Epistles

Plato to the relatives and companions of Dion wishes well-doing. The policy which would best serve to secure your real well-doing [*](For this reference to the phrasing of the opening salutation cf. Plat. L. 3 ad init.) is that which I shall now endeavor as best I can to describe to you. And I hope that my advice will not only be salutary to you (though to you in special), but also to all the Syracusans, in the second place, and, in the third, to your enemies and your foes, unless any of them be a doer of impious deeds [*](Alluding to Callippus, the murderer of Dion.); for such deeds are irremediable and none could ever wash out their stain. [*](cf. Plat. Gorg. 525c.) Mark, then, what I now say. Now that the tyranny is broken down over the whole of Sicily all your fighting rages round this one subject of dispute, the one party desiring to recover the headship, and the other to put the finishing touch to the expulsion of the tyrants. Now the majority of men always believe that the right advice about these matters is the advising of such action as will do the greatest possible harm to one’s enemies and the greatest possible good to one’s friends; whereas it is by no means easy to do much harm to others without also suffering in turn much harm oneself. And without going far afield one may see such consequences clearly in the recent events in Sicily itself, where the one faction is trying to inflict injury and the other to ward off the injurers; and the tale thereof, if ever you told it to others, would inevitably prove a most impressive lesson. Of such policies, one may say, there is no lack; but as for a policy which would prove beneficial to all alike, foes as well as friends, or at least as little detrimental as possible to either, such a policy is neither easy to discern, nor, when discerned, easy to carry out; and to advise such a policy or attempt to describe it is much like saying a prayer. [*](Prayer in the sense of a pious wish unlikely to be fulfilled, or a last resort.)

Be it so, then, that this is nothing but a prayer (and in truth every man ought always to begin his speaking and his thinking with the gods); yet may it attain fulfilment in indicating some such counsel as this:—Now and almost ever since the war [*](The struggle against the Carthaginians, which had lasted, with hardly a break, since 409 B.C.) began both you and your enemies have been ruled continuously by that one family which your fathers set on the throne in the hour of their greatest distress, when Greek Sicily was in the utmost danger of being entirely overrun by the Carthaginians and barbarized. On that occasion they chose Dionysius because of his youth and warlike prowess to take charge of the military operations for which he was suited, with Hipparinus, who was older, as his fellow-counsellor, appointing them dictators for the safeguarding of Sicily, with the title, as men say, of tyrants. But whether one prefers to suppose that the cause which ultimately brought about their salvation was divine Fortune and the Deity, or the virtue of the rulers, or possibly the combination of both assisted by the citizens of that age—as to this let everyone form his own notion; in any case this was the way in which salvation for the men of that generation came about. Seeing, then, that they proved themselves men of such a quality, it is surely right that they should be repaid with gratitude by all those whom they saved. But if in after times the tyrant’s house has wrongly abused the bounty of the city, the penalty for this it has suffered in part, [*](Alluding to the expulsion of Dionysius from Sicily; he retired to Locri in Italy.) and in part it will have to pay. What, then, is the penalty rightly to be exacted from them under existing circumstances? If you were able to get quit of them easily, without serious dangers and trouble, or if they were able to regain the empire without difficulty, then, in either case, it would not have been possible for me so much as to offer the advice which I am now about to utter; but as it is, both of you ought to bear in mind and remember how many times each party has hopefully imagined that it lacked but a little of achieving complete success almost every time; and, what is more, that it is precisely this little deficiency which is always turning out to be the cause of great and numberless evils. And of these evils no limit is ever reached, but what seems to be the end of the old is always being linked on to the beginning of a new brood; and because of this endless chain of evil the whole tribe of tyrants and democrats alike will be in danger of destruction. But should any of these consequences—likely as they are though lamentable—come to pass, hardly a trace of the Greek tongue will remain in all Sicily, since it will have been transformed into a province or dependency of Phoenicians or Opicians. [*](Probably some tribes of central Italy, Samnites or Campanians.) Against this all the Greeks must with all zeal provide a remedy.

If, therefore, any man knows of a remedy that is truer and better than that which I am now about to propose, and puts it openly before us, he shall have the best right to the title Friend of Greece. The remedy, however, which commends itself to me I shall now endeavor to explain, using the utmost freedom of speech and a tone of impartial justice. For indeed I am speaking somewhat like an arbitrator, and addressing to the two parties, the former despot and his subjects, as though each were a single person, the counsel I gave of old. And now also my word of advice to every despot would be that he should shun the despot’s title and his task, and change his despotism for kingship. That this is possible has been actually proved by that wise and good man Lycurgus [*](cf. Plat. L. 4.320d.); for when he saw that the family of his kinsmen in Argos and in Messene had in both cases destroyed both themselves and their city by advancing from kingship to despotic power, he was alarmed about his own city as well as his own family, and as a remedy he introduced the authority of the Elders and of the Ephors to serve as a bond of safety for the kingly power [*](cf. Plat. Laws 692a.); and because of this they have already been kept safe and glorious all these generations since Law became with them supreme king over men instead of men being despots over the laws. And now also I urgently admonish you all to do the same. Those of you who are rushing after despotic power I exhort to change their course and to flee betimes from what is counted as bliss by men of insatiable cravings and empty heads, and to try to transform themselves into the semblance of a king, and to become subject to kingly laws, owing their possession of the highest honors to the voluntary goodwill of the citizens and to the laws. And I should counsel those who follow after the ways of freedom, and shun as a really evil thing the yoke of bondage, to beware lest by their insatiable craving for an immoderate freedom they should ever fall sick of their forefathers’ disease, which the men of that time suffered because of their excessive anarchy, through indulging an unmeasured love of freedom. For the Siceliots of the age before Dionysius and Hipparinus began to rule were living blissfully, as they supposed, being in luxury and ruling also over their rulers; and they even stoned to death the ten generals who preceded Dionysius, without any legal trial, [*](Plato is here in error, apparently: the stoning took place at an earlier date at Agrigentum.) to show that they were no slaves of any rightful master, nor of any law, but were in all ways altogether free. Hence it was that the rule of the despots befell them.

For as regards both slavery and freedom, when either is in excess it is wholly evil, but when in moderation wholly good; and moderate slavery consists in being the slave of God, immoderate, in being the slave of men; and men of sound sense have Law for their God, [*](Law is divine as the dispensation of Reason (νόμος being derived from νοῦς), cf. Plat. Laws 762e. For evils of excessive freedom cf. Plat. Rep. 564a.) but men without sense Pleasure. Since these things are naturally ordained thus, I exhort Dion’s friends to declare what I am advising to all the Syracusans, as being the joint advice both of Dion and myself; and I will be the interpreter of what he would have said to you now, were he alive and able to speak. [*](For this artifice of putting words into the mouth of an absent speaker cf. Plat. Menex. 246c ff., Plat. L. 7.328d.) Pray then, someone might say, what message does the advice of Dion declare to us concerning the present situation? It is this: Above all else, 0 ye Syracusans, accept such laws as do not appear to you likely to turn your minds covetously to money-making and wealth; but rather—since there are three objects, the soul, the body, and money besides,—accept such laws as cause the virtue of the soul to be held first in honor, that of the body second, subordinate to that of the soul, and the honor paid to money to come third and last, in subjection to both the body and the soul. [*](For this classification of goods cf. Plat. Gorg. 477c; Plat. Laws 697b, Plat. Laws 726a ff.) The ordinance which effects this will be truly laid down by you as law, since it really makes those who obey it blessed [*](cf. Plat. Laws 631b; also Plat. L. 355c infra, Plat. L. 6.323d.); whereas the phrase which terms the rich blessed is not only a miserable one in itself, being the senseless phrase of women and children, but also renders those who believe it equally miserable. That this exhortation of mine is true you will learn by actual experience if you make trial of what I am now saying concerning laws; for in all matters experience is held to be the truest test. [*](cf. Plat. Rep. 408e ff., Plat. Rep. 452d ff.) And when you have accepted laws of this kind, inasmuch as Sicily is beset with dangers, and you are neither complete victors nor utterly vanquished, it will be, no doubt, both just and profitable for you all to pursue a middle course—not only those of you who flee from the harshness of the tyranny, but also those who crave to win back that tyranny—the men whose ancestors in those days performed the mightiest deed in saving the Greeks from the barbarians, with the result that it is possible for us now to talk about constitutions; whereas, if they had then been ruined, no place would have been left at all for either talk or hope. So, then, let the one party of you gain freedom by the aid of kingly rule, and the other gain a form of kingly rule that is not irresponsible, with the laws exercising despotic sway over the kings themselves as well as the rest of the citizens, in case they do anything illegal.