Laws

Clin. What is the next thing that can rightly be said? Ath. You mean, do you not, on the side of the lawgiver? Clin. Yes. Ath. This is what he will say: Give me the State under a monarchy; and let the monarch be young, and possessed by nature of a good memory, quick intelligence, courage and nobility of manner; and let that quality, which we formerly mentioned as the necessary accompaniment of all the parts of virtue, attend now also

on our monarch’s soul, if the rest of his qualities are to be of any value. Clin. Temperance, as I think, Megillus, is what the Stranger indicates as the necessary accompaniment. Is it not? Ath. Yes, Clinias; temperance, that is, of the ordinary kind not the kind men mean when they use academic language and identify temperance with wisdom, but that kind which by natural instinct springs up at birth in children and animals, so that some are not incontinent, others continent, in respect of pleasures; and of this we said

that, when isolated from the numerous so-called goods, it was of no account. You understand, of course, what I mean. Clin. Certainly. Ath. Let our monarch, then, possess this natural quality in addition to the other qualities mentioned, if the State is to acquire in the quickest and best way possible the constitution it needs for the happiest kind of life. For there does not exist, nor could there ever arise, a quicker and better form of constitution than this.

Clin. How and by what argument, Stranger, could one convince oneself that to say this is to speak the truth? Ath. It is quite easy to perceive at least this, Clinias, that the facts stand by nature’s ordinance in the way described. Clin. In what way do you mean? On condition, do you say, that there should be a monarch who was young, temperate, quick at learning, with a good memory, brave and of a noble manner? Ath. Add also fortunate, —not in other respects, but only in this, that in his time there should arise a praiseworthy lawgiver, and that, by a piece of good fortune,

the two of them should meet; for if this were so, then God would have done nearly everything that he does when he desires that a State should be eminently prosperous. The second best condition is that there should arise two such rulers; then comes the third best, with three rulers; and so on, the difficulty increasing in proportion as the number becomes greater, and vice versa. Clin. You mean, apparently, that the best State would arise from a monarchy, when it has a first-rate lawgiver and a virtuous monarch, and these are the conditions under which the change into such a State could be effected most easily and quickly; and, next to this, from an oligarchy—

or what is it you mean? Ath. Not at all: the easiest step is from a monarchy, the next easiest from a monarchic constitution, the third from some form of democracy. An oligarchy, which comes fourth in order, would admit of the growth of the best State only with the greatest difficulty, since it has the largest number of rulers. Ath. What I say is that the change takes place when nature supplies a true lawgiver, and when it happens that his policy is shared by the most powerful persons in the State;

and wherever the State authorities are at once strongest and fewest in number, then and there the changes are usually carried out with speed and facility. Clin. How so? We do not understand. Ath. Yet surely it has been stated not once, I imagine, but many times over. But you, very likely, have never so much as set eyes on a monarchical State. Clin. No, nor have I any craving for such a sight.

Ath. You would, however, see in it an illustration of what we spoke of just now. Clin. What was that? Ath. The fact that a monarch, when he decides to change the moral habits of a State, needs no great efforts nor a vast length of time, but what he does need is to lead the way himself first along the desired path, whether it be to urge the citizens towards virtue’s practices or the contrary; by his personal example he should first trace out the right lines, giving praise and honor to these things,

blame to those, and degrading the disobedient according to their several deeds. Clin. Yes, we may perhaps suppose that the rest of the citizens will quickly follow the ruler who adopts such a combination of persuasion and force. Ath. Let none, my friends, persuade us that a State could ever change its laws more quickly or more easily by any other way than by the personal guidance of the rulers: no such thing could ever occur, either now or hereafter. Indeed, that is not the result which we find it difficult or impossible

to bring about; what is difficult to bring about is rather that result which has taken place but rarely throughout long ages, and which, whenever it does take place in a State, produces in that State countless blessings of every kind. Clin. What result do you mean? Ath. Whenever a heaven-sent desire for temperate and just institutions arises in those who hold high positions,—whether as monarchs, or because of conspicuous eminence

of wealth or birth, or, haply, as displaying the character of Nestor, of whom it is said that, while he surpassed all men in the force of his eloquence, still more did he surpass them in temperance. That was, as they say, in the Trojan age, certainly not in our time; still, if any such man existed, or shall exist, or exists among us now, blessed is the life he leads, and blessed are they who join in listening to the words of temperance that proceed out of his mouth. Ath. So likewise of power in general, the same rule holds good:

whenever the greatest power coincides in man with wisdom and temperance, then the germ of the best polity is planted; but in no other way will it ever come about. Regard this as a myth oracularly uttered, and let us take it as proved that the rise of a well-governed State is in one way difficult, but in another way—given, that is, the condition we mention—it is easier by far and quicker than anything else. Clin. No doubt.

Ath. Let us apply the oracle to your State, and so try, like greybeard boys, to model its laws by our discourse. Clin. Yes, let us proceed, and delay no longer. Ath. Let us invoke the presence of the God at the establishment of the State; and may he hearken, and hearkening may he come, propitious and kindly to us-ward, to help us in the fashioning of the State and its laws. Clin. Yes, may he come! Ath. Well, what form of polity is it that we intend to impose

upon the State? Clin. What, in particular, do you refer to? Explain still more clearly. I mean, is it a democracy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy? For certainly you cannot mean a tyranny: that we can never suppose. Ath. Come now, which of you two would like to answer me first and tell me to which of these kinds his own polity at home belongs? Meg. Is it not proper that I, as the elder, should answer first?

Clin. No doubt. Meg. In truth, Stranger, when I reflect on the Lacedaemonian polity, I am at a loss to tell you by what name one should describe it. It seems to me to resemble a tyranny, since the board of ephors it contains is a marvellously tyrannical feature; yet sometimes it strikes me as, of all States, the nearest to a democracy. Still, it would be totally absurd to deny that it is an aristocracy;

while it includes, moreover, a life monarchy, and that the most ancient of monarchies, as is affirmed, not only by ourselves, but by all the world. But now that I am questioned thus suddenly, I am really, as I said, at a loss to say definitely to which of these polities it belongs. Clin. And I, Megillus, find myself equally perplexed; for I find it very difficult to affirm that our Cnosian polity is any one of these. Ath. Yes, my good Sirs; for you do, in fact, partake in a number of polities. But those we named just now are not polities, but arrangements of States which rule or serve

parts of themselves, and each is named after the ruling power. But if the State ought to be named after any such thing, the name it should have borne is that of the God who is the true ruler of rational men. Clin. Who is that God? Ath. May we, then, do a little more story-telling, if we are to answer this question suitably? Clin. Should we not do so? Ath. We should. Long ages before even those cities existed

whose formation we have described above, there existed in the time of Cronos, it is said, a most prosperous government and settlement, on which the best of the States now existing is modelled. Clin. Evidently it is most important to hear about it. Ath. I, for one, think so; and that is why I have introduced the mention of it. Meg. You were perfectly right to do so; and, since your story

is pertinent, you will be quite right in going on with it to the end. Ath. I must do as you say. Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Cronos was aware of the fact that no human being (as we have explained ) is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings

and rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, daemons. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the God, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of daemons who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace

and modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy. Ath. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Cronos, as tradition paints it, and order both

our homes and our States in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving to reason’s ordering the name of law. But if an individual man or an oligarchy or a democracy, possessed of a soul which strives after pleasures and lusts and seeks to surfeit itself therewith, having no continence and being the victim of a plague that is endless and insatiate of evil,— if such an one shall rule over a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, then there is (as I said just now)

no means of salvation. This, then, is the statement, Clinias, which we have to examine, to see whether we believe it, or what we are to do. Clin. We must, of course, believe it. Ath. Are you aware that, according to some, there are as many kinds of laws as there are kinds of constitutions? And how many constitutions are commonly recognized we have recently recounted. Please do not suppose that the problem now raised is one of small importance; rather it is of the highest importance. For we are again faced with the problem as to what ought to be the aim of justice and injustice. The assertion of the people I refer to is this,—

that the laws ought not to aim either at war or at goodness in general, but ought to have regard to the benefit of the established polity, whatever it may be, so that it may keep in power forever and never be dissolved; and that the natural definition of justice is best stated in this way. Clin. In what way? Ath. That justice is what benefits the stronger. . Clin. Explain yourself more clearly. Ath. This is how it is:—the laws (they say) in a State are always enacted by the stronger power? Is it not so? Clin. That is quite true. Ath. Do you suppose, then (so they argue), that a democracy

or any other government—even a tyrant—if it has gained the mastery, will of its own accord set up laws with any other primary aim than that of securing the permanence of its own authority? Clin. Certainly not. Ath. Then the lawgiver will style these enactments justice, and will punish every transgressor as guilty of injustice. Clin. That is certainly probable. Ath. So these enactments will thus and herein always constitute justice. Clin. That is, at any rate, what the argument asserts.

Ath. Yes, for this is one of those agreed claims concerning government. Clin. What claims ? Ath. Those which we dealt with before,—claims as to who should govern whom. It was shown that parents should govern children, the older the younger, the high-born the low-born, and (if you remember) there were many other claims, some of which were conflicting. The claim before us is one of these, and we said that —to quote Pindar— the law marches with nature

when it justifies the right of might. Clin. Yes, that is what was said then. Ath. Consider now, to which class of men should we entrust our State. For the condition referred to is one that has already occurred in States thousands of times. Clin. What condition? Ath. Where offices of rule are open to contest, the victors in the contest monopolize power in the State so completely that they offer not the smallest share in office to the vanquished party or their descendants; and each party keeps a watchful eye on the other,

lest anyone should come into office and, in revenge for the former troubles, cause a rising against them. Such polities we, of course, deny to be polities, just as we deny that laws are true laws unless they are enacted in the interest of the common weal of the whole State. But where the laws are enacted in the interest of a section, we call them feudalities rather than polities; and the justice they ascribe to such laws is, we say, an empty name. Our reason for saying this is that in your State we shall assign office to a man, not because he is wealthy,

nor because he possesses any other quality of the kind—such as strength or size or birth; but the ministration of the laws must be assigned, as we assert, to that man who is most obedient to the laws and wins the victory for obedience in the State,—the highest office to the first, the next to him that shows the second degree of mastery, and the rest must similarly be assigned, each in succession, to those that come next in order. And those who are termed magistrates I have now called ministers of the laws, not for the sake of coining a new phrase,

but in the belief that salvation, or ruin, for a State hangs upon nothing so much as this. For wherever in a State the law is subservient and impotent, over that State I see ruin impending; but wherever the law is lord over the magistrates, and the magistrates are servants to the law, there I descry salvation and all the blessings that the gods bestow on States. Clin. Aye, by Heaven, Stranger; for, as befits your age, you have keen sight. Ath. Yes; for a man’s vision of such objects is at its dullest

when he is young, but at its keenest when he is old. Clin. Very true. Ath. What, then, is to be our next step? May we not assume that our immigrants have arrived and are in the country, and should we not proceed with our address to them? Clin. Of course. Ath. Let us, then, speak to them thus:— O men, that God who, as old tradition tells, holdeth the beginning, the end, and the center of all things that exist,

completeth his circuit by nature’s ordinance in straight, unswerving course. With him followeth Justice, as avenger of them that fall short of the divine law; and she, again, is followed by every man who would fain be happy, cleaving to her with lowly and orderly behavior; but whoso is uplifted by vainglory, or prideth himself on his riches or his honors or his comeliness of body, and through this pride joined to youth and folly, is inflamed in soul with insolence, dreaming that he has no need of ruler or guide, but rather is competent himself to guide others,—

such an one is abandoned and left behind by the God, and when left behind he taketh to him others of like nature, and by his mad prancings throweth all into confusion: to many, indeed, he seemeth to be some great one, but after no long time he payeth the penalty, not unmerited, to Justice, when he bringeth to total ruin himself, his house, and his country. Looking at these things, thus ordained, what ought the prudent man to do, or to devise, or to refrain from doing? Clin. The answer is plain: Every man ought so to devise as to be of the number of those who follow in the steps of the God.

Ath. What conduct, then, is dear to God and in his steps? One kind of conduct, expressed in one ancient phrase, namely, that like is dear to like when it is moderate, whereas immoderate things are dear neither to one another nor to things moderate. In our eyes God will be the measure of all things in the highest degree—a degree much higher than is any man they talk of. He, then, that is to become dear to such an one must needs become, so far as he possibly can, of a like character; and, according to the present argument, he amongst us that is temperate is dear to God,

since he is like him, while he that is not temperate is unlike and at enmity,—as is also he who is unjust, and so likewise with the rest, by parity of reasoning. On this there follows, let us observe, this further rule,—and of all rules it is the noblest and truest,—that to engage in sacrifice and communion with the gods continually, by prayers and offerings and devotions of every kind, is a thing most noble and good and helpful towards the happy life, and superlatively fitting also, for the good man;

but for the wicked, the very opposite. Ath. For the wicked man is unclean of soul, whereas the good man is clean; and from him that is defiled no good man, nor god, can ever rightly receive gifts.

Therefore all the great labor that impious men spend upon the gods is in vain, but that of the pious is most profitable to them all. Here, then, is the mark at which we must aim; but as to shafts we should shoot, and (so to speak) the flight of them,—what kind of shafts, think you, would fly most straight to the mark? First of all, we say, if—after the honors paid to the Olympians and the gods who keep the State—we should assign the Even and the Left as their honors to the gods of the under-world, we would be aiming most straight at the mark of piety—

as also in assigning to the former gods the things superior, the opposites of these. Next after these gods the wise man will offer worship to the daemons, and after the daemons to the heroes. After these will come private shrines legally dedicated to ancestral deities; and next, honors paid to living parents. For to these duty enjoins that the debtor should pay back the first and greatest of debts, the most primary of all dues, and that he should acknowledge that all that he owns and has belongs to those who begot and reared him,

so that he ought to give them service to the utmost of his power—with substance, with body, and with soul, all three—thus making returns for the loans of care and pain spent on the children by those who suffered on their behalf in bygone years, and recompensing the old in their old age, when they need help most. And throughout all his life he must diligently observe reverence of speech towards his parents above all things,

seeing that for light and winged words there is a most heavy penalty,—for over all such matters Nemesis, messenger of Justice, is appointed to keep watch; wherefore the son must yield to his parents when they are wroth, and when they give rein to their wrath either by word or deed, he must pardon them, seeing that it is most natural for a father to be especially wroth when he deems that he is wronged by his own son. When parents die, the most modest funeral rites are the best, whereby the son neither exceeds the accustomed pomp, nor falls short of what his forefathers

paid to their sires; and in like manner he should duly bestow the yearly attentions, which ensure honor, on the rites already completed. Ath. He should always venerate them, by never failing to provide a continual memorial,

and assigning to the deceased a due share of the means which fortune Provides for expenditure. Every one of us, if we acted thus and observed these rules of life, would win always a due reward from the gods and from all that are mightier than ourselves, and would pass the greatest part of our lives in the enjoyment of hopes of happiness. As regards duties to children, relations, friends and citizens, and those of service done to strangers for Heaven’s sake, and of social intercourse with all those classes,—by fulfilling which a man should brighten his own life and order it as the law enjoins,—

the sequel of the laws themselves, partly by persuasion and partly (when men’s habits defy persuasion) by forcible and just chastisement, will render our State, with the concurrence of the gods, a blessed State and a prosperous. There are also matters which a lawgiver, if he shares my view, must necessarily regulate, though they are ill-suited for statement in the form of a law; in dealing with these he ought, in my opinion, to produce a sample for his own use and that of those

for whom he is legislating, and, after expounding all other matters as best he can, pass on next to commencing the task of legislation. Clin. What is the special form in which such matters are laid down? Ath. It is by no means easy to embrace them all in a single model of statement (so to speak) but let us conceive of them in some such way as this, in case we may succeed in affirming something definite about them. Clin. Tell us what that something is. Ath. I should desire the people to be as docile as possible in the matter of virtue; and this evidently is what the legislator will endeavor to effect in all his legislation.

Clin. Assuredly. Ath. I thought the address we have made might prove of some help in making them listen to its monitions with souls not utterly savage, but in a more civil and less hostile mood. So that we may be well content if as I say, it renders the hearer even but a little more docile, because a little less hostile. For there is no great plenty or abundance of persons anxious to become with all speed as good as possible;

the majority, indeed, serve to show how wise Hesiod was when he said, smooth is the way that leadeth unto wickedness, and that no sweat is needed to traverse it, since it is passing short, but (he says)— In front of goodness the immortal gods Have set the sweat of toil, and thereunto Long is the road and steep, and rough withal

The first ascent; but when the crest is won, ’Tis easy travelling, albeit ’twas hard. Clin. The poet speaks nobly, I should say. Ath. He certainly does. Now I wish to put before you what I take to be the result of the foregoing argument. Clin. Do so. Ath. Let us address the lawgiver and say: Tell us, O lawgiver: if you knew what we ought

to do and say, is it not obvious that you would state it? Clin. Inevitably. Ath. Now did not we hear you saying a little while ago that the lawgiver should not permit the poets to compose just as they please? For they would not be likely to know what saying of theirs might be contrary to the laws and injurious to the State. Clin. That is quite true. Ath. Would our address be reasonable, if we were to address him on behalf of the poets in these terms?— Clin. What terms?

Ath. These:— There is, O lawgiver, an ancient saying—constantly repeated by ourselves and endorsed by everyone else—that whenever a poet is seated on the Muses’ tripod, he is not in his senses, but resembles a fountain, which gives free course to the upward rush of water and, since his art consists in imitation, he is compelled often to contradict himself, when he creates characters of contradictory moods; and he knows not which of these contradictory utterances is true. But it is not possible for the lawgiver in his law

thus to compose two statements about a single matter; but he must always publish one single statement about one matter. Take an example from one of your own recent statements. A funeral may be either excessive or defective or moderate: of these three alternatives you chose one, the moderate, and this you prescribe, after praising it unconditionally. I, on the other hand, if (in my poem) I had a wife of surpassing wealth, and she were to bid me bury her,

would extol the tomb of excessive grandeur; while a poor and stingy man would praise the defective tomb, and the person of moderate means, if a moderate man himself, would praise the same one as you. But you should not merely speak of a thing as moderate, in the way you have now done, but you should explain what the moderate is, and what is its size; otherwise it is too soon for you to propose that such a statement should be made law. Clin. Exceedingly true. Ath. Should, then, our appointed president of the laws commence his laws with no such prefatory statement,

but declare at once what must be done and what not, and state the penalty which threatens disobedience, and so turn off to another law, without adding to his statutes a single word of encouragement and persuasion? Just as is the way with doctors, one treats us in this fashion, and another in that: they have two different methods, which we may recall, in order that, like children who beg the doctor to treat them by the mildest method, so we may make a like request of the lawgiver. Shall I give an illustration of what I mean? There are men that are doctors, we say, and others that are doctors’ assistants; but we call the latter also, to be sure, by the name of doctors.

Clin. We do. Ath. These, whether they be free-born or slaves, acquire their art under the direction of their masters, by observation and practice and not by the study of nature—which is the way in which the free-born doctors have learnt the art themselves and in which they instruct their own disciples. Would you assert that we have here two classes of what are called doctors ? Clin. Certainly. Ath. You are also aware that, as the sick folk in the cities comprise both slaves and free men,

the slaves are usually doctored by slaves, who either run round the town or wait in their surgeries; and not one of these doctors either gives or receives any account of the several ailments of the various domestics, but prescribes for each what he deems right from experience, just as though he had exact knowledge, and with the assurance of an autocrat; then up he jumps and off he rushes to another sick domestic, and thus he relieves his master in his attendance on the sick.

But the free-born doctor is mainly engaged in visiting and treating the ailments of free men, and he does so by investigating them from the commencement and according to the course of nature; he talks with the patient himself and with his friends, and thus both learns himself from the sufferers and imparts instruction to them, so far as possible; and he gives no prescription until he has gained the patient’s consent, and only then, while securing the patient’s continued docility by means of persuasion,

does he attempt to complete the task of restoring him to health. Which of these two methods of doctoring shows the better doctor, or of training, the better trainer? Should the doctor perform one and the same function in two ways, or do it in one way only and that the worse way of the two and the less humane? Clin. The double method, Stranger, is by far the better. Ath. Do you wish us to examine the double method and the single as applied also to actual legislation? Clin. Most certainly I wish it. Ath. Come, tell me then, in Heaven’s name,—what would be the first law to be laid down by the lawgiver? Will he not follow the order of nature, and in his ordinances regulate

first the starting-point of generation in States? Clin. Of course. Ath. Does not the starting-point of generation in all States lie in the union and partnership of marriage? . Clin. Certainly. Ath. So it seems that, if the marriage laws were the first to be enacted, that would be the right course in every State. Clin. Most assuredly. Ath. Let us state the law in its simple form first: how will it run? Probably like this:— A man shall marry when he is thirty years old

and under five and thirty; if he fails to do so, he shall be punished both by a fine in money and by degradation, the fine being of such and such an amount, and the degradation of such and such a kind. Such shall be the simple form of marriage law. The double form shall be this,— A man shall marry when he is thirty years old and under thirty-five, bearing in mind that this is the way by which the human race, by nature’s ordinance, shares in immortality, a thing for which nature has implanted in everyone a keen desire.

The desire to win glory, instead of lying in a nameless grave, aims at a like object. Thus mankind is by nature coeval with the whole of time, in that it accompanies it continually both now and in the future; and the means by which it is immortal is this:—by leaving behind it children’s children and continuing ever one and the same, it thus by reproduction shares in immortality. That a man should deprive himself thereof voluntarily is never an act of holiness; and he who denies himself wife and children is guilty of such intentional deprivation.

He who obeys the law may be dismissed without penalty, but he that disobeys and does not marry when thirty-five years old shall pay a yearly fine of such and such an amount,—lest he imagine that single life brings him gain and ease,—and he shall have no share in the honors which are paid from time to time by the younger men in the State to their seniors. When one hears and compares this law with the former one,

it is possible to judge in each particular case whether the laws ought to be at least double in length, through combining threats with persuasion, or only single in length, through employing threats alone. Meg. Our Laconian way, Stranger, is to prefer brevity always. But were I bidden to choose which of these two statutes I should desire to have enacted in writing in my State, I should choose the longer;

and what is more, I should make the same choice in the case of every law in which, as in the example before us, these two alternatives were offered. It is necessary, however, that the laws we are now enacting should have the approval of our friend Clinias also; for it is his State which is now proposing to make use of such things. Clin. I highly approve of all you have said, Megillus. Ath. Still, it is extremely foolish to argue about the length or brevity of writings, for what we should value, I suppose, is not their extreme brevity or prolixity,

but their excellence; and in the case of the laws mentioned just now, not only does the one form possess double the value of the other in respect of practical excellence, but the example of the two kinds of doctors, recently mentioned, presents a very exact analogy. But as regards this, it appears that no legislator has ever yet observed that, while it is in their power to make use in their law-making of two methods,—namely, persuasion and force,—in so far as that is feasible in dealing with the uncultured populace, they actually employ one method only: in their legislation they do not temper compulsion

with persuasion, but use untempered force alone. And I, my dear sirs, perceive still a third requisite which ought to be found in laws, but which is nowhere to be found at present. Clin. What is it you allude to? Ath. A matter which, by a kind of divine direction, has sprung out of the subjects we have now been discussing. It was little more than dawn when we began talking about laws, and now it is high noon, and here we are in this entrancing resting-place; all the time we have been talking of nothing but laws,

yet it is only recently that we have begun, as it seems, to utter laws, and what went before was all simply preludes to laws. What is my object in saying this? It is to explain that all utterances and vocal expressions have preludes and tunings-up (as one might call them), which provide a kind of artistic preparation which assists towards the further development of the subject. Indeed, we have examples before us of preludes, admirably elaborated,

in those prefixed to that class of lyric ode called the nome, and to musical compositions of every description. But for the nomes (i.e. laws) which are real nomes—and which we designate political —no one has ever yet uttered a prelude, or composed or published one, just as though there were no such thing. But our present conversation proves, in my opinion, that there is such a thing; and it struck me just now that the laws we were then stating are something more than simply double, and consist of these two things combined—law, and prelude to law. Ath. The part which we called the despotic prescription —

comparing it to the prescriptions of the slave-doctors we mentioned—is unblended law; but the part which precedes this, and which is uttered as persuasive thereof, while it actually is persuasion, yet serves also the same purpose as the prelude to an oration. To ensure that the person to whom the lawgiver addresses the law should accept the prescription quietly—and, because quietly, in a docile spirit,—that, as I supposed, was the evident object with which the speaker uttered all his persuasive discourse. Hence, according to my argument,

the right term for it would be, not legal statement, but prelude, and no other word. Having said this, what is the next statement I would desire to make? It is this: that the lawgiver must never omit to furnish preludes, as prefaces both to the laws as a whole and to each individual statute, whereby they shall surpass their original form by as much as the double examples recently given surpassed the single. Clin. I, for my part, would charge the expert in these matters to legislate thus, and not otherwise.

Ath. You are right, I believe, Clinias, in asserting at least thus much,—that all laws have preludes, and that, in commencing each piece of legislation, one ought to preface each enactment with the prelude that naturally belongs to it—for the statement that is to follow the prelude is one of no small importance, and it makes a vast difference whether these statements are distinctly or indistinctly remembered; still, we should be wrong if we prescribed that all statutes, great and small, should be equally provided with preludes.

For neither ought that to be done in the case of songs and speeches of every kind; for they all naturally have preludes, but we cannot employ them always; that is a thing which must be left in each case to the judgment of the actual orator or singer or legislator. Clin. What you say is, I believe, very true. But let us not spend more time, Stranger, in delay, but return to our main subject, and start afresh (if you agree) from the statements you made above—and made not

by way of prelude. Let us, then, repeat from the start the second thoughts that are best (to quote the players’ proverb), treating them throughout as a prelude, and not, as before, as a chance discourse; and let us handle the opening part as being confessedly a prelude. As to the worship of the gods and the attention to be paid to ancestors, our previous statement is quite sufficient; it is what comes next to these that you must try to state, until the whole of the prelude has been, in our opinion, adequately set forth by you. After that you will proceed with your statement of the actual laws.

Ath. So then the prelude we previously composed concerning the gods and those next to the gods, and concerning parents, living and dead, was, as we now declare, sufficient; and you are now bidding me, I understand, to bring up, as it were, to the light of day the residue of this same subject. Clin. Most certainly. Ath. Well, surely it is both fitting and of the greatest mutual advantage that, next to the matters mentioned, the speaker and his hearers should deal with the question of the degree of zeal or slackness

which men ought to use in respect of their souls, their bodies, and their goods, and should ponder thereon, and thus get a grasp of education as far as possible. Precisely this, then, is the statement which we must actually make and listen to next. Clin. Perfectly right.

Ath. Let everyone who has just heard the ordinances concerning gods and dear forefathers now give ear. Of all a man’s own belongings, the most divine is his soul, since it is most his own. A man’s own belongings are invariably twofold: the stronger and better are the ruling elements, the weaker and worse those that serve; wherefore of one’s own belongings one must honor those that rule above those that serve.

Ath. Thus it is that in charging men to honor their own souls next after the gods who rule and the secondary divinities, I am giving a right injunction. But there is hardly a man of us all who pays honor rightly, although he fancies he does so; for honor paid to a thing divine is beneficent, whereas nothing that is maleficent confers honor; and he that thinks to magnify his soul by words or gifts or obeisances, while he is improving it no whit in goodness, fancies indeed that he is paying it honor, but in fact does not do so. Every boy, for example, as soon as he has grown to manhood, deems himself capable of learning all things, and supposes that by lauding his soul he honors it,

and by eagerly permitting it to do whatsoever it pleases. But by acting thus, as we now declare, he is not honoring his soul, but injuring it; whereas, we affirm, he ought to pay honor to it next after the gods. Again, when a man counts not himself but others responsible always for his own sins and for the most and greatest evils, and exempts himself always from blame, thereby honoring, as he fancies, his own soul,—then he is far indeed from honoring it,

since he is doing it injury. Again, when a man gives way to pleasures contrary to the counsel and commendation of the lawgiver, he is by no means conferring honor on his soul, but rather dishonor, by loading it with woes and remorse. Again, in the opposite case, when toils, fears, hardships and pains are commended, and a man flinches from them, instead of stoutly enduring them,—then by his flinching he confers no honor on his soul; for by all such actions he renders it dishonored. Again, when a man deems life at any price to be a good thing,

then also he does not honor, but dishonor, to his soul; for he yields to the imagination of his soul that the conditions in Hades are altogether evil, instead of opposing it, by teaching and convincing his soul that, for all it knows, we may find, on the contrary, our greatest blessings in the realm of the gods below. Again, when a man honors beauty above goodness, this is nothing else than a literal and total dishonoring of the soul; for such a statement asserts that the body is more honorable than the soul,—

but falsely, since nothing earth-born is more honorable than the things of heaven, and he that surmises otherwise concerning the soul knows not that in it he possesses, and neglects, a thing most admirable. Ath. Again, when a man craves to acquire wealth ignobly, or feels no qualm in so acquiring it,

he does not then by his gifts pay honor to his soul,—far from it, in sooth!—for what is honorable therein and noble he is bartering away for a handful of gold; yet all the gold on earth, or under it, does not equal the price of goodness. To speak shortly:—in respect of the things which the lawgiver enumerates and describes as either, on the one hand, base and evil, or, on the other hand, noble and good, if any man refuses to avoid by every means the one kind, and with all his power to practise the other kind,—such a man knows not that

everyone who acts thus is treating most dishonorably and most disgracefully that most divine of things, his soul. Hardly anyone takes account of the greatest judgment (as men call it) upon evil-doing; that greatest judgment is this,—to grow like unto men that are wicked, and, in so growing, to shun good men and good counsels and cut oneself off from them, but to cleave to the company of the wicked and follow after them; and he that is joined to such men inevitably acts and is acted upon in the way that such men bid one another to act.

Now such a resultant condition is not a judgment (for justice and judgment are things honorable) , but a punishment, an infliction that follows on injustice; both he that undergoes this and he that undergoes it not are alike wretched,—the one in that he remains uncured, the other in that he is destroyed in order to secure the salvation of many others. Thus we declare that honor, speaking generally, consists in following the better, and in doing our utmost to effect the betterment of the worse, when it admits of being bettered. Man has no possession better fitted by nature than the soul for

the avoidance of evil and the tracking and taking of what is best of all, and living in fellowship therewith, when he has taken it, for all his life thereafter. Wherefore the soul is put second in order of honor; as for the third, everyone would conceive that this place naturally belongs to the honor due to the body. But here again one has to investigate the various forms of honor,—which of them are genuine, which spurious; and this is the lawgiver’s task. Now he, as I suppose, declares that the honors are these and of these kinds:—the honorable body is not the fair body nor the strong nor

the swift nor the large, nor yet the body that is sound in health, although this is what many believe; neither is it a body of the opposite kind to any of these; rather those bodies which hold the mean position between all these opposite extremes are by far the most temperate and stable; for while the one extreme makes the souls puffed up and proud, the other makes them lowly and spiritless. Ath. The same holds good of the possession of goods and chattels, and they are to be valued on a similar scale. In each case, when they are in excess,

they produce enmities and feuds both in States and privately, while if they are deficient they produce, as a rule, serfdom. And let no man love riches for the sake of his children, in order that he may leave them as wealthy as possible; for that is good neither for them nor for the State. For the young the means that attracts no flatterers, yet is not lacking in things necessary, is the most harmonious of all and the best; for it is in tune with us and in accord, and thus it renders our life in all respects painless.

To his children it behoves a man to bequeath modesty, not money, in abundance. We imagine that chiding the young for their irreverence is the way to bequeath this; but no such result follows from the admonition commonly given nowadays to the young, when people tell them that youth must reverence everyone. Rather will the prudent lawgiver admonish the older folk to reverence the young, and above all to beware lest any of them be ever seen or heard by any of the young either doing or saying anything shameful;

for where the old are shameless, there inevitably will also the young be very impudent. The most effective way of training the young—as well as the older people themselves—is not by admonition, but by plainly practising throughout one’s own life the admonitions which one gives to others. By paying honor and reverence to his kinsfolk, and all who share in the worship of the tribal gods and are sprung from the same blood, a man will, in proportion to his piety, secure the goodwill of the gods of Birth to bless his own begetting of children. Moreover,

a man will find his friends and companions kindly disposed, in regard to life’s intercourse, if he sets higher than they do the value and importance of the services he receives from them, while counting the favors he confers on them as of less value than they are deemed by his companions and friends themselves. In relation to his State and fellow-citizens that man is by far the best who, in preference to a victory at Olympia or in any other contest of war or peace, would choose to have a victorious reputation for service to his native laws, as being the one man above all others who has served them with distinction throughout his life.

Further, a man should regard contracts made with strangers as specially sacred; for practically all the sins against Strangers are—as compared with those against citizens—connected more closely with an avenging deity. Ath. For the stranger, inasmuch as he is without companions or kinsfolk, is the more to be pitied by men and gods; wherefore he that is most able to avenge succors them most readily, and the most able of all, in every case, is the Strangers’ daemon and god,

and these follow in the train of Zeus Xenios. Whoso, then, is possessed of but a particle of forethought will take the utmost care to go through life to the very end without committing any offence in respect of Strangers. Of offences against either Strangers or natives, that which touches suppliants is in every case the most grave; for when a suppliant, after invoking a god as witness, is cheated of his compact, that god becomes the special guardian of him who is wronged, so that he will never be wronged without vengeance being taken for his wrongs.

As concerns a man’s social relations towards his parents, himself and his own belongings, towards the State also and friends and kindred,—whether foreign relations or domestic,—our exposition is now fairly complete. It remains to expound next the character which is most conducive to nobility of life; and after that we shall have to state all the matters which are subject, not to law, but rather to praise or blame,—as the instruments whereby the citizens are educated individually and rendered more tractable and well-inclined towards the laws which are to be imposed on them. Of all the goods,

for gods and men alike, truth stands first. Thereof let every man partake from his earliest days, if he purposes to become blessed and happy, that so he may live his life as a true man so long as possible. He is a trusty man; but untrustworthy is the man who loves the voluntary lie; and senseless is the man who loves the involuntary lie; and neither of these two is to be envied. For everyone that is either faithless or foolish is friendless; and since, as time goes on, he is found out, he is making for himself, in his woeful old-age, at life’s close,

a complete solitude, wherein his life becomes almost equally desolate whether his companions and children are living or dead. He that does no wrong is indeed a man worthy of honor; but worthy of twice as much honor as he, and more, is the man who, in addition, consents not to wrongdoers when they do wrong; for while the former counts as one man, the latter counts as many, in that he informs the magistrates of the wrongdoing of the rest. And he that assists the magistrates in punishing, to the best of his power, let him be publicly proclaimed to be the Great Man of the State and perfect, the winner of the prize for excellence.

Upon temperance and upon wisdom one should bestow the same praise, and upon all the other goods which he who possesses them can not only keep himself but can share also with others. Ath. He that thus shares these should be honored as highest in merit; and he that would fain share them but cannot, as second in merit; while if a man is jealous and unwilling to share any good things with anyone in a friendly spirit,

then the man himself must be blamed, but his possession must not be disesteemed any the more because of its possessor,—rather one should strive to gain it with all one’s might. Let every one of us be ambitious to gain excellence, but without jealousy. For a man of this character enlarges a State, since he strives hard himself and does not thwart the others by calumny; but the jealous man, thinking that calumny of others is the best way to secure his own superiority, makes less effort himself to win true excellence, and disheartens his rivals by getting them unjustly blamed; whereby he causes the whole State

to be ill-trained for competing in excellence, and renders it, for his part, less large in fair repute. Every man ought to be at once passionate and gentle in the highest degree. For, on the one hand, it is impossible to escape from other men’s wrongdoings, when they are cruel and hard to remedy, or even wholly irremediable, otherwise than by victorious fighting and self-defence, and by punishing most rigorously; and this no soul

can achieve without noble passion. But, on the other hand, when men commit wrongs which are remediable, one should, in the first place, recognize that every wrongdoer is a wrongdoer involuntarily; for no one anywhere would ever voluntarily acquire any of the greatest evils, least of all in his own most precious possessions. And most precious in very truth to every man is, as we have said, the soul. No one, therefore, will voluntarily admit into this most precious thing the greatest evil and live

possessing it all his life long. Now while in general the wrong-doer and he that has these evils are to be pitied, it is permissible to show pity to the man that has evils that are remediable, and to abate one’s passion and treat him gently, and not to keep on raging like a scolding wife; but in dealing with the man who is totally and obstinately perverse and wicked one must give free course to wrath. Wherefore we affirm that it behoves the good man to be always at once passionate and gentle. There is an evil, great above all others, which most men have, implanted in their souls, and which each one of them excuses in himself and makes no effort to avoid.

It is the evil indicated in the saying that every man is by nature a lover of self, and that it is right that he should be such. But the truth is that the cause of all sins in every case lies in the person’s excessive love of self. Ath. For the lover is blind in his view of the object loved, so that he is a bad judge of things just and good and noble, in that he deems himself

bound always to value what is his own more than what is true; for the man who is to attain the title of Great must be devoted neither to himself nor to his own belongings, but to things just, whether they happen to be actions of his own or rather those of another man. And it is from this same sin that every man has derived the further notion that his own folly is wisdom; whence it comes about that though we know practically nothing, we fancy that we know everything; and since we will not entrust to others the doing of things we do not understand,