775dconsequently, when drunk, a man is clumsy and bad at sowing seed, and is thus likely to beget unstable and untrusty offspring, crooked in form and character. Wherefore he must be very careful throughout all the year and the whole of his life—and most especially during the time he is begetting—to commit no act that involves either bodily ailment or violence and injustice; for these he will inevitably stamp on the souls and bodies of the offspring,
775eand will generate them in every way inferior. From acts of such a kind he must especially abstain on the day and night of his marriage; for the Beginning that sits enshrined as a goddess note among mortals is the Savior of all, provided that she receives the honor due to her from each one who approaches her. The man who marries must part from his father and mother, and take one of the two houses note
776ain his allotment, to be, as it were, the nest and home of his chicks, and make therein his marriage and the dwelling and home of himself and his children. For in friendships the presence of some degree of longing seems to cement various dispositions and bind them together; but unabated proximity, since it lacks the longing due to an interval, causes friends to fall away from one another owing to an excessive surfeit of each other's company. Therefore the married pair must leave their own houses to their parents and the bride's relations,
776band act themselves as if they had gone off to a colony, visiting and being visited in their home, begetting and rearing children, and so handing on life, like a torch, note from one generation to another, and ever worshipping the gods as the laws direct. Next, as regards possessions, what should a man possess to form a reasonable amount of substance? As to most chattels, it is easy enough both to see what they should be and to acquire them; but servants present all kinds of difficulties. The reason is that our language about them is partly right and partly wrong;
776cfor the language we use both contradicts and agrees with our practical experience of them.Megillus
What mean we by this? We are still in the dark, Stranger, as to what you refer to.
Athenian
That is quite natural, Megillus. For probably the most vexed problem in all Hellas is the problem of the Helot-system of the Lacedaemonians, which some maintain to be good, others bad; a less violent dispute rages round the subjection of the Mariandyni note
776dto the slave-system of the Heracleotes, and that of the class of Penestae to the Thessalians. note In view of these and similar instances, what ought we to do about this question of owning servants? note The point I happened to mention in the course of my argument,—and about which you naturally asked me what I referred to,—was this. We know, of course, that we would all agree that one ought to own slaves that are as docile and good as possible; for in the past many slaves have proved themselves better in every form of excellence than brothers or sons, and have saved their masters and their goods and
776etheir whole houses. Surely we know that this language is used about slaves?Megillus
Certainly.
Athenian
And is not the opposite kind of language also used,—that the soul of a slave has no soundness in it, and that a sensible man should never trust that class at all? And our wisest poet, too, in speaking of Zeus,
777adeclared that—
Of half their wits far-thundering Zeus bereaves
Those men on whom the day of bondage falls.
Hom. Od. 17.322Thus each party adopts a different attitude of mind: the one places no trust at all in the servant-class, but, treating them like brute beasts, with goads and whips they make the servants' souls not merely thrice but fifty times enslaved; whereas the other party act in precisely the opposite way.Megillus
Just so.
777bClinias
Since this difference of opinion exists, Stranger, what ought we to do about our own country, in regard to the owning of slaves and their punishment?
Athenian
Well now, Clinias, since man is an intractable creature, it is plain that he is not at all likely to be or become easy to deal with in respect of the necessary distinction between slave and free-born master in actual experience.
Clinias
That is evident.
Athenian
The slave is no easy chattel. For actual experience shows
777chow many evils result from slavery,—as in the frequent revolts in Messenia, and in the States where there are many servants kept who speak the same tongue, not to speak of the crimes of all sorts committed by the “Corsairs,” note as they are called, who haunt the coasts of Italy, and the reprisals therefor. In view of all these facts, it is really a puzzle to know how to deal with all such matters. Two means only are left for us to try—the one is,
