Laws

Ath. Come now, what is this State going to be, shall we suppose I am not asking for its present name or the name it will have to go by in the future; for this might be derived from the conditions of its settlement, or from some locality, or a river or spring or some local deity might bestow its sacred title on the new State. The point of my question about it is rather this,—is it to be an inland State, or situated on the sea-coast?

Clin. The State which I mentioned just now, Stranger, lies about eighty stades, roughly speaking, from the sea.

Ath. Well, has it harbors on the sea-board side, or is it quite without harbors?

Clin. It has excellent harbors on that side, Stranger, none better.

Ath. Dear me! how unfortunate! But what of the surrounding country? Is it productive in all respects, or deficient in some products?

Clin. There is practically nothing that it is deficient in.

Ath. Will there be any State bordering close on it?

Clin. None at all, and that is the reason for settling it. Owing to emigration from this district long ago, the country has lain desolate for ever so long.

Ath. How about plains, mountains and forests? What extent of each of these does it contain?

Clin. As a whole, it resembles in character the rest of Crete.

Ath. You would call it hilly rather than level?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Then it would not be incurably unfit for the acquisition of virtue. For if the State was to be on the sea-coast, and to have fine harbors, and to be deficient in many products, instead of productive of everything,—in that case it would need a mighty savior and divine lawgivers, if, with such a character, it was to avoid having a variety of luxurious and depraved habits. As things are, however, there is consolation in the fact of that eighty stades. Still, it lies unduly near the sea, and the more so because, as you say, its harbors are good; that, however, we must make the best of. For the sea is, in very truth, a right briny and bitter neighbor, although there is sweetness in its proximity for the uses of daily life; for by filling the markets of the city with foreign merchandise and retail trading, and breeding in men’s souls knavish and tricky ways, it renders the city faithless and loveless, not to itself only, but to the rest of the world as well. But in this respect our State has compensation in the fact that it is all-productive; and since it is hilly, it cannot be highly productive as well as all-productive; if it were, and supplied many exports, it would be flooded in return with gold and silver money—the one condition of all, perhaps, that is most fatal, in a State, to the acquisition of noble and just habits of life,—as we said, if you remember, in our previous discourse.

Clin. We remember, and we endorse what you said both then and now.

Ath. Well, then, how is our district off for timber for ship-building?

Clin. There is no fir to speak of, nor pine, and but little cypress; nor could one find much larch or plane, which shipwrights are always obliged to use for the interior fittings of ships.

Ath. Those, two, are natural features which would not be bad for the country.

Clin. Why so?

Ath. That a State should not find it easy to copy its enemies in bad habits is a good thing.

Clin. To which of our statements does this observation allude?

Ath. My dear Sir, keep a watch on me, with an eye cast back on our opening statement about the Cretan laws. It asserted that those laws aimed at one single object; and whereas you declared that this object was military strength, I made the rejoinder that, while it was right that such enactments should have virtue for their aim, I did not at all approve of that aim being restricted to a part, instead of applying to the whole. So do you now, in turn, keep a watch on my present lawmaking, as you follow it, in case I should enact any law either not tending to virtue at all, or tending only to a part of it.

Ath. For I lay it down as an axiom that no law is rightly enacted which does not aim always, like an archer, at that object, and that alone, which is constantly accompanied by something ever-beautiful,—passing over every other object, be it wealth or anything else of the kind that is devoid of beauty. To illustrate how the evil imitation of enemies, which I spoke of, comes about, when people dwell by the sea and are vexed by enemies, I will give you an example (though with no wish, of course, to recall to you painful memories). When Minos, once upon a time, reduced the people of Attica to a grievous payment of tribute, he was very powerful by sea, whereas they possessed no warships at that time such as they have now, nor was their country so rich in timber that they could easily supply themselves with a naval force. Hence they were unable quickly to copy the naval methods of their enemies and drive them off by becoming sailors themselves. And indeed it would have profited them to lose seventy times seven children rather than to become marines instead of staunch foot-soldiers; for marines are habituated to jumping ashore frequently and running back at full speed to their ships, and they think no shame of not dying boldly at their posts when the enemy attack; and excuses are readily made for them, as a matter of course, when they fling away their arms and betake themselves to what they describe as no dishonorable flight. These exploits are the usual result of employing naval soldiery, and they merit, not infinite praise, but precisely the opposite; for one ought never to habituate men to base habits, and least of all the noblest section of the citizens. That such an institution is not a noble one might have been learnt even from Homer. For he makes Odysseus abuse Agamemnon for ordering the Achaeans to haul down their ships to the sea, when they were being pressed in fight by the Trojans; and in his wrath he speaks thus:— Dost bid our people hale their fair-benched shipsSeaward, when war and shouting close us round?So shall the Trojans see their prayers fulfilled,And so on us shall sheer destruction fall!For, when the ships are seaward drawn, no moreWill our Achaeans hold the battle up,But, backward glancing, they will quit the fray: Thus baneful counsel such as thine will prove.Hom. Il. 14.96

Ath. So Homer, too, was aware of the fact that triremes lined up in the sea alongside of infantry fighting on land are a bad thing: why, even lions, if they had habits such as these, would grow used to running away from does! Moreover, States dependent upon navies for their power give honors, as rewards for their safety, to a section of their forces that is not the finest; for they owe their safety to the arts of the pilot, the captain and the rower— men of all kinds and not too respectable,—so that it would be impossible to assign the honors to each of them rightly. Yet, without rectitude in this, how can it still be right with a State?

Clin. It is well-nigh impossible. None the less, Stranger, it was the sea-fight at Salamis, fought by the Greeks against the barbarians, which, as we Cretans at least affirm, saved Greece.

Ath. Yes, that is what is said by most of the Greeks and barbarians. But we—that is, I myself and our friend Megillus—affirm that it was the land-battle of Marathon which began the salvation of Greece, and that of Plataea which completed it; and we affirm also that, whereas these battles made the Greeks better, the sea-fights made them worse,—if one may use such an expression about battles that helped at that time to save us (for I will let you count Artemisium also as a sea-fight, as well as Salamis). Since, however, our present object is political excellence, it is the natural character of a country and its legal arrangements that we are considering; so that we differ from most people in not regarding mere safety and existence as the most precious thing men can possess, but rather the gaining of all possible goodness and the keeping of it throughout life. This too, I believe, was stated by us before.

Clin. It was.

Ath. Then let us consider only this,—whether we are traversing by the same road which we took then, as being the best for states in the matter of settlements and modes of legislation.

Clin. The best by far.

Ath. In the next place tell me this: who are the people that are to be settled? Will they comprise all that wish to go from any part of Crete, supposing that there has grown up in every city a surplus population too great for the country’s food supply? For you are not; I presume, collecting all who wish to go from Greece;

Ath. although I do, indeed, see in your country settlers from Argos, Aegina, and other parts of Greece. So tell us now from what quarters the present expedition of citizens is likely to be drawn.

Clin. It will probably be from the whole of Crete and of the rest of the Greeks, they seem most ready to admit people from the Peloponnese as fellow-settlers. For it is quite true, as you said just now, that we have some here from Argos, amongst them being the most famous of our clans, the Gortynian, which is a colony from Gortys, in the Peloponnese.

Ath. It would not be equally easy for States to conduct settlements in other cases as in those when, like a swarm of bees, a single clan goes out from a single country and settles, as a friend coming from friends, being either squeezed out by lack of room or forced by some other such pressing need. At times, too, the violence of civil strife might compel a whole section of a State to emigrate; and on one occasion an entire State went into exile, when it was totally crushed by an overpowering attack. All such cases are in one way easier to manage, as regards settling and legislation, but in another way harder. In the case where the race is one, with the same language and laws, this unity makes for friendliness, since it shares also in sacred rites and all matters of religion; but such a body does not easily tolerate laws or polities which differ from those of its homeland. Again, where such a body has seceded owing to civil strife due to the badness of the laws, but still strives to retain, owing to long habit, the very customs which caused its former ruin, then, because of this, it proves a difficult and intractable subject for the person who has control of its settlement and its laws. On the other hand, the clan that is formed by fusion of various elements would perhaps be more ready to submit to new laws, but to cause it to share in one spirit and pant (as they say) in unison like a team of horses would be a lengthy task and most difficult. But in truth legislation and the settlement of States are tasks that require men perfect above all other men in goodness.

Clin. Very probably; but tell us still more clearly the purport of these observations.

Ath. My good Sir, in returning to the subject of lawgivers in our investigation, I may probably have to cast a slur on them; but if what I say is to the point, then there will be no harm in it. Yet why should I vex myself? For practically all human affairs seem to be in this same plight.

Clin. What is it you refer to?

Ath. I was on the point of saying that no man ever makes laws, but chances and accidents of all kinds, occurring in all sorts of ways, make all our laws for us. For either it is a war that violently upsets polities and changes laws, or it is the distress due to grievous poverty. Diseases, too, often force on revolutions, owing to the inroads of pestilences and recurring bad seasons prolonged over many years. Foreseeing all this, one might deem it proper to say—as I said just now—that no mortal man frames any law, but human affairs are nearly all matters of pure chance. But the fact is that, although one may appear to be quite right in saying this about sea-faring and the arts of the pilot, the physician, and the general, yet there really is something else that we may say with equal truth about these same things.

Clin. What is that?

Ath. That God controls all that is, and that Chance and Occasion co-operate with God in the control of all human affairs. It is, however, less harsh to admit that these two must be accompanied by a third factor, which is Art. For that the pilots’ art should cooperate with Occasion—verily I, for one, should esteem that a great advantage. Is it not so?

Clin. It is.

Ath. Then we must grant that this is equally true in the other cases also, by parity of reasoning, including the case of legislation. When all the other conditions are present which a country needs to possess in the way of fortune if it is ever to be happily settled, then every such State needs to meet with a lawgiver who holds fast to truth.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Would not, then, the man who possessed art in regard to each of the crafts mentioned be able to pray aright for that condition which, if it were given by Chance, would need only the supplement of his own art?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. And if all the other craftsmen mentioned just now were bidden to state the object of their prayers, they could do so, could they not?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And the lawgiver, I suppose, could do likewise?

Clin. I suppose so.

Ath. Come now, O lawgiver, let us say to him, what are we to give you, and what condition of State, to enable you, when you receive it, thence-forward to manage the State by yourself satisfactorily?

Clin. What is the next thing that can rightly be said?

Ath. You mean, do you not, on the side of the lawgiver?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. This is what he will say: Give me the State under a monarchy; and let the monarch be young, and possessed by nature of a good memory, quick intelligence, courage and nobility of manner; and let that quality, which we formerly mentioned as the necessary accompaniment of all the parts of virtue, attend now also on our monarch’s soul, if the rest of his qualities are to be of any value.

Clin. Temperance, as I think, Megillus, is what the Stranger indicates as the necessary accompaniment. Is it not?

Ath. Yes, Clinias; temperance, that is, of the ordinary kind not the kind men mean when they use academic language and identify temperance with wisdom, but that kind which by natural instinct springs up at birth in children and animals, so that some are not incontinent, others continent, in respect of pleasures; and of this we said that, when isolated from the numerous so-called goods, it was of no account. You understand, of course, what I mean.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Let our monarch, then, possess this natural quality in addition to the other qualities mentioned, if the State is to acquire in the quickest and best way possible the constitution it needs for the happiest kind of life. For there does not exist, nor could there ever arise, a quicker and better form of constitution than this.

Clin. How and by what argument, Stranger, could one convince oneself that to say this is to speak the truth?

Ath. It is quite easy to perceive at least this, Clinias, that the facts stand by nature’s ordinance in the way described.

Clin. In what way do you mean? On condition, do you say, that there should be a monarch who was young, temperate, quick at learning, with a good memory, brave and of a noble manner?

Ath. Add also fortunate,—not in other respects, but only in this, that in his time there should arise a praiseworthy lawgiver, and that, by a piece of good fortune, the two of them should meet; for if this were so, then God would have done nearly everything that he does when he desires that a State should be eminently prosperous. The second best condition is that there should arise two such rulers; then comes the third best, with three rulers; and so on, the difficulty increasing in proportion as the number becomes greater, and vice versa.

Clin. You mean, apparently, that the best State would arise from a monarchy, when it has a first-rate lawgiver and a virtuous monarch, and these are the conditions under which the change into such a State could be effected most easily and quickly; and, next to this, from an oligarchy— or what is it you mean?

Ath. Not at all: the easiest step is from a monarchy, the next easiest from a monarchic constitution, the third from some form of democracy. An oligarchy, which comes fourth in order, would admit of the growth of the best State only with the greatest difficulty, since it has the largest number of rulers.

Ath. What I say is that the change takes place when nature supplies a true lawgiver, and when it happens that his policy is shared by the most powerful persons in the State; and wherever the State authorities are at once strongest and fewest in number, then and there the changes are usually carried out with speed and facility.

Clin. How so? We do not understand.

Ath. Yet surely it has been stated not once, I imagine, but many times over. But you, very likely, have never so much as set eyes on a monarchical State.

Clin. No, nor have I any craving for such a sight.

Ath. You would, however, see in it an illustration of what we spoke of just now.

Clin. What was that?

Ath. The fact that a monarch, when he decides to change the moral habits of a State, needs no great efforts nor a vast length of time, but what he does need is to lead the way himself first along the desired path, whether it be to urge the citizens towards virtue’s practices or the contrary; by his personal example he should first trace out the right lines, giving praise and honor to these things, blame to those, and degrading the disobedient according to their several deeds.

Clin. Yes, we may perhaps suppose that the rest of the citizens will quickly follow the ruler who adopts such a combination of persuasion and force.

Ath. Let none, my friends, persuade us that a State could ever change its laws more quickly or more easily by any other way than by the personal guidance of the rulers: no such thing could ever occur, either now or hereafter. Indeed, that is not the result which we find it difficult or impossible to bring about; what is difficult to bring about is rather that result which has taken place but rarely throughout long ages, and which, whenever it does take place in a State, produces in that State countless blessings of every kind.

Clin. What result do you mean?

Ath. Whenever a heaven-sent desire for temperate and just institutions arises in those who hold high positions,—whether as monarchs, or because of conspicuous eminence of wealth or birth, or, haply, as displaying the character of Nestor, of whom it is said that, while he surpassed all men in the force of his eloquence, still more did he surpass them in temperance. That was, as they say, in the Trojan age, certainly not in our time; still, if any such man existed, or shall exist, or exists among us now, blessed is the life he leads, and blessed are they who join in listening to the words of temperance that proceed out of his mouth.

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

Clin. No doubt.

Ath. Let us apply the oracle to your State, and so try, like greybeard boys, to model its laws by our discourse.

Clin. Yes, let us proceed, and delay no longer.

Ath. Let us invoke the presence of the God at the establishment of the State; and may he hearken, and hearkening may he come, propitious and kindly to us-ward, to help us in the fashioning of the State and its laws.

Clin. Yes, may he come!

Ath. Well, what form of polity is it that we intend to impose upon the State?

Clin. What, in particular, do you refer to? Explain still more clearly. I mean, is it a democracy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy? For certainly you cannot mean a tyranny: that we can never suppose.

Ath. Come now, which of you two would like to answer me first and tell me to which of these kinds his own polity at home belongs?

Meg. Is it not proper that I, as the elder, should answer first?

Clin. No doubt.

Meg. In truth, Stranger, when I reflect on the Lacedaemonian polity, I am at a loss to tell you by what name one should describe it. It seems to me to resemble a tyranny, since the board of ephors it contains is a marvellously tyrannical feature; yet sometimes it strikes me as, of all States, the nearest to a democracy. Still, it would be totally absurd to deny that it is an aristocracy; while it includes, moreover, a life monarchy, and that the most ancient of monarchies, as is affirmed, not only by ourselves, but by all the world. But now that I am questioned thus suddenly, I am really, as I said, at a loss to say definitely to which of these polities it belongs.

Clin. And I, Megillus, find myself equally perplexed; for I find it very difficult to affirm that our Cnosian polity is any one of these.

Ath. Yes, my good Sirs; for you do, in fact, partake in a number of polities. But those we named just now are not polities, but arrangements of States which rule or serve parts of themselves, and each is named after the ruling power. But if the State ought to be named after any such thing, the name it should have borne is that of the God who is the true ruler of rational men.

Clin. Who is that God?

Ath. May we, then, do a little more story-telling, if we are to answer this question suitably?

Clin. Should we not do so?

Ath. We should. Long ages before even those cities existed whose formation we have described above, there existed in the time of Cronos, it is said, a most prosperous government and settlement, on which the best of the States now existing is modelled.

Clin. Evidently it is most important to hear about it.

Ath. I, for one, think so; and that is why I have introduced the mention of it.

Meg. You were perfectly right to do so; and, since your story is pertinent, you will be quite right in going on with it to the end.

Ath. I must do as you say. Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Cronos was aware of the fact that no human being (as we have explained) is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings and rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, daemons. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the God, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of daemons who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace and modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy.

Ath. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Cronos, as tradition paints it, and order both our homes and our States in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving to reason’s ordering the name of law. But if an individual man or an oligarchy or a democracy, possessed of a soul which strives after pleasures and lusts and seeks to surfeit itself therewith, having no continence and being the victim of a plague that is endless and insatiate of evil,— if such an one shall rule over a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, then there is (as I said just now) no means of salvation. This, then, is the statement, Clinias, which we have to examine, to see whether we believe it, or what we are to do.

Clin. We must, of course, believe it.

Ath. Are you aware that, according to some, there are as many kinds of laws as there are kinds of constitutions? And how many constitutions are commonly recognized we have recently recounted. Please do not suppose that the problem now raised is one of small importance; rather it is of the highest importance. For we are again faced with the problem as to what ought to be the aim of justice and injustice. The assertion of the people I refer to is this,— that the laws ought not to aim either at war or at goodness in general, but ought to have regard to the benefit of the established polity, whatever it may be, so that it may keep in power forever and never be dissolved; and that the natural definition of justice is best stated in this way.

Clin. In what way?

Ath. That justice is what benefits the stronger..

Clin. Explain yourself more clearly.

Ath. This is how it is:—the laws (they say) in a State are always enacted by the stronger power? Is it not so?

Clin. That is quite true.

Ath. Do you suppose, then (so they argue), that a democracy or any other government—even a tyrant—if it has gained the mastery, will of its own accord set up laws with any other primary aim than that of securing the permanence of its own authority?

Clin. Certainly not.

Ath. Then the lawgiver will style these enactments justice, and will punish every transgressor as guilty of injustice.

Clin. That is certainly probable.

Ath. So these enactments will thus and herein always constitute justice.

Clin. That is, at any rate, what the argument asserts.

Ath. Yes, for this is one of those agreed claims concerning government.

Clin. What claims?