Jowett: judge

  

judgment

Judge, the, ought not to be influenced by compassion, Apol. 35 (cp. Laws 12. 949 A); a physician of the soul, Gorg. 478, 480 A; must himself be virtuous, Rep.   .3.409; his virtue, only to decide according to the standard fixed by the legislator, Statesm. 305; distinguished from the statesman  , ibid.; should aim at reconciling the contending, parties, Laws 1.627 E ; should co-operate with the legislator, ib. 11. 934 B ; must take the writings of the legislator as his guide, ib. 12. 957:—Judges ought not to drink wine, ib. 2. 674 A ; must give an account of their office, ib. 6. 761 E ; must supply the omissions of the legislator, ib. 9.876 ; 11.934 B ; must keep the speakers to the point, ib. 12. 949 B:—laws concerning, ib. 6. 766 E foil.; 9. 855-857; 12. 956:—election of, ib. 6. 767; 12. 956:—judges in cases of death, ib. 9. 855 C, 856 C,866 C, 867 E, 871 C ; 12. 958 C (cp. 11. 916 C); in cases of wounding, ib. 9.877 B, 878 D, 879 B, E ; in cases where assistance has not been rendered, ib. 880 D; where a son has neglected his parents, ib. 11. 932 C (cp. Guardians of the Laws) :—select judges, ib. 9. 855 C ; 11. 926 D, 928, 938; 12. 946, 948 A, 956:—Judges of art, must have knowledge, ib. 2. 669;—of contests in armour, ib. 8. 833 E ;— of gymnastic contests, ib. 6. 765 C; 8. 835 A; 11. 935 E ;—of horse races, ib. 8. 834 B;—of music, ib. 6. 765 C; 7. 802 ; 12. 949 A;—of the theatre, ought not to yield to clamour, ib. 2. 659.

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[138d] Then, if it is disgraceful in the philosopher to be unable, when a doctor speaks about the sick, either to follow his remarks or to contribute anything of his own to what is being said or done, and to be in the same case when any other of the craftsmen speaks, is it not disgraceful that he should be unable, when it is a judge or a king or some other of the persons whom we have just instanced, either to follow their words or contribute anything to their business ? LOVERS  

[138e] Are we then to say, I asked, that in these matters also he is to be an all-round athlete, a second-rate man, taking the second place in all the subjects of this art — he, the philosopher — and is to be useless so long as there is one of these persons ; or that, first of all, he is to entrust his own house to nobody else and is not to take the second place in it, but is himself to judge and punish rightly, if his house is to be well managed ? LOVERS

Secondly, I presume, whether his friends entrust him with an arbitration, or the state charges him to determine [139a] or judge any matter, it is disgraceful for him, my good friend, in such cases, to be found in the second or third place, and not to lead ? LOVERS

Rhadamanthus was a good man indeed, for he had been educated by Minos   ; he had, however, been educated, [320c] not in the whole of the kingly art, but in one subsidiary to the kingly, enough for presiding in law courts ; so that he was spoken of as a good judge. For Minos used him as guardian of the law in the city, and Talos as the same for the rest of Crete. For Talos thrice a year made a round of the villages, guarding the laws in them, by holding their laws inscribed on brazen tablets, which gave him his name of "brazen." And what Hesiod also has said [320d] of Minos is akin to this. For after mentioning him by name he remarks — MINOS

Hippias : I am too busy, Socrates  . For whenever Elis needs to have any business transacted with any of the states, she always comes to me first of her citizens and chooses me as envoy, thinking that I am the ablest judge and messenger of the words that are spoken by the several states. [281b] So I have often gone as envoy to other states, but most often and concerning the most numerous and important matters to Lacedaemon. For that reason, then, since you ask me, I do not often come to this neighborhood. GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : That’s a fine thing you say, Hippias, and strong testimony to your wisdom [283a] and that of the men of today and to their great superiority to the ancients. For the earlier sophists of the school of Anaxagoras must have been very ignorant to judge from what is said, according to your view ; for they say that what happened to Anaxagoras was the opposite of what happens to you ; for though much money was left him, he neglected it and lost it all so senseless was his wisdom. And they tell similar tales about others among the ancients. So this seems to me fine testimony that you adduce for the wisdom of the men of today as compared with the earlier men, [283b] and many people agree with me that the wise man must be wise for himself especially ; and the test of this is, who makes the most money. Well, so much for that. But tell me this : at which of the cities that you go to did you make the most money ? Or are we to take it that it was at Lacedaemon, where your visits have been most frequent ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : And by Zeus, Socrates, I have just lately gained reputation there by telling about noble or beautiful pursuits, recounting what those of a young man should be. For I have a very beautiful discourse composed about them, well arranged in its words and also in other respects. And the plan of the discourse, and its beginning, is something like this : After the fall of Troy, the story goes that Neoptolemus asked Nestor [286b] what the noble and beautiful pursuits were, by following which a young man would become most famous ; so after that we have Nestor speaking and suggesting to him very many lawful and most beautiful pursuits. That discourse, then, I delivered there and intend to deliver here the day after tomorrow in Pheidostratus’s schoolroom, with many other things worth hearing ; for Eudicus, the son of Apemantus, asked me to do so. Now be sure to be there yourself and to bring others [286c] who are able to judge of discourses that they hear. GREATER HIPPIAS

Soc. And yet surely, my dear friend Ion  , in a discussion about arithmetic, where many people are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, there is somebody who can judge which of them is the good speaker ? ION

Soc. Then, my dear friend, can I be mistaken in saying that Ion is equally skilled in Homer and in other poets, since he himself acknowledges that the same person will be a good judge of all those who speak of the same things ; and that almost all poets do speak of the same things ? ION

Soc. Enough. Now, Ion, will the charioteer or the physician be the better judge of the propriety of these lines ? ION

Soc. Then which will be a better judge of the lines which you were reciting from Homer, you or the charioteer ? ION

Soc. You know the passage in which Hecamede, the concubine of Nestor, is described as giving to the wounded Machaon a posset, as he says, Made with Pramnian wine ; and she grated cheese of goat’s milk with a grater of bronze, and at his side placed an onion which gives a relish to drink. Now would you say that the art of the rhapsode or the art of medicine was better able to judge of the propriety of these lines ? ION

Soc. And when Homer says, And she descended into the deep like a leaden plummet, which, set in the horn of ox that ranges in the fields, rushes along carrying death among the ravenous fishes, — will the art of the fisherman or of the rhapsode be better able to judge whether these lines are rightly expressed or not ? ION

Soc. Yes, Ion, and you are right also. And as I have selected from the Iliad and Odyssey for you passages which describe the office of the prophet and the physician and the fisherman, do you, who know Homer so much better than I do, Ion, select for me passages which relate to the rhapsode and the rhapsode’s art, and which the rhapsode ought to examine and judge of better than other men. ION

Soc. And in judging of the general’s art, do you judge of it as a general or a rhapsode ? ION

How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell ; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was — such was the effect of them ; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth. But many as their falsehoods were, there was one of them which quite amazed me ; — I mean when they told you to be upon your guard, and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of my eloquence. They ought to have been ashamed of saying this, because they were sure to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and displayed my deficiency ; they certainly did appear to be most shameless in saying this, unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth ; for then I do indeed admit that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs ! Well, as I was saying, they have hardly uttered a word, or not more than a word, of truth ; but you shall hear from me the whole truth : not, however, delivered after their manner, in a set oration duly ornamented with words and phrases. No indeed ! but I shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at the moment ; for I am certain that this is right, and that at my time of life I ought not to be appearing before you, O men of Athens, in the character of a juvenile orator — let no one expect this of me. And I must beg of you to grant me one favor, which is this — If you hear me using the same words in my defence which I have been in the habit of using, and which most of you may have heard in the agora, and at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised at this, and not to interrupt me. For I am more than seventy years of age, and this is the first time that I have ever appeared in a court of law, and I am quite a stranger to the ways of the place ; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country ; — that I think is not an unfair request. Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good ; but think only of the justice of my cause, and give heed to that : let the judge decide justly and the speaker speak truly. APOLOGY

I will begin at the beginning, and ask what the accusation is which has given rise to this slander of me, and which has encouraged Meletus to proceed against me. What do the slanderers say ? They shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit. "Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause ; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others." That is the nature of the accusation, and that is what you have seen yourselves in the comedy of Aristophanes ; who has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates, going about and saying that he can walk in the air, and talking a deal of nonsense concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know either much or little — not that I mean to say anything disparaging of anyone who is a student of natural philosophy. I should be very sorry if Meletus could lay that to my charge. But the simple truth is, O Athenians, that I have nothing to do with these studies. Very many of those here present are witnesses to the truth of this, and to them I appeal. Speak then, you who have heard me, and tell your neighbors whether any of you have ever known me hold forth in few words or in many upon matters of this sort. (...) You hear their answer. And from what they say of this you will be able to judge of the truth of the rest. APOLOGY

I dare say, Athenians, that someone among you will reply, "Why is this, Socrates, and what is the origin of these accusations of you : for there must have been something strange which you have been doing ? All this great fame and talk about you would never have arisen if you had been like other men : tell us, then, why this is, as we should be sorry to judge hastily of you." Now I regard this as a fair challenge, and I will endeavor to explain to you the origin of this name of "wise," and of this evil fame. Please to attend then. And although some of you may think I am joking, I declare that I will tell you the entire truth. Men of Athens, this reputation of mine has come of a certain sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of wisdom, I reply, such wisdom as is attainable by man, for to that extent I am inclined to believe that I am wise ; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have a superhuman wisdom, which I may fail to describe, because I have it not myself ; and he who says that I have, speaks falsely, and is taking away my character. And here, O men of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say something extravagant. For the word which I will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who is worthy of credit, and will tell you about my wisdom — whether I have any, and of what sort — and that witness shall be the god of Delphi. You must have known Chaerephon ; he was early a friend of mine, and also a friend of yours, for he shared in the exile of the people, and returned with you. Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous in all his doings, and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell him whether — as I was saying, I must beg you not to interrupt — he asked the oracle to tell him whether there was anyone wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered that there was no man wiser. Chaerephon is dead himself, but his brother, who is in court, will confirm the truth of this story. APOLOGY

But, setting aside the question of dishonor, there seems to be something wrong in petitioning a judge, and thus procuring an acquittal instead of informing and convincing him. For his duty is, not to make a present of justice, but to give judgment ; and he has sworn that he will judge according to the laws, and not according to his own good pleasure ; and neither he nor we should get into the habit of perjuring ourselves — there can be no piety in that. Do not then require me to do what I consider dishonorable and impious and wrong, especially now, when I am being tried for impiety on the indictment of Meletus. For if, O men of Athens, by force of persuasion and entreaty, I could overpower your oaths, then I should be teaching you to believe that there are no gods, and convict myself, in my own defence, of not believing in them. But that is not the case ; for I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them. And to you and to God I commit my cause, to be determined by you as is best for you and me. APOLOGY

And he who judges rightly will judge of the physician as a physician in what relates to these ? CHARMIDES  

Ah, Hippothales, I said ; what a noble and really perfect love you have found ! I wish that you would favour me with the exhibition which you have been making to the rest of the company, and then I shall be able to judge whether you know what a lover ought to say about his love, either to the youth himself, or to others. LYSIS  

O Hippothales, I said, if you have ever made any verses or songs in honour of your favourite, I do not want to hear them ; but I want to know the purport of them, that I may be able to judge of your mode of approaching your fair one. LYSIS

Soc. What is the charge ? Well, a very serious charge, which shows a good deal of character in the young man, and for which he is certainly not to be despised. He says he knows how the youth are corrupted and who are their corruptors. I fancy that he must be a wise man, and seeing that I am the reverse of a wise man, he has found me out, and is going to accuse me of corrupting his young friends. And of this our mother the state is to be the judge. Of all our political men he is the only one who seems to me to begin in the right way, with the cultivation of virtue in youth ; like a good husbandman, he makes the young shoots his first care, and clears away us who are the destroyers of them. This is only the first step ; he will afterwards attend to the elder branches ; and if he goes on as he has begun, he will be a very great public benefactor. EUTHYPHRO  

as cookery : medicine : : rhetoric : justice. And this, I say, is the natural difference between the rhetorician and the sophist, but by reason of their near connection, they are apt to be jumbled up together ; neither do they know what to make of themselves, nor do other men know what to make of them. For if the body presided over itself, and were not under the guidance of the soul, and the soul did not discern and discriminate between cookery and medicine, but the body was made the judge of them, and the rule of judgment was the bodily delight which was given by them, then the word of Anaxagoras, that word with which you, friend Polus, are so well acquainted, would prevail far and wide : "Chaos" would come again, and cookery, health, and medicine would mingle in an indiscriminate mass. And now I have told you my notion of rhetoric, which is, in relation to the soul, what cookery is to the body. I may have been inconsistent in making a long speech, when I would not allow you to discourse at length. But I think that I may be excused, because you did not understand me, and could make no use of my answer when I spoke shortly, and therefore I had to enter into explanation. And if I show an equal inability to make use of yours, I hope that you will speak at equal length ; but if I am able to understand you, let me have the benefit of your brevity, as is only fair : And now you may do what you please with my answer. GORGIAS

Soc. And if he, or any one about whom he cares, does wrong, he ought of his own accord to go where he will be immediately punished ; he will run to the judge, as he would to the physician, in order that the disease of injustice may not be rendered chronic and become the incurable cancer of the soul ; must we not allow this consequence, Polus, if our former admissions are to stand : — is any other inference consistent with them ? GORGIAS

Soc. And from the opposite point of view, if indeed it be our duty to harm another, whether an enemy or not — I except the case of self-defence — then I have to be upon my guard — but if my enemy injures a third person, then in every sort of way, by word as well as deed, I should try to prevent his being punished, or appearing before the judge ; and if he appears, I should contrive that he should escape, and not suffer punishment : if he has stolen a sum of money, let him keep what he has stolen and spend it on him and his, regardless of religion and justice ; and if he has done things worthy of death, let him not die, but rather be immortal in his wickedness ; or, if this is not possible, let him at any rate be allowed to live as long as he can. For such purposes, Polus, rhetoric may be useful, but is of small if of any use to him who is not intending to commit injustice ; at least, there was no such use discovered by us in the previous discussion. GORGIAS

Cal. You shall judge for yourself. GORGIAS

Soc. Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale, which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only, but which, as I believe, is a true tale, for I mean to speak the truth. Homer tells us, how Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided the empire which they inherited from their father. Now in the days of Cronos there existed a law respecting the destiny of man, which has always been, and still continues to be in Heaven — that he who has lived all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil ; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, and even quite lately in the reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on the very day on which the men were to die ; the judges were alive, and the men were alive ; and the consequence was that the judgments were not well given. Then Pluto and the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said that the souls found their way to the wrong places. Zeus said : "I shall put a stop to this ; the judgments are not well given, because the persons who are judged have their clothes on, for they are alive ; and there are many who, having evil souls, are apparelled in fair bodies, or encased in wealth or rank, and, when the day of judgment arrives, numerous witnesses come forward and testify on their behalf that they have lived righteously. The judges are awed by them, and they themselves too have their clothes on when judging ; their eyes and ears and their whole bodies are interposed as a well before their own souls. All this is a hindrance to them ; there are the clothes of the judges and the clothes of the judged — What is to be done ? I will tell you : — In the first place, I will deprive men of the foreknowledge of death, which they possess at present : this power which they have Prometheus has already received my orders to take from them : in the second place, they shall be entirely stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are dead ; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead — he with his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked souls ; and they shall die suddenly and be deprived of all their kindred, and leave their brave attire strewn upon the earth — conducted in this manner, the judgment will be just. I knew all about the matter before any of you, and therefore I have made my sons judges ; two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe, Aeacus. And these, when they are dead, shall give judgment in the meadow at the parting of the ways, whence the two roads lead, one to the Islands of the Blessed, and the other to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who come from Asia, and Aeacus those who come from Europe. And to Minos I shall give the primacy, and he shall hold a court of appeal, in case either of the two others are in any doubt : — then the judgment respecting the last journey of men will be as just as possible." GORGIAS

From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw the following inferences : — Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body ; nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their several natures, as in life ; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of treatment or accident are distinctly visible in it : for example, he who by nature or training or both, was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he was, after he is dead ; and the fat man will remain fat ; and so on ; and the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair, will have flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of the scourge, or of wounds in him when he was alive, you might see the same in the dead body ; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen when he was alive, the same appearance would be visible in the dead. And in a word, whatever was the habit of the body during life would be distinguishable after death, either perfectly, or in a great measure and for a certain time. And I should imagine that this is equally true of the soul, Callicles ; when a man is stripped of the body, all the natural or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view. And when they come to the judge, as those from Asia come to Rhadamanthus, he places them near him and inspects them quite impartially, not knowing whose the soul is : perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the great king, or of some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him, but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints and scars of perjuries and crimes with which each action has stained him, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture, and has no straightness, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by licence and luxury and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him ignominiously to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment which he deserves. GORGIAS

As I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of the bad kind, knows nothing about him, neither who he is, nor who his parents are ; he knows only that he has got hold of a villain ; and seeing this, he stamps him as curable or incurable, and sends him away to Tartarus, whither he goes and receives his proper recompense. Or, again, he looks with admiration on the soul of some just one who has lived in holiness and truth ; he may have been a private man or not ; and I should say, Callicles, that he is most likely to have been a philosopher who has done his own work, and not troubled himself with the doings of other in his lifetime ; him Rhadamanthus sends to the Islands of the Blessed. Aeacus does the same ; and they both have sceptres, and judge ; but Minos alone has a golden sceptre and is seated looking on, as Odysseus in Homer declares that he saw him : GORGIAS

Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the judge in that day. Renouncing the honours at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same. And, in return for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say, that you will not be able to help yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of which I was speaking, comes upon you ; you will go before the judge, the son of Aegina, and, when he has got you in his grip and is carrying you off, you will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully box you on the ears, and put upon you any sort of insult. GORGIAS

Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as the argument shows. And never mind if some one despises you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind ; let him strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practise of virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we have practised virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our minds ; so utterly stupid are we ! Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go ; and in this exhort all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow you ; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth. GORGIAS

These exploits, therefore, for these reasons I judge that we should pass over, seeing also that they have their due meed of praise ; but those exploits for which as yet no poet has received worthy renown for worthy cause, and which lie still buried in oblivion, I ought, as I think, to celebrate, not only praising them myself but providing material also for others to build up into odes and other forms of poetry in a manner worthy of the doers of those deeds. And of the deeds whereof I speak the first were these : [239d] The Persians were in command of Asia, and were enslaving Europe, when they came in contact with the children of this land, our own parents, of whom it is right and proper that we should make mention first and celebrate their valor. But if we are to celebrate it fitly, in order to visualize it we must place ourselves, in thought, at that epoch when the whole of Asia was already in bondage to the third of the Persian kings. Cyrus, the first of these kings, had by his own spirited action set free his fellow-countrymen, the Persians, and not only enslaved the Medes, their masters, [239e] but also gained command of the rest of Asia, as far as to Egypt. His son ruled over Egypt and as much of Libya as he could traverse ; while the third king, Darius, extended his empire by land as far as to the Scythians, and by his navy controlled the sea and the islands, [240a] so that none so much as thought of disputing his sway. Thus the minds of all men were enslaved ; so many were the mighty and warlike nations which had fallen under the yoke of the Persian Empire. MENEXENUS  

Soc. You shall judge, Crito  , if you are willing to hear what followed ; for we resumed the enquiry, and a question of this sort was asked : Does the kingly art, having this supreme authority, do anything for us ? To be sure, was the answer. And would not you, Crito, say the same ? EUTHYDEMUS  

You are mocking, Socrates, said Agathon, and ere long you and I will have to determine who bears off the palm of wisdom — of this Dionysus shall be the judge ; but at present you are better occupied with supper. SYMPOSIUM  

Soc. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth ; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt ; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of the he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories ; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied : O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have ; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories ; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth ; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing ; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing ; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. PHAEDRUS  

Soc. Then my perception is true to me, being inseparable from my own being ; and, as Protagoras says, to myself I am judge of what is and what is not to me. THEAETETUS  

Soc. I am charmed with his doctrine, that what appears is to each one, but I wonder that he did not begin his book on Truth with a declaration that a pig or a dog-faced baboon, or some other yet stranger monster which has sensation, is the measure of all things ; then he might have shown a magnificent contempt for our opinion of him by informing us at the outset that while we were reverencing him like a God for his wisdom he was no better than a tadpole, not to speak of his fellow-men — would not this have produced an over-powering effect ? For if truth is only sensation, and no man can discern another’s feelings better than he, or has any superior right to determine whether his opinion is true or false, but each, as we have several times repeated, is to himself the sole judge, and everything that he judges is true and right, why, my friend, should Protagoras be preferred to the place of wisdom and instruction, and deserve to be well paid, and we poor ignoramuses have to go to him, if each one is the measure of his own wisdom ? Must he not be talking ad captandum in all this ? I say nothing of the ridiculous predicament in which my own midwifery and the whole art of dialectic is placed ; for the attempt to supervise or refute the notions or opinions of others would be a tedious and enormous piece of folly, if to each man his own are right ; and this must be the case if Protagoras Truth is the real truth, and the philosopher is not merely amusing himself by giving oracles out of the shrine of his book. THEAETETUS

Soc. Why, suppose that you determine in your own mind something to be true, and declare your opinion to me ; let us assume, as he argues, that this is true to you. Now, if so, you must either say that the rest of us are not the judges of this opinion or judgment of yours, or that we judge you always to have a true opinion : But are there not thousands upon thousands who, whenever you form a judgment, take up arms against you and are of an opposite judgment and opinion, deeming that you judge falsely ? THEAETETUS

Theod. Nay, Socrates, not until we have finished what we are about ; for you truly said that we belong to a brotherhood which is free, and are not the servants of the argument ; but the argument is our servant, and must wait our leisure. Who is our judge ? Or where is the spectator having any right to censure or control us, as he might the poets ? THEAETETUS

Soc. Suppose now, that we ask Protagoras, or one of his disciples, a question : — O, Protagoras, we will say to him, Man is, as you declare, the measure of all things — white, heavy, light : of all such things he is the judge ; for he has the criterion of them in himself, and when he thinks that things are such as he experiences them to be, he thinks what is and is true to himself. Is it not so ? THEAETETUS

Soc. And the vinegrower, if I am not mistaken, is a better judge of the sweetness or dryness of the vintage which is not yet gathered than the harp-player ? THEAETETUS

Soc. And the cook will be a better judge than the guest, who is not a cook, of the pleasure to be derived from the dinner which is in preparation ; for of present or past pleasure we are not as yet arguing ; but can we say that every one will be to himself the best judge of the pleasure which will seem to be and will be to him in the future ? — nay, would not you, Protagoras, better guess which arguments in a court would convince any one of us than the ordinary man ? THEAETETUS

Soc. To be sure, friend : who would have paid a large sum for the privilege of talking to him, if he had really persuaded his visitors that neither a prophet nor any other man was better able to judge what will be and seem to be in the future than every one could for himself ? THEAETETUS

Soc. When, therefore, judges are justly persuaded about matters which you can know only by seeing them, and not in any other way, and when thus judging of them from report they attain a true opinion about them, they judge without knowledge and yet are rightly persuaded, if they have judged well. THEAETETUS

Soc. And yet, O my friend, if true opinion in law courts and knowledge are the same, the perfect judge could not have judged rightly without knowledge ; and therefore I must infer that they are not the same. THEAETETUS

Theaet. That is my view, as far as I can judge, although, at my age, I may be one of those who see things at a distance only. SOPHIST

Str. And now, in which of these divisions shall we place the king ? — Is he a judge and a kind of spectator ? Or shall we assign to him the art of command — for he is a ruler ? STATESMAN

Str. To refer them first of all to cases in which they judge correctly about the letters in question, and then to compare these with the cases in which they do not as yet know, and to show them that the letters are the same, and have the same character in both combination, until all cases in which they are right have been Placed side by side with all cases in which they are wrong. In this way they have examples, and are made to learn that each letter in every combination is always the same and not another, and is always called by the same name. STATESMAN

Str. In like manner, all alien and uncongenial matter has been separated from political science, and what is precious and of a kindred nature has been left ; there remain the nobler arts of the general and the judge, and the higher sort of oratory which is an ally of the royal art, and persuades men to do justice, and assists in guiding the helm of States : — How can we best clear away all these, leaving him whom we seek alone and unalloyed ? STATESMAN

Str. Once more let us consider the nature of the righteous judge. STATESMAN

Str. Then the inference is that the power of the judge is not royal, but only the power of a guardian of the law which ministers to the royal power ? STATESMAN

Hermocrates. And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus   says, will not be wanting in enthusiasm ; and there is no excuse for not complying with your request. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest-chamber of Critias  , with whom we are staying, or rather on our way thither, we talked the matter over, and he told us an ancient tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates, so that he may help us to judge whether it will satisfy his requirements or not. TIMAEUS

The part of the soul which desires meats and drinks and the other things of which it has need by reason of the bodily nature, they placed between the midriff and the boundary of the navel, contriving in all this region a sort of manger for the food of the body ; and there they bound it down like a wild animal which was chained up with man, and must be nourished if man was to exist. They appointed this lower creation his place here in order that he might be always feeding at the manger, and have his dwelling as far as might be from the council-chamber, making as little noise and disturbance as possible, and permitting the best part to advise quietly for the good of the whole. And knowing that this lower principle in man would not comprehend reason, and even if attaining to some degree of perception would never naturally care for rational notions, but that it would be led away by phantoms and visions night and day — to be a remedy for this, God combined with it the liver, and placed it in the house of the lower nature, contriving that it should be solid and smooth, and bright and sweet, and should also have a bitter quality, in order that the power of thought, which proceeds from the mind, might be reflected as in a mirror which receives likenesses of objects and gives back images of them to the sight ; and so might strike terror into the desires, when, making use of the bitter part of the liver, to which it is akin, it comes threatening and invading, and diffusing this bitter element swiftly through the whole liver produces colours like bile, and contracting every part makes it wrinkled and rough ; and twisting out of its right place and contorting the lobe and closing and shutting up the vessels and gates, causes pain and loathing. And the converse happens when some gentle inspiration of the understanding pictures images of an opposite character, and allays the bile and bitterness by refusing to stir or touch the nature opposed to itself, but by making use of the natural sweetness of the liver, corrects all things and makes them to be right and smooth and free, and renders the portion of the soul which resides about the liver happy and joyful, enabling it to pass the night in peace, and to practise divination in sleep, inasmuch as it has no share in mind and reason. For the authors of our being, remembering the command of their father when he bade them create the human race as good as they could, that they might correct our inferior parts and make them to attain a measure of truth, placed in the liver the seat of divination. And herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination not to the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. No man, when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration ; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession. And he who would understand what he remembers to have been said, whether in a dream or when he was awake, by the prophetic and inspired nature, or would determine by reason the meaning of the apparitions which he has seen, and what indications they afford to this man or that, of past, present or future good and evil, must first recover his wits. But, while he continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the words which he utters ; the ancient saying is very true, that "only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself and his own affairs." And for this reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be judges of the true inspiration. Some persons call them prophets ; they are quite unaware that they are only the expositors of dark sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all, but only interpreters of prophecy. TIMAEUS

As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number. And when they were gathered together they consulted about their common interests, and enquired if any one had transgressed in anything and passed judgment and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another on this wise : — There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon ; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons but with staves and nooses ; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them ; the rest of the victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round. Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself and for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god ; and after they had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the embers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had an accusation to bring against any one ; and when they given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be a memorial. CRITIAS

Soc. But how can we rightly judge of them ? PHILEBUS  

Soc. It is our intention to judge of their comparative importance and intensity, measuring pleasure against pain, and pain against pain, and pleasure against pleasure ? PHILEBUS

Pro. Yes, such is our intention, and we shall judge of them accordingly. PHILEBUS

Pro. Quite right ; in that way we shall be better able to judge. PHILEBUS

Ath. Again ; might there not be a judge over these brethren, of whom we were speaking ? LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Now, which would be the better judge — one who destroyed the bad and appointed the good to govern themselves ; or one who, while allowing the good to govern, let the bad live, and made them voluntarily submit ? Or third, I suppose, in the scale of excellence might be placed a judge, who, finding the family distracted, not only did not destroy any one, but reconciled them to one another for ever after, and gave them laws which they mutually observed, and was able to keep them friends. LAWS BOOK I

Cle. The last would be by far the best sort of judge and legislator. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Well, now, when you praise and blame war in this high-flown strain, whom are you praising or blaming, and to which kind of war are you referring ? I suppose that you must mean foreign war, if I am to judge from expressions of yours in which you say that you abominate those LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Thus far I too should agree with the many, that the excellence of music is to be measured by pleasure. But the pleasure must not be that of chance persons ; the fairest music is that which delights the best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one man who is pre-eminent in virtue and education. And therefore the judges must be men of character, for they will require both wisdom and courage ; the true judge must not draw his inspiration from the theatre, nor ought he to be unnerved by the clamour of the many and his own incapacity ; nor again, knowing the truth, ought he through cowardice and unmanliness carelessly to deliver a lying judgment, with the very same lips which have just appealed to the Gods before he judged. He is sitting not as the disciple of the theatre, but, in his proper place, as their instructor, and he ought to be the enemy of all pandering to the pleasure of the spectators. The ancient and common custom of Hellas, which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, did certainly leave the judgment to the body of spectators, who determined the victor by show of hands. But this custom has been the destruction of the poets ; for they are now in the habit of composing with a view to please the bad taste of their judges, and the result is that the spectators instruct themselves ; — and also it has been the ruin of the theatre ; they ought to be having characters put before them better than their own, and so receiving a higher pleasure, but now by their own act the opposite result follows. What inference is to be drawn from all this ? Shall I tell you ? LAWS BOOK II

Ath. Surely then he who would judge correctly must know what each composition is ; for if he does not know what is the character and meaning of the piece, and what it represents, he will never discern whether the intention is true or false. LAWS BOOK II

Ath. Very true ; and may we not say that in everything imitated, whether in drawing, music, or any other art, he who is to be a competent judge must possess three things ; — he must know, in the first place, of what the imitation is ; secondly, he must know that it is true ; and thirdly, that it has been well executed in words and melodies and rhythms ? LAWS BOOK II

Athenian Stranger. Enough of this. And what, then, is to be regarded as the origin of government ? Will not a man be able to judge of it best from a point of view in which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to good or evil ? LAWS BOOK III

Ath. Then, now hear and judge for yourself : — Would you like to have for a fellow-lodger or neighbour a very courageous man, who had no control over himself ? LAWS BOOK III

Ath. In the first place, let us speak of the laws about music — that is to say, such music as then existed — in order that we may trace the growth of the excess of freedom from the beginning. Now music was early divided among us into certain kinds and manners. One sort consisted of prayers to the Gods, which were called hymns ; and there was another and opposite sort called lamentations, and another termed paeans, and another, celebrating the birth of Dionysus, called, I believe, "dithyrambs." And they used the actual word "laws," or nomoi, for another kind of song ; and to this they added the term "citharoedic." All these and others were duly distinguished, nor were the performers allowed to confuse one style of music with another. And the authority which determined and gave judgment, and punished the disobedient, was not expressed in a hiss, nor in the most unmusical shouts of the multitude, as in our days, nor in applause and clapping of hands. But the directors of public instruction insisted that the spectators should listen in silence to the end ; and boys and their tutors, and the multitude in general, were kept quiet by a hint from a stick. Such was the good order which the multitude were willing to observe ; they would never have dared to give judgment by noisy cries. And then, as time went on, the poets themselves introduced the reign of vulgar and lawless innovation. They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what is just and lawful in music ; raging like Bacchanals and possessed with inordinate delights-mingling lamentations with hymns, and paeans with dithyrambs ; imitating the sounds of the flute on the lyre, and making one general confusion ; ignorantly affirming that music has no truth, and, whether good or bad, can only be judged of rightly by the pleasure of the hearer. And by composing such licentious works, and adding to them words as licentious, they have inspired the multitude with lawlessness and boldness, and made them fancy that they can judge for themselves about melody and song. And in this way the theatres from being mute have become vocal, as though they had understanding of good and bad in music and poetry ; and instead of an aristocracy, an evil sort of theatrocracy has grown up. For if the democracy which judged had only consisted of educated persons, no fatal harm would have been done ; but in music there first arose the universal conceit of omniscience and general lawlessness ; — freedom came following afterwards, and men, fancying that they knew what they did not know, had no longer any fear, and the absence of fear begets shamelessness. For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty ? LAWS BOOK III

Let the citizens at once distribute their land and houses, and not till the land in common, since a community of goods goes beyond their proposed origin, and nurture, and education. But in making the distribution, let the several possessors feel that their particular lots also belong to the whole city ; and seeing that the earth is their parent, let them tend her more carefully than children do their mother. For she is a goddess and their queen, and they are her mortal subjects. Such also are the feelings which they ought to entertain to the Gods and demi-gods of the country. And in order that the distribution may always remain, they ought to consider further that the present number of families should be always retained, and neither increased nor diminished. This may be secured for the whole city in the following manner : — Let the possessor of a lot leave the one of his children who is his best beloved, and one only, to be the heir of his dwelling, and his successor in the duty of ministering to the Gods, the state and the family, as well the living members of it as those who are departed when he comes into the inheritance ; but of his other children, if he have more than one, he shall give the females in marriage according to the law to be hereafter enacted, and the males he shall distribute as sons to those citizens who have no children and are disposed to receive them ; or if there should be none such, and particular individuals have too many children, male or female, or too few, as in the case of barrenness — in all these cases let the highest and most honourable magistracy created by us judge and determine what is to be done with the redundant or deficient, and devise a means that the number of 5040 houses shall always remain the same. There are many ways of regulating numbers ; for they in whom generation is affluent may be made to refrain, and, on the other hand, special care may be taken to increase the number of births by rewards and stigmas, or we may meet the evil by the elder men giving advice and administering rebuke to the younger — in this way the object may be attained. And if after all there be very great difficulty about the equal preservation of the 5040 houses, and there be an excess of citizens, owing to the too great love of those who live together, and we are at our wits’ end, there is still the old device often mentioned by us of sending out a colony, which will part friends with us, and be composed of suitable persons. If, on the other hand, there come a wave bearing a deluge of disease, or a plague of war, and the inhabitants become much fewer than the appointed number by reason of bereavement, we ought not to introduce citizens of spurious birth and education, if this can be avoided ; but even God is said not to be able to fight against necessity. LAWS BOOK V

The building of these and the like works will be useful and ornamental ; they will provide a pleasing amusement, but they will be a serious employment too ; for the sixty wardens will have to guard their several divisions, not only with a view to enemies, but also with an eye to professing friends. When a quarrel arises among neighbours or citizens, and any one, whether slave or freeman wrongs another, let the five wardens decide small matters on their own authority ; but where the charge against another relates to greater matters, the seventeen composed of the fives and twelves, shall determine any charges which one man brings against another, not involving more than three minae. Every judge and magistrate shall be liable to give an account of his conduct in office, except those who, like kings, have the final decision. Moreover, as regards the aforesaid wardens of the country, if they do any wrong to those of whom they have the care, whether by imposing upon them unequal tasks, or by taking the produce of the soil or implements of husbandry without their consent ; also if they receive anything in the way of a bribe, or decide suits unjustly, or if they yield to the influences of flattery, let them be publicly dishonoured ; and in regard to any other wrong which they do to the inhabitants of the country, if the question be of a mina, let them submit to the decision of the villagers in the neighbourhood ; but in suits of greater amount, or in case of lesser, if they refuse to submit, trusting that their monthly removal into another part of the country will enable them to escape — in such cases the injured party may bring his suit in the common court, and if he obtain a verdict he may exact from the defendant, who refused to submit, a double penalty. LAWS BOOK VI

In the next place, it will be proper to appoint directors of music and gymnastic, two kinds of each — of the one kind the business will be education, of the other, the superintendence of contests. In speaking of education, the law means to speak of those who have the care of order and instruction in gymnasia and schools, and of the going to school, and of school buildings for boys and girls ; and in speaking of contests, the law refers to the judges of gymnastics and of music ; these again are divided into two classes, the one having to do with music, the other with gymnastics ; and the same who judge of the gymnastic contests of men, shall judge of horses ; but in music there shall be one set of judges of solo singing, and of imitation — I mean of rhapsodists, players on the harp, the flute and the like, and another who shall judge of choral song. First of all, we must choose directors for the choruses of boys, and men, and maidens, whom they shall follow in the amusement of the dance, and for our other musical arrangements ; — one director will be enough for the choruses, and he should be not less than forty years of age. One director will also be enough to introduce the solo singers, and to give judgment on the competitors, and he ought not to be less than thirty years of age. The director and manager of the choruses shall be elected after the following manner : — Let any persons who commonly take an interest in such matters go to the meeting, and be fined if they do not go (the guardians of the law shall judge of their fault), but those who have no interest shall not be compelled. The elector shall propose as director some one who understands music, and he in the scrutiny may be challenged on the one part by those who say he has no skill, and defended on the other hand by those who say that he has. Ten are to be elected by vote, and he of the ten who is chosen by lot shall undergo a scrutiny, and lead the choruses for a year according to law. And in like manner the competitor who wins the lot shall be leader of the solo and concert music for that year ; and he who is thus elected shall deliver the award to the judges. In the next place, we have to choose judges in the contests of horses and of men ; these shall be selected from the third and also from the second class of citizens, and three first classes shall be compelled to go to the election, but the lowest may stay away with impunity ; and let there be three elected by lot out of the twenty who have been chosen previously, and they must also have the vote and approval of the examiners. But if any one is rejected in the scrutiny at any ballot or decision, others shall be chosen in the same manner, and undergo a similar scrutiny. LAWS BOOK VI

A city which has no regular courts of law ceases to be a city ; and again, if a judge is silent and says no more in preliminary proceedings than the litigants, as is the case in arbitrations, he will never be able to decide justly ; wherefore a multitude of judges will not easily judge well, nor a few if they are bad. The point in dispute between the parties should be made clear ; and time, and deliberation, and repeated examination, greatly tend to clear up doubts. For this reason, he who goes to law with another should go first of all to his neighbours and friends who know best the questions at issue. And if he be unable to obtain from them a satisfactory decision, let him have recourse to another court ; and if the two courts cannot settle the matter, let a third put an end to the suit. LAWS BOOK VI

Now the establishment of courts of justice may be regarded as a choice of magistrates, for every magistrate must also be a judge of some things ; and the judge, though he be not a magistrate, yet in certain respects is a very important magistrate on the day on which he is determining a suit. Regarding then the judges also as magistrates, let us say who are fit to be judges, and of what they are to be judges, and how many of them are to judge in each suit. Let that be the supreme tribunal which the litigants appoint in common for themselves, choosing certain persons by agreement. And let there be two other tribunals : one for private causes, when a citizen accuses another of wronging him and wishes to get a decision ; the other for public causes, in which some citizen is of opinion that the public has been wronged by an individual, and is willing to vindicate the common interests. And we must not forget to mention how the judges are to be qualified, and who they are to be. In the first place, let there be a tribunal open to all private persons who are trying causes one against another for the third time, and let this be composed as follows : — All the officers of state, as well annual as those holding office for a longer period, when the new year is about to commence, in the month following after the summer solstice, on the last day but one of the year, shall meet in some temple, and calling God to witness, shall dedicate one judge from every magistracy to be their first-fruits, choosing in each office him who seems to them to be the best, and whom they deem likely to decide the causes of his fellow-citizens during the ensuing year in the best and holiest manner. And when the election is completed, a scrutiny shall be held in the presence of the electors themselves, and if any one be rejected another shall be chosen in the same manner. Those who have undergone the scrutiny shall judge the causes of those who have declined the inferior courts, and shall give their vote openly. The councillors and other magistrates who have elected them shall be required to be hearers and spectators of the causes ; and any one else may be present who pleases. If one man charges another with having intentionally decided wrong, let him go to the guardians of the law and lay his accusation before them, and he who is found guilty in such a case shall pay damages to the injured party equal to half the injury ; but if he shall appear to deserve a greater penalty, the judges shall determine what additional punishment he shall suffer, and how much more he ought to pay to the public treasury, and to the party who brought the suit. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. Do not nurses, when they want to know what an infant desires, judge by these signs ? — when anything is brought to the infant and he is silent, then he is supposed to be pleased, but, when he weeps and cries out, then he is not pleased. For tears and cries are the inauspicious signs by which children show what they love and hate. Now the time which is thus spent is no less than three years, and is a very considerable portion of life to be passed ill or well. LAWS BOOK VII

Respecting contests of strength, instead of wrestling and similar contests of the heavier sort, we will institute conflicts in armour of one against one, and two against two, and so on up to ten against ten. As to what a man ought not to suffer or do, and to what extent, in order to gain the victory — as in wrestling, the masters of the art have laid down what is fair and what is not fair, so in fighting in armour — we ought to call in skilful persons, who shall judge for us and be our assessors in the work of legislation ; they shall say who deserves to be victor in combats of this sort, and what he is not to do or have done to him, and in like manner what rule determines who is defeated ; and let these ordinances apply to women until they married as well as to men. The pancration shall have a counterpart in a combat of the light armed ; they shall contend with bows and with light shields and with javelins and in the throwing of stones by slings and by hand : and laws shall be made about it, and rewards and prizes given to him who best fulfils the ordinances of the law. LAWS BOOK VIII

Such are the preludes which we sing to all who have thoughts of unholy and treasonable actions, and to him who hearkens to them the law has nothing to say. But to him who is disobedient when the prelude is over, cry with a loud voice, — He who is taken in the act of robbing temples, if he be a slave or stranger, shall have his evil deed engraven on his face and hands, and shall be beaten with as many stripes as may seem good to the judges, and be cast naked beyond the borders of the land. And if he suffers this punishment he will probably return to his right mind and be improved ; for no penalty which the law inflicts is designed for evil, but always makes him who suffers either better or not so much worse as he would have been. But if any citizen be found guilty of any great or unmentionable wrong, either in relation to the gods, or his parents, or the state, let the judge deem him to be incurable, remembering that after receiving such an excellent education and training from youth upward, he has not abstained from the greatest of crimes. His punishment shall be death, which to him will be the least of evils ; and his example will benefit others, if he perish ingloriously, and be cast beyond the borders of the land. But let his children and family, if they avoid the ways of their father, have glory, and let honourable mention be made of them, as having nobly and manfully escaped out of evil into good. None of them should have their goods confiscated to the state, for the lots of the citizens ought always to continue the same and equal. LAWS BOOK IX

Let the vote be given openly ; but before they come to the vote let the judges sit in order of seniority over against plaintiff and defendant, and let all the citizens who can spare time hear and take a serious interest in listening to such causes. First of all the plaintiff shall make one speech, and then the defendant shall make another ; and after the speeches have been made the eldest judge shall begin to examine the parties, and proceed to make an adequate enquiry into what has been said ; and after the oldest has spoken, the rest shall proceed in order to examine either party as to what he finds defective in the evidence, whether of statement or omission ; and he who has nothing to ask shall hand over the examination to another. And on so much of what has been said as is to the purpose all the judges shall set their seals, and place the writings on the altar of Hestia. On the next day they shall meet again, and in like manner put their questions and go through the cause, and again set their seals upon the evidence ; and when they have three times done this, and have had witnesses and evidence enough, they shall each of them give a holy vote, after promising by Hestia that they will decide justly and truly to the utmost of their power ; and so they shall put an end to the suit. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. Let us remember what has been well said by us already, that our ideas of justice are in the highest degree confused and contradictory. Bearing this in mind, let us proceed to ask ourselves once more whether we have discovered a way out of the difficulty. Have we ever determined in what respect these two classes of actions differ from one another ? For in all states and by all legislators whatsoever, two kinds of actions have been distinguished — the one, voluntary, the other, involuntary ; and they have legislated about them accordingly. But shall this new word of ours, like an oracle of God, be only spoken, and get away without giving any explanation or verification of itself ? How can a word not understood be the basis of legislation ? Impossible. Before proceeding to legislate, then, we must prove that they are two, and what is the difference between them, that when we impose the penalty upon either, every one may understand our proposal, and be able in some way to judge whether the penalty is fitly or unfitly inflicted. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. Let us proceed : — If any one slays a free man with his own hand, and the deed be done in a moment of anger, and without premeditation, let the offender suffer in other respects as the involuntary homicide would have suffered, and also undergo an exile of two years, that he may learn to school his passions. But he who slays another from passion, yet with premeditation, shall in other respects suffer as the former ; and to this shall be added an exile of three instead of two years — his punishment is to be longer because his passion is greater. The manner of their return shall be on this wise : (and here the law has difficulty in determining exactly ; for in some cases the murderer who is judged by the law to be the worse may really be the less cruel, and he who is judged the less cruel may be really the worse, and may have executed the murder in a more savage manner, whereas the other may have been gentler. But in general the degrees of guilt will be such as we have described them. Of all these things the guardians of the law must take cognisance) : — When a homicide of either kind has completed his term of exile, the guardians shall send twelve judges to the borders of the land ; these during the interval shall have informed themselves of the actions of the criminals, and they shall judge respecting their pardon and reception ; and the homicides shall abide by their judgment. But if after they have returned home, any one of them in a moment of anger repeats the deed, let him be an exile, and return no more ; or if he returns, let him suffer as the stranger was to suffer in a similar case. He who kills his own slave shall undergo a purification, but if he kills the slave of another in anger, he shall pay twice the amount of the loss to his owner. And if any homicide is disobedient to the law, and without purification pollutes the agora, or the games, or the temples, he who pleases may bring to trial the next of kin to the dead man for permitting him, and the murderer with him, and may compel the one to exact and the other to suffer a double amount of fines and purifications ; and the accuser shall himself receive the fine in accordance with the law. If a slave in a fit of passion kills his master, the kindred of the deceased man may do with the murderer (provided only they do not spare his life) whatever they please, and they will be pure ; or if he kills a freeman, who is not his master, the owner shall give up the slave to the relatives of the deceased, and they shall be under an obligation to put him to death, but this may be done in any manner which they please. LAWS BOOK IX

If a man do not commit a murder with his own hand, but contrives the death of another, and is the author of the deed in intention and design, and he continues to dwell in the city, having his soul not pure of the guilt of murder, let him be tried in the same way, except in what relates to the sureties ; and also, if he be found guilty, his body after execution may have burial in his native land, but in all other respects his case shall be as the former ; and whether a stranger shall kill a citizen, or a citizen a stranger, or a slave a slave, there shall be no difference as touching murder by one’s own hand or by contrivance, except in the matter of sureties ; and these, as has been said, shall be required of the actual murderer only, and he who brings the accusation shall bind them over at the time. If a slave be convicted of slaying a freeman voluntarily, either by his own hand or by contrivance, let the public executioner take him in the direction of the sepulchre, to a place whence he can see the tomb of the dead man, and inflict upon him as many stripes as the person who caught him orders, and if he survive, let him put him to death. And if any one kills a slave who has done no wrong, because he is afraid that he may inform of some base and evil deeds of his own, or for any similar reason, in such a case let him pay the penalty of murder, as he would have done if he had slain a citizen. There are things about which it is terrible and unpleasant to legislate, but impossible not to legislate. If, for example, there should be murders of kinsmen, either perpetrated by the hands of kinsmen, or by their contrivance, voluntary and purely malicious, which most often happen in ill-regulated and ill-educated states, and may perhaps occur even in a country where a man would not expect to find them, we must repeat once more the tale which we narrated a little while ago, in the hope that he who hears us will be the more disposed to abstain voluntarily on these grounds from murders which are utterly abominable. For the myth, or saying, or whatever we ought to call it, has been plainly set forth by priests of old ; they have pronounced that the justice which guards and avenges the blood of kindred, follows the law of retaliation, and ordains that he who has done any murderous act should of necessity suffer that which he has done. He who has slain a father shall himself be slain at some time or other by his children — if a mother, he shall of necessity take a woman’s nature, and lose his life at the hands of his offspring in after ages ; for where the blood of a family has been polluted there is no other purification, nor can the pollution be washed out until the homicidal soul which the deed has given life for life, and has propitiated and laid to sleep the wrath of the whole family. These are the retributions of Heaven, and by such punishments men should be deterred. But if they are not deterred, and any one should be incited by some fatality to deprive his father or mother, or brethren, or children, of life voluntarily and of purpose, for him the earthly lawgiver legislates as follows : — There shall be the same proclamations about outlawry, and there shall be the same sureties which have been enacted in the former cases. But in his case, if he be convicted, the servants of the judges and the magistrates shall slay him at an appointed place without the city where three ways meet, and there expose his body naked, and each of the magistrates on behalf of the whole city shall take a stone and cast it upon the head of the dead man, and so deliver the city from pollution ; after that, they shall bear him to the borders of the land, and cast him forth unburied, according to law. And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend ? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life, not because the law of the state requires him, nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him, nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty. For him, what ceremonies there are to be of purification and burial God knows, and about these the next of kin should enquire of the interpreters and of the laws thereto relating, and do according to their injunctions. They who meet their death in this way shall be buried alone, and none shall be laid by their side ; they shall be buried ingloriously in the borders of the twelve portions the land, in such places as are uncultivated and nameless, and no column or inscription shall mark the place of their interment. And if a beast of burden or other animal cause the death of any one, except in the case of anything of that kind happening to a competitor in the public contests, the kinsmen of the deceased shall prosecute the slayer for murder, and the wardens of the country, such, and so many as the kinsmen appoint, shall try the cause, and let the beast when condemned be slain by them, and let them cast it beyond the borders. And if any lifeless thing deprive a man of life, except in the case of a thunderbolt or other fatal dart sent from the Gods — whether a man is killed by lifeless objects, falling upon him, or by his falling upon them, the nearest of kin shall appoint the nearest neighbour to be a judge, and thereby acquit himself and the whole family of guilt. And he shall cast forth the guilty thing beyond the border, as has been said about the animals. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. I may reply, that in a state in which the courts are bad and mute, because the judges conceal their opinions and decide causes clandestinely ; or what is worse, when they are disorderly and noisy, as in a theatre, clapping or hooting in turn this or that orator — I say that then there is a very serious evil, which affects the whole state. Unfortunate is the necessity of having to legislate for such courts, but where the necessity exists, the legislator should only allow them to ordain the penalties for the smallest offences ; if the state for which he is legislating be of this character, he must take most matters into his own hands and speak distinctly. But when a state has good courts, and the judges are well trained and scrupulously tested, the determination of the penalties or punishments which shall be inflicted on the guilty may fairly and with advantage be left to them. And we are not to be blamed for not legislating concerning all that large class of matters which judges far worse educated than ours would be able to determine, assigning to each offence what is due both to the perpetrator and to the sufferer. We believe those for whom we are legislating to be best able to judge, and therefore to them the greater part may be left. At the same time, as I have often said, we should exhibit to the judges, as we have done, the outline and form of the punishments to be inflicted, and then they will not transgress the just rule. That was an excellent practice, which we observed before, and which now that we are resuming the work of legislation, may with advantage be repeated by us. LAWS BOOK IX

Now the boundaries of some things do not touch one another, but there is a borderland which comes in between, preventing them from touching. And we were saying that actions done from passion are of this nature, and come in between the voluntary and involuntary. If a person be convicted of having inflicted wounds in a passion, in the first place he shall pay twice the amount of the injury, if the wound be curable, or, if incurable, four times the amount of the injury ; or if the wound be curable, and at the same time cause great and notable disgrace to the wounded person, he shall pay fourfold. And whenever any one in wounding another injures not only the sufferer, but also the city, and makes him incapable of defending his country against the enemy, he, besides the other penalties, shall pay a penalty for the loss which the state has incurred. And the penalty shall be, that in addition to his own times of service, he shall serve on behalf of the disabled person, and shall take his place in war ; or, if he refuse, he shall be liable to be convicted by law of refusal to serve. The compensation for the injury, whether to be twofold or threefold or fourfold, shall be fixed by the judges who convict him. And if, in like manner, a brother wounds a brother, the parents and kindred of either sex, including the children of cousins, whether on the male or female side, shall meet, and when they have judged the cause, they shall entrust the assessment of damages to the parents, as is natural ; and if the estimate be disputed, then the kinsmen on the male side shall make the estimate, or if they cannot, they shall commit the matter to the guardians of the law. And when similar charges of wounding are brought by children against their parents, those who are more than sixty years of age, having children of their own, not adopted, shall be required to decide ; and if any one is convicted, they shall determine whether he or she ought to die, or suffer some other punishment either greater than death, or, at any rate, not much less. A kinsman of the offender shall not be allowed to judge the cause, not even if he be of the age which is prescribed by the law. If a slave in a fit of anger wound a freeman, the owner of the slave shall give him up to the wounded man, who may do as he pleases with him, and if be not give him up he shall himself make good the injury. And if any one says that the slave and the wounded man are conspiring together, let him argue the point, and if he is cast, he shall pay for the wrong three times over, but if he gains his case, the freeman who conspired with the slave shall reliable to an action for kidnapping. And if any one unintentionally wounds another he shall simply pay for the harm, for no legislator is able to control chance. In such a case the judges shall be the same as those who are appointed in the case of children suing their parents ; and they shall estimate the amount of the injury. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. Seeing you thus in earnest, I would fain offer up a prayer that I may succeed : — but I must proceed at once. Who can be calm when he is called upon to prove the existence of the Gods ? Who can avoid hating and abhorring the men who are and have been the cause of this argument ; I speak of those who will not believe the tales which they have heard as babes and sucklings from their mothers and nurses, repeated by them both in jest and earnest, like charms, who have also heard them in the sacrificial prayers, and seen sights accompanying them — sights and sounds delightful to children — and their parents during the sacrifices showing an intense earnestness on behalf of their children and of themselves, and with eager interest talking to the Gods, and beseeching them, as though they were firmly convinced of their existence ; who likewise see and hear the prostrations and invocations which are made by Hellenes and barbarians at the rising and setting of the sun and moon, in all the vicissitudes of life, not as if they thought that there were no Gods, but as if there could be no doubt of their existence, and no suspicion of their non-existence ; when men, knowing all these things, despise them on no real grounds, as would be admitted by all who have any particle of intelligence, and when they force us to say what we are now saying, how can any one in gentle terms remonstrate with the like of them, when he has to begin by proving to them the very existence of the Gods ? Yet the attempt must be made ; for it would be unseemly that one half of mankind should go mad in their lust of pleasure, and the other half in their indignation at such persons. Our address to these lost and perverted natures should not be spoken in passion ; let us suppose ourselves to select some one of them, and gently reason with him, smothering our anger : — O my son, we will say to him, you are young, and the advance of time will make you reverse may of the opinions which you now hold. Wait awhile, and do not attempt to judge at present of the highest things ; and that is the highest of which you now think nothing — to know the Gods rightly and to live accordingly. And in the first place let me indicate to you one point which is of great importance, and about which I cannot be deceived : — You and your friends are not the first who have held this opinion about the Gods. There have always been persons more or less numerous who have had the same disorder. I have known many of them, and can tell you, that no one who had taken up in youth this opinion, that the Gods do not exist, ever continued in the same until he was old ; the two other notions certainly do continue in some cases, but not in many ; the notion, I mean, that the Gods exist, but take no heed of human things, and the other notion that they do take heed of them, but are easily propitiated with sacrifices and prayers. As to the opinion about the Gods which may some day become clear to you, I advise you go wait and consider if it be true or not ; ask of others, and above all of the legislator. In the meantime take care that you do not offend against the Gods. For the duty of the legislator is and always will be to teach you the truth of these matters. LAWS BOOK X

Ath. After the prelude shall follow a discourse, which will be the interpreter of the law ; this shall proclaim to all impious persons : — that they must depart from their ways and go over to the pious. And to those who disobey, let the law about impiety be as follows : — If a man is guilty of any impiety in word or deed, any one who happens to present shall give information to the magistrates, in aid of the law ; and let the magistrates who. first receive the information bring him before the appointed court according to the law ; and if a magistrate, after receiving information, refuses to act, he shall be tried for impiety at the instance of any one who is willing to vindicate the laws ; and if any one be cast, the court shall estimate the punishment of each act of impiety ; and let all such criminals be imprisoned. There shall be three prisons in the state : the first of them is to be the common prison in the neighbourhood of the agora for the safe-keeping of the generality of offenders ; another is to be in the neighbourhood of the nocturnal council, and is to be called the "House of Reformation" ; another, to be situated in some wild and desolate region in the centre of the country, shall be called by some name expressive of retribution. Now, men fall into impiety from three causes, which have been already mentioned, and from each of these causes arise two sorts of impiety, in all six, which are worth distinguishing, and should not all have the same punishment. For he who does not believe in Gods, and yet has a righteous nature, hates the wicked and dislikes and refuses to do injustice, and avoids unrighteous men, and loves the righteous. But they who besides believing that the world is devoid of Gods are intemperate, and have at the same time good memories and quick wits, are worse ; although both of them are unbelievers, much less injury is done by the one than by the other. The one may talk loosely about the Gods and about sacrifices and oaths, and perhaps by laughing at other men he may make them like himself, if he be not punished. But the other who holds the same opinions and is called a clever man, is full of stratagem and deceit — men of this class deal in prophecy and jugglery of all kinds, and out of their ranks sometimes come tyrants and demagogues and generals and hierophants of private mysteries and the Sophists, as they are termed, with their ingenious devices. There are many kinds of unbelievers, but two only for whom legislation is required ; one the hypocritical sort, whose crime is deserving of death many times over, while the other needs only bonds and admonition. In like manner also the notion that the Gods take no thought of men produces two other sorts of crimes, and the notion that they may be propitiated produces two more. Assuming these divisions, let those who have been made what they are only from want of understanding, and not from malice or an evil nature, be placed by the judge in the House of Reformation, and ordered to suffer imprisonment during a period of not less than five years. And in the meantime let them have no intercourse with the other citizens, except with members of the nocturnal council, and with them let them converse with a view to the improvement of their soul’s health. And when the time of their imprisonment has expired, if any of them be of sound mind let him be restored to sane company, but if not, and if he be condemned a second time, let him be punished with death. As to that class of monstrous natures who not only believe that there are no Gods, or that they are negligent, or to be propitiated, but in contempt of mankind conjure the souls of the living and say that they can conjure the dead and promise to charm the Gods with sacrifices and prayers, and will utterly overthrow individuals and whole houses and states for the sake of money — let him who is guilty of any of these things be condemned by the court to be bound according to law in the prison which is in the centre of the land, and let no freeman ever approach him, but let him receive the rations of food appointed by the guardians of the law from the hands of the public slaves ; and when he is dead let him be cast beyond the borders unburied, and if any freeman assist in burying him, let him pay the penalty of impiety to any one who is willing to bring a suit against him. But if he leaves behind him children who are fit to be citizens, let the guardians of orphans take care of them, just as they would of any other orphans, from the day on which their father is convicted. LAWS BOOK X

And if a man dying by some unexpected fate leaves daughters behind him, let him pardon the legislator if he gives them in marriage, he have a regard only to two out of three conditions — nearness of kin and the preservation of the lot, and omits the third condition, which a father would naturally consider, for he would choose out of all the citizens a son for himself, and a husband for his daughter, with a view to his character and disposition — the father, say, shall forgive the legislator if he disregards this, which to him is an impossible consideration. Let the law about these matters where practicable be as follows : — If a man dies without making a will, and leaves behind him daughters, let his brother, being the son of the same father or of the same mother, having no lot, marry the daughter and have the lot of the dead man. And if he have no brother, but only a brother’s son, in like manner let them marry, if they be of a suitable age ; and if there be not even a brother’s son, but only the son of a sister, let them do likewise, and so in the fourth degree, if there be only the testator’s father’s brother, or in the fifth degree, his father’s brother’s son, or in the sixth degree, the child of his father’s sister. Let kindred be always reckoned in this way : if a person leaves daughters the relationship shall proceed upwards through brothers and sisters, and brothers’ and sisters’ children, and first the males shall come, and after them the females in the same family. The judge shall consider and determine the suitableness or unsuitableness of age in marriage ; he shall make an inspection of the males naked, and of the women naked down to the navel. And if there be a lack of kinsmen in a family extending to grandchildren of a brother, or to the grandchildren of a grandfather’s children, the maiden may choose with the consent of her guardians any one of the citizens who is willing and whom she wills, and he shall be the heir of the dead man, and the husband of his daughter. Circumstances vary, and there may sometimes be a still greater lack of relations within the limits of the state ; and if any maiden has no kindred living in the city, and there is some one who has been sent out to a colony, and she is disposed to make him the heir of her father’s possessions, if he be indeed of her kindred, let him proceed to take the lot according to the regulation of the law ; but if he be not of her kindred, she having no kinsmen within the city, and he be chosen by the daughter of the dead man, and empowered to marry by the guardians, let him return home and take the lot of him who died intestate. And if a man has no children, either male or female, and dies without making a will, let the previous law in general hold ; and let a man and a woman go forth from the family and share the deserted house, and let the lot belong absolutely to them ; and let the heiress in the first degree be a sister, and in a second degree a daughter of a brother, and in the third, a daughter of a sister, in the fourth degree the sister of a father, and in the fifth degree the daughter of a father’s brother, and in a sixth degree of a father’s sister ; and these shall dwell with their male kinsmen, according to the degree of relationship and right, as we enacted before. Now we must not conceal from ourselves that such laws are apt to be oppressive and that there may sometimes be a hardship in the lawgiver commanding the kinsman of the dead man to marry his relation ; be may be thought not to have considered the innumerable hindrances which may arise among men in the execution of such ordinances ; for there may be cases in which the parties refuse to obey, and are ready to do anything rather than marry, when there is some bodily or mental malady or defect among those who are bidden to marry or be married. Persons may fancy that the legislator never thought of this, but they are mistaken ; wherefore let us make a common prelude on behalf of the lawgiver and of his subjects, the law begging the latter to forgive the legislator, in that he, having to take care of the common weal, cannot order at the same time the various circumstances of individuals, and begging him to pardon them if naturally they are sometimes unable to fulfil the act which he in his ignorance imposes upon them. LAWS BOOK XI

Cases in which one man injures another by poisons, and which prove fatal, have been already discussed ; but about other cases in which a person intentionally and of malice harms another with meats, or drinks, or ointments, nothing has as yet been determined. For there are two kinds of poisons used among men, which cannot clearly be distinguished. There is the kind just now explicitly mentioned, which injures bodies by the use of other bodies according to a natural law ; there is also another kind which persuades the more daring class that they can do injury by sorceries, and incantations, and magic knots, as they are termed, and makes others believe that they above all persons are injured by the powers of the magician. Now it is not easy to know the nature of all these things ; nor if a man do know can he readily persuade others to believe him. And when men are disturbed in their minds at the sight of waxen images fixed either at their doors, or in a place where three ways meet, or on the sepulchres of parents, there is no use in trying to persuade them that they should despise all such things because they have no certain knowledge about them. But we must have a law in two parts, concerning poisoning, in whichever of the two ways the attempt is made, and we must entreat, and exhort, and advise men not to have recourse to such practices, by which they scare the multitude out of their wits, as if they were children, compelling the legislator and the judge to heal the fears which the sorcerer arouses, and to tell them in the first place, that he who attempts to poison or enchant others knows not what he is doing, either as regards the body (unless he has a knowledge of medicine), or as regards his enchantments (unless he happens to be a prophet or diviner). Let the law, then, run as follows about poisoning or witchcraft : — He who employs poison to do any injury, not fatal, to a man himself, or to his servants, or any injury, whether fatal or not, to his cattle or his bees, if he be a physician, and be convicted of poisoning, shall be punished with death ; or if he be a private person, the court shall determine what he is to pay or suffer. But he who seems to be the sort of man injures others by magic knots, or enchantments, or incantations, or any of the like practices, if he be a prophet or diviner, let him die ; and if, not being a prophet, he be convicted of witchcraft, as in the previous case, let the court fix what he ought to pay or suffer. LAWS BOOK XI

When a man does another any injury by theft or violence, for the greater injury let him pay greater damages to the injured man, and less for the smaller injury ; but in all cases, whatever the injury may have been, as much as will compensate the loss. And besides the compensation of the wrong, let a man pay a further penalty for the chastisement of his offence : he who has done the wrong instigated by the folly of another, through the lightheartedness of youth or the like, shall pay a lighter penalty ; but he who has injured another through his own folly, when overcome by pleasure or pain, in cowardly fear, or lust, or envy, or implacable anger, shall endure a heavier punishment. Not that he is punished because he did wrong, for that which is done can never be undone, but in order that in future times, he, and those who see him corrected, may utterly hate injustice, or at any rate abate much of their evil-doing. Having an eye to all these things, the law, like a good archer, should aim at the right measure of punishment, and in all cases at the deserved punishment. In the attainment of this the judge shall be a fellow-worker with the legislator, whenever the law leaves to him to determine what the offender shall suffer or pay ; and the legislator, like a painter, shall give a rough sketch of the cases in which the law is to be applied. This is what we must do, Megillus and Cleinias, in the best and fairest manner that we can, saying what the punishments are to be of all actions of theft and violence, and giving laws of such a kind as the Gods and sons of Gods would have us give. LAWS BOOK XI

If any man refuses to be a witness, he who wants him shall summon him, and he who is summoned shall come to the trial ; and if he knows and is willing to bear witness, let him bear witness, but if he says he does not know let him swear by the three divinities Zeus, and Apollo, and Themis, that he does not, and have no more to do with the cause. And he who is summoned to give witness and does not answer to his summoner, shall be liable for the harm which ensues according to law. And if a person calls up as a witness any one who is acting as a judge, let him give his witness, but he shall not afterwards vote in the cause. A free woman may give her witness and plead, if she be more than forty years of age, and may bring an action if she have no husband ; but if her husband be alive she shall only be allowed to bear witness. A slave of either sex and a child shall be allowed to give evidence and to plead, but only in cases of murder ; and they must produce sufficient sureties that they will certainly remain until the trial, in case they should be charged with false witness. And either of the parties in a cause may bring an accusation of perjury against witnesses, touching their evidence in whole or in part, if he asserts that such evidence has been given ; but the accusation must be brought previous to the final decision of the cause. The magistrates shall preserve the accusations of false witness, and have them kept under the seal of both parties, and produce them on the day when the trial for false witness takes place. If a man be twice convicted of false witness, he shall not be required, and if thrice, he shall not be allowed to bear witness ; and if he dare to witness after he has been convicted three times, let any one who pleases inform against him to the magistrates, and let the magistrates hand him over to the court, and if he be convicted he shall be punished with death. And in any case in which the evidence is rightly found to be false, and yet to have given the victory to him who wins the suit, and more than half the witnesses are condemned, the decision which was gained by these means shall be a discussion and a decision as to whether the suit was determined by that false evidence or and in whichever way the decision may be given, the previous suit shall be determined accordingly. LAWS BOOK XI

Now every man who is engaged in any suit ought to be very careful of bringing false witness against any one, either intentionally or unintentionally, if he can help ; for justice is truly said to be an honourable maiden, and falsehood is naturally repugnant to honour and justice. A witness ought to be very careful not to sift against justice, as for example in what relates to the throwing away of arms — he must distinguish the throwing them away when necessary, and not make that a reproach, or bring in action against some innocent person on that account. To make the distinction maybe difficult ; but still the law must attempt to define the different kinds in some way. Let me endeavour to explain my meaning by an ancient tale : — If Patroclus had been brought to the tent still alive but without his arms (and this has happened to innumerable persons), the original arms, which the poet says were presented to Peleus by the Gods as a nuptial gift when he married. Thetis, remaining in the hands of Hector, then the base spirits of that day might have reproached the son of Menoetius with having cast away his arms. Again, there is the case of those who have been thrown down precipices and lost their arms ; and of those who at sea, and in stormy places, have been suddenly overwhelmed by floods of water ; and there are numberless things of this kind which one might adduce by way of extenuation, and with the view of justifying a misfortune which is easily misrepresented. We must, therefore, endeavour to divide to the best of our power the greater and more serious evil from the lesser. And a distinction may be drawn in the use of terms of reproach. A man does not always deserve to be called the thrower away of his shield ; he may be only the loser of his arms. For there is a great or rather absolute difference between him who is deprived of his arms by a sufficient force, and him who voluntarily lets his shield go. Let the law then be as follows : — If a person having arms is overtaken by the enemy and does not turn round and defend himself, but lets them go voluntarily or throws them away, choosing a base life and a swift escape rather than a courageous and noble and blessed death — in such a case of the throwing away of arms let justice be done, but the judge need take no note of the case just now mentioned ; for the bad man ought always to be punished, in the hope that he may be improved, but not the unfortunate, for there is no advantage in that. And what shall be the punishment suited to him who has thrown away his weapons of defence ? Tradition says that Caeneus, the Thessalian, was changed by a God from a woman into a man ; but the converse miracle cannot now be wrought, or no punishment would be more proper than that the man who throws away his shield should be changed into a woman. This however is impossible, and therefore let us make a law as nearly like this as we can — that he who loves his life too well shall be in no danger for the remainder of his days, but shall live for ever under the stigma of cowardice. And let the law be in the following terms : — When a man is found guilty of disgracefully throwing away his arms in war, no general or military officer shall allow him to serve as a soldier, or give him any place at all in the ranks of soldiers ; and the officer who gives the coward any place, shall suffer a penalty which the public examiner shall exact of him ; and if he be of the highest dass, he shall pay a thousand drachmae ; or if he be of the second class, five minae ; or if he be of the third, three minae ; or if he be of the fourth class, one mina. And he who is found guilty of cowardice, shall not only be dismissed from manly dangers, which is a disgrace appropriate to his nature, but he shall pay a thousand drachmae, if he be of the highest class, and five minae if he be of the second class, and three if he be of the third class, and a mina, like the preceding, if he be of the fourth class. LAWS BOOK XII

The so-called decision of Rhadamanthus is worthy of all admiration. He knew that the men of his own time believed and had no doubt that there were Gods, which was a reasonable belief in those days, because most men were the sons of Gods, and according to tradition he was one himself. He appears to have thought that he ought to commit judgment to no man, but to the Gods only, and in this way suits were simply and speedily decided by him. For he made the two parties take an oath respecting the points in dispute, and so got rid of the matter speedily and safely. But now that a certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the Gods, and others imagine that they have no care of us, and the opinion of most men, and of the men, is that in return for small sacrifice and a few flattering words they will be their accomplices in purloining large sums and save them from many terrible punishments, the way of Rhadamanthus is no longer suited to the needs of justice ; for as the needs of men about the Gods are changed, the laws should also be changed ; — in the granting of suits a rational legislation ought to do away with the oaths of the parties on either side — he who obtains leave to bring an action should write, down the charges, but should not add an oath ; and the defendant in like manner should give his denial to the magistrates in writing, and not swear ; for it is a dreadful thing to know, when many lawsuits are going on in a state that almost half the people who meet one another quite unconcernedly at the public meals and in other companies and relations of private life are perjured. Let the law, then, be as follows : — A judge who is about to give judgment shall take an oath, and he who is choosing magistrates for the state shall either vote on oath or with a voting tablet which he brings from a temple ; so too the judge of dances and of all music, and the superintendents and umpires of gymnastic and equestrian contests, and any matters in which, as far as men can judge, there is nothing to be gained by a false oath ; but all cases in which a denial confirmed by an oath clearly results in a great advantage to the taker of the oath, shall be decided without the oath of the parties to the suit, and the presiding judges shall not permit either of them. to use an oath for the sake of persuading, nor to call down curses on himself and his race, nor to use unseemly supplications or womanish laments. But they shall ever be teaching and learning what is just in auspicious words ; and he who does otherwise shall be supposed to speak beside the point, and the judges shall again bring him back to the question at issue. On the other hand, strangers in their dealings with strangers shall as at present have power to give and receive oaths, for they will not often grow old in the city or leave a fry of young ones like themselves to be the sons and heirs of the land. LAWS BOOK XII

Now that the whole city has been divided into parts of which the nature and number have been described, and laws have been given about all the most important contracts as far as this was possible, the next thing will be to have justice done. The first of the courts shall consist of elected judges, who shall be chosen by the plaintiff and the defendant in common : these shall be called arbiters rather than judges. And in the second court there shall be judges of the villages and tribes corresponding to the twelvefold division of the land, and before these the litigants shall go to contend for greater damages, if the suit be not decided before the first judges ; the defendant, if he be defeated the second time, shall pay a fifth more than the damages mentioned in the indictment ; and if he find fault with his judges and would try a third time, let him carry the suit before the select judges, and if he be again defeated, let him pay the whole of the damages and half as much again. And the plaintiff, if when defeated before the first judges he persist in going on to the second, shall if he wins receive in addition to the damages a fifth part more, and if defeated he shall pay a like sum ; but if he is not satisfied with the previous decision, and will insist on proceeding to a third court, then if he win he shall receive from the defendant the amount of the damages and, as I said before, half as much again, and the plaintiff, if he lose, shall pay half of the damages claimed, Now the assignment by lot of judges to courts and the completion of the number of them, and the appointment of servants to the different magistrates, and the times at which the several causes should be heard, and the votings and delays, and all the things that necessarily concern suits, and the order of causes, and the time in which answers have to be put in and parties are to appear — of these and other things akin to these we have indeed already spoken, but there is no harm in repeating what is right twice or thrice : — All lesser and easier matters which the elder legislator has omitted may be supplied by the younger one. Private courts will be sufficiently regulated in this way, and the public and state courts, and those which the magistrates must use in the administration of their several offices, exist in many other states. Many very respectable institutions of this sort have been framed by good men, and from them the guardians of the law may by reflection derive what is necessary, for the order of our new state, considering and correcting them, and bringing them to the test of experience, until every detail appears to be satisfactorily determined ; and then putting the final seal upon them, and making them irreversible, they shall use them for ever afterwards. As to what relates to the silence of judges and the abstinence from words of evil omen and the reverse, and the different notions of the just and good and honourable which exist in our : own as compared with other states, they have been partly mentioned already, and another part of them will be mentioned hereafter as we draw near the end. To all these matters he who would be an equal judge, shall justly look, and he shall possess writings about them that he may learn them. For of all kinds of knowledge the knowledge of good laws has the greatest power of improving the learner ; otherwise there would be no meaning the divine and admirable law possessing a name akin to mind (nous, nomos). And of all other words, such as the praises and censures of individuals which occur in poetry and also in prose, whether written down or uttered in daily conversation, whether men dispute about them in the spirit of contention or weakly assent to them, as is often the case — of all these the one sure test is the writings of the legislator, which the righteous judge ought to have in his mind as the antidote of all other words, and thus make himself and the city stand upright, procuring for the good the continuance and increase of justice, and for the bad, on the other hand, a conversion from ignorance and intemperance, and in general from all unrighteousness, as far as their evil minds can be healed, but to those whose web of life is in reality finished, giving death, which is the only remedy for souls in their condition, as I may say truly again and again. And such judges and chiefs of judges will be worthy of receiving praise from the whole city. LAWS BOOK XII

When the suits of the year are completed the following laws shall regulate their execution : — In the first place, the judge shall assign to the party who wins the suit the whole property of him who loses, with the exception of mere necessaries, and the assignment shall be made through the herald immediately after each decision in the hearing of the judges ; and when the month arrives following the month in which the courts are sitting (unless the gainer of the suit has been previously satisfied), the court shall follow up the case, and hand over to the winner   the goods of the loser ; but if they find that he has not the means of paying, and the sum deficient is not less than a drachma, the insolvent person shall not have any right of going to law with any other man until he have satisfied the debt of the winning party ; but other persons shall still have the right of bringing suits against him. And if any one after he is condemned refuses to acknowledge the authority which condemned him, let the magistrates who are thus deprived of their authority bring him before the court of the guardians of the law, and if he be cast, let him be punished with death, as a subverter of the whole state and of the laws. LAWS BOOK XII

And one may judge, perhaps, for brevity’s sake how the human race needs number, by glancing at the arts — and yet that too is a great matter — but if you note the divinity of birth, and its mortality, in which awe of the divine must be acknowledged, and real number, [978a] it is not anybody who can tell how great is the power which we owe to the accompaniment of number as a whole — for it is clear that everything in music needs a distinct numeration of movement and notes — and above all, how it is the cause of all good things ; and that it is the cause of no evil thing is a point that must be well understood, as it may be quickly enough. Nay, the motion that we may call unreasoned and unordered, lacking shape and rhythm and harmony, and everything that has a share of some evil, [978b] is deficient in number altogether ; and in this light must the matter be regarded by him who means to end his life in happiness. And no one who does not know the just, the good, the honorable and all the rest of such qualities, with a hold on true opinion, will number them off so as fully to persuade both himself and his neighbor. EPINOMIS   BOOK XII

Some God, as it seems plain to me, is preparing for you good fortune in a gracious and bountiful way, if only you accept it with grace. For you dwell near together as neighbors in close association [6.322d] so that you can help one another in the things of greatest importance. For Hermeias will find in his multitude of horses or of other military equipment, or even in the gaining of gold itself, no greater source of power for all purposes than in the gaining of steadfast friends possessed of a sound character ; while Erastus and Coriscus, in addition to this fair Science of Ideas, need also — as I, old though I am, assert — the science which is a safeguard in dealing with the wicked and unjust, and a kind of self-defensive power. [6.322e] For they lack experience owing to the fact that they have spent a large part of their lives in company with us who are men of moderation and free from vice ; and for this reason, as I have said, they need these additional qualities, so that they may not be compelled to neglect the true Science, and to pay more attention than is right to that which is human and necessitated. Now Hermeias, on the other hand, seems to me — [6.323a] so far as I can judge without having met him as yet — to possess this practical ability both by nature and also through the skill bred of experience. What, then, do I suggest ? To you, Hermeias, I, who have made trial of Erastus and Coriscus more fully than you, affirm and proclaim and testify that you will not easily discover more trustworthy characters than these your neighbors ; and I counsel you to hold fast to these men by every righteous means, and regard this as a duty of no secondary importance. To Coriscus and Erastus the counsel I give is this — that they in turn should hold fast to Hermeias, [6.323b] and endeavor by thus holding to one another to become united in the bonds of friendship. But in case any one of you should be thought to be breaking up this union in any way — for what is human is not altogether durable — send a letter here to me and my friends stating the grounds of complaint ; for I believe that — unless the disruption should happen to be serious — the arguments sent you from here by us, based on justice and reverence, will serve better than any incantation to weld you and bind you together once again into your former state of friendship [6.323c] and fellowship. If, then, all of us — both we and you — practice this philosophy, as each is able, to the utmost of our power, the prophecy I have now made will come true ; but if we fail to do this, I keep silence as to the consequence ; for the prophecy I am making is one of good omen, and I declare that we shall, God willing, do all these things well. All you three must read this letter, all together if possible, or if not by twos ; and as often as you possibly can read it in common, and use it as a form of covenant and a binding law, [6.323d] as is right ; and with an earnestness that is not out of tune combined with the playfulness that is sister to earnestness, swear by the God that is Ruler of all that is and that shall be, and swear by the Lord and Father of the Ruler and Cause, Whom, if we are real philosophers, we shall all know truly so far as men well-fortuned can. LETTERS LETTER VI

The policy which would best serve to secure your real "well-doing" 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 [8.352c] 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 ; for such deeds are irremediable and none could ever wash out their stain. 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 [8.352d] 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, [8.352e] 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. Be it so, then, that this is nothing but a prayer (and in truth every man ought always [8.353a] 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 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 [8.353b] 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, [8.353c] 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, 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 [8.353d] 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 [8.353e] 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. 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, [8.354a] 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. [8.354b] That this is possible has been actually proved by that wise and good man Lycurgus ; 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 ; and because of this they have already been kept safe [8.354c] 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 [8.354d] 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 [8.354e] who preceded Dionysius, without any legal trial, 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 ; [8.355a] and men of sound sense have Law for their God, 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. "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, O ye Syracusans, accept such laws [8.355b] 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. The ordinance which effects this [8.355c] will be truly laid down by you as law, since it really makes those who obey it blessed ; 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. And when you have accepted laws of this kind, inasmuch as [8.355d] 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, [8.355e] 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. On these conditions set up kings for all of you, by the help of the gods and with honest and sound intent, — my own son first in return for twofold favors, namely that conferred by me and that conferred by my father ; for he delivered the city from barbarians in his own day, while I, in the present day, have twice delivered it from tyrants, [8.356a] whereof you yourselves are witnesses. And as your second king create the man who possesses the same name as my father and is son to Dionysius, in return for his present assistance and for his pious disposition ; for he, though he is sprung from a tyrant’s loins, is in act of delivering the city of his own free will, gaining thereby for himself and for his race everlasting honor in place of a transitory and unrighteous tyranny. And, thirdly, you ought to invite to become king of Syracuse — as willing king of a willing city — him who is now [8.356b] commander of your enemies’ army, Dionysius, son of Dionysius, if so be that he is willing of his own accord to transform himself into a king, being moved thereto by fear of fortune’s changes, and by pity for his country and the untended state of her temples and her tombs, lest because of his ambition he utterly ruin all and become a cause of rejoicing to the barbarians. And these three, — whether you grant them the power of the Laconian kings or curtail that power by a common agreement, — you should establish as kings in some such manner as the following, [8.356c] which indeed has been described to you before, yet listen to it now again. If you find that the family of Dionysius and Hipparinus is willing to make an end of the evils now occurring in order to secure the salvation of Sicily provided that they receive honors both in the present and for the future for themselves and for their family, then on these terms, as was said before, convoke envoys empowered to negotiate a pact, such men as they may choose, whether they come from Sicily or from abroad or both, and in such numbers as may be mutually agreed. [8.356d] And these men, on their arrival, should first lay down laws and a constitution which is so framed as to permit the kings to be put in control of the temples and of all else that fitly belongs to those who once were benefactors. And as controllers of war and peace they should appoint Law-wardens, thirty-five in number, in conjunction with the People and the Council. And there should be various courts of law for various suits, but in matters involving death or exile the Thirty-five should form the court ; and in addition to these there should be judges selected [8.356e] from the magistrates of each preceding year, one from each magistracy — the one, that is, who is approved as the most good and just ; and these should decide for the ensuing year all cases which involve the death, imprisonment or transportation of citizens ; and it should not be permissible for a king to be a judge of such suits, but he, like a priest, [8.357a] should remain clean from bloodshed and imprisonment and exile. This is what I planned for you when I was alive, and it is still my plan now. With your aid, had not Furies in the guise of guests prevented me, I should then have overcome our foes, and established the State in the way I planned ; and after this, had my intentions been realized, I should have resettled the rest of Sicily by depriving the barbarians of the land they now hold — excepting those who fought in defence of the common liberty against the tyranny — [8.357b] and restoring the former occupiers of the Greek regions to their ancient and ancestral homes. And now likewise I counsel you all with one accord to adopt and execute these same plans, and to summon all to this task, and to count him who refuses as a common enemy. Nor is such a course impossible ; for when plans actually exist in two souls, and when they are readily perceived upon reflection to be the best, he who pronounces such plans impossible is hardly a man of understanding. And by the "two souls" [8.357c] I mean the soul of Hipparinus the son of Dionysius and that of my own son ; for should these agree together, I believe that all the rest of the Syracusans who have a care for their city will consent. Well then, when you have paid due honor, with prayer, to all the gods and all the other powers to whom, along with the gods, it is due, cease not from urging and exhorting both friends and opponents by gentle means and every means, until, like a heaven-sent dream presented to waking eyes, [8.357d] the plan which I have pictured in words be wrought by you into plain deeds and brought to a happy consummation." LETTERS LETTER VIII

[13.361a] As regards the things you wrote to me to send you, I have had the Apollo made and Leptines is bringing it to you. It is by a young and good craftsman named Leochares. He had at his shop another piece which was, as I thought, very artistic ; so I bought it with the intention of presenting it to your wife, because she tended me both in health and sickness in a manner which did credit both to you and to me. So will you give it to her, unless you prefer to do otherwise. I am also sending twelve jars of sweet wine for the children [13.361b] and two of honey. We arrived too late for the stoling of the figs, and the myrtle-berries that were stored have rotted ; but in future we shall take better care of them. About the plants Leptines will tell you. The money to meet these expenses — I mean for the purchases mentioned and for certain State taxes — I obtained from Leptines, telling him what I thought it best became us to tell him, it being also true, — that the sum of about sixteen minas which we spent on the Leucadian ship belonged to us ; [13.361c] this, then, was the sum I obtained, and on obtaining it I used it myself and sent off these purchases to you. Next, let me tell you what your position is in regard to money, both what you have at Athens and my own. I shall make use of your money, as I told you previously, just as I do that of all my other friends ; I use as little as I possibly can, only just so much as I and the man I get it from agree to be necessary or right or fitting. Now this is how I am situated at present. I have in my charge four daughters of those nieces of mine who died [13.361d] at the time when you bade me to wear a crown, and I refused ; and of these one is of marriageable age, one eight years old, one a little over three years, and the fourth not yet a year old. To these girls I and my friends must give portions — to all of them, that is, whom I live to see married ; as to the rest, they must look to themselves. Nor should I give portions to any whose fathers may get to be richer   than I ; though at present I am the wealthiest of them, and it was I who, with the help of Dion and others, [13.361e] gave their mothers their portions. Now the eldest one is marrying Speusippus, she being his sister’s daughter. So for her I require no more than thirty minas, that being for us a reasonable dowry. Moreover, in case my own mother should die, no more than ten minas would be required for the building of her tomb. For such purposes, then, these are pretty well all my necessary requirements at the present time. And should any further expense, private or public, be incurred owing to my visit to your court, we must do as I said before : I must strive hard to keep the expense as low as possible, and if ever [13.362a] that is beyond my power, the charge must fall upon you. In the next place, as regards the spending of your own money at Athens, I have to tell you, first of all, that, contrary to what we supposed, you have not a single friend who will advance money in case I am required to spend something on furnishing a chorus or the like ; and further, if you yourself have some urgent affair on hand in which prompt expenditure is to your advantage, whereas it is to your disadvantage to have the expenditure deferred until the arrival of a messenger from you, such a state of affairs is not only awkward but reflects also on your honor. And in fact I discovered this myself [13.362b] when I sent Erastus to Andromedes the Aeginetan — from whom, as a friend of yours, you told me to borrow what I needed ; as I wished to send you also some other valuable items which you had written for. He replied — naturally enough, as any man might — that when, on a previous occasion, he had advanced money on your father’s account he had had difficulty in recovering it, and that he would now loan a small amount but no more. That was how I came to borrow from Leptines ; and for this Leptines is deserving of praise, not that he gave it, but that he did so readily, and plainly showed his friendship and its quality [13.362c] in all else that he did or said regarding you. For it is surely right that I should report such actions, as well as the opposite kind, to show what I believe to be each man’s attitude towards you. However, I will tell you candidly the position with regard to money matters ; for it is right to do so, and, moreover, I shall be speaking from experience of your court. The agents who bring you the reports every time are unwilling to report anything which they think entails an expense, as being likely to bring them odium. Do you therefore accustom them and compel them [13.362d] to declare these matters as well as the rest ; for it is right that you should know the whole state of affairs so far as you can and act as the judge, and not avoid this knowledge. For such a course will best serve to enhance your authority. For expenditure that is rightly laid out and rightly paid back is a good thing — as you yourself maintain and will maintain — not only for other purposes but also for the acquisition of money itself. Therefore, do not let those who profess to be devoted to you slander you before the world ; for to have the reputation of being ill to deal with is neither [13.362e] good for your reputation nor honorable. LETTERS LETTER XIII

If, I said, he makes a set speech and we make another recounting all the advantages of being just, and he answers and we rejoin, there must be a numbering and measuring of the goods which are claimed on either side, and in the end we shall want judges to decide ; but if we proceed in our inquiry as we lately did, by making admissions to one another, we shall unite the offices of judge and advocate in our own persons. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarrelling among themselves as of all things the basest, should any word be said to them of the wars in heaven, and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, for they are not true. No, we shall never mention the battles of the giants, or let them be embroidered on garments ; and we shall be silent about the innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relatives. If they would only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarrel between citizens ; this is what old men and old women should begin by telling children ; and when they grow up, the poets also should be told to compose them in a similar spirit. But the narrative of Hephaestus binding Here his mother, or how on another occasion Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods in Homer — these tales must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal ; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable ; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts. THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

Would you say "most," I replied, when you consider that there is a further stage of the evil in which a man is not only a life-long litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as plaintiff or defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his litigiousness ; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty ; able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice : and all for what ? — in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that still more disgraceful ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

But with the judge it is otherwise ; since he governs mind by mind ; he ought not therefore to have been trained among vicious minds, and to have associated with them from youth upward, and to have gone through the whole calendar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes of others as he might their bodily diseases from his own self-consciousness ; the honorable mind which is to form a healthy judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits when young. And this is the reason why in youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practised upon by the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young ; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others : knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Then the good and wise judge whom we are seeking is not this man, but the other ; for vice cannot know virtue too, but a virtuous nature, educated by time, will acquire a knowledge both of virtue and vice : the virtuous, and not the vicious, man has wisdom — in my opinion. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

We were inquiring into the nature of absolute justice and into the character of the perfectly just, and into injustice and the perfectly unjust, that we might have an ideal. We were to look at these in order that we might judge of our own happiness and unhappiness according to the standard which they exhibited and the degree in which we resembled them, but not with any view of showing that they could exist in fact. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

I mean to say that objects of sense are of two kinds ; some of them do not invite thought because the sense is an adequate judge of them ; while in the case of other objects sense is so untrustworthy that further inquiry is imperatively demanded. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

And in estimating the men, too, may I not fairly make a like request, that I should have a judge whose mind can enter into and see through human nature ? he must not be like a child who looks at the outside and is dazzled at the pompous aspect which the tyrannical nature assumes to the beholder, but let him be one who has a clear insight. May I suppose that the judgment is given in the hearing of us all by one who is able to judge, and has dwelt in the same place with him, and been present at his daily life and known him in his family relations, where he may be seen stripped of his tragedy attire, and again in the hour of public danger — he shall tell us about the happiness and misery of the tyrant when compared with other men ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

The decision will be easily given, he replied ; they shall be choruses coming on the stage, and I must judge them in the order in which they enter, by the criterion of virtue and vice, happiness and misery. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

His experience, then, will enable him to judge better than anyone ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And what does the judge affirm to be the life which is next, and the pleasure which is next ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning with Homer, are only imitators ; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach ? The poet is like a painter who, as we have already observed, will make a likeness of a cobbler though he understands nothing of cobbling ; and his picture is good enough for those who know no more than he does, and judge only by colors and figures. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colors of the several arts, himself understanding their nature only enough to imitate them ; and other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in metre and harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well — such is the sweet influence which melody and rhythm by nature have. And I think that you must have observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colors which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

Hear and judge : The best of us, as I conceive, when we listen to a passage of Homer or one of the tragedians, in which he represents some pitiful hero who is drawling out his sorrows in a long oration, or weeping, and smiting his breast — the best of us, you know, delight in giving way to sympathy, and are in raptures at the excellence of the poet who stirs our feelings most. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X