| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 878b | Pl. Leg. 880b (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 882b |
879cAn outrage perpetrated by a younger against an older person is a shameful thing to see happening in a State, and a thing hateful to God: when a young man is beaten by an old man, it is meet that, in every case, he should quietly endure his anger, and thus store up honor for the time of his own old age. Therefore let the law stand thus:—Everyone shall reverence his elder both by deed and word; whosoever, man or woman, exceeds himself in age by twenty years he shall regard as a father or a mother, and he shall keep his hands off that person, and he shall ever refrain himself, for the sake of the gods of birth, from all the generation
879dof those who are potentially his own bearers and begetters. So likewise he shall keep his hands off a Stranger, be he long resident or newly arrived; neither as aggressor nor in self-defence shall he venture at all to chastise such an one with blows. If he deems that a Stranger has shown outrageous audacity in beating him and needs correction, he shall seize the man and take him before the bench of the city-stewards (but refrain from beating him), so that he may flee the thought of
879eever daring to strike a native. And the city-stewards shall take over the Stranger and examine him—with due respect for the God of Strangers; note and if he really appears to have beaten the native unjustly, they shall give the Stranger as many strokes of the scourge as he himself inflicted, and make him cease from his foreign forwardness; but if he has not acted unjustly, they shall threaten and reprove the man who arrested him, and dismiss them both. If a man of a certain age beat a man of his own age, or one above his own age who is childless,—
880awhether it be a case of an old man beating an old man, or of a young man beating a young man,—the man attacked shall defend himself with bare hands, as nature dictates, and without a weapon. But if a man over forty ventures to fight, whether as aggressor or in self-defence, he shall be called a knave and a boor, and if he finds himself incurring a degrading sentence, he will be getting his deserts. Any man who lends a ready ear to such exhortations will prove easy to manage; but he that is intractable and pays no regard to the prelude will hearken readily
880bto a law to this effect:—If anyone beats a person who is twenty or more years older than himself, in the first place, whoever comes upon them, if he be neither of equal age nor younger, shall try to separate them, or else be held to be a coward in the eyes of the law; and if he be of a like age with the man assaulted or still younger, he shall defend him who is wronged as he would a brother or a father or a still older progenitor. Further, he that dares to strike the older man in the way described shall be liable also to an action for outrage, and if he be convicted,
880che shall be imprisoned for not less than a year; and if the judges assess the penalty at a longer period, the period so assessed shall be binding on him. And if a Stranger or a resident alien beat a man older than himself by twenty or more years, the same law regarding help from bystanders shall be equally binding; and he that is cast in a suit of this kind, if he be a non-resident Stranger, shall be imprisoned for two years and fulfil this sentence; and he that is a resident alien and disobeys the laws shall be imprisoned for three years, unless the court assess his penalty at a longer period.
880dAnd the man who is a bystander in any of these cases of assault, and who fails to give help as the law prescribes, shall be penalized by a fine of a mina, if he be a man of the highest property-class; of fifty drachmae, if he be of the second class; of thirty drachmae, if of the third; and of twenty drachmae, if of the fourth class. And the court for such cases shall consist of the generals, taxiarchs, phylarchs, and hipparchs. Laws, it would seem, are made partly
880efor the sake of good men, to afford them instruction as to what manner of intercourse will best secure for them friendly association one with another, and partly also for the sake of those who have shunned education, and who, being of a stubborn nature, have had no softening treatment note to prevent their taking to all manner of wickedness. It is because of these men that the laws which follow have to be stated,—laws which the lawgiver must enact of necessity, on their account, although wishing that the need for them may never arise. Whosoever shall dare to lay hands on father or mother, or their progenitors, and to use outrageous violence, fearing neither the wrath of the gods above nor that of the Avengers (as they are called) of the underworld, but scorning the ancient and worldwide traditions
881a(thinking he knows what he knows not at all), and shall thus transgress the law,—for such a man there is needed some most severe deterrent. Death is not a most severe penalty; and the punishments we are told of in Hades for such offences, although more severe than death and described most truly, yet fail to prove any deterrent to souls such as these,—else we should never find cases of matricide and of impiously audacious assaults
881bupon other progenitors. Consequently, the punishments inflicted upon these men here in their lifetime for crimes of this kind must, so far as possible, fall in no way short of the punishments in Hades. So the next pronouncement shall run thus:—Whosoever shall dare to beat his father or mother, or their fathers or mothers, if he be not afflicted with madness,—in the first place, the bystander shall give help, as in the former cases, and the resident Stranger who helps shall be invited to a first-row seat at the public games, but he who fails to help shall be banished from the country for life;
| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 878b | Pl. Leg. 880b (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 882b |
