| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 927a | Pl. Leg. 929a (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 931a |
928bEvery guardian shall observe this one law in the discharge of his office; and if any act in such matters contrary to this law, the magistrate shall punish him if he be a guardian, and, if he be a magistrate, the guardian shall summon him before the court of the select judges, and fine him double the penalty adjudged by the court. And if a guardian be held by the child's relatives, or by any other citizen, to be guilty of neglecting or maltreating his ward, they shall bring him before the same court,
928cand he shall pay four times the damages assessed, and of this amount one half shall go to the child, the other half to the successful prosecutor. When an orphan has reached full age, if he thinks that he has been badly cared for, he shall be allowed to bring an action concerning the guardianship within a period of five years after the date of its expiration; and if the guardian lose his case, the court shall assess the amount of his penalty or fine; and if it be a magistrate that is held to have injured the orphan by neglect, the court shall assess
928dwhat sum he shall pay to the child, but if the injury be due to unjust dealing, in addition to the fine he shall be removed from his office of Law-warden, and the public authority of the State shall appoint another in his place to act as Law-warden for the country and the State. Between fathers and their children, and children and their fathers, there arise differences greater than is right, in the course of which fathers, on the one hand, are liable to suppose that the lawgiver should give them legal permission to proclaim publicly by herald, if they so wish, that their sons have legally
928eceased to be their sons; while the sons, on the other hand, claim permission to indict their fathers for insanity when they are in a shameful condition owing to illness or old age. These results are wont to occur among men who are wholly evil of character, since where only half of them are evil—the son being evil and the father not, or vice versa—such enmity does not issue in calamitous consequences. Now, whereas under another polity a son when disinherited would not necessarily cease to be a citizen, it is necessary in our State (of which these are to be the laws) that the fatherless man should emigrate to another State,
929asince it is impossible that a single household should be added to our 5040; consequently it is necessary that the person upon whom this punishment is to be inflicted legally should be disinherited, not by his father only, but by the whole family. Such cases should be dealt with according to a law such as this:—If any man is urged by a most unhappy impulse of anger to desire, rightly or wrongly, to expel from his own kindred one whom he has begotten and reared, he shall not be permitted
929bto do this informally and immediately, but he shall, first of all, assemble his own kinsfolk as far as cousins and likewise his son's kinsfolk on the mother's side, and in the presence of these he shall accuse his son, showing how he deserves at the hands of all to be expelled from the family, and he shall grant to the son an equal length of time for arguing that he does not deserve to suffer any such treatment; and if the father convinces them and gains the votes of more than half the family (votes being given by all the other adults of both sexes,
929csave only the father, the mother, and the son who is defendant), in this way and on these conditions, but not otherwise, the father shall be permitted to disinherit his son. And as regards the man disinherited, if any citizen desires to adopt him as his son, no law shall prevent him from doing so, (for the characters of the young naturally undergo many changes during their life); but if within ten years no one offers to adopt the disinherited man,
929dthen the controllers of the surplus children designed for emigration shall take control of these persons also, in order that they may be duly included in the same scheme of emigration. And if a man becomes unusually demented owing to illness or old age or crabbedness, or a combination of these complaints, but his condition remains unnoticed by all except those who are living with him, and if he regards himself as master of his own property and wastes his goods, while his son feels at a loss and scruples to indict him for insanity,—in such a case a law shall be enacted
929eon behalf of the son whereby he shall, in the first instance, go to the eldest of the Law-wardens and report to them his father's condition, and they, after full enquiry, shall advise whether or not he ought to bring an indictment; and if they advise him to bring an indictment, they shall act for him, when he brings it, both as witnesses and advocates; and the father that is convicted shall thenceforward have no power to administer even the smallest tittle of his property, and shall be counted as a child in the house for the rest of his life. If a man and his wife, being of unhappy dispositions, in no wise agree together, it is right that they should be under the constant control of ten members of the Board of Law-wardens, of middle age,
930atogether with ten of the women in charge of marriage. note If these officials are able to bring about a reconciliation, this arrangement shall hold good; but if their passions rage too high for harmony, the officials shall, so far as possible, seek out other suitable unions for each of them. And since it is probable that such persons are not of a gentle disposition, they must endeavor to yoke with them dispositions that are more gentle and sedate note. If those who quarrel are childless, or have but few children,
| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 927a | Pl. Leg. 929a (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 931a |
