Laws

Ath. A composer of a comedy or of any iambic or lyric song shall be strictly forbidden to ridicule any of the citizens either by word or by mimicry, whether with or without passion; and if anyone disobeys, the Presidents of the Games shall on the same day banish him wholly from the country, failing which they shall be fined three minas, dedicated to the god whose festival is being held. Those to whom permission has been given, as we previously said, to write songs about one another shall be allowed to ridicule others in jest and without passion; but they shall not be allowed to do so with passion and in earnest. The task of making this distinction shall be entrusted to the minister in charge of the general education of the young: whatever he shall approve, the composer shall be allowed to produce in public, but whatever he shall disapprove, the composer shall be forbidden either personally to exhibit to anyone or to be found teaching to any other person, free man or slave; and if he does so, he shall be held to be a base man and disobedient to the laws. The man who suffers from hunger or the like is not the man who deserves pity, but he who, while possessing temperance or virtue of some sort, or a share thereof gains in addition evil fortune; wherefore it would be a strange thing indeed if in a polity and State that is even moderately well organized, a man of this kind (be he slave or free man) should be so entirely neglected as to come to utter beggary. Wherefore the Lawgiver will be safe in enacting for such cases some such law as this:— There shall be no beggar in our State; and if anyone attempts to beg, and to collect a livelihood by ceaseless prayers, the market-stewards shall expel him from the market, and the Board of city-stewards from the city, and from any other district he shall be driven across the border by the country-stewards, to the end that the land may be wholly purged of such a creature. If a slave, male or female, do any injury to another man’s goods, when the injured man himself has had no share in causing the injury through his own clumsy or careless handling, then the master of him that has done the injury shall fully make good the damage, or else shall hand over the person of the injurer: but if the master brings a charge affirming that the claim is made in order to rob him of his slave by a privy agreement between the injurer and the injured party, then he shall prosecute the man who claims that he has been injured on the charge of conspiracy; and if he wins his case, he shall receive double the price at which the court shall assess the slave, but if he loses he shall not only make good the damage, but he shall also hand over the slave. And if it be a mule or horse or dog any other animal that causes damage to any property belonging to a neighbor, its master shall in like manner pay compensation.