Greek Texts & Translations

Yes, his testimony supports us; so let us take him as evidence that polities of this sort do sometimes come into existence.

Quite right.

Did they not originate with those people who lived scattered in separate clans or in single households, owing to the distress which followed after the catastrophes; for amongst these the eldest holds rule, owing to the fact that the rule proceeds from the parents, 680eby following whom they form a single flock, like a covey of birds, and live under a patriarchal government and a kingship which is of all kingships the most just?

Most certainly.

Next, they congregate together in greater numbers, and form larger droves; and first they turn to farming on the hill-sides, 681aand make ring-fences of rubble and walls to ward off wild beasts, till finally they have constructed a single large common dwelling.

It is certainly probable that such was the course of events.

Well, is not this also probable?

What?

That, while these larger settlements were growing out of the original small ones, each of the small settlements continued to retain, clan by clan, both the rule of the eldest 681band also some customs derived from its isolated condition and peculiar to itself. As those who begot and reared them were different, so these customs of theirs, relating to the gods and to themselves, differed, being more orderly where their forefathers had been orderly, and more brave where they had been brave; and as thus the fathers of each clan in due course stamped upon their children and children's children their own cast of mind, these people came (as we say) into the larger community furnished each with their own peculiar laws.

Of course. 681c

And no doubt each clan was well pleased with its own laws, and less well with those of its neighbors.

True.

Unwittingly, as it seems, we have now set foot, as it were, on the starting-point of legislation.

We have indeed.

The next step necessary is that these people should come together and choose out some members of each clan who, after a survey of the legal usages of all the clans, shall notify publicly to the tribal leaders and chiefs (who may be termed their “kings”) which of those usages please them best, 681dand shall recommend their adoption. These men will themselves be named “legislators,” and when they have established the chiefs as “magistrates,” and have framed an aristocracy, or possibly even a monarchy, from the existing plurality of “headships,” they will live under the constitution thus transformed.

The next steps would certainly be such as you describe.

Let us go on to describe the rise of a third form of constitution, in which are blended all kinds and varieties of constitutions, and of States as well. ^note 681e

What form is that?

The same that Homer himself mentioned next to the second, when he said that the third form arose in this way. His verses run thus— Dardania he founded when as yet
The Holy keep of Ilium was not built
Upon the plain, a town for mortal folk,
But still they dwelt upon the highland slopes
Of many-fountained Ida.
Hom. Il. 20.216 ff. 682aIndeed, these verses of his, as well as those he utters concerning the Cyclopes, are in a kind of unison with the voices of both God and Nature. For being divinely inspired in its chanting, the poetic tribe, with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the truth of history.

It certainly does.

Now let us advance still further in the tale that now engages us; for possibly it may furnish some hint regarding the matter we have in view. Ought we not to do so? 682b

Most certainly.

Ilium was founded, we say, after moving from the highlands down to a large and noble plain, on a hill of no great height which had many rivers flowing down from Ida above.

So they say.

And do we not suppose that this took place many ages after the Deluge?

Many ages after, no doubt.

At any rate they seem to have been strangely forgetful 682cof the catastrophe now mentioned, since they placed their city, as described, under a number of rivers descending from the mount, and relied for their safety upon hillocks of no great height.

So it is evident that they were removed by quite a long interval from that calamity.

By this time, too, as mankind multiplied, many other cities had been founded.

Of course.

And these cities also made attacks on Ilium, probably by sea too, as well as by land, since by this time all made use of the sea fearlessly.

So it appears.