Greek Texts & Translations

No doubt. 712b

Let us apply the oracle to your State, and so try, like greybeard boys, to model its laws by our discourse. ^note

Yes, let us proceed, and delay no longer.

Let us invoke the presence of the God at the establishment of the State; and may he hearken, and hearkening may he come, propitious and kindly to us-ward, to help us in the fashioning of the State and its laws.

Yes, may he come!

Well, what form of polity is it that we intend to impose 712cupon the State?

What, in particular, do you refer to? Explain still more clearly. I mean, is it a democracy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy? For certainly you cannot mean a tyranny: that we can never suppose.

Come now, which of you two would like to answer me first and tell me to which of these kinds his own polity at home belongs?

Is it not proper that I, as the elder, should answer first? 712d

No doubt.

In truth, Stranger, when I reflect on the Lacedaemonian polity, I am at a loss to tell you by what name one should describe it. It seems to me to resemble a tyranny, since the board of ephors it contains is a marvellously tyrannical feature; yet sometimes it strikes me as, of all States, the nearest to a democracy. Still, it would be totally absurd to deny that it is an aristocracy; 712ewhile it includes, moreover, a life monarchy, and that the most ancient of monarchies, as is affirmed, not only by ourselves, but by all the world. But now that I am questioned thus suddenly, I am really, as I said, at a loss to say definitely to which of these polities it belongs.

And I, Megillus, find myself equally perplexed; for I find it very difficult to affirm that our Cnosian polity is any one of these.

Yes, my good Sirs; for you do, in fact, partake in a number of polities. But those we named just now are not polities, but arrangements of States which rule or serve 713aparts of themselves, and each is named after the ruling power. But if the State ought to be named after any such thing, the name it should have borne is that of the God who is the true ruler of rational men.

Who is that God?

May we, then, do a little more story-telling, if we are to answer this question suitably?

Should we not do so?

We should. Long ages before even those cities existed 713bwhose formation we have described above, there existed in the time of Cronos, it is said, a most prosperous government and settlement, on which the best of the States now existing is modelled. ^note

Evidently it is most important to hear about it.

I, for one, think so; and that is why I have introduced the mention of it.

You were perfectly right to do so; and, since your story 713cis pertinent, you will be quite right in going on with it to the end.

I must do as you say. Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Cronos was aware of the fact that no human being (as we have explained ^note) is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings 713dand rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, daemons. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the God, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of daemons who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace 713eand modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Cronos, as tradition paints it, and order both 714aour homes and our States in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving to reason's ordering the name of “law.” ^note But if an individual man or an oligarchy or a democracy, possessed of a soul which strives after pleasures and lusts and seeks to surfeit itself therewith, having no continence and being the victim of a plague that is endless and insatiate of evil,— if such an one shall rule over a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, then there is (as I said just now)