Greek Texts & Translations

A very just observation.

Heaven's favour and good-luck mark the seventh form of rule, where we bring a man forward for a casting of lots, and declare that if he gains the lot he will most justly be ruler, but if he fails he shall take his place among the ruled.

Very true. 690d

“Seest thou, O legislator,”—it is thus we might playfully address one of those who lightly start on the task of legislation— “how many are the rights pertaining to rulers, and how they are essentially opposed to one another? Herein we have now discovered a source of factions, which thou must remedy. So do thou, in the first place, join with us in enquiring how it came to pass, and owing to what transgression of those rights, that the kings of Argos and Messene brought ruin alike on themselves and on the Hellenic power, 690esplendid as it was at that epoch. Was it not through ignorance of that most true saying of Hesiod ^note that 'oftimes the half is greater than the whole'?”

Most true, indeed.

Is it our view, then, that this causes ruin when it is found in kings rather than when found in peoples? 691a

Probably this is, in the main, a disease of kings, in whom luxury breeds pride of life.

Is it not plain that what those kings strove for first was to get the better of the established laws, and that they were not in accord with one another about the pledge which they had approved both by word and by oath; and this discord—reputed to be wisdom, but really, as we affirm, the height of ignorance, owing to its grating dissonance and lack of harmony, brought the whole Greek world to ruin?

It would seem so, certainly. 691b

Very well then: what precaution ought the legislator to have taken at that time in his enactments, to guard against the growth of this disorder? Verily, to perceive that now requires no great sagacity, nor is it a hard thing to declare; but the man who foresaw it in those days—if it could possibly have been foreseen—would have been a wiser man than we.

To what are you alluding?

If one looks at what has happened, Megillus, among you Lacedaemonians, it is easy to perceive, and after perceiving to state, what ought to have been done at that time.

Speak still more clearly.

The clearest statement would be this—

What? 691c

If one neglects the rule of due measure, and gives things too great in power to things too small—sails to ships, food to bodies, offices of rule to souls—then everything is upset, and they run, through excess of insolence, some to bodily disorders, others to that offspring of insolence, injustice. ^note What, then, is our conclusion? Is it not this? There does not exist, my friends, a mortal soul whose nature, when young and irresponsible, will ever be able to stand being in the highest ruling position upon earth without getting surfeited in mind with that greatest of disorders, 691dfolly, and earning the detestation of its nearest friends; and when this occurs, it speedily ruins the soul itself and annihilates the whole of its power. To guard against this, by perceiving the due measure, is the task of the great lawgiver. So the most duly reasonable conjecture we can now frame as to what took place at that epoch appears to be this—

What?

To begin with, there was a god watching over you; and he, foreseeing the future, restricted within due bounds the royal power by making 691eyour kingly line no longer single but twofold. In the next place, some man, ^note in whom human nature was blended with power divine, observing your government to be still swollen with fever, blended the self-willed force 692aof the royal strain with the temperate potency of age, by making the power of the eight-and-twenty elders of equal weight with that of the kings in the greatest matters. Then your “third saviour,” ^note seeing your government still fretting and fuming, curbed it, as one may say, by the power of the ephors, which was not far removed from government by lot. Thus, in your case, according to this account, owing to its being blended of the right elements and possessed of due measure, the kingship not only survived itself but ensured the survival of all else. 692bFor if the matter had lain with Temenus and Cresphontes ^note and the lawgivers of their day—whosoever those lawgivers really were,—even the portion of Aristodemus ^note could never have survived, for they were not fully expert in the art of legislation; otherwise they could hardly have deemed it sufficient to moderate by means of sworn pledges ^note a youthful soul endowed with power such as might develop into a tyranny; but now God has shown of what kind the government ought to have been then, and ought to be now, if it is to endure. That we should understand this,