principle approaching to that which prevails in Krete.[281] The
total produce raised will be distributed into twelve portions,
each equivalent to one month's consumption. Each twelfth portion
will then be divided into equal thirds. Two of these thirds will
be consumed by the citizens, their families, their slaves, and
their agricultural animals: the other third will be sold in the
market for the consumption of artisans and strangers, who alone
are permitted to buy it, all citizens being forbidden to do so.
Each citizen will make the apportionment of his own two-thirds
among freemen and slaves: a measured quantity shall then be given
to each of the working animals.[282] On the first of each month,
the sale of barley and wheat will be made in the market-place, and
every artisan or stranger will then purchase enough for his
monthly consumption: the like on the twelfth of each month, for
wine and other liquids--and on the twentieth of each month, for
animals and animal products, such as wool and hides. Firewood may
be purchased daily by any stranger or artisan, from the
proprietors on whose lands the trees grow, and may be resold by
him to other artisans: other articles can only be sold at the
monthly market-days. The Agoranomi, or regulators of the market,
will preside on those days, and will fix the spots on which the
different goods shall be exposed for sale. They will also take
account of the quantity which each man has for sale, fixing a
certain price for each article. They will then adjust the entries
of each man's property in the public registers according to these
new transactions. But if the actual purchases and sales be
made at any rate different from what is thus fixed, the Agoranomi
will modify their entries in the register according to the actual
rate, either in plus or in minus. These entries of individual
property in the public register will be made both for citizens and
resident strangers alike.[283]
[Footnote 281: Plato, Legg. viii. p. 847 E. [Greek: e)ggu\s tê=
tou= Krêtikou= no/mou.]]
[Footnote 282: Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 847-848.]
[Footnote 283: Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 849-850.
These regulations are given both briefly and obscurely.]
[Side-note: Admission of resident Metics--conditions
attached.]
It shall be open to any one who chooses, to come and reside in the
city as a stranger or artisan to exercise his craft, without
payment of any fee, simply on condition of good conduct; and of
being enrolled with his property in the register. But he shall not
acquire any fixed settlement. After twenty years, he must depart
and take away his property. When he departs, the entries belonging
to his name, in the proprietary register, shall be cancelled. If
he has a son, the son may also exercise the same art and reside as
a metic in the city for twenty years, but no longer; beginning
from the age of fifteen. Any metic who may render special service
to the city, may have his term prolonged, the magistrates and the
citizens consenting.[284]
[Footnote 284: Plato, Legg. viii. p. 850.]
[Side-note: Offences and penal judicature--Procedure of the
Dikasts.]
Plato now passes to the criminal code of his community: the
determination of offences, penalties, and penal judicature.
Serious and capital offences will be judged by the thirty-seven
Nomophylakes, in conjunction with a Board of Select Dikasts,
composed of the best among the magistrates of the preceding
year.[285] They will hear first the pleading of the accuser, next
that of the accused: they will then proceed, in the order of
seniority, to put questions to both these persons, sifting the
matter of charge. Plato requires them to be active in this
examination, and to get at the facts by mental effort of their
own. They will take notes of the examination, then seal up the
tablet, and deposit it upon the altar of Hestia. On the morrow
they will reassemble and repeat their examination, hearing
witnesses and calling for information respecting the affair. On
the third day, again the like: after which they will deliver their
verdict on the altar of Hestia. Upon this altar two urns will
be placed, for condemnation and acquittal: each Dikast will
deposit his pebble in one or other of these, openly before the
accuser and accused, and before the assembled citizens.[286]
[Footnote 285: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 855-856. This judicial Board
is mentioned also in xi. pp. 926 D, 928 B, 938 B, under the title
of [Greek: to\ tô=n e)kkri/tôn dikastê/rion--to\ tô=n e)klektô=n
dikastê/rion]. It forms the parallel to the Areiopagus at Athens.
See K. F. Hermann, De Vestigiis Institut. Attic., &c., pp.
45-46, &c.]
[Footnote 286: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 855-856. Compare the procedure
before the Areiopagus at Athens, as described by Schömann, Antiq.
Juris Publ. Græc. Part v. s. 63, p. 292. It does not appear that
the Areiopagites at Athens were in the practice of exercising any
such [Greek: a)na/krisis] of the parties before them, as Plato
enjoins upon his [Greek: e)klektoi\ dikastai/]: though it was
competent to the Dikasts at Athens to put questions if they chose.
Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 718.]
Conformably to the general sentiment announced still more
distinctly in the Republic, Plato speaks here also of penal
legislation as if it were hardly required. He regards it as almost
an insult to assume that any of his citizens can grow up capable
of committing grave crimes, when they have been subjected to such
a training, discipline, and government as he institutes. Still
human nature is perverse: we must provide for the occurrence of
some exceptional criminals among our citizens, even after all our
precautionary supervision: besides, over and above the citizens,
we have metics and slaves to watch over.[287]
[Footnote 287: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 853 C-D-E.]
[Side-note: Sacrilege, the gravest of all crimes. High
Treason.]
The first and gravest of all crimes is Sacrilege: pillage or
destruction of places or objects consecrated to the Gods. Next
comes high treason: either betrayal of the city to foreign
enemies, or overthrow of the established laws and government.
Persons charged with these crimes shall be tried before the Select
Dikasts, or High Court above constituted. If found guilty, they
shall be punished either capitally or by such other sentence as
the court may award. But no sentence either of complete
disfranchisement or of perpetual banishment can be passed against
any citizen, because every one of the 5040 lots of land must
always remain occupied.[288] Nor can any citizen be fined to any
greater extent than what he possesses over and above his lot of
land. He may be imprisoned, or flogged, or exposed in the pillory,
or put to do penance in some sacred precinct. But his
punishment shall noway extend to his children, unless persons of
the same family shall be condemned to death for three successive
generations. Should this occur, the family shall be held as
tainted. Their lot of land shall be considered vacant, and
assigned to some deserving young man of another citizen
family.[289]
[Footnote 288: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 855 C.
Compare the penalties inflicted by Plato with those which were
inflicted in Attic procedure. Meier und Schömann, Der Attische
Prozess, pp. 739-740 seq. There is considerable difference between
the two, arising to a great degree out of Plato's peculiar
institution about the unalterable number of lots of land (5040)
and of citizen families--as well as out of his fixation of maximum
and minimum of property. Flogging or beating is prescribed by
Plato, but had no place at Athens: [Greek: a)timi/a] was a
frequent punishment at Athens: Plato's substitute for it seems to
be the pillory--[Greek: tina\s a)mo/rphous e(/dras]. Fine was
frequent at Athens as a punishment: Plato is obliged to employ it
sparingly.]
[Footnote 289: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 856 D.]
[Side-note: Theft punished by _poena dupli_. General
exhortation founded by Plato upon this enactment.]
_Theft._--Plato next adverts to theft, and prescribes that
the punishment for a convicted thief shall be one and the same in
all cases--to compensate the party robbed to the extent of double
the value of the property, or to be imprisoned until he does
so.[290] But upon a question upon this being raised, how far one
and the same _poena dupli_, neither more nor less, can be
properly applied to all cases of theft, we are carried (according
to the usual unsystematic manner of the Platonic dialogue) into a
general discussion on the principles of penal legislation. We are
reminded that the Platonic lawgiver looks beyond the narrow and
defective objects to which all other lawgivers have hitherto
unwisely confined themselves.[291] He is under no pressing
necessity to legislate at once: he can afford time for preliminary
discussion and exposition: he desires to instruct his citizens
respecting right and wrong, as well as to constrain their acts by
penalty.[292] As he is better qualified than the poets to
enlighten them about the just and honourable, so the principles
which he lays down ought to have more weight than the verses of
Homer or Tyrtæus.[293] In regard to Justice and Injustice
generally, there are points on which Plato differs from the
public, and also points on which the public are at variance with
themselves. For example, every one is unanimous in affirming that
whatever is just is also beautiful or honourable. But if this be
true, then not only what is justly done, but also what is justly
suffered, is beautiful or honourable. Now the penalty of death,
inflicted on the sacrilegious person, is justly inflicted. It
must therefore be beautiful or honourable: yet every one agrees in
declaring it to be shocking and infamous. Here there is an
inconsistency or contradiction in the opinions of the public
themselves.[294]
[Footnote 290: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 857 A, xii. p. 941. The
Solonian Law at Athens provided, that if a man was sued for theft
under the [Greek: i)di/a di/kê klopê=s], he should be condemned to
the _poena dupli_ and to a certain [Greek: prosti/mêma]
besides (Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. 733-736). But it seems that
the thief might be indicted by a [Greek: graphê/], and then the
punishment might be heavier. See Aulus Gellius, xi. 18, and chap.
xi. of my 'History of Greece,' p. 189.]
[Footnote 291: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 857 C. [Greek: ta\ peri\ tê\n
tô=n no/môn the/sin ou)deni\ tro/pô| pô/pote ge/gonen o)rthô=s
diapeponême/na], &c.]
[Footnote 292: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 857 E, 858 A.]
[Footnote 293: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 858-859.]
[Footnote 294: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 859-860.
The same argument is employed by Sokrates in the Gorgias, p. 476
E.]
[Side-note: All unjust men are unjust involuntarily.--No
such thing as voluntary injustice. Injustice depends upon the
temper of the agent--Distinction between damage and injury.]
But Plato differs from the public on another point also. He
affirms all wicked or unjust men to be unwillingly wicked or
unjust: he affirms that no man does injustice willingly.[295] How
is he to carry out this maxim in his laws? He cannot make any
distinction (as all existing cities make it) in the penalties
prescribed for voluntary injustice, and for involuntary injustice;
for he does not recognise the former as real.[296] He must explain
upon what foundation his dissent from the public rests. He
discriminates between _Damnum_ and _Injuria_--between
Damage or Hurt, and Injustice. When damage is done, it is
sometimes done voluntarily--sometimes, and quite as often,
involuntarily. The public call this latter by the name of
involuntary injustice; but in Plato's view it is no injustice at
all. Injustice is essentially distinct from damage: it depends on
the temper, purpose, or disposition of the agent, not on the
result as affecting the patient. A man may be unjust when he is
conferring benefit upon another, as well as when he is doing hurt
to another. Whether the result be beneficial or hurtful, the
action will be right or wrong, and the agent just or unjust,
according to the condition of his own mind in doing it.[297]
[Footnote 295: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 860 D-E.]
[Footnote 296: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 861 B. [Greek: a(\ dê\ kata\
pa/sas ta\s po/leis u(po\ nomothetô=n pa/ntôn tô=n pô/pote
genome/nôn ô(s du/o ei)/dê tô=n a)dikêma/tôn o)/nta, ta\ me\n
e(kou/sia, ta\ de\ a)kou/sia, tau/tê| kai\ nomothetei=tai.]
The eighth chapter, fifth Book, of Aristotle's Nikomachean Ethics,
discusses this question more instructively than Plato.]
[Footnote 297: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 861-862.]
[Side-note: Damage may be voluntary or
involuntary--Injustice is shown often by conferring corrupt profit
upon another--Purpose of punishment, to heal the distemper of the
criminal.]
The real distinction therefore (according to Plato) is not between
voluntary and involuntary injustice, but between voluntary and
involuntary damage. Voluntary damage is injustice, but it is not
voluntary injustice. The unjust agent, so far forth as unjust,
acts involuntarily: he is under the perverting influence of
mental distemper. He must be compelled to make good the damage
which he has done, or to offer such requital as may satisfy the
feelings of the person damaged: and he must besides be subjected
to such treatment as will heal the distemper of his mind, so that
he will not be disposed to do farther voluntary damage in future.
And he ought to be subjected to this treatment equally, whether
his mental distemper (injustice) has shown itself in doing wilful
damage to another, or in conferring corrupt profit on another--in
taking away another man's property, or in giving away his own
property wrongfully.[298] The healing treatment may be different
in different cases: discourses addressed, or works
imposed--pleasures or pains, honour or disgrace, fine or otherwise.
But in all cases the purpose is one and the same--to heal the
distemper of his mind, and to make him hate injustice. If he be found
incurable, he must be put to death. It is a gain for himself to
die, and a still greater gain for society that he should die,
since his execution will serve as a warning to others.[299]
[Footnote 298: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 862 B. [Greek: ou)/t' ei)/ ti/s
tô| di/dôsi/ ti tô=n o)/ntôn ou)/t' ei) tou)nanti/on
a)phairei=tai, di/kaion a(plô=s ê)\ a)/dikon chrê\ to\ toiou=ton
ou(/tô le/gein, a)ll' e)a\n ê)/thei kai\ dikai/ô| tro/pô|
chrô/meno/s tis ô)phelê=| tina/ ti kai\ bla/ptê|, tou=to/ e)sti
tô=| nomothe/tê| theate/on, kai\ pro\s du/o tau=ta dê\ blepte/on,
pro/s te a)diki/an kai\ blabê/n.]]
[Footnote 299: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 862 C-E.]
[Side-note: Three distinct causes of misguided proceedings.
1. Painful stimulus. 2. Pleasurable stimulus. 3. Ignorance.]
Of misguided or erroneous proceeding there are in the human mind
three producing causes, acting separately or conjointly:--1. The
painful stimulus--Anger, Envy, Hatred, or Fear. 2. The seductive
stimulus, of Pleasure or Desire. 3. Ignorance. Ignorance is
twofold:--1. Ignorance pure and simple. 2. Ignorance combined with
the false persuasion of knowledge. This last again is exhibited
under two distinguishable cases:--1. When combined with power; and
in this case it produces grave and enormous crimes. 2. When found
in weak persons, children or old men, in which case it produces,
nothing worse than slight and venial offences, giving little
trouble to the lawgiver.[300]
[Footnote 300: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 863 C. [Greek: Tri/ton mê\n
a)/gnoian le/gôn a)/n tis tô=n a(martêma/tôn ai)ti/an ou)k a)\n
pseu/doito.]]
[Side-note: The unjust man is under the influence either of
the first or second of these causes, without controul of Reason.
If he acts under controul of Reason, though the Reason be bad, he
is not unjust.]
Now the unjust man (Plato tells us) is he in whose mind
either one or other of the two first causes are paramount,
and not controuled by Reason: either Hatred, Anger, Fear--or else
Appetite and the Desire of Pleasure. What he does under either of
these two stimuli is unjust, whether he damages any one else or
not. But if neither of these two stimuli be prevalent in his
mind--if, on the contrary, both of them are subordinated to the opinion
which he entertains about what is good and right--then everything
which he does is just, even though he falls into error. If in this
state of mind he hurts any one else, it will be simply
_hurt_, not injustice. Those persons are incorrect who speak
of it as injustice, but as involuntary injustice. The proceedings
of such a man may be misguided or erroneous, but they will never
be unjust.[301]
[Footnote 301: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 864 A. [Greek: tê\n de\ tou=
a)ri/stou do/xan, o(/pê| per a)\n e)/sesthai tou=to ê(gê/sôntai
po/lis ei)/te i)diô=tai/ tines, e)a\n au)/tê kratou=sa e)n
psuchê=| diakosmê=| pa/nta a)/ndra, ka)\n spha/llêtai/ ti,
di/kaion me\n pa=n ei)=nai to\ tau/tê| prachthe\n kai\ to\ tê=s
toiau/tês a)rchê=s gigno/menon u(pê/koon e(ka/stôn, kai\ e)pi\
to\n a(/panta a)/nthrô/pôn bi/on a)/riston.]]
All these three causes may realise themselves in act under three
varieties of circumstances: 1. By open and violent deeds. 2. By
secret, deceitful, premeditated contrivance. 3. By a combination
of both the two. Our laws must make provision for all the
three.[302]
[Footnote 302: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 864 C.]
[Side-note: Reasoning of Plato to save his doctrine--That
no man commits injustice voluntarily.]
Such is the theory here advanced by Plato to reconcile his views
and recommendations in the Leges with a doctrine which he had
propounded and insisted upon elsewhere:--That no man commits
injustice voluntarily--That all injustice is involuntary, arising
from ignorance--That every one would be just, if he only knew
wherein justice consists--That knowledge, when it exists in the
mind, will exercise controul and preponderance over the passions
and appetites.[303]
[Footnote 303: Compare Legg. v. p. 731 C; Timæus, p. 86 D;
Republic, ix. p. 589 C; Protagoras, pp. 345 D--352 D.]
The distinction whereby Plato here proposes to save all
inconsistency, is a distinction between misconduct or misguided
actions ([Greek: a(martê/mata], or [Greek: a(martano/mena]), and
unjust actions ([Greek: a)dikê/mata]). The last of these
categories is comprised by him in the first, as one species
or variety thereof. That is, all [Greek: a)dikê/mata] are [Greek:
a(martê/mata]: but all [Greek: a(martê/mata] are not [Greek:
a)dikê/mata]. He reckons three distinct causes of [Greek:
a(martê/mata]: two belonging to the emotional department of mind;
one to the intellectual. Those [Greek: a(martê/mata] which arise
from either of the two first causes are also [Greek: a)dikê/mata]:
those which arise from the third are not [Greek: a)dikê/mata].
This is the distinction which Plato here draws, with a view to
save consistency in his own doctrine--at least as far as I can
understand it, for the reasoning is not clear. It proceeds upon a
restricted definition, peculiar to himself, of the word
_injustice_--a restriction, however, which coincides in part
with that which he gives of Justice in the Republic,[304] where he
treats Justice as consisting in the controul exercised over
Passion and Appetite (the emotional department) by Reason (the
intellectual): each of the three departments of the soul or each
of the three separate souls, keeping in its own place, and
discharging its own appropriate functions. Every act which a man
does under the influence of persuasion or opinion of the best, is
held by Plato to be _just_--whatever his persuasion may
be--whether it be true or false[305] If he be sincerely persuaded
that he is acting for the best, he cannot commit injustice.
[Footnote 304: Plato, Republ. iv. pp. 443-444.]
[Footnote 305: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 863 C, 864 A.]
[Side-note: Peculiar definition of Injustice. A man may do
great voluntary hurt to others, and yet not be unjust, provided he
does it under the influence of Reason, and not of Appetite.]
Injustice being thus restricted to mean the separate and
unregulated action of emotional impulse--and such unregulated
action being, as a general fact, a cause of misery to the
agent--Plato's view is, that no man is voluntarily unjust: for no
man wishes to be miserable. Every man wishes to be happy: therefore
every man wishes to be just: because some controul of impulse by
reason is absolutely essential to happiness. When once such
controul is established, a man becomes just: he no longer commits
injustice. But he may still commit misconduct, and very gross
misconduct: moreover, this misconduct will be, or may be,
voluntary. For though the rational soul be now preponderant and
controuling over the emotional (which controul constitutes
_justice_), yet the rational soul itself may be
imperfectly informed (ignorance simple); or may not only be
ignorant, but preoccupied besides with false persuasions and
prejudices. Under such circumstances the just man may commit
misconduct, and do serious hurt to others. What he does may be
done voluntarily, in full coincidence with his own will: for the
will postulates only the controul of reason over emotion, and here
that condition is fulfilled, the fault lying with the controuling
reason itself.
[Side-note: Plato's purpose in the Laws is to prevent or
remedy not only injustice but misconduct.]
Plato's reasoning here (obscure and difficult to follow) is
intended to show that there can be no voluntary _injustice_,
but that there is much both of voluntary _misconduct_, and
voluntary _mischief_. His purpose as lawgiver is to prevent
or remedy not only (what he calls) _injustice_, but also
misconduct and mischief. As a remedy for mischief done, he
prescribes that the agent thereof shall make full compensation to
the sufferer. As an antidote to injustice, he applies his
educational discipline as well as his penal and remuneratory
treatment, to the emotions, with a view to subdue some and develop
others.[306] As a corrective to misconduct in all its branches, he
assumes to himself as lawgiver a spiritual power, applied to the
improvement of the rational or intellectual man: prescribing what
doctrines and beliefs shall be accredited in his city, tolerating
no others, and forbidding all contradiction, or dissentient
individuality of judgment.[307] He thus ensures that every man s
individual reason shall be in harmony with the infallible reason.
[Footnote 306: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 862 C-D.]
[Footnote 307: K. F. Hermann, in his valuable Dissertation, De
Vestigiis Institutorum Veterum, imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis
de Legibus libros indagandis, Marburg, 1836, p. 55,
says:--"Philosophi [Platonis] manum novatricem in iis tantum agnosco,
quæ de exsilii tempore pro diversis criminum fontibus diverso
argutatur; qui quum omnino omnium, nisi fallor, primus in hoc ipso
Legum Opere veterem usuque receptam criminum divisionem in
voluntaria et invita reprehenderit, eaque secundum tres animi
partes trifariam distribuerit, ita hic quoque mediam inter
imprudentiam et dolum malum iracundiam inseruit, quâ quis motus
cædem vel extemplo committeret vel etiam posterius animum suum
sanguine explêret."
I do not conceive Plato's reasoning exactly in the same way as
Hermann. Plato denies only the reality of [Greek: e(kou/sia
a)dikê/mata]: he considers all [Greek: a)dikê/mata] as essentially
[Greek: a)kou/sia]. But he does not deny [Greek: e(kou/sia
a)dikê/mata] (which is the large genus comprehending [Greek:
a)dikê/mata] as one species): he recognises both [Greek:
a(martê/mata e(kou/sia] and [Greek: a(martê/mata a)kou/sia]. And
he considers the [Greek: a(martê/mata] arising from [Greek:
thumo\s] to be midway between the two. But he also recognises
[Greek: a(martê/mata] as springing from the three different
sources in the human mind. The two positions are not incompatible;
though the whole discussion is obscured by the perplexing
distinction between [Greek: a(martê/mata] and [Greek:
a)dikê/mata].]
The peculiar sense in which Plato uses the words justice and
injustice is perplexing throughout this discussion. The words, as
he uses them, coincide only in part with the ordinary meaning.
They comprehend more in one direction, and less in another.
Plato now proceeds to promulgate laws in respect to homicide,
wounds, beating, &c.
[Side-note: Varieties of homicide--modes of dealing with
them penally.]
Homicide, however involuntary and unintentional, taints the person
by whose hands it is committed. He must undergo purification,
partly by such expiatory ceremonies as the Exêgêtæ may appoint,
partly by a temporary exile from the places habitually frequented
by the person slain: who even after death (according to the
doctrine of an ancient fable, which Plato here ratifies[308]), if
he saw the homicidal agent among his prior haunts, while the
occurrence was yet recent, would be himself disturbed, and would
communicate tormenting disturbance to the agent. This latter
accordingly is commanded to leave the territory for a year, and to
refrain from visiting any of the sacred precincts until he has
been purified. If he obeys, the relatives of the person slain
shall forgive him; and he shall, after his year's exile, return to
his ordinary abode and citizenship. But if he evades obedience,
these relatives shall indict him for the act, and he shall incur
double penalties. Should the nearest relative, under these
circumstances, neglect to indict, he may himself be indicted by
any one who chooses, and shall be condemned to an exile of five
years.[309]
[Footnote 308: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 865 A-D--866 B.
Compare Antiphon. Accus. Cæd. p. 116, and Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p.
301. The old law of Drako is given in substance in Demosthen. adv.
Leptin. p. 505. [Greek: A)peniautismo/s], compulsory year of
exile. K. F. Hermann, Griechische Privat-Alterthümer, s. 61, not.
23.]
[Footnote 309: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 866.]
[Side-note: Homicide involuntary--Homicide under
provocation.]
Plato provides distinct modes of proceeding for this same act of
involuntary homicide, under varieties of persons and
circumstances--citizens, metics, strangers, slaves, &c. He
especially lays it down that physicians, if a patient dies under
their hands, they being unwilling--shall be held innocent, and
shall not need purification.[310]
[Footnote 310: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 865 B.]
After involuntary homicide, Plato passes to the case of homicide
committed under violent passion or provocation; which he ranks as
intermediate between the involuntary and the
voluntary--approaching the one or the other, according to
circumstances:[311] according as it is done instantaneously, or
with more or less of interval and premeditation. If the act be
committed instantaneously, the homicide shall undergo two years'
exile: if after time for deliberation, the time of exile must be
extended to three years.[312] But if the slain person before his
death shall have expressed forgiveness, the case shall be dealt
with as one of involuntary homicide.[313] Special enactments are
made for the case of a slave killed by a citizen, a citizen killed
by a slave, a son killed by his father, a wife by her husband,
&c., under the influence of passion or strong provocation.
Homicide in self-defence against a previous aggressor is allowed
universally.[314]
[Footnote 311: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 866 E. [Greek: thumô=| kai\
o(/soi propêlakisthe/ntes lo/gois ê)\ kai\ a)ti/mois e)/rgois . . .
metaxu/ pou tou= te e(kousi/ou kai\ a)kousi/ou.]]
[Footnote 312: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 867 D.]
[Footnote 313: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 869 D.]
[Footnote 314: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 868-869 C.]
[Side-note: Homicide voluntary.]
Thirdly, Plato passes to the case of homicide voluntary, the
extreme of injustice, committed under the influence of pleasure,
appetite, envy, jealousy, ambition, fear of voluntary divulgation
of dangerous secrets, &c.--homicide premeditated and unjust.
Among all these causes, the chief and most frequent is love of
wealth; which gets possession of most men, in consequence of the
untrue and preposterous admiration of wealth** imbibed in their
youth from the current talk and literature. The next in frequency
is the competition of ambitious men for power or rank.[315]
Whoever has committed homicide upon a fellow-citizen, under these
circumstances, shall be interdicted from all the temples and other
public places, and shall be indicted by the nearest relatives of
the deceased. If found guilty, he shall be put to death: if he
leave the country to evade trial, he must be banished in
perpetuity. The nearest relative is bound to indict, otherwise he
draws down upon himself the taint, and may himself be indicted.
Certain sacrifices and religious ceremonies will be required in
such cases, to accompany the legal procedure. These, together with
the names of the Gods proper to invoke, will be prescribed by the
Nomophylakes, in conjunction with the prophets and the Exêgêtæ, or
religious interpreters.[316] The Dikasts before whom such trials
will take place are the Nomophylakes, together with some select
persons from the magistrates of the past year: the same as in the
case of sacrilege and treason.[317] The like procedure and
penalty will be employed against any one who has contrived the
death of another, not with his own hands, but by suborning some
third person: except that this contriver may be buried within the
limits of the territory, while the man whose hands are stained
with blood cannot be buried therein.[318]
[Footnote 315: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 870.]
[Footnote 316: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 871.]
[Footnote 317: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 871 D.]
[Footnote 318: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 872 A.]
[Side-note: Homicide between kinsmen.]
For the cases of homicide between kinsmen or relatives, Plato
provides a form of procedure still more solemn, and a still graver
measure of punishment. He also declares suicide to leave a taint
upon the country, which requires to be purified as the Exêgêtæ may
prescribe: unless the act has been committed under extreme pain or
extreme disgrace. The person who has killed himself must be buried
apart without honour, not in the regular family burying
places.[319] The most cruel mode of death is directed to be
inflicted upon a slave who has voluntarily slain, or procured to
be slain, a freeman. If a slave be put to death without any fault
of his own, but only from apprehension of secrets which he may
divulge, the person who kills him shall be subjected to the same
trial and sentence as if he had killed a citizen.[320] If any
animal, or even any lifeless object, has caused the death of a
man, the surviving relatives must prosecute, and the animal or the
object must be taken away from the country.[321]
[Footnote 319: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 873.]
[Footnote 320: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 872 D.]
[Footnote 321: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 873 E. He makes exception of
the cases in which death of a man is caused by thunder or some
such other missile from the Gods--[Greek: plê\n o(/sa kerauno\s
ê)\ ti para\ theou= toiou=ton be/los i)o/n.]]
[Side-note: Homicide justifiable--in what cases.]
_Justifiable Homicide._--Some special cases are named in
which he who voluntarily kills another, is nevertheless perfectly
untainted. A housebreaker caught in act may thus be rightfully
slain: so also a clothes-stealer, a ravisher, a person who attacks
the life of any man's father, mother, or children.[322]
[Footnote 322: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 874 C.]
[Side-note: Infliction of wounds.]
_Wounds._--Next to homicide, Plato deals with wounds
inflicted: introducing his enactments by a preface on the general
necessity of obedience to law.[323] Whosoever, having intended to
kill another (except in the special cases wherein homicide is
justifiable), inflicts a wound which proves not mortal, is as
criminal as if he had killed him. Nevertheless he is not required
to suffer so severe a punishment, inasmuch as an auspicious Dæmon
and Fortune have interposed to ward off the worst results of his
criminal purpose. He must make full compensation to the sufferer,
and then be exiled in perpetuity.[324] The Dikastery will decide
how much compensation he shall furnish. In general, Plato trusts
much to the discretion of the Dikastery, under the great diversity
of the cases of wounds inflicted. He would not have allowed so
much discretion to the numerous and turbulent Dikasteries of
Athens: but he regards his select Dikastery as perfectly
trustworthy.[325] Peculiar provision is made for cases in which
the person inflicting the wound is kinsman or relative of the
sufferer--also for homicide under the same circumstances. Plato
also directs how to supply the vacancy which perpetual banishment
will occasion in the occupation of one among the 5040
citizen-lots.[326] If one man wounds another in a fit of passion,
he must pay simple, double, or triple, compensation according as the
Dikasts may award: he must farther do all the military duty which
would have been incumbent on the wounded man, should the latter be
disabled.[327] But if the person inflicting the wound be a slave
and the wounded man a freeman, the slave shall be handed over to
the wounded freeman to deal with as he pleases. If the master of
the slave will not give him up, he must himself make compensation
for the wound, unless he can prove before the Dikastery that the
case is one of collusion between the wounded freeman and the
slave; in which case the wounded freeman will become liable to the
charge of unlawfully suborning away the slave from his
master.[328]
[Footnote 323: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 875.]
[Footnote 324: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 877 A.]
[Footnote 325: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 876 A.]
[Footnote 326: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 877.]
[Footnote 327: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 878 C.]
[Footnote 328: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 879 A.]
[Side-note: Infliction of blows.]
_Beating._--The laws of Plato on the subject of beating are
more peculiar. They are mainly founded in reverence for age. One
who strikes a person twenty years older than himself, is severely
punished: but if he strikes a person of the same age with himself,
that person must defend himself as he can with his own hands--no
punishment being provided.[329] For him who strikes his
father or mother, the heaviest penalty, excommunication and
perpetual banishment, is provided.[330] If a slave strike a
freeman, he shall be punished with as many blows as the person
stricken directs, nevertheless in such manner as not to diminish
his value to his master.[331]
[Footnote 329: Plato, Legg. ix. pp. 879-880.
The person who struck first blow was guilty of [Greek: ai)ki/a],
Demosth. adv. Euerg. and Mnesibul. pp. 1141-1151.]
[Footnote 330: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 881.]
[Footnote 331: Plato, Legg. p. 882 A.]
[Side-note: Plato has borrowed much from Attic procedure,
especially in regard to Homicide--Peculiar view of Homicide at
Athens, as to procedure.]
Throughout all this Treatise De Legibus, in regard both to civil
and criminal enactments, Plato has borrowed largely from Attic
laws and procedure. But in regard to homicide and wounds, he has
borrowed more largely than in any other department. Both the
general character, and the particular details, of his provisions
respecting homicide, are in close harmony with ancient Athenian
sentiment, and with the embodiments of that sentiment by the
lawgivers Drako and Solon. At Athens, though the judicial
procedure generally, as well as the political constitution,
underwent great modification between the time of Solon and that of
Demosthenes, yet the procedure in the case of homicide remained
without any material change. It was of a sanctified character,
depending mainly upon ancient religious tradition. The person
charged with homicide was not tried before the general body of
Dikasts, drawn by lot, but before special ancient tribunals and in
certain consecrated places, according to the circumstances under
which the act of homicide was charged. The principal object
contemplated, was to protect the city and its public buildings
against the injurious consequences arising from the presence of a
tainted man--and to mollify the posthumous wrath of the person
slain. This view of the Attic procedure[332] against homicide is
copied by the Platonic. Plato keeps prominently in view the
religious bearing and consequences of such an act; he touches
comparatively little upon its consequences in causing distress and
diminishing the security of life. He copies the Attic law both in
the justifications which he admits for homicide, and in the
sentence of banishment which he passes against both animals and
inanimate objects to whom any man owes his death. He goes beyond
the Attic law in the solemnity and emphasis of his details about
homicide among members of the same family and relatives: as well
as in the severe punishment which he imposes upon the surviving
relatives of the person slain, if they should neglect their
obligation of indicting.[333] Throughout all this chapter, Plato
not only follows the Attic law, but overpasses it, in dealing with
homicide as a portion of the Jus Sacrum rather than of the Jus
Civile.
[Footnote 332: The oration of Demosthenes against Aristokrates
treats copiously of this subject, pp. 627-646. [Greek: ei)/rgein
tê=s tou= patho/ntos patri/dos, di/kaion ei)=nai--o(/sôn tô=|
patho/nti zô=nti metê=n, tou/tôn ei)/rgei to\n dedrako/ta, prô=ton
me\n tê=s patri/dos] (632-633).
The first of Matthiæ's Dissertations, De Judiciis Atheniensium
(Miscellanea Philologica, vol. i. pp. 145-176), collects the
information on these matters: and K. F. Hermann (De Vestigiis
Institutorum Veterum, imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis De Legibus
Libros indagandis, Marburg, 1836) gives a detailed comparison of
Plato's directions with what we know about the Attic Law:--"Ipsas
homicidiorum religiones (Plato) ex antiquissimo jure patrio in
suum ita transtulit, ut nihil opportunius ad illustranda illius
vestigia inveniri posse videatur" (p. 49). . . . "quæ omnia
Solonis Draconisve in legibus ferè ad verbum eadem inveniuntur"
(p. 50). The same about [Greek: trau/mata e)k pronoi/as], pp.
58-59.]
[Footnote 333: K. F. Hermann, De Vestigiis, ut suprà, p. 54.
Compare Demosthenes adv. Theokrin. p. 1331.]
In respect to the offence of beating, he does not follow the Attic
law, when he permits it between citizens of the same age, and
throws the beaten person upon his powers of self-defence. This is
Spartan, not Athenian. It is also Spartan when he makes the
criminality, in giving blows, to turn upon the want of reverence
for age: upon the circumstance, that the person beaten is twenty
years older than the beater.[334]
[Footnote 334: Plato, Legg. ix. p. 879 C. He admits the same
provision as to blows between [Greek: ê(/likes] into his Republic
(v. p. 464 E).
Compare, about Sparta, Xenophon, Rep. Laced. iv. 5; Cicero, Tusc.
Disp. v. 27; Pausanias, iii. 14: Dionys. Halikarnass. Arch. Rom.
xx. 2. [Greek: Lakedaimo/nioi o(/ti toi=s presbute/rois
e)pe/trepon tou\s a)kosmou=ntas tô=n politô=n e)n o(/tô| dê/ tini
tô=n dêmosi/ôn to/pôn tai=s baktêri/ais pai/ein.]]
[Side-note: Impiety or outrage offered to divine things or
places.]
From these various crimes--sacrilege or plunder of holy places,
theft, homicide, wounding, beating--Plato passes in the tenth book
to insult or outrage ([Greek: u(/bris]). These outrages (he
considers) are essentially the acts of wild young men. Outrage may
be offered towards five different subjects. 1. Public temples. 2.
Private chapels and sepulchres. 3. Parents. 4. The magistrates, in
their dignity or their possessions. 5. Private citizens, in
respect of their civic rights and dignity.[335] The tenth book is
devoted entirely to the two first-mentioned heads, or to impiety
and its alleged sources: the others come elsewhere, not in any
definite order.[336]
[Footnote 335: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 884-885.]
[Footnote 336: Treatment of parents comes xi. pp. 930-931.]
[Side-note: All impiety arises from one or other of
three heresies. 1. No belief in the Gods. 2. Belief that the Gods
interfere very little. 3. Belief that they may be appeased by
prayer and sacrifice.]
Plato declares that all impiety, either in word or deed, springs
from one of three heretical doctrines. 1. The heretic does not
believe in the Gods at all. 2. He believes the Gods to exist, but
believes also that they do not interest themselves about human
affairs; or at least that they interfere only to a small extent.
3. He believes that they exist, and that they direct every thing;
but that it is perfectly practicable to appease their displeasure,
and to conciliate their favour, by means of prayer and
sacrifice.[337]
[Footnote 337: Plato, Legg. x. p. 885.]
[Side-note: Punishment for these three heretical beliefs,
with or without overt act.]
If a person displays impiety, either by word or deed, in either of
these three ways, he shall be denounced to the archons by any
citizen who becomes acquainted with the fact. The archons, on pain
of taking the impiety on themselves, shall assemble the dikastery,
and put the person accused on trial. If found guilty, he shall be
put in chains and confined in one or other of the public prisons.
These public prisons are three in number: one in the market-place,
for ordinary offenders: a second, called the House of Correction
([Greek: sôphronistê/rion]), attached to the building in which the
Supreme Board of Magistrates hold their nocturnal sittings: a
third, known by some designation of solemn penalty, in the centre
of the territory, but in some savage and desolate spot.[338]
[Footnote 338: Plato, Legg. x. p. 908. [Greek: desmo\s me\n ou)=n
u(parche/tô pa=si; desmôtêri/ôn de\ o)/ntôn e)n tê=| po/lei
triô=n], &c.
Imprisonment included chains round the prisoner's legs. Sokrates
was put in chains during his thirty days' confinement, arising
from the voyage of the Theôric ship to Delos (Plat. Phædon, p. 60
B).]
[Side-note: Heretic, whose conduct has been virtuous and
faultless, to be imprisoned for five years, perhaps more.]
Suppose the heretic, under either one of the three heads, to be
found guilty of heresy pure and simple--but that his conduct has
been just, temperate, unexceptionable, and his social dispositions
steadily manifested, esteeming the society of just men, and
shunning that of the unjust.[339] There is still danger that by
open speech or scoffing he should shake the orthodox belief of
others: he must therefore be chained in the house of Correction
for a term not less than five years. During this term no
citizen whatever shall be admitted to see him, except the members
of the Nocturnal Council of Magistrates. These men will constantly
commune with him, administering exhortations for the safety of his
soul and for his improvement. If at the expiration of the five
years, he appears to be cured of his heresy and restored to a
proper state of mind, he shall be set at liberty, and allowed to
live with other proper-minded persons. But if no such cure be
operated, and if he shall be found guilty a second time of the
same offence, he shall suffer the penalty of death.[340]
[Footnote 339: Plato, Legg. p. 908 B-E. [Greek: ô(=| ga\r a)/n,
mê\ nomi/zonti theou\s ei)=nai to\ para/pan, ê)=thos phu/sei
prosge/nêtai di/kaion, misou=nte/s te gi/gnontai tou\s kakou/s,
kai\ tô=| duscherai/nein tê\n a)diki/an ou)/te ta\s toiau/tas
pra/xeis prosi/entai pra/ttein, tou/s te mê\ dikai/ous tô=n
a)nthrô/pôn pheu/gousi, kai\ tou\s dikai/ous ste/rgousi],
&c.]
[Footnote 340: Plato, Legg. x. p. 909 A. [Greek: e)n tou/tô| de\
tô=| chro/nô| mêdei\s tô=n politô=n au)toi=s a)/llos
xuggigne/sthô, plê\n oi( tou= nukterinou= xullo/gou koinônou=ntes,
e)pi\ nouthetê/sei te kai\ tê=| tê=s psuchê=s sôtêri/a|
o(milou=ntes.]]
[Side-note: Heretic with bad conduct--punishment to be
inflicted.]
Again--the heretic may be found guilty, not of heresy pure and
simple in one of its three varieties, but of heresy manifesting
itself in bad conduct and with aggravating circumstances. He may
conceal his real opinion, and acquire the reputation of the best
dispositions, employing that reputation to overreach others, and
combining dissolute purposes with superior acuteness and
intelligence: he may practise stratagems to succeed as a despot, a
public orator, a general, or a sophist: he may take up, and will
more frequently take up, the profession of a prophet or religious
ritualist or sorcerer, professing to invoke the dead or to command
the aid of the Gods by prayer and sacrifice. He may thus try to
bring ruin upon citizens, families, and cities.[341] A heretic of
this description (says Plato) deserves death not once or twice
only, but several times over, if it were possible.[342] If found
guilty he must be kept in chains for life in the central penal
prison--not allowed to see any freemen--not visited by any one,
except the slave who brings to him his daily rations. When he
dies, his body must be cast out of the territory without burial:
and any freeman who may assist in burying it, shall himself incur
the penalty of impiety. From the day that the heretic is
imprisoned, he shall be considered as civilly dead; his children
being placed under wardship as orphans.[343]
[Footnote 341: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 908-909.]
[Footnote 342: Plato, Legg. x. p. 908 E. [Greek: ô(=n to\ me\n
ei)rôniko\n ou)ch e(no\s ou)de\ duoi=n a)/xia thana/toin
a(marta/non], &c.]
[Footnote 343: Plato, Legg. x. p. 909 C.]
[Side-note: No private worship or religious rites allowed.
Every citizen must worship at the public temples.]
As a still farther assurance for reaching and punishing these
dangerous heretics, Plato enacts--No one shall erect any
temple or altar, no one shall establish any separate worship or
sacrifice, in his own private precincts. No one shall propitiate
the Gods by secret prayer and sacrifice of his own. When a man
thinks fit to offer prayer and sacrifice, he must do it at the
public temples, through and along with recognised priests and
priestesses. If a man keep in his house any sacred object to which
he offers sacrifice, the archons shall require him to bring it
into the public temples, and shall punish him until he does so.
But if he be found guilty of sacrificing either at home or in the
public temples, after the commission of any act which the
Dikastery may consider grave impiety--he shall be condemned to
death.[344]
[Footnote 344: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 909-910.]
[Side-note: Uncertain and mischievous action of the
religious sentiment upon individuals, if not controuled by public
authority.]
In justifying this stringent enactment, Plato not only proclaims
that the proper establishment of temples and worship can only be
dictated by a man of the highest intelligence, but he also
complains of the violent and irregular working of the religious
feeling in the minds of individuals. Many men (he says) when sick,
or in danger and troubles of what kind soever, or when alarmed by
dreams or by spectres seen in their waking hours, or when calling
to mind and recounting similar narratives respecting the past, or
when again experiencing unexpected good fortune--many men under
such circumstances, and all women, are accustomed to give a
religious colour to the situation, and to seek relief by vows,
sacrifices, and altars to the Gods. Hence the private houses and
villages become full of such foundations and proceedings.[345]
Such religious sentiments and fears, springing up spontaneously in
the minds of individuals, are considered by Plato to require
strict repression. He will allow no religious worship or
manifestation, except that which is public and officially
authorised.
[Footnote 345: Plato, Legg. x. p. 909 E-910 A. [Greek: e)/thos te
gunaixi/ te dê\ diaphero/ntôs pa/sais kai\ toi=s a)sthenou=si
pa/ntê| kai\ kinduneu/ousi kai\ a)porou=sin, o(/pê| tis a)\n
a)porê=|, . . . kathierou=n te to\ paro\n a)ei/, kai\ thusi/as
eu)/chesthai kai\ i(dru/seis u(pischnei=sthai theoi=s], &c.
If, however, we turn back to v. p.738 C, we shall see that Plato
ratifies these [Greek: kathierô/seis], when they have once got
footing, and rejects only the new ones. The rites, worship, and
sacrifices, in his city, are assumed to have been determined by
local or oracular inspiration (v. p. 738 B): the orthodox creed is
set out by himself.]
[Side-note: Intolerant spirit of Plato's legislation
respecting uniformity of belief.]
Such is the Act of Uniformity promulgated by Plato for his new
community of the Magnêtes, and such the terrible sanctions by
which it is enforced. The lawgiver is the supreme and exclusive
authority, spiritual as well as temporal, on matters religious as
well as on matters secular. No dissenters from the orthodoxy
prescribed by him are admitted. Those who believe more than he
does, and those who believe less, however blameless their conduct,
are condemned alike to pass through a long solitary imprisonment
to execution. Not only the speculations of enquiring individual
reason, but also the spontaneous inspirations of religious
disquietude or terror, are suppressed and punished.[346]
[Footnote 346: Plato himself is here the [Greek: No/mos Po/leôs],
which the Delphian oracle, in its responses, sanctioned as the
proper rule for individual citizens, Xenophon, Memor. iv. 3, 16.
Compare iv. 6. 2, and i. 3, 1; Lysias, Or. xxx. 21-26. [Greek:
thu/ein ta\ pa/tria--thu/ein ta\ e)k tô=n ku/rbeôn], is [Greek:
eu)sebei/a].
See K. F. Hermann, Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer der Griechen,
sect. 10: Nägelsbach, Nach-Homerische Theologie, pp. 201-204.
Cicero also enacts, in his Treatise De Legibus (ii.
8-10):--"Separatim nemo habessit Deos: neve novos, sed ne advenas,
nisi publicé adscitos, privatim colunto." Compare Livy, xxxix. 16,
about the Roman prohibitions of _sacra externa_. But Cicero
does not propose to inflict such severe penalties as Plato.]
We seem to be under a legislation imbued with the persecuting
spirit and self-satisfied infallibility of mediaeval Catholicism
and the Inquisition. The dissenter is a criminal, and among the
worst of criminals, even if he do nothing more than proclaim his
opinions.[347] How striking is the contradiction between this
spirit and that in which Plato depicts the Sokrates of the Phædon,
the Apology, and the Gorgias! How fully does Sokrates in the
Phædon[348] recognise and respect the individual reason of his two
friends, though dissenting from his own! How emphatically
does he proclaim, in the Apology and Gorgias, not merely his own
individual dissent from his fellow-citizens, but also his
resolution to avow and maintain it against one and all, until he
should hear such reasons as convinced him that it was untrue! How
earnestly does he declare (in the Apology) that he has received
from the Delphian God a mission to cross-examine the people of
Athens, and that he will obey the God in preference to them:[349]
thus claiming to himself that special religious privilege which
his accuser Melêtus imputes to him as a crime, and which Plato, in
his Magnêtic colony, also treats as a crime, interdicting it under
the severest penalties! During the interval of forty-five years
(probably) between the trial of Sokrates and the composition of
the Leges, Plato had passed from sympathy with the free-spoken
dissenter to an opposite feeling--hatred of all dissent, and an
unsparing employment of penalties for upholding orthodoxy. I have
already remarked on the Republic, and I here remark it again--if
Melêtus lived long enough to read the Leges, he would have found
his own accusation of Sokrates amply warranted by the enactments
and doctrines of the most distinguished Sokratic Companion.[350]
[Footnote 347: Milton, in his Areopagitica, or Argument for
Unlicensed Printing (vol. i. p. 149, Birch's edition of Milton's
Prose Works), has some strenuous protestations against the rigour
of the Platonic censorship in this tenth Book. In the year 1480
Hermolaus Barbarus wrote to George Merula as follows:--"Plato, in
Institutione De Legibus, inter prima commemorat, in omni republicâ
præscribi caverique oportere, ne cui liceat, quæ composuerit, aut
privatim ostendere, aut in usum publicum edere, antequam ea
constitute super id judices viderint, nec damnarint. Utinam
hodieque haberetur hæc lex: neque enim tam multi scriberent, neque
tam pauci bonas litteras discerent. Nunc et copiâ malorum librorum
offundimur, et omissis eminentissimis autoribus, plebeios et
minutulos consectamur. Et, quod calamitosissimum est, periti juxta
imperitique de studiis impuné ac promiscué judicant" (Politiani
Opera, 1553, p. 197).
I transcribe the above passage from an interesting article upon
Book-Censors, in Beckmann's History of Inventions (Ed. 1817, vol.
iii. p. 93 seq.), where numerous examples are cited of the
prohibition, combustion, or licensing of books by authority, from
the burning of the work of Protagoras by decree of the Athenian
assembly, down to modern times; illustrating the tendency of
different sects and creeds, in proportion as they acquired power,
to silence all open contradiction. The Christian Arnobius, at a
time when his creed was under disfavour by the Emperors, protests
against this practice, in a liberal and comprehensive phrase which
would have much offended Plato (at the time when he wrote the
Leges) and Hermolaus:--"Alios audio mussitare indignanter et
dicere:--Oportere statui per Senatum, aboleantur ut hæc scripta
quibus Christiana religio comprobetur et vetustatis opprimatur
auctoritas. . . . Nam intercipere scripta, et publicatam velle
submergere lectionem, non est Deos defendere, sed veritatis
testificationem timere" (Arnob. adv. Gentes, iii. p. 104. Also iv.
p. 152).
"We are told by Eusebius (Beckmann, ed. 1817, vol. iii. p. 96;
Bohn's ed., vol. ii. p. 514) that Diocletian caused the sacred
Scriptures to be burnt. After the spreading of the Christian
religion, the clergy exercised against books that were either
unfavourable or disagreeable to them, the same severity which they
had censured in the heathens as foolish and prejudicial to their
own cause. Thus were the writings of Arius condemned to the flames
at the Council of Nice; and Constantine threatened with the
punishment of death those who should conceal them. The clergy
assembled at the Council of Ephesus requested the Emperor
Theodosius II. to cause the works of Nestorius to be burnt; and
this desire was complied with. The writings of Eutyches shared the
like fate at the Council of Chalcedon: and it would not be
difficult to collect examples of the same kind from each of the
following centuries."
Dr. Vaughan observes, in criticising the virtuous character and
sincere persecuting spirit of Sir Thomas More:--"If there be any
_opinion_ which it would be just to punish as a _crime_,
it is the opinion which makes it to be _a virtue not to tolerate
opinion_." (Revolutions in English History, vol. ii. p. 178.)
I find the following striking anecdote in the transactions of the
Académie Royale de Belgique, 1862; Bulletins, 2me Sér., tom. xiii.
p. 567 seq.; Vie et Travaux de _Nicolas Cleynaerts_ par M.
Thonissen. Cleynaerts (or Clenardus) was a learned Belgian (born
1495--died 1543), professor both at Louvain and at Salamanca, and
author of _Grammaticæ Institutiones_, both of the Greek and
the Hebrew languages. He acquired, under prodigious difficulties
and disadvantages, a knowledge of the Arabic language; and he
employed great efforts to organise a course of regular instruction
in that language at Louvain, with a view to the formation of
missionaries who would combat the doctrines of Islam.
At Grenada, in Spain (1538), "Clenardus ne réussit pas mieux à
arracher aux bûchers de l'inquisition les manuscrits et les
livres" (Moorish and Arabic books which had been seized after the
conquest of Grenada by the Spaniards) "qu'elle avait entassés dans
sa succursale de Grenade. Ce fut en vain que Cleynaerts, faisant
valoir le but éminemment chrétien qu'il voulait atteindre,
prodigua les démarches et les prières, pour se faire remettre 'ces
papiers plus nécessaires à lui qu'à Vulcain'. . . . L'inexorable
inquisition refusa de lâcher sa proie. Un savant théologien,
Jean-Martin Silicæus, précepteur de Philippe II., fit cependant
entendre à notre compatriote, que ses voeux pourraient être
exaucés, s'il consentait à fonder son école, non à Louvain, mais à
Grenade, où une multitude de néophytes faisaient semblant de
professer le Christianisme, tout en conservant les préceptes de
Mahomet au fond du coeur. Mais le linguiste Belge lui fit cette
réponse, doublement remarquable à cause du pays et de l'époque où
elle fut émise: 'C'est en Brabant, et nullement en Espagne, que je
poserai les fondements de mon oeuvre. Je cherche des
_compagnons d'armes pour lutter là où la lutte peut être loyale
et franche_. Les habitants du royaume de Grenade n'oseraient
pas me répondre, puisque la terreur de l'inquisition les force à
se dire chrétiens. Le combat est impossible, là où personne n'ose
assumer le rôle de l'ennemi'--." Galen calls for a strict
censorship, even over medical books--ad Julianum--Vol. xviii. p.
247 Kühn.]
[Footnote 348: Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 29. Gorgias, p. 472 A-B:
[Greek: kai\ nu=n peri\ ô(=n su\ le/geis o)li/gou soi pa/ntes
sumphê/sousi tau)ta\ A)thênai=oi kai\ xe/noi . . . _A)ll' e)gô/
soi ei(=s ô)\n ou)ch o(mologô=_.]
Compare also p. 482 B of the same dialogue, where Sokrates
declares his anxiety to maintain consistency with himself, and his
indifference to other authority.]
[Footnote 349: Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 29 D. [Greek: pei/somai de\
ma=llon tô=| theô=| ê)\ u(mi=n]. Comp. pp. 30 A, 31 D, 33 C.]
[Footnote 350: The indictment of Melêtus against Sokrates ran
thus--[Greek: A)dikei= Sôkra/tês, ou(\s me\n ê( po/lis nomi/zei
theou/s, ou) nomi/zôn, _e(/tera_ de\ _kaina\ daimo/nia_
ei)sêgou/menos; a)dikei= de\ kai\ tou\s ne/ous diaphthei/rôn;
ti/mêma, tha/natos] (Diog. Laert. ii. 40; Xenoph. Memor. i. 1).
The charge as to introduction of [Greek: kaina\ daimo/nia] was
certainly well founded against Sokrates (compare Plato, Republic,
vi. p. 496 C). Whoever was guilty of promulgating [Greek: kaina\
daimo/nia] in the Platonic city De Legibus, would have perished
miserably long before he reached the age of 70; which Sokrates
attained at Athens.
Compare my 'History of Greece,' ch. xxviii.
I have in one passage greatly understated the amount of severity
which Plato employs against heretics. I there affirm that he
banishes them: whereas the truth is, that he imprisons them, and
ultimately, unless they recant, puts them to death.]
[Side-note: The persons denounced by Plato as heretics, and
punished as such, would have included a majority of the Grecian
world.]
It is true that the orthodoxy which Plato promulgates, and forbids
to be impugned, in the Magnêtic community, is an orthodoxy of his
own, different from that which was recognised at Athens; but this
only makes the case more remarkable, and shows the deep root of
intolerance in the human bosom--esteemed as it frequently is, by a
sincere man, among the foremost of his own virtues. Plato marks
out three varieties of heresy, punishable by long
imprisonment, and subsequent death in case of obstinate
persistence. Now under one or other of the three varieties, a
large majority of actual Greeks would have been included. The
first variety--those who did not believe the Gods to exist--was
doubtless confined to a small minority of reflecting men; though
this minority (according to Plato[351]), not contemptible even in
number, was distinguished in respect to intellectual
accomplishments. The second variety--that of those who believed
the Gods to exist, but believed them to produce some results only,
not all--was more numerous. And the third variety--that of those
who believed them to be capable of being appeased or won over by
prayer and sacrifice--was the most numerous of all. Plato himself
informs us[352] that this last doctrine was proclaimed by the most
eminent poets, rhetors, prophets, and priests, as well as by
thousands and tens of thousands besides. That prayer and sacrifice
were means of appeasing the displeasure or unfavourable
dispositions of the Gods--was the general belief of the Grecian
world, from the Homeric times downwards. The oracles or individual
prophets were constantly entreated to inform petitioners, what was
the nature or amount of expiatory ceremony which would prove
sufficient for any specific case; but that there was _some_
sort of expiatory ceremony which would avail, was questioned by
few sincere believers.[353] All these would have been ranked as
heretics by Plato. If the Magnêtic community had become a reality,
the solitary cells of the Platonic Inquisition might have been
found to include Anaxagoras, and most of the Ionic philosophers,
under the first head of heresy; Aristotle and Epikurus under the
second; Herodotus and Nikias under the third. Indeed most of the
5040 Magnêtic colonists must have adjusted anew their canon of
orthodoxy in order to satisfy the exigence of the Platonic
Censors.
[Footnote 351: Plato, Legg. x. p. 886 E. [Greek: pa/mpolloi]. Also
pp. 888 E, 891 B.
Fabricius tells us that Plato himself has been considered and
designated as an atheist, by various critics:--"Alii Platonem
atheis, alii Spinozæ præcursoribus, adnumerarunt. Utriusque
criminis reum eum fecit Nic. Henr. Gundling. . . At alii bené
defenderunt philosophum ab illo crimine." (Bibliothec. Græc. tom.
iii. pp. 69, not. _hh_, ed. Harles.)
This illustrates the loose manner in which the epithet [Greek:
a)/theos] has been applied in philosophical and theological
controversies: a practice forcibly exposed in the following acute
note of Wyttenbach.
Wyttenbach, Præf. ad Plutarch. De Superstit. vol. vi. pars ii. p.
995. "Nam quæ est superstitio? quæ [Greek: a)theo/tês]? quæ harum
species? qui gradus? His demum explicitis et inter se comparatis
intelligi poterit, quæ [Greek: a)theo/têtos] species cui
superstitionis speciei, qui gradus hujus cui gradui illius,
anteferri aut postponi debeat. Ac primum in ipsis illis de quibus
agitur rebus definiendis magna est difficultas. Quamquam
_atheum_ quidem definire non difficile videtur; quippe quo
ipso nomine significetur is _qui nullum esse deum putet_.
Atqui hæc etiam definitio non intelligatur, nisi antea declaretur
quid sit id quod _Dei_ vocabulo significemus--omnino quæ sit
definitio _Dei_. Jam nemo ignorat quantopere in notione ac
definitione Dei dissentiant non modo universi populi, sed et
singuli homines: nec solum vulgus, sed et sapientes: ita quidem,
ut quo plures partes sint, ex quibus hæc notio constituatur, eo
minus in ea consentiant. Sed fac esse qui eam paucissimis
complectatur proprietatibus, ut dicat _Deum esse mentem æternam,
omnium rerum creatricem et gubernatricem_. Erunt qui eum parum,
erunt qui nimium, dixisse putent: neutri se atheos volent, utrique
et hunc et se invicem atheos dicent. . . Ita se res habet.
Quotidié jactatur tralatitium illud, _verus Deus_: quo suam
quisque de Deo notionem significat, sæpe illam ineptam et summi
numinis majestate indignam. Et bene nobiscum ageretur, si non
nisi ab indocto vulgo jactaretur. Nunc philosophi, certe qui se
philosophos haberi volunt, item crepant. Disputant de _vero
Deo_, nec ab ejus definitione proficiscuntur, quasi vero hæc
nemini ignota sit. . . . Pervulgata illa _veri Dei_
appellatio nobis venit a consuetudine Ecclesiæ, cujus diversæ
quondam sectæ notionem Dei diverso modo informantes, ejus
ignorationem et [Greek: a)theo/têta] non modo profanis, sed
invicem aliæ aliis sectis exprobrare solebant. Hæc de notione
_athei_: quæ profecto, nisi constitutâ notione Dei, constitui
ipsa nequit."]
[Footnote 352: Plato, Legg. x. p. 885 D. [Greek: nu=n me\n ga\r
tau=ta a)kou/onte/s te kai\ toiau=th' e(/tera tô=n legome/nôn
a)ri/stôn ei)=nai poiêtô=n te kai\ r(êto/rôn kai\ ma/nteôn kai\
i(ere/ôn kai\ a)/llôn muria/kis muri/ôn], &c.]
[Footnote 353: See the sections 23 and 24 of the Lehrbuch of K. F.
Hermann, Über die Gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Griechen:
Herodot. vi. 91; Thucydid. i. 134.--Respecting Plato's aversion
for Anaxagoras--and the physical philosophers--see Legg. x. 888 E.
xii. 967 A., with Stallbaum's notes.]
[Side-note: Proëm or prefatory discourse of Plato, for
these severe laws against heretics.]
To these severe laws and penalties against heretics, Plato
prefixes a Proëm or Prologue of considerable length, commenting
upon and refuting their doctrines. In the earlier part of this
dialogue he had taken credit to himself for having been the first
to introduce his legal mandates by a prefatory harangue, intended
to persuade and conciliate the persons upon whom the mandate was
imposed, and to procure cheerful obedience.[354] For such a
purpose the Proëm in the tenth Book would be badly calculated. But
Plato here introduces it with a different view:[355] partly to
demonstrate a kosmical and theological theory, partly to excite
alarm and repugnance in the heretics whom he marks out and
condemns. How many among them might be convinced by Plato's
reasonings, I do not know; but the large majority of them could
not fail to be offended and exasperated by the tone of his Proëm
or prefatory discourse. Confessing his inability to maintain
completely the calmness and dignity of philosophical discussion,
he addresses them partly with passionate asperity, partly with the
arrogant condescension of a schoolmaster lecturing indocile
pupils. He describes them now as hateful and unprincipled men--now
as presumptuous youths daring to form opinions before they are
competent, and labouring under a distemper of reason;[356] and
this too, although he intimates that the first-named variety of
heresy was adopted by most of the physical philosophers; and the
third variety by many of the best poets, rhetors, prophets, and
priests.[357] Such unusual vehemence is justified by Plato on the
ground of a virtuous indignation against the impugners of orthodox
belief. We learn from the Platonic and Xenophontic Apologies, that
Melêtus and Anytus, when they accused Sokrates of impiety before
the Dikastery, indulged in the same invective, announced the same
justification, and felt the same confidence that they were
righteous champions of the national faith, against an impious and
guilty assailant.
[Footnote 354: Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 722-723. 723 A: [Greek: i(/na
ga\r eu)menô=s kai\ dia\ tê\n eu)me/neian eu)mathe/steron tê\n
e)pi/taxin, o(\ dê/ e)stin o( no/mos, de/xêtai ô(=| to\n no/mon o(
nomothe/tês le/gei], &c.]
[Footnote 355: Plato, Legg. x. p. 887 A.]
[Footnote 356: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 887 B-E, 888 B, 891 B, 900 B,
907 A-C. [Greek: kai\ mê\n ei)/rêntai/ ge/ pôs
_sphodro/teron_ (oi( lo/goi) dia\ philoneiki/an tô=n kakô=n
a)nthrô/pôn--prothumi/a me\n dê\ dia\ tau=ta _neôte/rôs_
ei)pei=n ê(mi=n ge/gonen.]]
[Footnote 357: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 891 D, 885 D.]
[Side-note: The third variety of heresy is declared to be
the worst--the belief in Gods persuadable by prayer and
sacrifice.]
Among the three varieties of heresy, Plato considers the third to
be the worst. He accounts it a greater crime to believe in
indulgent and persuadeable Gods, than not to believe in any Gods
at all.[358] Respecting the entire unbelievers, he acknowledges
that a certain proportion are so from intellectual, not from
moral, default: and that there are, among them, persons of
blameless life and disposition.[359] It must be remembered that
the foremost of these unbelievers, and the most obnoxious to
Plato, were the physical astronomers: those who did not agree with
him in recognising the Sun, Moon, and Stars as animated and divine
Beings--those who studied their movements as if they were
mechanical agents. Plato gives a brief summary of various
cosmogonic doctrines professed by these heretics, who did not
recognise (he says) either God, or reason, or art, in the
cosmogonic process; but ascribed to nature, chance, and necessity,
the genesis of celestial and terrestrial substances, which
were afterwards modified by human art and reason. Among these
matters regulated by human art and reason, were included (these
men said) the beliefs of each society respecting the Gods and
religion, respecting political and social arrangements, respecting
the just and the beautiful: though there were (they admitted)
certain things beautiful by nature, yet not those which the
lawgiver declared to be such. Lastly, these persons affirmed
(Plato tells us) that the course of life naturally right was, for
each man to seize all the wealth, and all the power over others,
which his strength enabled him to secure, without any regard to
the requirements of the law. And by such teaching they corrupted
the minds of youth.[360]
[Footnote 358: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 907 A, 906 B.]
[Footnote 359: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 886 A, 908 B.]
[Footnote 360: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 889-890.]
[Side-note: Heretics censured by Plato--Sokrates censured
before the Athenian Dikasts.]
Who these teachers were, whom Plato groups together as if they
taught the same doctrine, we do not know. Having no memorials from
themselves, we cannot fully trust the description of their
teaching given by an opponent: especially when we reflect, that it
coincides substantially with the accusation which Melêtus and
Anytus urged against Sokrates before the Athenian
Dikastery--_viz._: that he was irreligious, and that he corrupted
youth by teaching them to despise both the laws and their senior
relatives--of which corruption Kritias and Alkibiades were cited
as examples. Such allegations, when advanced against Sokrates, are
noted both by Plato and Xenophon as the stock-topics, always ready
at hand for those who wished to depreciate philosophers.[361]
[Footnote 361: Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 23. [Greek: ta\ kata\ pa/ntôn
tô=n philosophou/ntôn pro/cheira tau=ta le/gousin, o(/ti ta\
mete/ôra kai\ ta\ u(po\ gê=s kai\ theou\s mê\ nomi/zein kai\ to\n
ê(/ttô lo/gon krei/ttô poiei=n.] Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 31. See
generally the first two chapters of the Memorabilia, where
Xenophon intimates that Sokrates was accused of training youth to
a life of lawless and unprincipled ambition and selfishness, and
especially of having trained Kritias and Alkibiades.]
In so far as these heretics affirmed that right as opposed to
wrong, just as opposed to unjust, true belief as opposed to false
respecting the Gods, were determined by the lawgiver and not by
any other authority--Plato has little pretence for blaming them:
because he himself claims such authority explicitly in his
Magnêtic community, and punishes severely not merely those who
disobey his laws in act, but those who contradict his dogmas in
speech or argument. Before he proclaims his intended
punishments in a penal law, he addresses the heretics in a
proëm or prefatory discourse intended to persuade or win them
over: a discourse which was the more indispensable, since their
doctrines (he tells us) were disseminated everywhere.[362] If he
seriously intended to persuade real dissentients, his attempt is
certainly a failure: for the premisses on which he reasons are
such as would not have been granted by them--nor indeed by many
who agreed in the conclusion which he was himself trying to prove.
[Footnote 362: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 890 D, 891 A.]
[Side-note: Kosmological and Kosmogonical theory announced
in Leges.]
The theory here given by Plato, represents the state of his own
convictions at the time when the Leges were composed. It is a
theory of kosmology of universal genesis: different in many
respects from what he propounds in the Timæus, since it comprises
no mention of the extra-kosmical Demiurgus--nor of the eternal
Ideas--nor of the primordial chaotic movements called
Necessity--while it contains (what we do not find in the Timæus)
the allegation of a twofold or multiple soul pervading the
universe--the good soul (one or more), being co-existent and
co-eternal with others (one or more), that are bad.[363]
[Footnote 363: Plato, Legg. x. p. 896 E.]
[Side-note: Soul--older, more powerful in the universe than
Body. Different souls are at work in the universe--the good soul
and the bad soul.]
The fundamental principle which he lays down (in this tenth Book
De Legibus) is--That soul or mind is older, prior, and more
powerful, than body. Soul is the principle of self-movement,
activity, spontaneous change. Body cannot originate any movement
or change by itself. It is simply passive, receiving movement from
soul, and transmitting movement onward. The movement or change
which we witness in the universe could never have begun at first,
except through the originating spontaneity of soul. None of the
four elements--earth, water, air, or fire--is endowed with any
self-moving power.[364] As soul is older and more powerful than
body, so the attributes of soul are older and more powerful than
those of body: that is, pleasure, pain, desire, fear, love,
hatred, volition, deliberation, reason, reflection, judgment true
or false--are older and more powerful than heat, cold, heaviness,
lightness, hardness, softness, whiteness, sweetness, &c.[365]
The attributes and changes of body are all secondary effects,
brought about, determined, modified, or suspended, by the prior
and primitive attributes and changes of soul. In all things that
are moved there dwells a determining soul: which is thus the cause
of all effects however contrary--good and bad, just and unjust,
honourable and base. But it is one variety of soul which works to
good, another variety which works to evil.[366] The good variety
of soul works under the guidance of [Greek: Nou=s] or Reason--the
bad variety works irrationally.[367] Now which of the two (asks
Plato) directs the movements of the celestial sphere, the Sun,
Moon, and Stars? Certainly, the good soul, and not the bad. This
is proved by the nature and character of their movements: which
movements are rotatory in a circle, and exactly uniform and
equable. Now among all the ten different sorts of motion or
change, rotatory motion in a circle is the one which is most akin
or congenial to Reason.[368] The motion of Reason, and the
motion of the stars, is alike rotatory, and the same, and
unchangeable--in the same place, round the same centre, and
returning into itself. The bad soul, acting without reason,
produces only irregular movements, intermittent, and accompanied
by constant change of place.[369] Though it is the good variety of
soul which produces the celestial rotation, yet there are many
distinct and separate souls, all of this same variety, which
concur to the production of the result. The Sun, the Moon, and
each of the Stars, has a distinct soul inherent in itself or
peculiar to its own body.[370] Each of these souls, invested in
the celestial substance and in each of the visible celestial
bodies, is a God: and thus all things are full of Gods.[371]
[Footnote 364: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 894 D, 895 B.]
[Footnote 365: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 896 A, 897 A. The [Greek:
kinê/seis] of soul are [Greek: prôtourgoi/]--those of body are
[Greek: deuterourgoi/].]
[Footnote 366: Plato, Legg. x. p. 896 E. [Greek: psuchê\n dê\
dioikou=san kai\ e)noikou=san e)n a(/pasi toi=s pa/ntê|
kinoume/nois.]
As an illustration or comment on this portion of Plato De Legibus,
Lord Monboddo's _Ancient Metaphysics_ are instructive. See
vol. i. pp. 2-7-9-25. He adopts the distinction between Mind and
Body made both in the tenth Book De Legg., and in the Epinomis. He
considers that Body and Mind are mixed together in each part of
nature; and in the material world never separated: that motion is
perpetual; and "Where there is _motion_, there must be there
something that _moves_. What is _moved_, I call
_body_; what _moves_, I call _mind_.
"Under _mind_, in this definition, I include:--1. The
rational and intellectual; 2. The animal life; 3. That principle
in the vegetable, by which it is nourished, grows, and produces
its like, and which therefore is commonly called the _vegetable
life_; and 4. That _motive principle_ which I understand
to be in all bodies, even such as are thought to be inanimate.
This is the distinction between _body_ and _mind_ made
by Plato in his tenth Book of Laws" (pp. 8-9).
"The Greek word [Greek: psuchê/] denotes the three first kinds I
have mentioned, which are not expressed by any one word that I
know in English; for the word _mind_, that I have used to
express them, denotes in common use only the _rational mind_
or _soul_, as it is otherwise called. The fourth kind that I
have mentioned, _viz._, the _motive principle_ in all
bodies, is not commonly in Greek called [Greek: psuchê/]. But
Aristotle, in a passage which I shall afterwards quote, says that
it is [Greek: ô(/sper psuchê/] (p. 8, note).
"As to the _principle of motion_ or _moving principle_,
which Aristotle supposes to be in all bodies, it is what he calls
_nature_ (p. 9). . . . He makes Nature also to be the
principle of _rest_ in bodies; by which I suppose he means,
that those bodies which he calls _heavy_, that is, which move
towards the centre of the earth, would _rest_ if they were
there" (p. 9, note).
"From the account here given of motion, it is evident that by it
the whole business of nature, above, below, and round about us, is
carried on. . . . To those who hold that _mind_ is the first
of things, and principal in the universe, it will not appear
surprising that I have made _moving_, or _producing
motion_, an essential attribute of _mind_" (p. 25).
In the same Treatise--which exhibits very careful study both of
Plato and of Aristotle--Lord Monboddo analyses the ten varieties
of motion here recognised by Plato, and shows that Plato's account
is confused and unsatisfactory. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. i. pp.
23-230-252.]
[Footnote 367: Plato, Legg. x. p. 897 B.]
[Footnote 368: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 897 E-898 A. [Greek: ê(=|
prose/oike kinê/sei nou=s tô=n de/ka e)kei/nôn kinê/seôn tê\n
ei)ko/na la/bômen . . . tou/toin dê\ toi=n kinê/seoin tê\n e)n
e(ni\ pherome/nên a)ei\ peri/ ge/ ti me/son a)na/gkê kinei=sthai,
tô=n e)nto/rnôn ou)sô=n] [al. [Greek: ou)=san]] [Greek: mi/mêma/
ti ku/klôn, ei)=nai/ te au)tê\n tê=| tou= nou= perio/dô| pa/ntôs
ô(s dunato\n oi)keiota/tên te kai\ o(moi/an.]]
[Footnote 369: Plato, Legg. x. p. 898 B-C.]
[Footnote 370: Plato, Legg. x. p. 898 D.]
[Footnote 371: Plato, Legg. x. p. 899 B. [Greek: ei)/th' o(/stis
o(mologei= tau=ta, u(pome/nei mê\ theô=n ei)=nai plê/rê pa/nta?]]
[Side-note: Plato's argument is unsatisfactory and
inconsistent.]
In this argument--which Plato tells us that no man will be insane
enough to dispute,[372] and which he proclaims to be a triumphant
refutation of the unbelievers--we find, instead of the
extra-kosmical Demiurgus and pre-kosmical Chaos or necessity (the
doctrine of the Platonic Timæus[373]), two opposing primordial
forces both intra-kosmical: the good soul and the bad soul, there
being a multiplicity of each. Though Plato here proclaims his
conclusion with an unqualified confidence which contrasts greatly
with the modest reserve often expressed in his Timæus--yet the
conclusion is rather disproved than proved by his own premisses.
It cannot be true that all things are full of Gods, since there
are two varieties of soul existing and acting, the bad as well as
the good: and Plato calls the celestial bodies Gods, as endowed
with and moved by good and rational souls. Aristotle in his theory
draws a marked distinction between the regularity and perfection
of the celestial region, and the irregularity and imperfection of
the terrestrial and sublunary: Plato's premisses as here laid out
would have called upon him to do the same, and to designate the
Kosmos as the theatre of counteracting agencies, partly
divine, partly not divine. So he terms it indeed in the
Timæus.[374]
[Footnote 372: Plato, Legg. x. p. 899 C. [Greek: ou)k e)/stin
ou(/tôs paraphronô=n ou)dei/s.]]
[Footnote 373: Plato, Timæus, pp. 48 A, 69 A-B.]
[Footnote 374: Plato, Timæus, p. 48 A.
The remarks of Zeller, in the second edition of his work, Die
Philosophie der Griechen (vol. ii. p. 634 seq.), upon this portion
of the Treatise De Legibus, are very acute and instructive. He
exposes the fallacy of the attempt made by various critics to
explain away the Manichæan doctrine declared in this treatise, and
to reconcile the Leges with the Timæus. The subject is handled in
a manner superior to the Platonische Studien of the same author
(wherein the Leges are pronounced to be spurious, while in the
History of Philosophy Zeller retracts this opinion), though in
that work also there is much instruction.--Stallbaum's copious
notes on these passages (pp. 188-189-195-207-213 of his edition of
Leges), while admitting the discrepancy between Leges and Timæus,
furnish what he thinks a satisfactory explanation. One portion of
his explanation is, that Plato here accommodates himself "ad
captum hominum vulgarem (p. 189) . . . ad captum civium communem
accommodaté et populari ratione explicari" (p. 207). I dissent
from this as a matter of fact. I think that the heretics of the
second and third class coincide rather with the "captus vulgaris".
So Plato himself intimates.]
[Side-note: Reverence of Plato for uniform circular
rotation.]
There is another feature, common both to the Timæus and the Leges,
which deserves attention as illustrating Plato's point of view. It
is the reverential sentiment with which he regards uniform
rotatory movement in the same place. This he pronounces to be the
perfect, regular, movement appertaining and congenial to Reason
and the good variety of soul. Because the celestial bodies move
thus and only thus, he declares them to be Gods. It is this
circular rotation which continues with perfect and unchangeable
regularity in the celestial sphere of the Kosmos, and also, though
imperfect and perturbed, in the spherical cranium of man.[375]
Aristotle in his theory maintains unabated the reverence for this
mode of motion, as the perfection of reason and regularity. The
feeling here noted exercised a powerful and long-continued
influence over the course of astronomical speculations.
[Footnote 375: Plato, Timæus, pp. 44 B, 47 C.]
[Side-note: Argument of Plato to confute the second class
of heretics.]
Having demonstrated to his own full satisfaction, from the
regularity of the celestial rotations, that the heavenly bodies
are wise and good Gods, and that all things are full of
Gods--Plato applies this conclusion to refute the second class of
heretics--those who did not believe that the Gods directed all
human affairs, the small things as well as the great;[376] that
is, the lot of each individual person as well as that of the
species or of its component aggregates. He himself affirms that
they direct all things. It is inconsistent with their attributes
of perfect intelligence, power, and goodness (he maintains) that
they should leave anything, either small or great, without
regulation. All good human administrators, generals, physicians,
pilots, &c., regulate all things, small and great, in their
respective provinces: the Gods cannot be inferior to them, and
must be held to do the same. They regulate every thing with a view
to the happiness of the whole, in which each man has his share and
interest; and each man has his special controuling Deity watching
over his minutest proceedings, whether the individual sees it or
not.[377] Soul, both in its good variety and its bad variety, is
essentially in change from one state to another, and passes from
time to time out of one body into another. In the perpetual
conflict between the good and the bad variety of soul, according
as each man's soul inclines to the better or to the worse, the
Gods or Fate exalt it to a higher region or degrade it to a lower.
By this means the Gods do the best they can to ensure triumph to
virtue, and defeat to vice, in the entire Kosmos. This reference
to the entire Kosmos is overlooked by the heretics who deny the
all-pervading management of the Gods.[378]
[Footnote 376: The language of Plato sometimes implies, that the
opponents whom he is controverting disbelieve altogether the
intervention of the Gods in human affairs, pp. 899 E, 900 A, 885
B. But the main stress of his argument is directed against those
who, admitting the intervention of the Gods in great things, deny
it in small, pp. 900 D, 901 A-B-C-D, 902 A-B.]
[Footnote 377: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 902-903 B-C.]
[Footnote 378: This argument is set forth from p. 903 B to 905 B.
It is obscure and difficult to follow.]
[Side-note: Contrary doctrine of Plato in Republic.]
Plato gives here an outburst of religious eloquence which might
prove impressive when addressed to fellow-believers--but which, if
employed for the avowed purpose of convincing dissentients, would
fail of its purpose, as involving assumptions to which they would
not subscribe. As to the actual realities of human life, past as
well as present, Plato himself always gives a very melancholy
picture of them. "The heaven is full of good things, and also full
of things opposite to good: but mostly of things not good."[379]
Moreover, when we turn back to the Republic, we find Plato
therein expressly blaming a doctrine very similar to what he
declares true here in the Leges--as a dangerous heresy, although
extensively believed, from the time of Homer downward. "Since God
is good" (Plato had there affirmed[380]) "he cannot be the cause
of all things, as most men pronounce him to be. He is the cause of
a few things, but of most things he is not the cause: for the good
things in our lot are much fewer than the evil. We must ascribe
all the good things to him, but for the evil things we must seek
some other cause, and not God." The confessed imperfection of the
actual result[381] was one of the main circumstances urged by
those heretics, who denied that all-pervading administration of
the Gods which Plato in the Leges affirms.[382] If he undertook to
convince them at all, he would have done well to state and answer
more fully their arguments, and to clear up the apparent
inconsistencies in his own creed.
[Footnote 379: Plato, Legg. x. p. 906 A. [Greek: e)peidê\ ga\r
sugkechôrê/kamen ê(mi=n au)toi=s ei)=nai me\n to\n ou)rano\n
pollô=n mesto\n a)gathô=n, ei)=nai de\ kai\ tô=n e)nanti/ôn,
pleio/nôn de\ tô=n mê/, ma/chê dê/, phame/n, a)tha/nato/s e)stin
ê( toiau/tê kai\ phulakê=s thaumastê=s deome/nê.] Ast in his note
affirms that after [Greek: mê\] is understood [Greek: a)gathô=n].
Stallbaum thinks, though with some hesitation, that [Greek:
e)nanti/ôn] is understood after [Greek: mê/]. I agree with Ast.
Compare iii. pp. 676-677, where Plato states that in the earlier
history of the human race, a countless number of different
societies ([Greek: muri/ai e)pi\ muri/ais]) have all successively
grown up and successively perished, with extinction of all their
comforts and civilization.]
[Footnote 380: Plato, Republic, ii. p. 379 C. [Greek: Ou)d' a)/ra
o( theo\s, e)peidê\ a)gatho\s, pa/ntôn a)\n ei)/ê ai)/tios, ô(s
oi( polloi\ le/gousin; a)ll' o)li/gôn me\n toi=s a)nthrô/pois
ai)/tios, pollô=n de\ a)nai/tios; polu\ ga\r e)la/ttô ta)gatha\
tô=n kakô=n ê(mi=n; kai\ tô=n me\n a)gathô=n ou)de/na a)/llon
ai)tiate/on, tô=n de\ kakô=n a)/ll' a(/tta zêtei=n dei= ta\
ai)/tia, a)ll' ou) to\n theo/n.] See a striking passage in
Arnobius, adv. Gentes, ii. 46.]
[Footnote 381: Plato, Legg. x. p. 903 A-B. [Greek: Pei/thômen to\n
neani/an toi=s lo/gois . . . ô(=n e(\n kai\ to\ so/n, ô)=
sche/tlie, mo/rion ei)s to\ pa=n xuntei/nei ble/pon a)ei/.]]
[Footnote 382: Lucretius, v. 197:--
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam mundi: tantâ stat prædita culpâ.]
[Side-note: Argument of Plato to refute the third class of
heretics.]
A similar criticism may be made still more forcibly, upon the
demonstration whereby he professes to refute the third and most
culpable class of heretics--"Those who believe that the Gods
exercise an universal agency, but that they can be persuaded by
prayer and conciliated by sacrifice". Here he was treading on
dangerous ground: for he was himself a heretic, by his own
confession, if compared with Grecian belief generally. Not merely
the ordinary public, but the most esteemed and religious persons
among the public[383]--poets, rhetors, prophets, and
priests--believed the doctrine which he here so vehemently condemns.
Moreover it was the received doctrine of the city[384]--that is,
it was assumed as the basis of the official and authorised
religious manifestations: and the law of the city was
recognised by the Delphian oracle[385] as the proper standard of
reference for individual enquirers who came there to ask for
information on matters of doubtful religious propriety. In the
received Grecian conception of religious worship, prayer and
sacrifice were correlative and inseparable: sacrifice was the gift
of man to the Gods, accompanying the prayer for gifts from the
Gods to man, and accounted necessary to render the prayer
efficacious.[386] The priest was the professional person competent
and necessary to give advice as to the details: but as a general
principle, it was considered disrespectful to ask favours from the
Gods without tendering to them some present, suitable to the means
of the petitioner.
[Footnote 383: Plato, Legg. x. p. 885 D; Republic, ii. pp.
364-365-366.]
[Footnote 384: Plato, Republic, ii. p. 366 A-B. [Greek: a)ll'
ô)phelê/sousin a(gnizome/nous ai( teletai\ kai\ oi( lu/sioi
theoi/, ô(s ai( me/gistai po/leis le/gousi kai\ oi( theô=n
pai=des, poiêtai\ kai\ prophê=tai tô=n theô=n geno/menoi, oi(\
tau=ta ou(/tôs e)/chein mênu/ousin.]]
[Footnote 385: Xenophon, Memor. i. 3, 1, iv. 3, 16; Cicero, Legg.
ii. 16.]
[Footnote 386: See Nägelsbach, Nach-Homerische Theologie, Part 5,
1, p. 194 seq., where this doctrine is set forth and largely
illustrated.
In approaching a king a satrap or any other person of exalted
position above the level of ordinary men, it was the custom to
come with a present. Thucyd. ii. 97; Xenoph. Anab. vii. 3, 26;
Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 1, 10-12.
The great person, to whom the presents were made, usually requited
them magnificently.]
[Side-note: General belief in Greece about the efficacy of
prayer and sacrifice to appease the Gods.]
Plato himself states this view explicitly in his Politikus.[387]
Moreover, when a man desired information from the Gods on any
contemplated project or on any grave matter of doubt, he sought it
by means of sacrifice.[388] Such sacrifice was a debt to the God:
and if it remained unpaid, his displeasure was incurred.[389] The
motive for sacrificing to the Gods was thus, not simply to ensure
the granting of prayers, but to pay a debt: and thus either to
prevent or to appease the wrath of the Gods. The religious
practice of Greece rested upon the received belief that the Gods
were not merely pleased with presents, but exacted them as a mark
of respect, and were angry if they were not offered: yet that
being angry, their wrath might be appeased by acceptable presents
and supplications.[390] To learn what proceedings of this kind
_were_ suitable, a man went to consult the oracle, the
priests, or the Exêgêtæ: in cases wherein he believed that he
had incurred the displeasure of the Gods by any wrong or
omission.[391]
[Footnote 387: Plato, Politikus, p. 290 D. [Greek: kai\ mê\n kai\
to\ tô=n i(ere/ôn au)= ge/nos, ô(s to\ no/mimo/n phêsi, para\ me\n
ê(mô=n dôrea\s theoi=s dia\ thusiô=n e)pistê=mo/n e)sti kata\
nou=n e)kei/nois dôrei=sthai, para\ de\ e)kei/nôn ê(mi=n eu)chai=s
ktê=sin a)gathô=n ai)tê/sasthai.] Compare Euthyphron, p. 14.]
[Footnote 388: Xenophon, Anab. vii. 6, 44; Euripid. Ion. 234.]
[Footnote 389: Plato, Republic, i. p. 331 B. Compare also Phædon,
p. 118, the last words spoken by Sokrates before his
decease--[Greek: o)phei/lomen A)sklêpiô=| a)lektru/ona;
a)ll' a)po/dote kai\ mê\ a)melê/sête.]]
[Footnote 390: See Nägelsbach, Nach-Homerische Theologie, pp.
211-213.]
[Footnote 391: See, as one example among a thousand, the
proceeding of the Spartan government, Thucyd. i. 134; also ii.
48-54.]
[Side-note: Incongruities of Plato's own doctrine.]
Now it is against this latter sentiment--that which recognised the
Gods as placable or forgiving[392]--that Plato declares war as the
worst of all heresies. He admits indeed, implicitly, that the Gods
are influenced by prayer and sacrifice; since he directs both the
one and the other to be constantly offered up, by the citizens of
his Magnêtic city, in this very Treatise. He even implies that the
Gods are too facile and compliant: for in his second Alkibiadês,
Sokrates is made to remark that it was dangerous for an ignorant
man to pray for specific advantages, because he might very
probably bring ruin upon himself by having his prayers granted--
"Evertêre domos totas, optantibus ipsis,
Di faciles."
Farthermore Plato does not scruple to notice[393] it as a real
proceeding of the Gods, that they executed the prayer or curse of
Theseus, by bringing a cruel death upon the blameless youth
Hippolytus; which Theseus himself is the first to deplore when he
becomes acquainted with the true facts. That the Gods should
inflict punishment on a person who did not deserve it, Plato
accounts not unworthy of their dignity: but that they should remit
punishment in any case where he conceives it to have been
deserved, he repudiates with indignation. Though accessible and
easily influenced by prayer and sacrifice from other persons, they
are deaf and inexorable to those who have incurred their
displeasure by wrong-doing.[394] The prayer so offered is called
by Plato a treacherous cajolery, the sacrifice a guilty bribe, to
purchase their indulgence.[395] Since, in human affairs, no good
magistrate, general, physician, pilot, &c., will allow himself
to be persuaded by prayers or presents to betray his trust:
much less can we suppose (he argues) the Gods to be capable of
such betrayal.[396]
[Footnote 392: The common sentiment is expressed in a verse of
Euripides--[Greek: Ti/na dei= maka/rôn e)kthusame/nous Eu(rei=n
mo/chthôn a)na/paulan]--(Fragm. Ino 155); compare Eurip. Hippol.
1323.]
[Footnote 393: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 931 C. [Greek: a)rai=os ga\r
goneu\s e)kgo/nois ô(s ou)dei\s e(/teros a)/llois,
_dikaio/tata_.] Also iii. p. 687 D.]
[Footnote 394: Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 716-717.]
[Footnote 395: Plato, Legg. x. p. 906 B. [Greek: thôpei/ais
lo/gôn].]
[Footnote 396: Plato, Legg. x. pp. 906-907.]
[Side-note: Both Herodotus and Sokrates dissented from
Plato's doctrine.]
The general doctrine, upon which Plato here lays so much stress,
and the dissent from which he pronounces to be a capital
offence--that the Gods, though persuadeable by every one else, were
thoroughly unforgiving, deaf to any prayer or sacrifice from one
who had done wrong--is a doctrine from which Sokrates[397] himself
dissented; and to which few of Plato's contemporaries, perhaps
hardly even himself, consistently adhered. The argument, upon
which Plato rests for convincing all these numerous dissentients,
is derived from his conception of the character and functions of
the Gods. But this, though satisfactory to himself, would not have
been granted by his opponents. The Gods were conceived by
Herodotus as jealous, meddlesome, intolerant of human happiness
beyond a narrow limit, and keeping all human calculations in a
state of uncertainty:[398] in this latter attribute Sokrates also
agreed. He affirmed that the Gods kept all the important results
essentially unpredictable by human study, reserving them for
special revelations by way of prophecy to those whom they
preferred. These were privileged and exclusive communications to
favoured individuals, among whom Sokrates was one:[399] and Plato,
though not made a recipient of the same favour as Sokrates,
declares his own full belief in the reality of such special
revelations from the Gods, to particular persons and at particular
places.[400] Aristotle, on the other hand, pronounces action
and construction, especially action in details, to be petty and
unworthy of the Gods; whom he regards as employed in perpetual
contemplation and theorising, as the only occupation worthy to
characterise their blessed immortality.[401] Epikurus and his
numerous followers, though not agreeing with Aristotle in
regarding the Gods as occupied in intellectual contemplation,
agreed with him fully in considering the existence of the Gods as
too dignified and enviable to be disturbed by the vexation of
meddling with human affairs, or to take on the anxieties of regard
for one man, displeasure towards another.
[Footnote 397: Xenophon, Memorab. ii. 2, 14. [Greek: Su\ ou)=n,
ô)= pai=, a)\n sôphronê=|s, tou\s me\n theou\s paraitê/sê|
suggnô/mona/s soi ei)=nai, ei)/ ti parême/lêkas tê=s mêtro/s, mê/
se kai\ ou(=toi nomi/santes a)cha/riston ei)=nai ou)k e)the/lôsin
eu)= poiei=n.]
At the same time, Sokrates maintains that the Gods accepted
sacrifices from good men with greater favour than sacrifices from
bad men. Xenoph. Mem. i. 3, 3.]
[Footnote 398: Herodotus, i. 32, iii. 40.]
[Footnote 399: Xenoph. Mem. i. 1, 8-9. [Greek: tou\s theou\s ga/r,
oi(=s a)\n ô)=sin i(/leô|, sêmai/nein.] Also i. 3, 4, iv. 3, 12;
Cyropæd. i. 6, 5-23-46. [Greek: theoi\ a)ei\ o)/ntes pa/nta
i)/sasi . . . kai\ tô=n sumbouleuome/nôn a)nthrô/pôn oi(=s a)\n
i(/leô| ô)=si, prosêmai/nousin a(/ te chrê\ poiei=n kai\ a(\ ou)
chrê/. Ei) de\ mê\ pa=sin e)the/lousi sumbouleu/ein, ou)de\n
thaumasto/n; ou) ga\r a)na/gkê au)toi=s e)stin, ô(=n a)\n mê\
the/lôsin, e)pimelei=sthai] (Cyrop. i. 6, 46).
Solon. Frag. v. 53, ed. Gaisf.:--
[Greek: A)/llon ma/nten e)/thêkin a)/nax e(ka/ergos A)po/llôn;
E)/gnô d' a)ndri\ kako\n tê/lothen e)rcho/menon.]
See the curious narrative in Herodotus ix. 94 seq. about the
prophetic gifts bestowed on Euenius. The same narrative attests
the full belief prevalent respecting both the displeasure of the
Gods and their placability on the proper expiation being made. It
conflicts signally in every respect with the canon of orthodoxy
set up by Plato.]
[Footnote 400: Plato, Legg. v. pp. 738 C, 747 E, vii. p. 811 D;
Republic, vi. pp. 496 C, 499 C.]
[Footnote 401: Aristotle, Ethic. Nikom. x. 8, p. 1178 b. 21.
[Greek: ô(/ste ê( tou= theou= e)ne/rgeia, makario/têti
diaphe/rousa, theôrêtikê\ a)\n ei)/ê.]]
[Side-note: Great opposition which Plato's doctrine would
have encountered in Greece.]
The orthodox religious belief, which Plato imposes upon his 5040
Magnêtic citizens under the severest penalties, would thus be
found inconsistent with the general belief, not merely of ordinary
Greeks, but also of the various lettered and philosophical
individuals who thought for themselves. Most of these latter would
have passed, under one of the three heads of Platonic heresy, into
the Platonic prison for five years, and from thence either to
recantation or death. The arguments which Plato considered so
irresistible, that none but silly youths could be deaf to
them--did not appear conclusive to Aristotle and other intelligent
contemporaries. Plato makes up his own mind, what proceedings he
thinks worthy and unworthy of the Gods, and then proclaims with
confidence as a matter of indisputable fact, that they act
conformably. But neither Herodotus, nor Aristotle, would have
granted his premisses: they conceived the attributes and character
of the Gods differently from him, and differently from each other.
And if we turn to the Kratylus of Plato, we find Sokrates there
declaring, that men knew nothing about the Gods: that speculations
about the Gods were in reality speculations about the opinions of
men respecting the Gods.[402]
[Footnote 402: Plato, Kratylus, pp. 400-401. [Greek: Peri\ theô=n
ou)de\n i)/smen, ou)/te peri\ au)tô=n, ou)/te peri\ tô=n
o)noma/tôn, a(/tta pote\ au)toi\ e(autou\s kalou=si] (400 D) . . .
[Greek: skopô=men ô(/sper proeipo/ntes toi=s theoi=s o(/ti peri\
au)tô=n ou)de\n ê(mei=s skepso/metha, ou) ga\r a)xiou=men oi(=oi/
t' a)\n ei)=nai skopei=n, a)lla\ peri\ tô=n a)nthrô/pôn, ê(/ntina/
pote do/xan e)/chontes e)ti/thento au)toi=s ta\ o)no/mata; tou=to
ga\r a)neme/sêton] (401 A). Compare also Kratyl. p. 425 B.]
[Side-note: Local infallibility was claimed as a rule
in each community, though rarely enforced with severity: Plato
both claims it more emphatically, and enforces it more
rigorously.]
Such opinions were local, traditional, and dissentient, among the
numerous distinct cities and tribes which divided the inhabited
earth between them in Plato's time.[403] Each of these claimed a
local infallibility, principally as to religious rites and
customs, indirectly also as to dogmas and creed: and Plato's
Magnêtic community, if it had come into existence, would have
added one to the number of distinct varieties. To this general
sentiment, deeply rooted in the emotions and unused to the
scrutiny of reason, the philosophers were always more or less
odious, as dissenters, enquirers, and critics, each on his own
ground.[404] At Athens the sentiment manifested itself
occasionally in severe decrees and judicial sentences against
obnoxious freethinkers, especially in the case of Sokrates. If the
Athenians had carried out consistently and systematically the
principle involved in their sentence against Sokrates, philosophy
must have been banished from Athens.[405] The school of Plato
could never have been maintained. But the principle of intolerance
was usually left dormant at Athens: philosophical debate continued
active and unshackled, so that the school of Plato subsisted in
the city without interruption for nearly forty years until his
death. We might have expected that the philosophers, to whose
security toleration of free dissent and debate was essential,
would have upheld it as a general principle against the public.
But here we find the most eminent among them, at the close of a
long life, not only disallowing all liberty of philosophising to
others, and assuming to himself the exclusive right of dictating
the belief, as well as the conduct, of his imaginary citizens--but
also enforcing this exclusive principle with an amount of
systematic rigour, which I do not believe to have been equalled in
any actual Grecian city. This is a memorable fact in the history
of Grecian philosophy. The Stoic Kleanthes, in the century
after Plato's death, declared that the Samian astronomer
Aristarchus ought to be indicted for impiety, because he had
publicly advocated the doctrine of the Earth's rotation round the
Sun. Kleanthês and Plato thus stand out as known examples, among
Grecian philosophers before the Christian era, of that intolerance
which would apply legal penalties against individual dissenters
and competitors.[406]
[Footnote 403: Plato, Politikus, p. 262 D. [Greek: ge/nesin
a)pei/rois ou)=si kai\ a)mi/ktois kai\ a)sumphô/nois pro\s
a)/llêla.] Herodot. iii. 39.]
[Footnote 404: Plato, Euthyphron, p. 3.]
[Footnote 405: See the Apologies both of Plato and Xenophon. In
one of the rhetorical discourses cited by Aristotle, on the
subject of the trial of Sokrates (seemingly that by the Rhetor
Theodektês), the point is put thus:--[Greek: Me/llete de\
kri/nein, ou) peri\ Sôkra/tous, a)lla\ peri\ e)pitêdeu/matos, ei)
chrê\ philosophei=n] (Aristot. Rhetor. ii. 1399, a. 8, b. 10).]
[Footnote 406: The Platonist and astronomer Derkyllides afterwards
(about 100-120 A.D.) declares those who affirm the
doctrine, that the earth moves and that the stars are stationary,
to be accursed and impious--[Greek: tou\s de\ ta\ kinêta\
stê/santas, ta\ de\ a)ki/nêta phu/sei kai\ e(/dra| kinê/santas,
ô(s para\ ta\s tê=s mantikê=s u(pothe/seis, a)podiopompei=tai.]
(Theon Smyrnæus, De Astronomiâ, ch. 41, p. 328, fol. 26, ed.
Martin.)]
[Side-note: Farther civil and political regulations for the
Magnêtic community. No evidence that Plato had studied the working
of different institutions in practice.]
The eleventh Book of the Treatise De Legibus, and the larger
portion of the twelfth, are devoted to a string of civil and
political regulations for the Magnêtic community. Each regulation
is ushered in with an expository prologue, often with severe
reproof towards persons committing the various forbidden acts.
There is little of systematic order in the enumeration of
subjects. In general we may remark that neither here nor elsewhere
in the Treatise is there any proof, that Plato--though doubtless
he had visited Italy, Sicily, and Egypt, perhaps other
countries--had taken much pains to acquaint himself with the practice
of human life, or that he had studied and compared the working of
different institutions in different communities. His experience
seems all derived from Athenian law and practice: the criticisms
and modifications which he applies to it flow from his own
sentiment and theory: from his religious or ethical likings or
dislikings. He sets up a type of character which he desires to
enforce among his citizens, and which he guards against
adulteration by very stringent interference. The displeasure of
the Gods is constantly appealed to, as a justification for the
penalties which he proposed: sometimes even the current mythes are
invoked as authority, though in other places Plato so greatly
disparages them.[407]
[Footnote 407: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 913 D.]
[Side-note: Modes of acquiring property--legitimate and
illegitimate.]
Various modes of acquiring property are first forbidden as
illegitimate. The maxim[408]--"That which you have not put down,
do not take up"--is rigorously enforced: any man who finds a
buried treasure is prohibited from touching it, though he find it
by accident and though the person who buried it be unknown. If a
man violates this law, every one, freeman or slave, is invited and
commanded to inform against him. Should he be found guilty, a
special message must be sent to the Delphian oracle, to ask what
is to be done both with the treasure and with the offender. So
again, an article of property left on the highway is declared to
be under protection of the Goddess or Dæmon of the Highway:
whoever finds and takes it, if he be a slave, shall be severely
flogged by any freeman above thirty years of age who meets him: if
he be a freeman, he shall be disgraced and shall pay, besides, ten
times its value to the person who left it.[409] These are average
specimens of Plato's point of view and manner of handling offences
respecting property.
[Footnote 408: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 913 C. [Greek: A(\ mê\
kate/thou, mê\ a)nelê=|.] This does not include, however, what has
been deposited by a man's father or grandfather.]
[Footnote 409: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 914. Seemingly, if any man
found a treasure buried in the ground, or a purse lying on the
road without an owner, he was not considered by most persons
dishonest if he appropriated it; to do so was looked upon as an
admissible piece of good luck. See Theophrastus, [Greek: peri\
Mempsimoiri/as]. From Plato's language we gather that the finder
sometimes went to consult the prophets what he should do, p. 913
B--[Greek: mê/te toi=s legome/nois ma/ntesin a)nakoinô/saimi]: his
phrase is not very respectful towards the prophets.]
[Side-note: Plato's general regulations leave little room
for disputes about ownership.]
The general constitution of Plato's community restricts within
comparatively narrow limits the occasions of proprietary dispute.
His 5040 lots of land are all marked out, unchangeable, and
indivisible, each possessed by one citizen. No man is allowed to
acquire or possess movable property to a greater value than four
times the lot of land: every article of property possessed by
every man is registered by the magistrates. Disputes as to
ownership, if they arise, are settled by reference to this
register.[410] If the disputed article be not registered, the
possessor is bound to produce the seller or donor from whom he
received it. All purchases and sales are required to take place in
the public market before the Agoranomi: and all for ready-money,
or by immediate interchange and delivery. If a man chooses to
deliver his property, without receiving the consideration, or in
any private place, he does so at his own risk: he has no legal
claim against the receiver.[411] So likewise respecting the
Eranoi or Associations for mutual Succour and Benefit. Plato gives
no legal remedy to a contributor or complainant respecting any
matter arising out of these associations. He requires that every
man shall contribute at his own risk: and trust for requital to
the honesty or equity of his fellow-contributors.[412]
[Footnote 410: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 914 D.]
[Footnote 411: The same principle is laid down by Plato, Republic,
viii. p. 556 A, and was also laid down by Charondas (Theophrast.
ap. Stobæum Serm. xliv. 21, p. 204). Aristotle alludes to some
Grecian cities in which it was the established law. K. F. Hermann,
Privat-Alterthümer der Griechen, s. 71, n. 10.]
[Footnote 412: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 915 D-E.]
[Side-note: Plato's principles of legislation, not
consistent--comparison of them with the Attic law about Eranoi.]
A remark must here be made upon Plato's refusal to allow any legal
redress in such matters as sale on credit, or payments for the
purpose of mutual succour and relief. Such refusal appears to
contradict his general manner of proceeding: for his usual
practice is, to estimate offences not according to the mischief
which they inflict, but according to the degree of wickedness or
impiety which he supposes them to imply in the doer. Now the
contributor to an association for mutual succour, who, after
paying his contributions for the aid of his associates, finds that
they refuse to contribute to his aid when the hour of his
necessity arrives--suffers not only heavy calamity but grievous
disappointment: which implies very bad dispositions on the part of
those who, not being themselves distressed, nevertheless refuse.
Of such dispositions Plato takes no notice in the present case. He
does not expatiate (as he does in many other cases far more
trifling and disputable) upon the displeasure of the Gods when
they see a man who has been benefited in distress by his
neighbour's contributions, refusing all requital at the time of
that neighbour's need. Plato indeed treats it as a private affair
between friends. You do a service to your friend, and you must
take your chance whether he will do you a service in return: you
must not ask for legal redress, if he refuses: what you have
contributed was a present voluntarily given, not a loan lent to be
repaid. This is an intelligible point of view, but it excludes
those ethical and sentimental considerations which Plato usually
delights in enforcing.[413] His ethics here show themselves by
leading him to turn aside from that which takes the form of a
pecuniary contract. It was in this form that the Eranoi or Mutual
Assurance Associations were regarded by Attic judicature: that is,
they seem to have been considered as a sort of imperfect
obligation, which the Dikastery would enforce against any citizen
whose circumstances were tolerably prosperous, but not against one
in bad circumstances. Such Eranic actions before the Attic
Dikastery were among those that enjoyed the privilege of speedy
adjudication ([Greek: e)/mmênoi di/kai]).[414]
[Footnote 413: In Xenophon's ideal legislation, or rather
education of the Persian youth, in the Cyropædia, he introduces
legal trial and punishment for ingratitude generally (Cyropæd. i.
2, 7). The Attic judicature took cognizance of neglect or bad
conduct towards parents, which Xenophon ranks as a sort of
ingratitude--but not of ingratitude towards any one else (Xenoph.
Memor. ii. 2, 13). There is an interesting discussion in Seneca
(De Beneficiis, iii. 6-18) about the propriety of treating
ingratitude as a legal offence.]
[Footnote 414: Respecting the [Greek: e)ranikai\ di/kai] at
Athens, see Heraldus, Animadversiones in Salmasium, vi. 1, p. 407
seq.; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 540 seq.; K. F.
Hermann, Staats Alterth. s. 146, not. 9.
The word [Greek: e)/ranos] meant very different things--a pic-nic
banquet, a club for festive meetings kept up by subscription with
a common purse, a contribution made to relieve a friend in
distress, carrying obligation on the receiver to requite it if the
donor fell into equal distress. This last sense is the prevalent
one in the Attic orators, and is brought out well in the passage
of Theophrastus--[Greek: Peri\ Mempsimoiri/as]. Probably the Attic
[Greek: e)ranikai\ di/kai] took cognizance of complaints arising
out of [Greek: e)/ranos] in all its senses.]
[Side-note: Regulations about slaves, and about freedmen.]
As to property in slaves, Plato allows any owner to lay hold of a
fugitive slave belonging either to himself or to any friend. If a
third party reclaims the slave as being not rightfully in
servitude, he must provide three competent sureties, and the slave
will then be set free until legal trial can be had. Moreover,
Plato enacts, respecting one who has been a slave, but has been
manumitted, that such freedman ([Greek: a)peleu/thros]), if he
omits to pay "proper attention" to his manumitter, may be laid
hold of by the latter and re-enslaved. Proper attention consists
in: 1. Going three times per month to the house of his former
master, to tender service in all lawful ways. 2. Not contracting
marriage without consulting his former master. 3. Not acquiring so
much wealth as to become richer than his former master: if he
should do so the latter may appropriate all that is above the
limit. The freed man, when liberated, does not become a citizen,
but is only a non-citizen or metic. He is therefore subject to the
same necessity as all other metics--of departing from the
territory after a residence of twenty years,[415] and of never
acquiring more wealth than is possessed by the second class of
citizens enrolled in the Schedule.
[Footnote 415: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 915 A-B.]
The duties imposed by Plato on the freedman towards his
former master--involving a formal recognition at least of the
prior dependence, and some positive duties besides--are deserving
of remark, as we know so little of the condition or treatment of
this class of persons in antiquity.
[Side-note: Provisions in case a slave is sold, having a
distemper upon him.]
Regulations are made to provide for the case where a slave, sold
by his master, is found to be distempered or mad, or to have
committed a murder. If the sale has been made to a physician or a
gymnast, Plato holds that these persons ought to judge for
themselves about the bodily condition of the slave bought: he
therefore grants them no redress. But if the buyer be a
non-professional man, he may within one month restore the
distempered slave (or within one year, if the distemper be the
Morbus Sacer), and may cause a jury of physicians to examine the
case. Should they decide the distemper of the slave to be undoubted,
the seller must take him back: repaying the full price, if he be a
private man--double the price, if he be a professional man, who
ought to have known, and perhaps did know, the real condition of
the slave sold.[416]
[Footnote 416: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 916 B-C.]
[Side-note: Retailers. Strict regulations about them. No
citizen can be a retailer.]
In regard to Retail Selling, and to frauds committed either in
sale or in barter, Plato provides or enjoins strict regulations.
The profession of the retailer, and the function of money as
auxiliary to it, he pronounces to be useful and almost
indispensable to society, for the purpose of rendering different
articles of value commensurable with each other, and of ensuring a
distribution suitable to the requirements of individuals. This
could not be done without retailers, merchants, hired agents,
&c.[417] But though retailing is thus useful, if properly
conducted, it slides easily and almost naturally into cheating,
lying, extortion, &c., from the love of money inherent in most
men. Such abuses must be restrained: at any rate they must not be
allowed to corrupt the best part of the community. Accordingly,
none of the 5040 citizens will be allowed either to practise
retailing, or to exercise any hired function, except under his own
senior relatives, and of a dignified character. The discrimination
of what is dignified and not dignified must be made according
to the liking or antipathy of a court of honour, composed of such
citizens as have obtained prizes for virtue.[418] None must be
permitted to sell by retail except metics or non-citizens: and
these must be kept under strict watch by the Nomophylakes, who,
after enquiring into the details of each article, will fix its
price at such sum as will afford to the dealer a moderate
profit.[419]
[Footnote 417: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 918 B. The like view of retail
trade is given in the Republic, ii. p. 371. It indicates just and
penetrating social observation, taken in reference to Plato's
age.]
[Footnote 418: Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 918-919. 919 E: [Greek: to\ d'
e)leutheriko\n kai\ a)neleu/theron a)kribô=s me\n ou) r(a/|dion
nomothetei=n, krine/sthô ge mê\n u(po\ tô=n ta\ a)ristei=a
ei)lêpho/tôn tô=| e)kei/nôn _mi/sei te kai\ a)spasmô=|_.]]
[Footnote 419: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 920 B-C.]
[Side-note: Frauds committed by sellers--severe punishments
on them.]
If there be any fraud committed by the seller (which is nearly
akin to retailing),[420] Plato prescribes severe penalty. The
seller must never name two prices for his article during the same
day. He must declare his price: and if no one will give it, he
must withdraw the article for the day.[421] He is not allowed to
praise his own articles, or to take any oath respecting them. If
he shall take any oath, any citizen above thirty years of age
shall be held bound to thrash him, and may do so with impunity:
such citizen, if he neglect to thrash the swearer, will himself be
amenable to censure for betraying the laws. If the seller shall
sell a spurious or fraudulent article, the magistrates must be
informed of it by any one cognizant. The informer, if a slave or a
metic, shall be rewarded by having the article made over to him.
If he be a citizen, he will receive the article, but is bound to
consecrate it to the Gods who preside over the market: if being
cognizant he omits to inform, he shall be proclaimed a wicked man,
for defrauding the Gods of that to which they are entitled. The
magistrates, on receiving information, will not only deprive the
seller of the spurious article, but will cause him to be flogged
by the herald in the market-place--one stripe for every drachma
contained in the price demanded. The herald will publicly proclaim
the reason why the flogging is given. Besides this, the
magistrates will collect and write up in the market-place both
regulations of detail for the sellers, and information to put
buyers on their guard.[422]
[Footnote 420: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 920 C. [Greek: tê=s kibdêlei/as
pe/ri, xuggenou=s tou/tô| (kapêlei/a|) pra/gmatos], &c.
Plato is more rigorous on these matters than the Attic law. See K.
F. Hermann, Griech. Privat-Alterthümer, s. 62.]
[Footnote 421: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 917 B-C. I do not quite see how
this is to be reconciled with Plato's direction that the prices of
articles sold shall be fixed by the magistrates; but both of the
two are here found.]
[Footnote 422: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 917 B-D.]
[Side-note: Comparison with the lighter punishment
inflicted by Attic law.]
Compare this enactment in Plato with the manner in which the Attic
law would have dealt with the like offence. The defrauded buyer
would have brought his action before the Dikastery against the
fraudulent seller, who, if found guilty, would have been condemned
in damages to make good the wrong: perhaps fined besides. The
penalties inflicted by the usual course of law at Athens were
fine, disfranchisement, civil disability of one kind or other,
banishment, confiscation of property: occasionally
imprisonment--sometimes, though rarely, death by the cup of hemlock
in prison.[423] Except in very rare cases, an accused person might
retire into banishment if he chose, and might thus escape any
penalty worse than banishment and confiscation of property. But
corporal punishment was never inflicted by the law at Athens. The
people, especially the poorer citizens, were very sensitive on
this point,[424] regarding it as one great line of distinction
between the freeman and the slave. At Sparta, on the contrary,
corporal chastisement was largely employed as a penalty: moreover
the use of the fist in private contentions, by the younger
citizens, was encouraged rather than forbidden.[425]
[Footnote 423: See Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, B.
iv. Chap. 13, 740.]
[Footnote 424: See Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 58.]
[Footnote 425: Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 3, 11: De Republ. Laced. ii.
8, iv. 6, ix. 5; Aristophanes, Aves, 1013.]
Plato follows the analogy of Sparta in preference to that of
Athens. Here, as elsewhere, he employs corporal punishment
abundantly as a penalty. Here, as elsewhere, he not only
prescribes that it shall be inflicted by a public agent under the
supervision of magistrates, but also directs it to be
administered, against certain offenders, by private unofficial
citizens. I believe that this feature of his system would have
been more repugnant than any other, to the feelings of all classes
of Athenian citizens--to all the different types of character
represented by Perikles, Nikias, Kleon, Isokrates, Demosthenes,
and Sokrates. Abstinence from manual violence was characteristic
of Athenian manners. Whatever licence might be allowed to the
tongue, it was at least a substitute for the aggressive employment
of the arm and hand. Athens exhibited marked respect for the
sanctity of the person against blows--much equality of dealing
between man and man--much tolerance, public as well as private, of
individual diversity in taste and character--much keenness of
intellectual and oral competition, liable to degenerate into
unfair stratagem in political, forensic, professional, and
commercial life, as well as in rhetorical, dialectical, and
philosophical exercises. All these elements, not excepting even
the first, were distasteful to Plato. But those who copy the
disparaging judgment which he pronounces against Athenian manners,
ought in fairness to take account of the point of view from which
that judgment is delivered. To a philosopher whose ideal is
depicted in the two treatises De Republicâ and De Legibus,
Athenian society would appear repulsive enough. We learn from
these two treatises what it was that a great speculative
politician of the day desired to establish as a substitute.
[Side-note: Regulations about Orphans and Guardians: also
about Testamentary powers.]
Plato next goes on to make regulations about orphans and
guardians, and in general for cases arising out of the death of a
citizen. The first question presenting itself naturally is, How
far is the citizen to be allowed to direct by testament the
disposition of his family and property? What restriction is to be
placed upon his power of making a valid will? Many persons (Plato
says) affirmed that it was unjust to impose any restriction: that
the dying man had a right to make such dispositions as he chose,
for his property and family after his death. Against this view
Plato enters his decided protest. Each man--and still more each
man's property--belongs not to himself, but to his family and to
the city: besides which, an old man's judgment is constantly
liable to be perverted by decline of faculties, disease, or the
cajoleries of those around him.[426] Accordingly Plato grants only
a limited liberty of testation. Here, as elsewhere, he adopts the
main provisions of the Attic law, with such modifications as were
required by the fundamental principles of his Magnêtic city:
especially by the fixed total of 5040 lots or _fundi_, each
untransferable and indivisible. The lot, together with the plant
or stock for cultivating it,[427] must descend entire to one
son: but the father, if he has more than one son, may determine by
will to which of them it shall descend. If there be any one among
the sons whom another citizen (being childless) is disposed to
adopt, such adoption can only take place with the father's
consent. But if the father gives his consent, he cannot bequeath
his own lot to the son so adopted, because two lots cannot be
united in the same possessor. Whatever property the father
possesses over and above his lot and its appurtenances, he may
distribute by will among his other sons, in any proportion he
pleases. If he dies, leaving no sons, but only daughters, he may
select which of them he pleases; and may appoint by will some
suitable husband, of a citizen family, to marry her and inherit
his lot. If a citizen (being childless) has adopted a son out of
any other family, he must bequeath to that son the whole of his
property, except one-tenth part of what he possesses over and
above his lot and its appurtenances: this tenth he may bequeath to
any one whom he chooses.[428]
[Footnote 426: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 923 B.
It is to be observed that Plato does not make any allusion to
these misguiding influences operating upon an aged man, when he
talks about the curse of a father against his son being constantly
executed by the Gods: xi. p. 931 B.]
[Footnote 427: Plato, Legg. xi. p. 923 D. [Greek: plê\n tou=
patrô/|ou klê/rou kai\ tê=s peri\ to\n klê=ron kataskeu/ês
pa/sês.]]