Laws

Ath. The lawgiver will realize that in all such cases not only is it better for the sinners themselves to live no longer, but also that they will prove of a double benefit to others by quitting life—since they will both serve as a warning to the rest not to act unjustly, and also rid the State of wicked men,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 957e, Plat. Rep. 410a)—and thus he will of necessity inflict death as the chastisement for their sins, in cases of this kind, and of this kind only.

Clin. What you have said seems very reasonable; but we should be glad to hear a still clearer statement respecting the difference between injury and injustice, and how the distinction between the voluntary and the involuntary applies in these cases.

Ath. I must endeavor to do as you bid me, and explain the matter. No doubt in conversing with one another you say and hear said at least thus much about the soul, that one element in its nature (be it affection or part) is passion, which is an inbred quality of a contentious and pugnacious kind, and one that overturns many things by its irrational force.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Moreover, we distinguish pleasure from passion, and we assert that its mastering power is of an opposite kind, since it effects all that its intention desires by a mixture of persuasion and deceit.

Clin. Exactly.

Ath. Nor would it be untrue to say that the third cause of sins is ignorance.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 864d., Plat. Laws 908e; Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1110b.18 ff.) This cause, however, the lawgiver would do well to subdivide into two, counting ignorance in its simple form to be the cause of minor sins, and in its double form—where the folly is due to the man being gripped not by ignorance only, but also by a conceit of wisdom,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 732a, Plat. Phileb. 48e.) as though he had full knowledge of things he knows nothing at all about,—counting this to be the cause of great and brutal sins when it is joined with strength and might, but the cause of childish and senile sins when it is joined with weakness; and these last he will count as sins and he will ordain laws, as for sinners, but laws that will be, above all others, of the most mild and merciful kind.

Clin. That is reasonable.

Ath. And pretty well everyone speaks of one man being superior, another inferior, to pleasure or to passion; and they are so.

Clin. Most certainly.

Ath. But we have never heard it said that one man is superior, another inferior, to ignorance.[*](i.e. ignorance is not regarded as an active force (like passion or pleasure) capable of opposing reason and tyrannizing over the soul.)

Clin. Quite true.

Ath. And we assert that all these things urge each man often to go counter to the actual bent of his own inclination.

Clin. Very frequently.

Ath. Now I will define for you, clearly and without complication, my notion of justice and injustice. The domination of passion and fear and pleasure and pain and envies and desires in the soul, whether they do any injury or not, I term generally injustice; but the belief in the highest good— in whatsoever way either States or individuals think they can attain to it,—if this prevails in their souls and regulates every man, even if some damage be done, we must assert that everything thus done is just, and that in each man the part subject to this governance is also just, and best for the whole life of mankind, although most men suppose that such damage is an involuntary injustice. But we are not now concerned with a verbal dispute. Since, however, it has been shown that there are three kinds of sinning, we must first of all recall these still more clearly to mind. Of these, one kind, as we know, is painful; and that we term passion and fear.[*](Cp.Plat. Phileb. 40d, Plat. Phileb. 40e.)

Clin. Quite so.

Ath. The second kind consists of pleasure and desires; the third, which is a distinct kind, consists of hopes and untrue belief regarding the attainment of the highest good. And when this last kind is subdivided into three,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 863c, Plat. Laws 863d.) five classes are made, as we now assert; and for these five classes we must enact distinct laws, of two main types.

Clin. What are they?

Ath. The one concerns acts done on each occasion by violent and open means, the other acts done privily under cover of darkness and deceit, or sometimes acts done in both these ways,—and for acts of this last kind the laws will be most severe, if they are to prove adequate.

Clin. Naturally.

Ath. Let us revert next to that point from which we digressed,[*](i.e. Plat. Laws 857b.) and proceed with our enactment of the laws. We had, I believe, laid down the laws dealing with those who plunder the gods and with traitors, and also with those who wreck the laws with intent to overthrow the existing constitution. An act of this kind a man might commit when mad, or when suffering from some disease or from excessive senility, or in a state of childishness, whereby he is no better than a madman. If any case of this kind is ever brought to the notice of the selected judges, either on the information of the doer of the act or on that of him who is pleading for the doer, and if it be judged that he was in this state of madness when he broke the law, then he shall certainly pay for the damage he has done, but only the exact sum, and he shall be acquitted of the other charges, unless it be that he has killed a man and has not purged his hands from blood: in this case he shall depart into another country and place, and dwell there as an exile for a year; and should he return within the time fixed by the law or set foot at all within his own country, he shall be put in the public jail by the Law-wardens for the space of two years, and not let out of jail until after that time.

Ath. We need not hesitate to enact laws about every class of murder on similar lines, now that we have made a beginning. First we shall deal with the cases that are violent and involuntary. If a man has killed a friend in a contest or in public games—whether his death has been immediate or as the after-effect of wounds,—or similarly if he has killed him in war or in some action of training for war, either when practicing javelin-work without armor or when engaged in some warlike maneuver in heavy armor,—then, when he has been purified as the Delphic rule on this matter directs, he shall be accounted pure. So too with respect to all doctors, if the patient dies against the will of his doctor, the doctor shall be accounted legally pure. And if one man kills another of his own act, but involuntarily,—whether it be with his own unarmed body, or by a tool or a weapon, or by a dose of drink or of solid food, or by application of fire or of cold, or by deprivation of air, and whether he does it himself with his own body or by means of other bodies,— in all cases it shall be accounted to be his own personal act, and he shall pay the following penalties. If he kill a slave, he shall secure the master against damage and loss, reckoning as if it were a slave of his own that had been destroyed, or else he shall be liable to a penalty of double the value of the dead man,—and the judges shall make an assessment of his value,—and he must also employ means of purification greater and more numerous than those employed by persons who kill a man at games, and those interpreters[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 759c.) whom the oracle names shall be in charge of these rites; but if it be a slave of his own that he has killed, he shall be set free after the legal purification. And if anyone kill a free man involuntarily, he shall undergo the same purifications as the man that has killed a slave; and there is an ancient tale, told of old, to which he must not fail to pay regard. The tale is this,—that the man slain by violence, who has lived in a free and proud spirit, is wroth with his slayer when newly slain, and being filled also with dread and horror on account of his own violent end, when he sees his murderer going about in the very haunts which he himself had frequented, he is horror-stricken; and being disquieted himself, he takes conscience as his ally, and with all his might disquiets his slayer—both the man himself and his doings. Wherefore it is right for the slayer to retire before his victim for a full year, in all its seasons, and to vacate all the spots he owned in all parts of his native land;

Ath. and if the dead man be a Stranger, he shall be barred also from the Stranger’s country for the same period. If a man willingly obeys this law, he that is nearest of kin to the dead man, having the supervision of the performance of all these rules, shall pardon him and live at peace with him, and in doing so he will be acting with perfect propriety; but if a man disobeys, and dares, in the first place, to approach the altars and to do sacrifice while still unpurified, and if he refuses, further, to fulfil the times appointed in exile, then the next of kin to the dead man shall prosecute the slayer for murder, and in case of conviction all the penalties shall be doubled. And should the nearest relative fail to prosecute for the crime, it shall be as though the pollution had passed on to him, through the victim claiming atonement for his fate; and whoso pleases shall bring a charge against him, and compel him by law to quit his country for five years. And if a Stranger involuntarily kills a Stranger who is resident in the State, whoso pleases shall prosecute him under the same laws; and if he be a resident alien, he shall be exiled for a year, while if he be altogether a Stranger—whether the man slain be a Stranger or resident alien or citizen—in addition to the purifications imposed, he shall be barred for all his life from the country which ordains these laws; and if he transgresses the law, and comes back to it, the Law-wardens shall punish him with death; and if he has any property, they shall hand it over to the next of kin of the victim. And should he come back unwillingly, in case he be shipwrecked off the coast of the country, he shall camp with his feet in the sea, and watch for a ship to take him off; or in case he be brought in by people forcibly by land, the first magistrate of the State that meets with him shall loose him, and send him out over the border unharmed. If a person with his own hand kills a free man, and the deed be done in passion, in a case of this kind we must begin by making a distinction between two varieties of the crime. For murder is committed in passion by those who, on a sudden and without intent to kill, destroy a man by blows or some such means in an immediate attack, when the deed is at once followed by repentance; and it is also a case of murder done in passion whenever men who are insulted by shameful words or actions seek for vengeance, and end by killing a man with deliberate intent to kill, and feel no repentance for the deed.

Ath. We must lay it down, as it seems, that these murders are of two kinds, both as a rule done in passion, and most properly described as lying midway between the voluntary and the involuntary. None the less, each of these kinds tends to resemble one or other of these contraries; for the man who retains his passion and takes vengeance, not suddenly on the spur of the moment, but after lapse of time, and with deliberate intent, resembles the voluntary murderer; whereas the man who does not nurse his rage, but gives way to it at once on the spur of the moment and without deliberate intent, has a likeness to the involuntary murderer; yet neither is he wholly involuntary, but bears a resemblance thereto. Thus murders done in passion are difficult to define,—whether one should treat them in law as voluntary or involuntary. The best and truest way is to class them both as resemblances, and to distinguish them by the mark of deliberate intent or lack of intent, and to impose more severe penalties on those who slay with intent and in anger, and milder penalties on those who do so without intent and on a sudden. For that which resembles a greater evil must be more heavily punished, that which resembles a lesser evil more lightly. So our laws also must do likewise.

Clin. They must, most certainly.

Ath. Returning, then, to our task, let us make this pronouncement:—If a man with his own hand slay a free man, and the deed be done in rage without deliberate intent, he shall suffer such other penalties as it is proper for the man to suffer who has slain without passion, and he shall be compelled to go into exile for two years, thereby chastising his own passion. And he that slays in passion and with deliberate intent shall be treated in other respects like the former, but shall be exiled for three years—instead of two, like the other,—receiving a longer period of punishment because of the greatness of his passion. As regards the return home, in such cases it shall be on this wise. (It is a difficult matter to legislate for with exactness; for sometimes the more dangerous of the two murderers in the eye of the law might prove the more gentle and the gentler the more dangerous, and the latter might have committed the murder more savagely, the former more gently; though as a rule matters turn out in the way we have stated: so, regarding all these regulations the Law-wardens must act as supervisors). When the period of exile in each case has elapsed, they must send twelve of their number to the borders of the country to act as judges—they having made during the interval a still closer investigation into the actions of the exiles;

Ath. and these men shall serve also as judges in regard to the matter of giving them pardon and admitting them back; and the exiles must abide by the verdicts of these magistrates. And if either of them, after his return, again yields to rage and commits the same act, he shall be exiled, and never again return; and if he returns, he shall suffer the same fate as the returned Stranger.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 855c.) He that slays a slave of his own shall purify himself; and if he kill another man’s slave in rage, he shall pay to the owner twice the damage. And if anyone of all these types of slayers disobeys the law and, being unpurified, defiles the market and the games and other sacred assemblies, whoso pleases shall prosecute both that member of the dead man’s kindred who permits this and the slayer himself, and shall compel the one of them to exact, and the other to pay, double the amount of the money-fines and of the other exactions[*](Such as the costs of the purification-rites.); and the sum so paid he shall keep for himself as the law directs. If a slave kills his own master in rage, the kindred of the dead man shall treat the slayer how they please,—save that they must not in any wise let him live,—and shall be held guiltless. And if a slave kill a free man (other than his master) in rage, his masters shall hand over the slave to the kindred of the dead man, and they shall be compelled to put the criminal to death, doing so in whatever manner they choose. If in a fit of rage a father or mother slays a son or daughter by means of blows or some kind of violence,—an occurrence which, though rare, does sometimes happen,—the slayer must make the same purifications as the other slayers, and be exiled for three years; and when the slayers have returned, the wife must be separated from the husband and the husband from the wife, and they must never again have a child, nor shall they ever share a home with those whom the slayer has robbed of child or brother, nor shall they take part in their worship; he that is disobedient and impious concerning this matter shall be liable to an action for impiety at the hands of whoso pleases. And if a husband in a fit of rage kills his wedded wife, or if a wife in like manner kills her husband, they must undergo the same purifications, and remain exiled for three years. And when one who has committed such a crime returns, he shall never take part in worship with his children, nor sit at table with them; and if either the parent or the child disobeys, he shall be liable to a charge of impiety at the hands of whoso pleases.

Ath. And if in rage a brother kill a brother or a sister, or a sister kill a brother or a sister, it shall be declared that they must undergo the same purifications and banishment as have been ordained for parents and children,—namely, that the homicide shall never share in the house or in the worship of those brothers or parents whom he has robbed of brothers or of children; and if anyone disobeys, he will rightly and justly be liable to the law laid down concerning such cases of impiety. If any man gets into such an uncontrollable rage with his parents as actually to dare to kill a parent in the madness of his rage, then, in case the dead person before dying voluntarily acquits the culprit of murder, he shall be held pure, after he has purified himself in the same manner as those who have committed an involuntary murder, and done as they in all other respects; but in case the dead person does not so acquit him, then he that has done such a deed is liable to a number of laws: for outrage he will be liable to most heavy penalties, and likewise for impiety and temple-robbing, since he has robbed his parent of life; so that if to die a hundred deaths were possible for any one man, that a parricide or a matricide, who did the deed in rage, should undergo a hundred deaths would be a fate most just. Since every law will forbid the man to kill father or mother, the very authors of his existence, even for the sake of saving his own life, and will ordain that he must suffer and endure everything rather than commit such an act,— in what other way than this can such a man be fittingly dealt with by law, and receive his due reward? Be it enacted, therefore, that for the man who in rage slays father or mother the penalty is death. If a brother kill a brother in fight during a civil war, or in any such way, acting in self-defence against the other, who first started the brawl, he shall be counted as one who has slain an enemy, and be held guiltless; so too, when a citizen has killed a citizen in like manner, or a Stranger a Stranger. And if a citizen kill a Stranger in self-defence, or a Stranger a citizen, he shall be accounted pure in the same way. So likewise, if a slave kill a slave; but if a slave kill a free man in self-defence, he shall be liable to the same laws as he that kills a father. And what has been said about remission of the charge in the case of the murder of a father shall hold equally good in all such cases—if any man voluntarily acquit any culprit of this charge, the purifications for the culprit shall be made as though the murder were involuntary, and one year of exile shall be imposed by law. Let us take this as an adequate statement respecting murder-cases that involve violence, and are involuntary and done in passion. Next to these we must state the regulations regarding such acts when voluntary and involving iniquity of all kinds and premeditated,—acts caused by yielding to pleasure or lust or envy.

Clin. You are right.

Ath. First, let us once more state, as best we can, how many these causes are likely to be. The greatest is lust, which masters a soul that is made savage by desires; and it occurs especially in connection with that object for which the most frequent and intense craving afflicts the bulk of men,—the power which wealth possesses over them, owing to the badness of their nature and lack of culture, to breed in them countless lustings after its insatiable and endless acquisition. And of this lack of culture the cause is to be found in the ill-praising of wealth in the common talk of both Greeks and barbarians; for by exalting it as the first of goods,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 697b, Plat. Laws 831c; Aristot. Pol. 1323a.25 ff; Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1098 b 13 ff.) when it should come but third, they ruin both posterity and themselves. The noblest and best course of all in all States is that the truth should be stated about wealth,—namely, that it exists for the sake of the body, and the body for the sake of the soul; so that, while the objects for which it really exists are goods, yet wealth itself will come third, after goodness of body and of soul. So this law will serve as an instructor, to teach that the man who intends to be happy must seek not to be wealthy, but to be justly and temperately wealthy; and if this were so, no murders that needed purging by murders would occur in States. But, as things now stand, this love of riches is—as we said[*](Plat. Laws 831c; cp. Aristot. Pol. 1271a.17.) when we began this subject—one cause, and a very great cause, which produces the most serious of trials for willful murder. A second cause is the temper of the ambitious soul, which breeds envies that are dangerous associates for the man that feels the envy, in the first place, and dangerous also for the best citizens in the State. Thirdly, fears bred of cowardice and iniquity have wrought many murders,—in cases where men do or have done things concerning which they desire that no one should share their secret; consequently, if there are any who might expose their secret, they remove them by death, whenever they can do so by no other means. Concerning all these matters, the preludes mentioned shall be pronounced, and, in addition to them, that story which is believed by many when they hear it from the lips of those who seriously relate such things at their mystic rites,—that vengeance for such acts is exacted in Hades,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 722d: whereas the law coerces, its prelude seeks to persuade.) and that those who return again to this earth[*](This implies the (Pythagorean) doctrine of re-incarnation: cp. Plat. Laws 904c, Plat. Rep. 614e ff., Plat. Tim. 90e ff.) are bound to pay the natural penalty,—each culprit the same, that is, which he inflicted on his victim,—and that their life on earth must end in their meeting a like fate at the hands of another.

Ath. To him who obeys, and fully dreads such a penalty, there is no need to add to the prelude by reciting the law on the subject; but to the disobedient this is the law which shall be stated in the written code:—Whosoever of deliberate intent and unjustly slays with his own hand any of the tribesmen shall, in the first place, be debarred from the lawful assemblies, and shall not defile either temples or market or harbors or any other place of meeting, whether or not any person warns off the doer of such deeds—for he is warned off by the law, which is, and always will continue, warning him thus publicly, on behalf of the whole State; and the man who fails to prosecute him when he ought, or fails to warn him of the fact that he is thus debarred, if he be of kin to the dead man on either the male or female side, and not further removed than a cousin,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 877c Plat. Laws 877d.) shall, first, receive upon himself the defilement and the wrath of the gods, since the curse of the law brings also upon him that of the divine voice, and, secondly, he shall be liable to the action of whosoever pleases to punish him on behalf of the dead man. And he that wishes to punish him shall duly perform all that concerns the observance of the purifications proper therefore, and whatsoever else the god prescribes as lawful in these cases, and he shall recite the pronouncement of warning; and thus he shall go and compel the culprit to submit to the execution of the penalty according to law. That it is necessary that these proceedings should be accompanied by certain invocations and sacrifices to those gods whose concern it is that murders should not occur in States, it is easy for the lawgiver to demonstrate: who these gods are, and what method for bringing such prosecutions would be the most correct in point of ritual,—this the Law-wardens, in conjunction with the interpreters and seers and with the god, shall ordain; and so they shall bring these prosecutions. And the judges in these cases shall be the same persons who form—as we described[*](Plat. Laws 855c.)—the final court of trial for robbers of temples. He that is convicted shall be punished by death, and he shall not be buried in the land of the victim, because of the shamelessness as well as impiety of his act. If the culprit flees and refuses to come up for judgment, he shall be exiled with an unending exile; and if any such person sets foot in the country of the murdered man, he of the dead man’s relatives or of the citizens that first meets with him shall slay him with impunity, or else bind him and hand him over to those magistrates who have judged the case, to be slain. The prosecutor, in a murder-charge, must at once demand bail from the defendant; and the latter shall provide three substantial securities—as approved by the court of the judges in such cases—, who guarantee to produce him at the trial; and if a man be unwilling or unable to provide these sureties, the court must take, bind and keep him, and produce him at the trial of the case.

Ath. If a man does not slay another with his own hand, but plots death for him, and after killing him by design and plotting resides in the State, being responsible for the murder and not innocent or pure of heart in respect of it,—in his case the prosecutions on this charge shall proceed in the same way, except in the matter of bail. And the person convicted shall be allowed to have burial at home; but all else shall be carried out in his case in the same way as in the case last described. And these same regulations shall govern all cases where Strangers are at law with Strangers, or citizens and Strangers at law with each other, or slaves with slaves, in respect both of actual murder and of plotting to murder, except as regards bail; and as to this, just as it has been said that the actual murderers must be secured by guarantors, so these persons too must provide security to the person who proclaims the murder. If a slave willfully slay a free man, either by his own hand or by plotting, and be convicted at the trial, the public executioner of the State shall drag him in the direction of the tomb of the dead man to a spot from which he can see the tomb, and there scourge him with as many stripes as the prosecutor shall prescribe; and if the murderer be still alive after the beating, he shall put him to death. And if a man kill a slave when he is doing no wrong, actuated by fear lest the slave should expose his own foul and evil deeds, or for any other such reason, just as he would have been liable to a charge of murder for slaying a citizen, so likewise he shall be liable in the same way for the death of such a slave. Should cases occur of a kind for which it is a formidable and most unwelcome task to legislate, and yet impossible not to legislate,—such as murders of kinsfolk, either by a man’s own hand or by plotting, which are wholly willful and wicked,—crimes that occur for the most part in States with bad organization and nurture, but may occur at times even in a country where one would not expect them,—we must again recite the story we uttered[*](Plat. Laws 870d, Plat. Laws 870e.) a moment ago, if haply anyone, on hearing us, may become more strongly disposed in consequence voluntarily to abstain from murders of the most impious kind. The myth or story (or whatever one should call it) has been clearly stated, as derived from ancient priests, to the effect that Justice, the avenger of kindred blood, acting as overseer, employs the law just mentioned, and has ordained that the doer of such a deed must of necessity suffer the same as he has done: if ever a man has slain his father, he must endure to suffer the same violent fate at his own children’s hands in days to come; or if he has slain his mother, he must of necessity come to birth sharing in the female nature, and when thus born be removed from life by the hands of his offspring in afterdays;

Ath. for of the pollution of common blood there is no other purification, nor does the stain of pollution admit of being washed off before the soul which committed the act pays back murder for murder, like for like, and thus by propitiation lays to rest the wrath of all the kindred. Wherefore, in dread of such vengeances from Heaven a man should refrain himself; if, however, any should be overtaken by a disaster so lamentable that they have the audacity deliberately and of free will to reave soul from body for father, mother, brethren or children, in such cases the ordinance of the law of the mortal lawgiver stands thus:— The warnings of exclusion from customary places, and the sureties, are the same as those prescribed for former cases; and if any man be convicted of such a murder, and of having slain any of the persons named, the officers of the judges and magistrates shall kill him and cast him out naked at an appointed cross-roads outside the city; and all the magistrates, acting on behalf of the whole State, shall take each a stone and cast it on the head of the corpse, and thus make atonement for the whole State; and after this they shall carry the corpse to the borders of the land and cast it out unburied, according to law. Now he that slays the person who is, as men say, nearest and dearest of all,—what penalty should he suffer? I mean the man that slays himself,—violently robbing himself of his Fate-given share of life, when this is not legally ordered by the State, and when he is not compelled to it by the occurrence of some intolerable and inevitable misfortune, nor by falling into some disgrace that is beyond remedy or endurance,—but merely inflicting upon himself this iniquitous penalty owing to sloth and unmanly cowardice. In this case, the rest of the matters—concerning the rules about rites of purification and of burial—come within the cognizance of the god, and regarding these the next of kin must seek information from the interpreters and the laws dealing with these matters, and act in accordance with their instructions: but for those thus destroyed the tombs shall be, first, in an isolated position with not even one adjacent, and, secondly, they shall be buried in those borders of the twelve districts which are barren and nameless, without note, and with neither headstone nor name to indicate the tombs. If a mule or any other animal murder anyone,— except when they do it when taking part in a public competition,—the relatives shall prosecute the slayer for murder, and so many of the land-stewards as are appointed by the relatives shall decide the case, and the convicted beast they shall kill and cast out beyond the borders of the country.

Ath. If a lifeless thing rob a man of life—except it be lightning or some bolt from heaven,—if it be anything else than these which kills someone, either through his falling against it or its falling upon him, then the relative shall set the nearest neighbor to pass judgment on it, thus making atonement on behalf of himself and all his kindred, and the thing convicted they shall cast beyond the borders, as was stated in respect of animals. If anyone be found evidently dead, and if his slayer be unknown and undiscoverable after careful search, then the warnings shall be the same as in the other cases, including the warning of death to the doer of the deed, and the prosecutor, when he has proved his claim, shall give public warning in the market-place to the slayer of So-and-so, convicted of murder, not to set foot in holy places nor anywhere in the country of the victim, since, if he appears and is known, he shall be put to death and be cast out from the country of the victim without burial. So let this stand as one section of our code of law dealing with murder. Thus far we have dealt with crimes of the kind described; in what follows we shall describe the cases and the circumstances under which the slayer will rightly be pronounced guiltless. If a man catch and slay a thief who is entering his house by night to steal goods, he shall be guiltless; and if a man in self-defence slay a footpad, he shall be guiltless. The man who forcibly violates a free woman or boy shall be slain with impunity by the person thus violently outraged, or by his father or brother or sons. And should a man discover his wedded wife being violated, if he kills the violator he shall be guiltless before the law. And if a man slay anyone when warding off death from his father (when he is doing no wrong), or from his mother or children or brethren, or from the mother of his own children, he shall be wholly guiltless. Thus let it be laid down by law respecting the nurture and training of living souls,—which when gained make life livable, but when missed, unlivable,—and respecting the punishments which ought to be imposed in cases of violent death. The regulations regarding the nurture and training of the body have been stated[*](Plat. Laws 813d.): but what comes next, namely, violent actions, both voluntary and involuntary, done by one against another,—these we must define as clearly as we can, stating their character and number and what punishment each duly deserves: such enactments, as it seems, will rightly follow on the foregoing. Next in order after cases of death even the least competent of those who essay legislation would place cases of wounds and maiming. Wounds, just like murders, must be classed under several heads,—the involuntary, those done in passion, those done in fear, and all those that are voluntary and deliberate.

Ath. Concerning all such cases we must make a prefatory pronouncement to this effect:—It is really necessary for men to make themselves laws and to live according to laws, or else to differ not at all from the most savage of beasts. The reason thereof is this,—that no man’s nature is naturally able both to perceive what is of benefit to the civic life of men and, perceiving it, to be alike able and willing to practice what is best. For, in the first place, it is difficult to perceive that a true civic art necessarily cares for the public, not the private, interest,—for the public interest bind States together, whereas the private interest rends them asunder,—and to perceive also that it benefits both public and private interests alike when the public interest, rather than the private, is well enacted. And, secondly, even if a man fully grasps the truth of this as a principle of art, should he afterwards get control of the State and become an irresponsible autocrat, he would never prove able to abide by this view and to continue always fostering the public interest in the State as the object of first importance, to which the private interest is but secondary; rather, his mortal nature will always urge him on to grasping and self-interested action, irrationally avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure; both these objects it will prefer above justice and goodness, and by causing darkness within itself it will fill to the uttermost both itself and the whole State with all manner of evils. Yet if ever there should arise a man competent by nature and by a birthright of divine grace to assume such an office, he would have no need of rulers over him; for no law or ordinance is mightier than Knowledge,[*](Cp. Plat. Prot. 352b ff.; Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1145 b 24 ff.) nor is it right for Reason to be subject or in thrall to anything, but to be lord of all things, if it is really true to its name and free in its inner nature. But at present such a nature exists nowhere at all, except in small degree; wherefore we must choose what is second best, namely, ordinance and law, which see and discern the general principle, but are unable to see every instance in detail. This declaration has been made for the sake of what follows: now we shall ordain what the man who has wounded, or in some way injured, another must suffer or pay. And here, of course, it is open to anyone, in regard to any case, to interrupt us, and quite properly, with the question—What wounds has the man you speak of inflicted, and on whom, and how and when? For cases of wounding are countless in their variety, and they differ vastly from one another. So it is impossible for us either to commit all these cases to the law courts for trial, or to commit none of them.

Ath. Yet in regard to them all there is one point that we must of necessity commit for decision,—the question of fact, whether or not each of the alleged acts took place; and it is practically impossible for the lawgiver to refuse in all cases to commit to the courts the question regarding the proper penalty or fine to be inflicted on the culprit, and himself to pass laws respecting all such cases, great and small.

Clin. What, then, is to be our next statement?

Ath. This,—that some matters are to be committed to the courts, while others are not to be so committed, but enacted by the lawgiver.

Clin. What are the matters to be enacted, and what are to be handed over to the law courts for decision?

Ath. It will be best to make the following statement next,— that in a State where the courts are poor and dumb and decide their cases privily, secreting their own opinions, or (and this is a still more dangerous practice) when they make their decisions not silently but filled with tumult, like theaters, roaring out praise or blame of each speaker in turn,—then the whole State, as a rule, is faced with a difficult situation. To be compelled by some necessity to legislate for law courts of this kind is no happy task; but when one is so compelled, one must commit to them the right of fixing penalties only in a very few cases, dealing oneself with most cases by express legislation—if indeed one ever legislates at all for a State of that description. On the other hand, in a State where the courts have the best possible constitution, and the prospective judges are well-trained and tested most strictly, there it is right, and most fitting and proper, that we should commit to such judges for decision most of the questions regarding what penalties convicted criminals should suffer or pay. On the present occasion we may well be pardoned if we refrain from ordaining for them by law the points that are most important and most numerous, which even ill-educated judges could discern, and could assign to each offence the penalty merited by the wrong as suffered and committed; and seeing that the people for whom we are legislating are themselves likely, as we suppose, to become not the least capable of judges of such matters, we must commit most of them to them. None the less, that course which we frequently adopted[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 770b, Plat. Laws 846b, Plat. Laws 846c.) when laying down our former laws, both by word and action— when we stated an outline and typical cases of punishments, and gave the judges examples, so as to prevent their ever overstepping the bounds of justice,—that course was a perfectly right one then, and now also we ought to adopt it, when we return again at last to the task of legislation.

Ath.So let our written law concerning wounding run thus—If any man purposing of intent to kill a friendly person—save such as the law sends him against,—wounds him, but is unable to kill him, he that has thus purposed and dealt the wound does not deserve to be pitied; rather he is to be regarded exactly as a slayer, and must be compelled to submit to trial for murder; yet out of respect for his escape from sheer ill-fortune and for his Genius [*](For daemon in this sense of tutelary Genius or Guardian-angel, cp. Plat. Laws 732c, Plat. Rep. 619d ff, Plat. Rep. 619e.)—who in pity alike for him and for the wounded man saved the wound of the one from proving fatal and the fortune and crime of the other from proving accursed,—in gratitude to this Genius, and in compliance therewith, the wounder shall be relieved of the death-penalty, but shall be deported for life to a neighboring State, enjoying the fruits of all his own possessions. If he has done damage to the wounded man, he shall pay for it in full to him that is damaged; and the damage shall be assessed by the court which decides the case, which court shall consist of those who would have tried the culprit for murder if the man had died of the wound he received. If in like manner, deliberately, a son wound his parents or a slave his master, death shall be the penalty; and if a brother wound in like manner a brother or sister, or a sister wound a brother or sister, and be convicted of wounding deliberately, death shall be the penalty. A wife that has wounded her husband, or a husband his wife, with intent to kill, shall be exiled for life: if they have sons or daughters who are still children, the guardians shall administer their property, and shall take charge of the children as orphans; but if they be already grown men, the offspring shall be compelled to support their exiled parent, and they shall possess his property. If any person overtaken by such a disaster be childless, the kinsfolk on both sides, both male and female, as far as cousins’ children, shall meet together and appoint an heir for the house in question—the 5040th in the State,—taking counsel with the Law-wardens and priests; and they shall bear in mind this principle, that no house of the 5040 belongs as much, either by private or public right, to the occupier or to the whole of his kindred as it belongs to the State; and the State must needs keep its own houses as holy and happy as possible.

Ath. Therefore, whenever any house is at once unhappy and unholy, in that the owner thereof leaves no children, but—being either unmarried or, though married, childless—dies, after having been convicted of willful murder or of some other offence against gods or citizens for which death is the penalty expressly laid down in the law; or else if any man who is without male issue be exiled for life;—then they shall be in duty bound, in the first place, to make purifications and expiations for this house, and, in the next place, the relatives, as we said just now, must meet together and in consultation with the Law-wardens consider what family there is in the State which is pre-eminent for goodness, and prosperous withal, and containing several children. Then from the family selected they shall adopt one child on behalf of the dead man’s father and ancestors to be a son of theirs, and they shall name him after one of them, for the sake of the omen—with a prayer that in this wise he may prove to them a begetter of offspring, a hearth-master and a minister in holy and sacred things, and be blest with happier fortune than his (official) father; him they shall thus establish legally as lot-holder, and the offender they shall suffer to be nameless and childless and portionless, whenever such calamities overtake him. It is not the fact, as it would seem, that in the case of all objects boundary is contiguous with boundary; but where there is a neutral strip, which lies between the two boundaries, impinging on each, it will be midway between both. And that is precisely the description we gave[*](Plat. Laws 867a.) of the passionate action as one which lies midway between involuntary and voluntary actions. So let the law stand thus respecting wounding committed in anger:—If a person be convicted, in the first place he shall pay double the damage, in case the wound prove to be curable, but four times the damage in case of incurable wounds. And if the wound be curable, but cause great shame and disgrace to the wounded party, the culprit shall pay three times the damage. And if ever a person, in wounding anyone, do damage to the State as well as to the victim, by rendering him incapable of helping his country against its enemies, such a person, in addition to the rest of the damages, shall pay also for the damage done to the State: in addition to his own military service, he shall do service also as a substitute for the incapacitated man, and carry out his military duties in his place, or, if he fails to do so, he shall by law be liable to prosecution for shirking military service, at the hands of anyone who pleases. The due proportion of the damage payable—whether two, three, or four times the actual amount—shall be fixed by the judges who have voted on the case. If a kinsman wound a kinsman in the same way as the person just mentioned, the members of his tribe and kin, both males and females, as far as cousins’ children on both the male and female side, shall meet together and, after coming to a decision, shall hand over the case to the natural parents for assessment of the damage; and if the assessment be disputed, the kindred on the male side shall be authorized to make a binding assessment; and if they prove unable to do so, they shall refer the matter finally to the Law-wardens.

Ath. When woundings of this kind are inflicted by children on parents, the judges shall be, of necessity, men over sixty years of age who have genuine, and not merely adopted, children of their own; and if a person be convicted, they shall assess the penalty—whether such a person ought to be put to death, or ought to suffer some other punishment still more severe, or possibly a little less severe: but none of the relatives of the culprit shall act as a judge, not even if he be of the full age stated in the law. If a slave wound a free man in rage, his owner shall hand over the slave to the wounded man to be dealt with just as he pleases; and if he do not hand over the slave, he shall himself make good the damage to the full. And if any man alleges that the deed was a trick concocted by the slave in collusion with the wounded party, he shall dispute the case: if he fail to win it, he shall pay three times the damage, but if he win, he shall hold liable for kidnapping the man who contrived the trick in collusion with the slave. Whoever wounds another involuntarily shall pay a single equivalent for the damage (since no lawgiver is able to control fortune), and the judges shall be those designated to act in cases of the wounding of parents by children; and they shall assess the due proportion of damage payable. All the cases we have now dealt with are of suffering due to violence, and the whole class of cases of outrage involve violence. Regarding such cases, the view that should be held by everyone,—man, woman and child,—is this, that the older is greatly more revered than the younger, both among the gods and among those men who propose to keep safe and happy. An outrage perpetrated by a younger against an older person is a shameful thing to see happening in a State, and a thing hateful to God: when a young man is beaten by an old man, it is meet that, in every case, he should quietly endure his anger, and thus store up honor for the time of his own old age. Therefore let the law stand thus:—Everyone shall reverence his elder both by deed and word; whosoever, man or woman, exceeds himself in age by twenty years he shall regard as a father or a mother, and he shall keep his hands off that person, and he shall ever refrain himself, for the sake of the gods of birth, from all the generation of those who are potentially his own bearers and begetters. So likewise he shall keep his hands off a Stranger, be he long resident or newly arrived; neither as aggressor nor in self-defence shall he venture at all to chastise such an one with blows. If he deems that a Stranger has shown outrageous audacity in beating him and needs correction, he shall seize the man and take him before the bench of the city-stewards (but refrain from beating him), so that he may flee the thought of ever daring to strike a native. And the city-stewards shall take over the Stranger and examine him—with due respect for the God of Strangers;[*](For the respect due to Strangers as a religious duty, cp. Plat. Laws 729e.) and if he really appears to have beaten the native unjustly, they shall give the Stranger as many strokes of the scourge as he himself inflicted, and make him cease from his foreign forwardness; but if he has not acted unjustly, they shall threaten and reprove the man who arrested him, and dismiss them both.

Ath. If a man of a certain age beat a man of his own age, or one above his own age who is childless,— whether it be a case of an old man beating an old man, or of a young man beating a young man,—the man attacked shall defend himself with bare hands, as nature dictates, and without a weapon. But if a man over forty ventures to fight, whether as aggressor or in self-defence, he shall be called a knave and a boor, and if he finds himself incurring a degrading sentence, he will be getting his deserts. Any man who lends a ready ear to such exhortations will prove easy to manage; but he that is intractable and pays no regard to the prelude will hearken readily to a law to this effect:—If anyone beats a person who is twenty or more years older than himself, in the first place, whoever comes upon them, if he be neither of equal age nor younger, shall try to separate them, or else be held to be a coward in the eyes of the law; and if he be of a like age with the man assaulted or still younger, he shall defend him who is wronged as he would a brother or a father or a still older progenitor. Further, he that dares to strike the older man in the way described shall be liable also to an action for outrage, and if he be convicted, he shall be imprisoned for not less than a year; and if the judges assess the penalty at a longer period, the period so assessed shall be binding on him. And if a Stranger or a resident alien beat a man older than himself by twenty or more years, the same law regarding help from bystanders shall be equally binding; and he that is cast in a suit of this kind, if he be a non-resident Stranger, shall be imprisoned for two years and fulfil this sentence; and he that is a resident alien and disobeys the laws shall be imprisoned for three years, unless the court assess his penalty at a longer period. And the man who is a bystander in any of these cases of assault, and who fails to give help as the law prescribes, shall be penalized by a fine of a mina, if he be a man of the highest property-class; of fifty drachmae, if he be of the second class; of thirty drachmae, if of the third; and of twenty drachmae, if of the fourth class. And the court for such cases shall consist of the generals, taxiarchs, phylarchs, and hipparchs. Laws, it would seem, are made partly for the sake of good men, to afford them instruction as to what manner of intercourse will best secure for them friendly association one with another, and partly also for the sake of those who have shunned education, and who, being of a stubborn nature, have had no softening treatment[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 853d.) to prevent their taking to all manner of wickedness. It is because of these men that the laws which follow have to be stated,—laws which the lawgiver must enact of necessity, on their account, although wishing that the need for them may never arise.

Ath. Whosoever shall dare to lay hands on father or mother, or their progenitors, and to use outrageous violence, fearing neither the wrath of the gods above nor that of the Avengers (as they are called) of the underworld, but scorning the ancient and worldwide traditions (thinking he knows what he knows not at all), and shall thus transgress the law,—for such a man there is needed some most severe deterrent. Death is not a most severe penalty; and the punishments we are told of in Hades for such offences, although more severe than death and described most truly, yet fail to prove any deterrent to souls such as these,—else we should never find cases of matricide and of impiously audacious assaults upon other progenitors. Consequently, the punishments inflicted upon these men here in their lifetime for crimes of this kind must, so far as possible, fall in no way short of the punishments in Hades. So the next pronouncement shall run thus:—Whosoever shall dare to beat his father or mother, or their fathers or mothers, if he be not afflicted with madness,—in the first place, the bystander shall give help, as in the former cases, and the resident Stranger who helps shall be invited to a first-row seat at the public games, but he who fails to help shall be banished from the country for life; and the non-resident Stranger shall receive praise if he helps, and blame if he does not help; and the slave who helps shall be made free, but if he fails to help he shall be beaten with 100 stripes of a scourge by the market-stewards, if the assault occur in the market, and if it occur in the city, but outside the market-place, the punishment shall be inflicted by the city-steward in residence, and if it occur in any country district, by the officers of the country-stewards. And the bystander who is a native—whether man, woman, or boy—shall in every case drive off the attacker, crying out against his impiety; and he that fails to drive him off shall be liable by law to the curse of Zeus, guardian-god of kinship and parentage. And if a man be convicted on a charge of outrageous assault upon parents, in the first place he shall be banished for life from the city to other parts of the country, and he shall keep away from all sacred places and if he fails to keep away, the country-stewards shall punish him with stripes, and in any other way they choose, and if he returns again he shall be punished with death. And if any free man voluntarily eat or drink or hold any similar intercourse with such an one, or even give him merely a greeting when he meets him, he shall not enter any holy place or the market or any part of the city until he be purified, but he shall regard himself as having incurred a share of contagious guilt;

Ath. and should he disobey the law and illegally defile sacred things and the State, any magistrate who notices his case and fails to bring him up for trial shall have to face this omission as one of the heaviest charges against him at his audit. If it be a slave that strikes the free man—stranger or citizen—the bystander shall help, failing which he shall pay the penalty as fixed according to his assessment;[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 880d.) and the bystanders together with the person assaulted shall bind the slave, and hand him over to the injured person, and he shall take charge of him and bind him in fetters, and give him as many stripes with the scourge as he pleases, provided that he does not spoil his value to the damage of his master, to whose ownership he shall hand him over according to law. The law shall stand thus:—Whosoever, being a slave, beats a free man without order of the magistrates,—him his owner shall take over in bonds from the person assaulted, and he shall not loose him until the slave have convinced the person assaulted that he deserves to live loosed from bonds. The same laws shall hold good for all such cases when both parties are women, or when the plaintiff is a woman and the defendant a man, or the plaintiff a man and the defendant a woman.