| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 854e | Pl. Leg. 856e (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 858e |
856aof all the judges, they shall lay them up at the altar of Hestia. On the morrow again they shall assemble at the same place and discuss the case, and they shall make their pronouncements in the same manner, and shall again sign the statements. And after doing this thrice,—during which proceedings they shall pay full attention to evidence and witnesses,—each of the judges shall cast a sacred vote, promising by Hestia to give just and true judgment to the best of his power; and thus they shall bring to its end this form of trial.
856bNext to cases which concern religion come those which concern the dissolution of the polity. Whosoever enslaves the laws by making them subject to men, and makes the State subject to a faction, and acts illegally in doing all this by violence and in stirring up civil strife,—such a man must be deemed the worst of all enemies to the whole State. And the man who, though he takes part in none of these doings, yet fails to observe them, while he has a share in the chief offices of State, or else, though he observes them, fails to defend his country
856cand punish them, owing to his cowardice,—a citizen of such a kind must be counted second in order of badness. Every man who is of the least worth shall inform the magistrates by prosecuting the plotter on a charge of violent and illegal revolution: they shall have the same judges as the temple-robbers had, and the whole trial shall be conducted just as it was in their case, and the death penalty shall be imposed by a majority of votes. As a summary rule, the disgrace or punishment inflicted on a father shall not descend upon his children,
856dexcept in a case where not only the father, but his father and grandfather before him, have all been condemned on a capital charge: in such a case, the children, while retaining their own property, excepting only the allotment with its full equipment, shall be deported by the State to their original country and State. And from the sons of citizens who happen to have more than one son over ten years old, ten shall be chosen by lot—after application made by the father or by the paternal or maternal grandfather,—and the names
856ethus chosen shall be sent to Delphi ; and that man whom the oracle names shall be established as the allotment-holder in the house of those departed,—be it with happier fortune!Clinias
Very good.
AthenianMoreover, a third general law shall be laid down, dealing with the judges to be employed and the manner of the trials, in cases where one man prosecutes another on a charge of treason; and concerning the offspring, likewise, whether they are to remain in their country or be expelled, this one law
857ashall apply to the three cases of the traitor, the temple-robber, and the man who wrecks the State laws by violence. For the thief also, whether he steals a great thing or a small, one law and one legal penalty shall be enacted for all alike note: first, he must pay twice the value of the stolen article, if he loses his case and possesses enough property over and above his allotment wherewith to pay; but if not, he must be put in prison until either he has paid the sum or has been let off by the prosecutor. And if a man be cast in a suit for theft from the State, 857bon obtaining pardon from the State, or after payment of double the sum stolen, he shall be let out of prison.CliniasHow comes it, Stranger, that we are ruling that it makes no difference to the thief whether the thing he steals be great or small, and whether the place it is stolen from be holy or unhallowed, or whatever other differences may exist in the manner of a theft; whereas the lawgiver ought to suit the punishment to the crime by inflicting dissimilar penalties in these varying cases?
AthenianWell said, Clinias! You have collided with me
857cwhen I was going, as it were, full steam ahead, and so have woken me up. You have reminded me of a previous reflection of mine, how that none of the attempts hitherto made at legislation have ever been carried out rightly—as in fact we may infer from the instance before us. What do I mean to imply by this remark? It was no bad comparison we made note when we compared all existing legislation to the doctoring of slaves by slaves. For one should carefully notice this, that if any of the doctors who practice medicine by purely empirical methods, 857ddevoid of theory, were to come upon a free-born doctor conversing with a free-born patient, and using arguments, much as a philosopher would, dealing with the course of the ailment from its origin and surveying the natural constitution of the human body,—he would at once break out into a roar of laughter, and the language he would use would be none other than that which always comes ready to the tongue of most so-called “doctors”: “You fool,” he would say, “you are not doctoring your patient, but schooling him, so to say, as though what he wanted was to be made, not a sound man, 857ebut a doctor.”CliniasAnd in saying so, would he not be right?
AthenianPossibly, provided that he should also take the view that the man who treats of laws in the way that we are now doing is schooling the citizens rather than legislating. Would he not seem to be right in saying that, too?
CliniasProbably.
AthenianHow fortunate we are in the conclusion we have now come to!
CliniasWhat conclusion?
AthenianThis,—that there is no need to legislate,
| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 854e | Pl. Leg. 856e (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 858e |
