government and settlement, on which the best of the States now existing is modelled.[*](Cp.Politic. 271.)

Clin. Evidently it is most important to hear about it.

Ath. I, for one, think so; and that is why I have introduced the mention of it.

Meg. You were perfectly right to do so; and, since your story is pertinent, you will be quite right in going on with it to the end.

Ath. I must do as you say. Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Cronos was aware of the fact that no human being (as we have explained[*](Plat. Laws 691c, 691d.)) is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings and rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, daemons. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the God, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of daemons who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace and modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy.

Ath. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Cronos, as tradition paints it, and order both our homes and our States in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving to reason’s ordering the name of law.[*](A double word-play:νοῦς=νόμος, and διανομάς=δαίμονας. Laws, being the dispensation of reason, take the place of the daemons of the age of Cronos: the divine element in man (τὸ δαιμόνιον), which claims obedience, is reason (νοῦς).) But if an individual man or an oligarchy or a democracy, possessed of a soul which strives after pleasures and lusts and seeks to surfeit itself therewith, having no continence and being the victim of a plague that is endless and insatiate of evil,— if such an one shall rule over a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, then there is (as I said just now) no means of salvation. This, then, is the statement, Clinias, which we have to examine, to see whether we believe it, or what we are to do.

Clin. We must, of course, believe it.

Ath. Are you aware that, according to some, there are as many kinds of laws as there are kinds of constitutions? And how many constitutions are commonly recognized we have recently recounted.[*](Plat. Laws 712c.) Please do not suppose that the problem now raised is one of small importance; rather it is of the highest importance. For we are again[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 630b, 690b, 690c.) faced with the problem as to what ought to be the aim of justice and injustice. The assertion of the people I refer to is this,— that the laws ought not to aim either at war or at goodness in general, but ought to have regard to the benefit of the established polity, whatever it may be, so that it may keep in power forever and never be dissolved; and that the natural definition of justice is best stated in this way.

Clin. In what way?

Ath. That justice is what benefits the stronger.[*](Cp.Plat. Rep. 1.338, 2.367.).

Clin. Explain yourself more clearly.

Ath. This is how it is:—the laws (they say) in a State are always enacted by the stronger power? Is it not so?

Clin. That is quite true.

Ath. Do you suppose, then (so they argue), that a democracy or any other government—even a tyrant—if it has gained the mastery, will of its own accord set up laws with any other primary aim than that of securing the permanence of its own authority?

Clin. Certainly not.

Ath. Then the lawgiver will style these enactments justice, and will punish every transgressor as guilty of injustice.

Clin. That is certainly probable.

Ath. So these enactments will thus and herein always constitute justice.

Clin. That is, at any rate, what the argument asserts.

Ath. Yes, for this is one of those agreed claims concerning government.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 690b.)

Clin. What claims?

Ath. Those which we dealt with before,—claims as to who should govern whom. It was shown that parents should govern children, the older the younger, the high-born the low-born, and (if you remember) there were many other claims, some of which were conflicting. The claim before us is one of these, and we said that[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 690b, with the footnote.)—to quote Pindar—

the law marches with nature when it justifies the right of might.

Clin. Yes, that is what was said then.

Ath. Consider now, to which class of men should we entrust our State. For the condition referred to is one that has already occurred in States thousands of times.

Clin. What condition?

Ath. Where offices of rule are open to contest, the victors in the contest monopolize power in the State so completely that they offer not the smallest share in office to the vanquished party or their descendants; and each party keeps a watchful eye on the other, lest anyone should come into office and, in revenge for the former troubles, cause a rising against them. Such polities we, of course, deny to be polities, just as we deny that laws are true laws unless they are enacted in the interest of the common weal of the whole State. But where the laws are enacted in the interest of a section, we call them feudalities[*](A word coined (like the Greek) to suggest a constitution based on feuds or party-divisions.) rather than polities; and the justice they ascribe to such laws is, we say, an empty name. Our reason for saying this is that in your State we shall assign office to a man, not because he is wealthy, nor because he possesses any other quality of the kind—such as strength or size or birth; but the ministration of the laws must be assigned, as we assert, to that man who is most obedient to the laws and wins the victory for obedience in the State,—the highest office to the first, the next to him that shows the second degree of mastery, and the rest must similarly be assigned, each in succession, to those that come next in order. And those who are termed magistrates I have now called ministers[*](Magistrates = rulers; ministers = subjects, or servants.) of the laws, not for the sake of coining a new phrase, but in the belief that salvation, or ruin, for a State hangs upon nothing so much as this. For wherever in a State the law is subservient and impotent, over that State I see ruin impending; but wherever the law is lord over the magistrates, and the magistrates are servants to the law, there I descry salvation and all the blessings that the gods bestow on States.

Clin. Aye, by Heaven, Stranger; for, as befits your age, you have keen sight.

Ath. Yes; for a man’s vision of such objects is at its dullest when he is young, but at its keenest when he is old.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. What, then, is to be our next step? May we not assume that our immigrants have arrived and are in the country, and should we not proceed with our address to them?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Let us, then, speak to them thus:—O men, that God who, as old tradition[*](Probably Orphic, quoted thus by the scholiast:Ζεὺς ἀρχή, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ’ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται.) tells, holdeth the beginning, the end, and the center of all things that exist, completeth his circuit by nature’s ordinance in straight, unswerving course. With him followeth Justice, as avenger of them that fall short of the divine law; and she, again, is followed by every man who would fain be happy, cleaving to her with lowly and orderly behavior; but whoso is uplifted by vainglory, or prideth himself on his riches or his honors or his comeliness of body, and through this pride joined to youth and folly, is inflamed in soul with insolence, dreaming that he has no need of ruler or guide, but rather is competent himself to guide others,— such an one is abandoned and left behind by the God, and when left behind he taketh to him others of like nature, and by his mad prancings throweth all into confusion: to many, indeed, he seemeth to be some great one, but after no long time he payeth the penalty, not unmerited, to Justice, when he bringeth to total ruin himself, his house, and his country. Looking at these things, thus ordained, what ought the prudent man to do, or to devise, or to refrain from doing?

Clin. The answer is plain: Every man ought so to devise as to be of the number of those who follow in the steps of the God.

Ath. What conduct, then, is dear to God and in his steps? One kind of conduct, expressed in one ancient phrase,[*](Cp. Hom. Od. 17.218:ὡς αἰεὶ τὸν ὁμοῖον ἄγει θεὸς ὡς τὸν ὁμοῖον. The expression like to like became proverbial, like our Birds of a feather, etc. Usually it was applied more to the bad than to the good (or moderate) to which Plato here restricts it.) namely, that like is dear to like when it is moderate, whereas immoderate things are dear neither to one another nor to things moderate. In our eyes God will be the measure of all things in the highest degree—a degree much higher than is any man they talk of.[*](An allusion to the dictum of the sophist Protagoras—Man is the measure of all things, cp. Cratylus 386 A ff.; Theaetetus 152 A.) He, then, that is to become dear to such an one must needs become, so far as he possibly can, of a like character; and, according to the present argument, he amongst us that is temperate is dear to God, since he is like him, while he that is not temperate is unlike and at enmity,—as is also he who is unjust, and so likewise with the rest, by parity of reasoning. On this there follows, let us observe, this further rule,—and of all rules it is the noblest and truest,—that to engage in sacrifice and communion with the gods continually, by prayers and offerings and devotions of every kind, is a thing most noble and good and helpful towards the happy life, and superlatively fitting also, for the good man; but for the wicked, the very opposite.