| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 843d | Pl. Leg. 845d (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 847e |
844ewhich coincides with the rising of Arcturus, whether it be on his own land or on that of others, shall owe fifty sacred drachmae to Dionysus if he has cut them from his own trees, if from his neighbor's trees, a mina, and if from others, two-thirds of a mina. And if any man wishes to harvest “choice” grapes or “choice” figs (as they are now called), he shall gather them how and when he will if they are from his own trees, but if they are from another man's, and without his consent, he shall be fined every time, in pursuance of the law, note “thou shalt not shift what thou hast not set.”
845aAnd if a slave, without the consent of the master of the plots, touches any of such fruit, he shall be beaten with stripes as many as the grapes in the bunch or the figs on the fig-tree. If a resident alien buys a choice crop, he shall harvest it if he wishes. If a foreigner sojourning in the country desires to eat of the crop as he passes along the road, he, with one attendant,
845bshall, if he wishes, take some of the choice fruit with-out price, as a gift of hospitality; but the law shall forbid our foreigners to share in the so-called “coarse” fruit, and the like; and should either a master or a slave touch these, in ignorance, the slave shall be punished with stripes, and the free man shall be sent off with a reproof and be instructed to touch only the other crop, which is unfitted for storing to make raisins for wine or dried figs. As to pears, apples, pomegranates, and all such fruits,
845cit shall be no disgrace to take them privily; but the man that is caught at it, if he be under thirty years of age, shall be beaten and driven off without wounds; and for such blows a free man shall have no right to sue. A foreigner shall be allowed to share in these fruits in the same way as in the grape crop; and if a man above thirty touch them, eating on the spot and not taking any away, he shall have a share in all such fruits, like the foreigner; but if he disobeys the law, he shall be liable to be disqualified
845din seeking honors, in case anyone brings these facts to the notice of the judges at the time. Water above all else in a garden is nourishing; but it is easy to spoil. For while soil and sun and wind, which jointly with water nourish growing plants, are not easy to spoil by means of sorcery or diverting or theft, all these things may happen to water; hence it requires the assistance of law.
845eLet this, then, be the law concerning it:—if anyone wantonly spoil another man's water, whether in spring or in pond, by means of sorcery, digging, or theft, the injured party shall sue him before the city-stewards, recording the amount of the damage sustained; and whosoever is convicted of damaging by poisons shall, in addition to the fine, clean out the springs or the basin of the water, in whatever way the laws of the interpreters declare it right for the purification to be made on each occasion and for each plaintiff. Touching the bringing home of all crops,
846awhoso wills shall be permitted to fetch his own stuff through any place, provided that either he does no damage or else gains himself three times as much profit as the damage he costs his neighbor; the authority in this matter shall rest with the magistrates, as in all other cases where a man willingly injures an unwilling party either by force or secretly—whether it be the party himself he injures or some of his chattels, by means of his own chattels; in all such cases the plaintiff must report to the magistrates to get redress, where the damage is under three minas; but if a man makes a larger claim than this
846bagainst another, he shall bring a suit before the public courts and punish the injurer. If any of the magistrates be thought to have given an unjust verdict in deciding the penalties, he shall be liable to pay to the injured party double the amount; and whoso wishes shall bring up the wrong-doings of the magistrates before the public courts in the case of each complaint. And since there are countless petty cases for which penalties must be laid down, concerning written complaints
846cand citations and evidence of citation,—whether the citation requires two or more witnesses,—and all matters of the like kind,—these cases cannot be left without legal regulation, but at the same time they do not deserve the attention of an aged lawgiver; so the young lawgivers shall make laws for these cases, modelling their small rules on the great ones of our earlier enactments, and learning by experience how far they are necessary in practice, until it be decided that they are all adequately laid down; and then, having permanently fixed them, they shall live in the practice of them, now that they are set out in due form.
846dMoreover, for craftsmen we ought to make regulations in this wise. First, no resident citizen shall be numbered among those who engage in technical crafts, nor any servant of a resident. For a citizen possesses a sufficient craft, and one that needs long practice and many studies, in the keeping and conserving of the public system of the State, a task which demands his full attention: and there hardly exists a human being with sufficient capacity
846eto carry on two pursuits or two crafts thoroughly, nor yet to practice one himself and supervise another in practicing a second. So we must first of all lay down this as a fundamental rule in the State: no man who is a smith shall act as a joiner, nor shall a joiner supervise others at smith-work, instead of his own craft, under the pretext that, in thus supervising many servants working for him, he naturally supervises them more carefully because he gains more profit
| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 843d | Pl. Leg. 845d (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 847e |
