Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.].
<<Pl. Leg. 783a Pl. Leg. 785b (Greek) >>Pl. Leg. 790a

784cand abide by the regulations they shall permit or impose. The women-inspectors shall enter the houses of the young people, and, partly by threats, partly by admonition, stop them from their sin and folly: if they cannot do so, they shall go and report the case to the Law-wardens, and they shall prevent them. If they also prove unable, they shall inform the State Council, posting up a sworn statement that they are “verily unable to reform So-and-so.” The man that is thus posted up,— 784dif he fails to defeat those who have thus posted him in the law-courts,—shall suffer the following disqualifications: he shall not attend any marriage or children's birthday feasts, and if he does so, anyone who wishes may with impunity punish him with blows. The same law shall hold good for the women: the offender shall have no part in women's excursions, honors, or invitations to weddings or birthday feasts, if she has been similarly posted up as disorderly and has lost her suit. 784eAnd when they shall have finished producing children according to the laws, if the man have sexual intercourse with a strange woman, or the woman with a man, while the latter are still within the procreative age-limit, they shall be liable to the same penalty as was stated for those still producing children. Thereafter the man and woman that are sober-minded in these matters shall be well-reputed in every way; but the opposite kind of esteem, 785aor rather disesteem, shall be shown to persons of the opposite character. Sexual conduct shall lie unmentioned or unprescribed by law when the majority show due propriety therein; but if they are disorderly, then what is thus prescribed shall be executed according to the laws then enacted. For everyone the first year is the beginning of the whole life: it ought to be inscribed as life's beginning for both boy and girl in their ancestral shrines: beside it, on a whited wall in every phratry, there should be written up the number of the archons who give its number to the year; and the names of the living members of the phratry shall be written always close together, 785band those of the deceased shall be erased. The limit of the marriage-age shall be from sixteen to twenty years—the longest time allowed—for a girl, and for a boy from thirty to thirty-five. The limit for official posts shall be forty for a woman and thirty for a man. For military services the limit shall be from twenty years up to sixty for a man; for women they shall ordain what is possible and fitting in each case, after they have finished bearing children, and up to the age of fifty, in whatever kind of military work it may be thought right to employ their services.

788aAthenian

Now that our children, of both sexes, are born, our proper course will be to deal in the next place with their nurture and education. This is a subject which it is wholly impossible to pass over; but obviously it can be treated more suitably by way of precept and exhortation than by legislation. For in the private life of the family many trivial things are apt to be done which escape general notice,—things which are the result of individual feelings of pain, pleasure, or desire, 788band which contravene the instructions of the lawgiver; and these will produce in the citizens a multiplicity of contradictory tendencies. This is bad for a State. For while, on the one hand, it is improper and undignified to impose penalties on these practices by law, because of their triviality and the frequency of their occurrence, on the other hand, it detracts from the authority of the law which stands written when men grow used to breaking the law in trivial matters repeatedly. 788cHence, while it is impossible to pass over these practices in silence, it is difficult to legislate concerning them. The practices I refer to I will try to make clear by bringing some specimens, as it were, to the light; for at present my words rather resemble a “dark speech.”

Clinias

That is quite true.

Athenian

When we said note that right nurture must be manifestly capable of making both bodies and souls in all respects as beautiful and good as possible, we spoke, I presume, truly?

Clinias

Certainly we did. 788d

Athenian

And I suppose that (to take the simplest point) the most beautiful bodies must grow up from earliest infancy as straight as possible.

Clinias

Most certainly.

Athenian

Well then, do we not observe that in every living creature the first shoot makes by far the largest and longest growth; so that many people stoutly maintain that in point of height men grow more in the first five years of life than in the next twenty?

Clinias

That is true.

Athenian

But we know, don't we, that when growth occurs rapidly, 789awithout plenty of suitable exercise, it produces in the body countless evils?

Clinias

Certainly.

Athenian

And when bodies receive most food, then they require most exercise?

Clinias

What is that, Stranger? Are we to prescribe most exercise for new-born babes and tiny infants?

Athenian

Nay, even earlier than that,—we shall prescribe it for those nourished inside the bodies of their mothers.

Clinias

What do you mean, my dear sir? Is it unborn babes you are talking of?



Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.].
<<Pl. Leg. 783a Pl. Leg. 785b (Greek) >>Pl. Leg. 790a

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