| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 922d | Pl. Leg. 924d (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 926d |
923ehe shall not assign goods, but if not so betrothed, he shall assign. And if, after the will is made, it is discovered that one of the sons or daughters owns a lot in the district, then that person shall resign his legacy in favor of the heir of him that made the will. If the testator leave no male children, but females, he shall bequeath to whichever daughter he chooses a husband, and to himself a son, and write him down as his heir; note and if a man has a son, whether his own or adopted, who dies in childhood before reaching man's estate, in this case also,
924awhen making his will, he shall state in writing who is to be his son's successor, and with happier luck. If any testator be wholly childless, he shall take out a tenth part of his surplus property and shall give it to any person, if he so chooses; but all the rest he shall hand over to his adopted heir, and him he shall make his son with mutual good-will and the blessing of the law. When a man's children need guardians, if he die after making a will and naming what persons and how many he desires to act as guardians to his children,
924band if they are willing and consent act, then the choice of guardians in this document shall be final; but if a man dies either wholly intestate or having omitted from his will the choice of guardians, then the nearest of kin on both the father's and the mother's side, two from each side, together with one of the friends of the deceased, shall act as official guardians, and these the Law-wardens shall appoint in the case of each orphan that requires them.
924cAll that appertains to guardianship and the orphans shall be supervised by fifteen of the Law-wardens, who shall be the eldest of the whole body, and shall divide themselves into threes according to seniority, three acting one year and another three a second year, until five yearly periods have passed in rotation; and this process shall go on, so far as possible, without a break. And if any man die wholly intestate, leaving children that require guardianship, his unfriended children shall share in these same laws.
924dAnd if a man meets with some unforeseen mischance and leaves daughters, he shall pardon the lawgiver if he regulates the betrothal of the daughters with an eye to two points out of three—namely, nearness of kinship and the security of the lot—and omits the third point, which a father would take into consideration,—namely, the selecting out of all the citizens of a person suited by character and conduct to be a son to himself and a spouse for daughter,—if, I say, the lawgiver passes this over owing to the impossibility of taking it into consideration.
924eAccordingly, the law that we shall enact, as the best in our power touching such matters, will be this:—If a man dies intestate and leaves daughters, that brother who is born of the same father or of the same mother and who is without a lot shall take the daughter note and the lot of the deceased; failing a brother, if there be a brother's son, the procedure shall be the same, provided that the parties be of an age suited the one to the other; failing one of these, the same rule shall hold for a sister's son; then, fourthly, for a father's brother; and, fifthly, for his son; and, sixthly, for the son of a father's sister.
925aIn like manner, if a man leaves female children, the right of kinship shall proceed always by degrees of consanguinity, going up through brothers and brother's children, first the males, and secondly the females in one line. The suitability or otherwise of the time of marriage the judge shall decide by inspection, viewing the males naked and the females naked down to the navel. And if there be in the family a lack of kinsmen as far as brother's grandchildren, and likewise as far as grandfather's children, whomsoever of the other citizens the girl, aided by her guardians, shall choose, that man (if both he and the girl are willing)
925bshall become the heir of the deceased and the spouse of his daughter. But obstacles often occur, and there might be times when there was an unusual dearth of such men in the city itself: so if any girl, being at a loss to find a spouse on the spot, sees one that has emigrated to a colony and desires that he should become heir to her father's property, if so be that he is related, he shall proceed to the lot, according to the ordinance of the law; but if he be outside the kin, and there be no one of near kin in the State,
925cthen by the choice of the guardians and of the daughter of the deceased he shall be entitled to marry and to take the lot of the intestate man on his return home. Whosoever dies intestate, being without any issue, male or female, in his case all other matters shall be governed by the previous law; and a man and woman from the family shall in each such instance go into the deserted house as joint assignees, and their claim to the lot shall be made valid;
925dand the female claims to inheritance shall come in this order—first, a sister; second, a brother's daughter; third, a sister's daughter; fourth, a father's sister; fifth, a father's brother's daughter; sixth, a father's sister's daughter; and these shall share the home with the male kinsmen according to the degree of relationship and right, as we previously enacted. Now we must not fail to notice how burdensome such a law may prove, in that sometimes it harshly orders the next of kin to the deceased to marry his kinswoman, and that it appears to overlook the thousands of impediments which in human life
| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 922d | Pl. Leg. 924d (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 926d |
