| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 863e | Pl. Leg. 865e (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 868a |
865aand not let out of jail until after that time. We need not hesitate to enact laws about every class of murder on similar lines, now that we have made a beginning. First we shall deal with the cases that are violent and involuntary. If a man has killed a friend in a contest or in public games—whether his death has been immediate or as the after-effect of wounds,—or similarly if he has killed him in war or in some action of training for war, either when practicing
865bjavelin-work without armor or when engaged in some warlike maneuver in heavy armor,—then, when he has been purified as the Delphic rule on this matter directs, he shall be accounted pure. So too with respect to all doctors, if the patient dies against the will of his doctor, the doctor shall be accounted legally pure. And if one man kills another of his own act, but involuntarily,—whether it be with his own unarmed body, or by a tool or a weapon, or by a dose of drink or of solid food, or by application of fire or of cold, or by deprivation of air, and whether he does it himself with his own body or by means of other bodies,—
865cin all cases it shall be accounted to be his own personal act, and he shall pay the following penalties. If he kill a slave, he shall secure the master against damage and loss, reckoning as if it were a slave of his own that had been destroyed, or else he shall be liable to a penalty of double the value of the dead man,—and the judges shall make an assessment of his value,—and he must also employ means of purification greater and more numerous than those employed by persons
865dwho kill a man at games, and those interpreters note whom the oracle names shall be in charge of these rites; but if it be a slave of his own that he has killed, he shall be set free after the legal purification. And if anyone kill a free man involuntarily, he shall undergo the same purifications as the man that has killed a slave; and there is an ancient tale, told of old, to which he must not fail to pay regard. The tale is this,—that the man slain by violence, who has lived in a free and proud spirit, is wroth with his slayer when newly slain,
865eand being filled also with dread and horror on account of his own violent end, when he sees his murderer going about in the very haunts which he himself had frequented, he is horror-stricken; and being disquieted himself, he takes conscience as his ally, and with all his might disquiets his slayer—both the man himself and his doings. Wherefore it is right for the slayer to retire before his victim for a full year, in all its seasons, and to vacate all the spots he owned in all parts of his native land; and if the dead man be a Stranger, he shall be barred also from the Stranger's country
866afor the same period. If a man willingly obeys this law, he that is nearest of kin to the dead man, having the supervision of the performance of all these rules, shall pardon him and live at peace with him, and in doing so he will be acting with perfect propriety; but if a man disobeys, and dares, in the first place, to approach the altars and to do sacrifice while still unpurified, and if he refuses, further,
866bto fulfil the times appointed in exile, then the next of kin to the dead man shall prosecute the slayer for murder, and in case of conviction all the penalties shall be doubled. And should the nearest relative fail to prosecute for the crime, it shall be as though the pollution had passed on to him, through the victim claiming atonement for his fate; and whoso pleases shall bring a charge against him, and compel him by law to quit his country for five years. And if a Stranger involuntarily kills a Stranger who is resident in the State, whoso pleases shall prosecute him under the same laws;
866cand if he be a resident alien, he shall be exiled for a year, while if he be altogether a Stranger—whether the man slain be a Stranger or resident alien or citizen—in addition to the purifications imposed, he shall be barred for all his life from the country which ordains these laws; and if he transgresses the law, and comes back to it, the Law-wardens shall punish him with death; and if he has any property, they shall hand it over
866dto the next of kin of the victim. And should he come back unwillingly, in case he be shipwrecked off the coast of the country, he shall camp with his feet in the sea, and watch for a ship to take him off; or in case he be brought in by people forcibly by land, the first magistrate of the State that meets with him shall loose him, and send him out over the border unharmed. If a person with his own hand kills a free man, and the deed be done in passion, in a case of this kind we must begin by making a distinction between two varieties of the crime. For murder is committed in passion by those who, on a sudden and without intent to kill,
866edestroy a man by blows or some such means in an immediate attack, when the deed is at once followed by repentance; and it is also a case of murder done in passion whenever men who are insulted by shameful words or actions seek for vengeance, and end by killing a man with deliberate intent to kill, and feel no repentance for the deed. We must lay it down, as it seems, that these murders are of two kinds,
867aboth as a rule done in passion, and most properly described as lying midway between the voluntary and the involuntary. None the less, each of these kinds tends to resemble one or other of these contraries; for the man who retains his passion and takes vengeance, not suddenly on the spur of the moment, but after lapse of time, and with deliberate intent, resembles the voluntary murderer; whereas the man who does not nurse his rage, but gives way to it at once on the spur of the moment and without deliberate intent, has a likeness to the involuntary murderer; yet neither is he wholly involuntary, but bears a resemblance thereto.
| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 863e | Pl. Leg. 865e (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 868a |
