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Платон
Laws

Let us now return to the enactment of laws. We have treated of sacrilege, and of conspiracy, and of treason. Any of these crimes may be committed by a person not in his right mind, or in the second childhood of old age. If this is proved to be the fact before the judges, the person in question shall only have to pay for the injury, and not be punished further, unless he have on his hands the stain of blood. In this case he shall be exiled for a year, and if he return before the expiration of the year, he shall be retained in the public prison two years.

Homicides may be divided into voluntary and involuntary: and first of involuntary homicide. He who unintentionally kills another man at the games or in military exercises duly authorized by the magistrates, whether death follow immediately or after an interval, shall be acquitted, subject only to the purification required by the Delphian Oracle. Any physician whose patient dies against his will shall in like manner be acquitted. Any one who unintentionally kills the slave of another, believing that he is his own, with or without weapons, shall bear the master of the slave harmless, or pay a penalty amounting to twice the value of the slave, and to this let him add a purification greater than in the case of homicide at the games. If a man kill his own slave, a purification only is required of him. If he kill a freeman unintentionally, let him also make purification; and let him remember the ancient tradition which says that the murdered man is indignant when he sees the murderer walk about in his own accustomed haunts, and that he terrifies him with the remembrance of his crime. And therefore the homicide should keep away from his native land for a year, or, if he have slain a stranger, let him avoid the land of the stranger for a like period. If he complies with this condition, the nearest kinsman of the deceased shall take pity upon him and be reconciled to him; but if he refuses to remain in exile, or visits the temples unpurified, then let the kinsman proceed against him, and demand a double penalty. The kinsman who neglects this duty shall himself incur the curse, and any one who likes may proceed against him, and compel him to leave his country for five years. If a stranger involuntarily kill a stranger, any one may proceed against him in the same manner: and the homicide, if he be a metic, shall be banished for a year; but if he be an entire stranger, whether he have murdered metic, citizen, or stranger, he shall be banished for ever; and if he return, he shall be punished with death, and his property shall go to the next of kin of the murdered man. If he come back by sea against his will, he shall remain on the seashore, wetting his feet in the water while he waits for a vessel to sail; or if he be brought back by land, the magistrates shall send him unharmed beyond the border.

Next follows murder done from anger, which is of two kinds – either arising out of a sudden impulse, and attended with remorse; or committed with premeditation, and unattended with remorse. The cause of both is anger, and both are intermediate between voluntary and involuntary. The one which is committed from sudden impulse, though not wholly involuntary, bears the image of the involuntary, and is therefore the more excusable of the two, and should receive a gentler punishment. The act of him who nurses his wrath is more voluntary, and therefore more culpable. The degree of culpability depends on the presence or absence of intention, to which the degree of punishment should correspond. For the first kind of murder, that which is done on a momentary impulse, let two years' exile be the penalty; for the second, that which is accompanied with malice prepense, three. When the time of any one's exile has expired, the guardians shall send twelve judges to the borders of the land, who shall have authority to decide whether he may return or not. He who after returning repeats the offence, shall be exiled and return no more, and, if he return, shall be put to death, like the stranger in a similar case. He who in a fit of anger kills his own slave, shall purify himself; and he who kills another man's slave, shall pay to his master double the value. Any one may proceed against the offender if he appear in public places, not having been purified; and may bring to trial both the next of kin to the dead man and the homicide, and compel the one to exact, and the other to pay, a double penalty. If a slave kill his master, or a freeman who is not his master, in anger, the kinsmen of the murdered person may do with the murderer whatever they please, but they must not spare his life. If a father or mother kill their son or daughter in anger, let the slayer remain in exile for three years; and on the return of the exile let the parents separate, and no longer continue to cohabit, or have the same sacred rites with those whom he or she has deprived of a brother or sister. The same penalty is decreed against the husband who murders his wife, and also against the wife who murders her husband. Let them be absent three years, and on their return never again share in the same sacred rites with their children, or sit at the same table with them. Nor is a brother or sister who have lifted up their hands against a brother or sister, ever to come under the same roof or share in the same rites with those whom they have robbed of a child. If a son feels such hatred against his father or mother as to take the life of either of them, then, if the parent before death forgive him, he shall only suffer the penalty due to involuntary homicide; but if he be unforgiven, there are many laws against which he has offended; he is guilty of outrage, impiety, sacrilege all in one, and deserves to be put to death many times over. For if the law will not allow a man to kill the authors of his being even in self-defence, what other penalty than death can be inflicted upon him who in a fit of passion wilfully slays his father or mother? If a brother kill a brother in self-defence during a civil broil, or a citizen a citizen, or a slave a slave, or a stranger a stranger, let them be free from blame, as he is who slays an enemy in battle. But if a slave kill a freeman, let him be as a parricide. In all cases, however, the forgiveness of the injured party shall acquit the agents; and then they shall only be purified, and remain in exile for a year.

Enough of actions that are involuntary, or done in anger; let us proceed to voluntary and premeditated actions. The great source of voluntary crime is the desire of money, which is begotten by evil education; and this arises out of the false praise of riches, common both among Hellenes and barbarians; they think that to be the first of goods which is really the third. For the body is not for the sake of wealth, but wealth for the body, as the body is for the soul. If this were better understood, the crime of murder, of which avarice is the chief cause, would soon cease among men. Next to avarice, ambition is a source of crime, troublesome to the ambitious man himself, as well as to the chief men of the state. And next to ambition, base fear is a motive, which has led many an one to commit murder in order that he may get rid of the witnesses of his crimes. Let this be said as a prelude to all enactments about crimes of violence; and the tradition must not be forgotten, which tells that the murderer is punished in the world below, and that when he returns to this world he meets the fate which he has dealt out to others. If a man is deterred by the prelude and the fear of future punishment, he will have no need of the law; but in case he disobey, let the law be declared against him as follows: – He who of malice prepense kills one of his kindred, shall in the first place be outlawed; neither temple, harbour, nor agora shall be polluted by his presence. And if a kinsman of the deceased refuse to proceed against his slayer, he shall take the curse of pollution upon himself, and also be liable to be prosecuted by any one who will avenge the dead. The prosecutor, however, must observe the customary ceremonial before he proceeds against the offender. The details of these observances will be best determined by a conclave of prophets and interpreters and guardians of the law, and the judges of the cause itself shall be the same as in cases of sacrilege. He who is convicted shall be punished with death, and not be buried within the country of the murdered person. He who flies from the law shall undergo perpetual banishment; if he return, he may be put to death with impunity by any relative of the murdered man or by any other citizen, or bound and delivered to the magistrates. He who accuses a man of murder shall demand satisfactory bail of the accused, and if this is not forthcoming, the magistrate shall keep him in prison against the day of trial. If a man commit murder by the hand of another, he shall be tried in the same way as in the cases previously supposed, but if the offender be a citizen, his body after execution shall be buried within the land.

If a slave kill a freeman, either with his own hand or by contrivance, let him be led either to the grave or to a place whence he can see the grave of the murdered man, and there receive as many stripes at the hand of the public executioner as the person who took him pleases; and if he survive he shall be put to death. If a slave be put out of the way to prevent his informing of some crime, his death shall be punished like that of a citizen. If there are any of those horrible murders of kindred which sometimes occur even in well-regulated societies, and of which the legislator, however unwilling, cannot avoid taking cognizance, he will repeat the old myth of the divine vengeance against the perpetrators of such atrocities. The myth will say that the murderer must suffer what he has done: if he have slain his father, he must be slain by his children; if his mother, he must become a woman and perish at the hands of his offspring in another age of the world. Such a preamble may terrify him; but if, notwithstanding, in some evil hour he murders father or mother or brethren or children, the mode of proceeding shall be as follows: – Him who is convicted, the officers of the judges shall lead to a spot without the city where three ways meet, and there slay him and expose his body naked; and each of the magistrates shall cast a stone upon his head and justify the city, and he shall be thrown unburied beyond the border. But what shall we say of him who takes the life which is dearest to him, that is to say, his own; and this not from any disgrace or calamity, but from cowardice and indolence? The manner of his burial and the purification of his crime is a matter for God and the interpreters to decide and for his kinsmen to execute. Let him, at any rate, be buried alone in some uncultivated and nameless spot, and be without name or monument. If a beast kill a man, not in a public contest, let it be prosecuted for murder, and after condemnation slain and cast without the border. Also inanimate things which have caused death, except in the case of lightning and other visitations from heaven, shall be carried without the border. If the body of a dead man be found, and the murderer remain unknown, the trial shall take place all the same, and the unknown murderer shall be warned not to set foot in the temples or come within the borders of the land; if discovered, he shall die, and his body shall be cast out. A man is justified in taking the life of a burglar, of a footpad, of a violator of women or youth; and he may take the life of another with impunity in defence of father, mother, brother, wife, or other relations.

The nurture and education which are necessary to the existence of men have been considered, and the punishment of acts of violence which destroy life. There remain maiming, wounding, and the like, which admit of a similar division into voluntary and involuntary. About this class of actions the preamble shall be: Whereas men would be like wild beasts unless they obeyed the laws, the first duty of citizens is the care of the public interests, which unite and preserve states, as private interests distract them. A man may know what is for the public good, but if he have absolute power, human nature will impel him to seek pleasure instead of virtue, and so darkness will come over his soul and over the state. If he had mind, he would have no need of law; for mind is the perfection of law. But such a freeman, 'whom the truth makes free,' is hardly to be found; and therefore law and order are necessary, which are the second-best, and they regulate things as they exist in part only, but cannot take in the whole. For actions have innumerable characteristics, which must be partly determined by the law and partly left to the judge. The judge must determine the fact; and to him also the punishment must sometimes be left. What shall the law prescribe, and what shall be left to the judge? A city is unfortunate in which the tribunals are either secret and speechless, or, what is worse, noisy and public, when the people, as if they were in a theatre, clap and hoot the various speakers. Such courts a legislator would rather not have; but if he is compelled to have them, he will speak distinctly, and leave as little as possible to their discretion. But where the courts are good, and presided over by well-trained judges, the penalties to be inflicted may be in a great measure left to them; and as there are to be good courts among our colonists, we need not determine beforehand the exact proportion of the penalty and the crime. Returning, then, to our legislator, let us indite a law about wounding, which shall run as follows: – He who wounds with intent to kill, and fails in his object, shall be tried as if he had succeeded. But since God has favoured both him and his victim, instead of being put to death, he shall be allowed to go into exile and take his property with him, the damage due to the sufferer having been previously estimated by the court, which shall be the same as would have tried the case if death had ensued. If a child should intentionally wound a parent, or a servant his master, or brother or sister wound brother or sister with malice prepense, the penalty shall be death. If a husband or wife wound one another with intent to kill, the penalty which is inflicted upon them shall be perpetual exile; and if they have young children, the guardians shall take care of them and administer their property as if they were orphans. If they have no children, their kinsmen male and female shall meet, and after a consultation with the priests and guardians of the law, shall appoint an heir of the house; for the house and family belong to the state, being a 5040th portion of the whole. And the state is bound to preserve her families happy and holy; therefore, when the heir of a house has committed a capital offence, or is in exile for life, the house is to be purified, and then the kinsmen of the house and the guardians of the law are to find out a family which has a good name and in which there are many sons, and introduce one of them to be the heir and priest of the house. He shall assume the fathers and ancestors of the family, while the first son dies in dishonour and his name is blotted out.

Some actions are intermediate between the voluntary and involuntary. Those done from anger are of this class. If a man wound another in anger, let him pay double the damage, if the injury is curable; or fourfold, if curable, and at the same time dishonourable; and fourfold, if incurable; the amount is to be assessed by the judges. If the wounded person is rendered incapable of military service, the injurer, besides the other penalties, shall serve in his stead, or be liable to a suit for refusing to serve. If brother wounds brother, then their parents and kindred, of both sexes, shall meet and judge the crime. The damages shall be assessed by the parents; and if the amount fixed by them is disputed, an appeal shall be made to the male kindred; or in the last resort to the guardians of the law. Parents who wound their children are to be tried by judges of at least sixty years of age, who have children of their own; and they are to determine whether death, or some lesser punishment, is to be inflicted upon them – no relatives are to take part in the trial. If a slave in anger smite a freeman, he is to be delivered up by his master to the injured person. If the master suspect collusion between the slave and the injured person, he may bring the matter to trial: and if he fail he shall pay three times the injury; or if he obtain a conviction, the contriver of the conspiracy shall be liable to an action for kidnapping. He who wounds another unintentionally shall only pay for the actual harm done.

In all outrages and acts of violence, the elder is to be more regarded than the younger. An injury done by a younger man to an elder is abominable and hateful; but the younger man who is struck by an elder is to bear with him patiently, considering that he who is twenty years older is loco parentis, and remembering the reverence which is due to the Gods who preside over birth. Let him keep his hands, too, from the stranger; instead of taking upon himself to chastise him when he is insolent, he shall bring him before the wardens of the city, who shall examine into the case, and if they find him guilty, shall scourge him with as many blows as he has given; or if he be innocent, they shall warn and threaten his accuser. When an equal strikes an equal, whether an old man an old man, or a young man a young man, let them use only their fists and have no weapons. He who being above forty years of age commences a fight, or retaliates, shall be counted mean and base.

To this preamble, let the law be added: If a man smite another who is his elder by twenty years or more, let the bystander, in case he be older than the combatants, part them; or if he be younger than the person struck, or of the same age with him, let him defend him as he would a father or brother; and let the striker be brought to trial, and if convicted imprisoned for a year or more at the discretion of the judges. If a stranger smite one who is his elder by twenty years or more, he shall be imprisoned for two years, and a metic, in like case, shall suffer three years' imprisonment. He who is standing by and gives no assistance, shall be punished according to his class in one of four penalties – a mina, fifty, thirty, twenty drachmas. The generals and other superior officers of the army shall form the court which tries this class of offences.

Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not be hindered from crime. The uttermost penalty will fall upon those who lay violent hands upon a parent, having no fear of the Gods above, or of the punishments which will pursue them in the world below. They are too wise in their own conceits to believe in such things: wherefore the tortures which await them in another life must be anticipated in this. Let the law be as follows: —

If a man, being in his right mind, dare to smite his father and mother, or his grandfather and grandmother, let the passer-by come to the rescue; and if he be a metic or stranger who comes to the rescue, he shall have the first place at the games; or if he do not come to the rescue, he shall be a perpetual exile. Let the citizen in the like case be praised or blamed, and the slave receive freedom or a hundred stripes. The wardens of the agora, the city, or the country, as the case may be, shall see to the execution of the law. And he who is an inhabitant of the same place and is present shall come to the rescue, or he shall fall under a curse.

If a man be convicted of assaulting his parents, let him be banished for ever from the city into the country, and let him abstain from all sacred rites; and if he do not abstain, let him be punished by the wardens of the country; and if he return to the city, let him be put to death. If any freeman consort with him, let him be purified before he returns to the city. If a slave strike a freeman, whether citizen or stranger, let the bystander be obliged to seize and deliver him into the hands of the injured person, who may inflict upon him as many blows as he pleases, and shall then return him to his master. The law will be as follows: – The slave who strikes a freeman shall be bound by his master, and not set at liberty without the consent of the person whom he has injured. All these laws apply to women as well as to men.

BOOK X. The greatest wrongs arise out of youthful insolence, and the greatest of all are committed against public temples; they are in the second degree great when private rites and sepulchres are insulted; in the third degree, when committed against parents; in the fourth degree, when they are done against the authority or property of the rulers; in the fifth degree, when the rights of individuals are violated. Most of these offences have been already considered; but there remains the question of admonition and punishment of offences against the Gods. Let the admonition be in the following terms: – No man who ever intentionally did or said anything impious, had a true belief in the existence of the Gods; but either he thought that there were no Gods, or that they did not care about men, or that they were easily appeased by sacrifices and prayers. 'What shall we say or do to such persons?' My good sir, let us first hear the jests which they in their superiority will make upon us. 'What will they say?' Probably something of this kind: – 'Strangers you are right in thinking that some of us do not believe in the existence of the Gods; while others assert that they do not care for us, and others that they are propitiated by prayers and offerings. But we want you to argue with us before you threaten; you should prove to us by reasonable evidence that there are Gods, and that they are too good to be bribed. Poets, priests, prophets, rhetoricians, even the best of them, speak to us of atoning for evil, and not of avoiding it. From legislators who profess to be gentle we ask for instruction, which may, at least, have the persuasive power of truth, if no other.' What have you to say? 'Well, there is no difficulty in proving the being of the Gods. The sun, and earth, and stars, moving in their courses, the recurring seasons, furnish proofs of their existence; and there is the general opinion of mankind.' I fear that the unbelievers – not that I care for their opinion – will despise us. You are not aware that their impiety proceeds, not from sensuality, but from ignorance taking the garb of wisdom. 'What do you mean?' At Athens there are tales current both in prose and verse of a kind which are not tolerated in a well-regulated state like yours. The oldest of them relate the origin of the world, and the birth and life of the Gods. These narratives have a bad influence on family relations; but as they are old we will let them pass, and consider another kind of tales, invented by the wisdom of a younger generation, who, if any one argues for the existence of the Gods and claims that the stars have a divine being, insist that these are mere earth and stones, which can have no care of human things, and that all theology is a cooking up of words. Now what course ought we to take? Shall we suppose some impious man to charge us with assuming the existence of the Gods, and make a defence? Or shall we leave the preamble and go on to the laws? 'There is no hurry, and we have often said that the shorter and worse method should not be preferred to the longer and better. The proof that there are Gods who are good, and the friends of justice, is the best preamble of all our laws.' Come, let us talk with the impious, who have been brought up from their infancy in the belief of religion, and have heard their own fathers and mothers praying for them and talking with the Gods as if they were absolutely convinced of their existence; who have seen mankind prostrate in prayer at the rising and setting of the sun and moon and at every turn of fortune, and have dared to despise and disbelieve all this. Can we keep our temper with them, when they compel us to argue on such a theme? We must; or like them we shall go mad, though with more reason. Let us select one of them and address him as follows:

O my son, you are young; time and experience will make you change many of your opinions. Do not be hasty in forming a conclusion about the divine nature; and let me mention to you a fact which I know. You and your friends are not the first or the only persons who have had these notions about the Gods. There are always a considerable number who are infected by them: I have known many myself, and can assure you that no one who was an unbeliever in his youth ever persisted till he was old in denying the existence of the Gods. The two other opinions, first, that the Gods exist and have no care of men, secondly, that they care for men, but may be propitiated by sacrifices and prayers, may indeed last through life in a few instances, but even this is not common. I would beg of you to be patient, and learn the truth of the legislator and others; in the mean time abstain from impiety. 'So far, our discourse has gone well.'

I will now speak of a strange doctrine, which is regarded by many as the crown of philosophy. They affirm that all things come into being either by art or nature or chance, and that the greater things are done by nature and chance, and the lesser things by art, which receiving from nature the greater creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are termed works of art. Their meaning is that fire, water, earth, and air all exist by nature and chance, and not by art; and that out of these, according to certain chance affinities of opposites, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth have been framed, not by any action of mind, but by nature and chance only. Thus, in their opinion, the heaven and earth were created, as well as the animals and plants. Art came later, and is of mortal birth; by her power were invented certain images and very partial imitations of the truth, of which kind are the creations of musicians and painters: but they say that there are other arts which combine with nature, and have a deeper truth, such as medicine, husbandry, gymnastic. Also the greater part of politics they imagine to co-operate with nature, but in a less degree, having more of art, while legislation is declared by them to be wholly a work of art. 'How do you mean?' In the first place, they say that the Gods exist neither by nature nor by art, but by the laws of states, which are different in different countries; and that virtue is one thing by nature and another by convention; and that justice is altogether conventional, made by law, and having authority for the moment only. This is repeated to young men by sages and poets, and leads to impiety, and the pretended life according to nature and in disobedience to law; for nobody believes the Gods to be such as the law affirms. 'How true! and oh! how injurious to states and to families!' But then, what should the lawgiver do? Should he stand up in the state and threaten mankind with the severest penalties if they persist in their unbelief, while he makes no attempt to win them by persuasion? 'Nay, Stranger, the legislator ought never to weary of trying to persuade the world that there are Gods; and he should declare that law and art exist by nature.' Yes, Cleinias; but these are difficult and tedious questions. 'And shall our patience, which was not exhausted in the enquiry about music or drink, fail now that we are discoursing about the Gods? There may be a difficulty in framing laws, but when written down they remain, and time and diligence will make them clear; if they are useful there would be neither reason nor religion in rejecting them on account of their length.' Most true. And the general spread of unbelief shows that the legislator should do something in vindication of the laws, when they are being undermined by bad men. 'He should.' You agree with me, Cleinias, that the heresy consists in supposing earth, air, fire, and water to be the first of all things. These the heretics call nature, conceiving them to be prior to the soul. 'I agree.' You would further agree that natural philosophy is the source of this impiety – the study appears to be pursued in a wrong way. 'In what way do you mean?' The error consists in transposing first and second causes. They do not see that the soul is before the body, and before all other things, and the author and ruler of them all. And if the soul is prior to the body, then the things of the soul are prior to the things of the body. In other words, opinion, attention, mind, art, law, are prior to sensible qualities; and the first and greater works of creation are the results of art and mind, whereas the works of nature, as they are improperly termed, are secondary and subsequent. 'Why do you say "improperly"?' Because when they speak of nature they seem to mean the first creative power. But if the soul is first, and not fire and air, then the soul above all things may be said to exist by nature. And this can only be on the supposition that the soul is prior to the body. Shall we try to prove that it is so? 'By all means.' I fear that the greenness of our argument will ludicrously contrast with the ripeness of our ages. But as we must go into the water, and the stream is strong, I will first attempt to cross by myself, and if I arrive at the bank, you shall follow. Remembering that you are unaccustomed to such discussions, I will ask and answer the questions myself, while you listen in safety. But first I must pray the Gods to assist at the demonstration of their own existence – if ever we are to call upon them, now is the time. Let me hold fast to the rope, and enter into the depths: Shall I put the question to myself in this form? – Are all things at rest, and is nothing in motion? or are some things in motion, and some things at rest? 'The latter.' And do they move and rest, some in one place, some in more? 'Yes.' There may be (1) motion in the same place, as in revolution on an axis, which is imparted swiftly to the larger and slowly to the lesser circle; and there may be motion in different places, having sometimes (2) one centre of motion and sometimes (3) more. (4) When bodies in motion come against other bodies which are at rest, they are divided by them, and (5) when they are caught between other bodies coming from opposite directions they unite with them; and (6) they grow by union and (7) waste by dissolution while their constitution remains the same, but are (8) destroyed when their constitution fails. There is a growth from one dimension to two, and from a second to a third, which then becomes perceptible to sense; this process is called generation, and the opposite, destruction. We have now enumerated all possible motions with the exception of two. 'What are they?' Just the two with which our enquiry is concerned; for our enquiry relates to the soul. There is one kind of motion which is only able to move other things; there is another which can move itself as well, working in composition and decomposition, by increase and diminution, by generation and destruction. 'Granted.' (9) That which moves and is moved by another is the ninth kind of motion; (10) that which is self-moved and moves others is the tenth. And this tenth kind of motion is the mightiest, and is really the first, and is followed by that which was improperly called the ninth. 'How do you mean?' Must not that which is moved by others finally depend upon that which is moved by itself? Nothing can be affected by any transition prior to self-motion. Then the first and eldest principle of motion, whether in things at rest or not at rest, will be the principle of self-motion; and that which is moved by others and can move others will be the second. 'True.' Let me ask another question: