Complete Works (277 page)

[d] Hesiod too has said some things akin to these with regard to Minos. After making mention of his name he says

Who proved to be most kingly of mortal kings, and ruled over most of the people in the countryside, holding the scepter of Zeus—with which he exercised kingship also over cities.
⁷

He means by “the scepter of Zeus” nothing other than the education he received from Zeus, by means of which he governed Crete.

[e] F
RIEND
: Why, then, Socrates, has this rumor about Minos as someone who was uneducated and harsh ever been spread about?

S
OCRATES
: Because of something over which you, my good friend, will take precautions, if you are sensible, and so will anyone else who cares for a good reputation: never to fall out with any man who is skilled in poetry. The poets have great power where reputation is concerned, whichever mode—eulogy or abuse—they adopt in writing about people. Which was the mistake Minos made in waging war on this city, where as well as many other forms of wisdom there are poets of every kind, who compose tragedy as well as every other kind of poetry. Tragedy is an
[321]
ancient form here, not beginning with Thespis as some suppose nor with Phrynichus:
⁸
if you care to consider the matter you will find it to be a very ancient discovery, made in this very city. Tragedy is that form of poetry which most delights the populace and which most seduces the soul. So it is in tragedy that we torture Minos and take vengeance upon him for that tribute he compelled us to pay.
⁹
This, then, was the mistake Minos made, in falling out with us. And that is why, to answer your question, he has come to have a worse and worse reputation. He was good and lawabiding, [b] as we said at the outset, a good apportioner. And the greatest indication of this is that his laws are unaltered: that shows how well he did at discovering reality as regards habitation of a city.

F
RIEND
: In my view, Socrates, the account you have given is a likely one.

S
OCRATES
: Now if what I say is true, is it your view that the Cretans, who are citizens of Minos and Rhadamanthus, make use of the most ancient laws?

F
RIEND
: They seem to.

S
OCRATES
: Then these two have proved to be the best lawgivers among [c] the ancients, apportioners and shepherds of men, just as Homer said that the good general was “shepherd of the people.”
¹⁰

F
RIEND
: Certainly.

S
OCRATES
: Please, now, by Zeus god of friendship: if someone were to ask us what are these things that the good lawgiver and apportioner for the body distributes to the body to make it better, we would say if we were to reply well and briefly: food and hard work, building it up with the one, and exercising and constituting the body itself with the other.

F
RIEND
: Quite correct.

S
OCRATES
: If then after this he were to ask us: “Whatever then are those [d] things that the good lawgiver and apportioner distributes to the soul to make it better?,” what reply would we make if we are not to be ashamed both of ourselves and of our mature years?

F
RIEND
: I don’t any more know what to say.

S
OCRATES
: Yet it really is a disgrace to the soul in each of us that it plainly doesn’t know what in it constitutes goodness and badness for it, whereas what constitutes goodness and badness for the body, and for other things, is something it has already considered.

1
. Conjecturally deleting
kai ta axia neimai
in d8–9.

2
. Accepting a conjectural deletion of
tou s
ō
matos
in a1–2.

3
. Marsyas was said to have invented a form of music for wind instruments (such as the
aulos,
here conventionally but misleadingly translated “flute”). Olympus was credited with bringing this music from the Near East to Greece and developing it further.

4
. Reading
toi
for
ti
in a5.

5
.
Odyssey
xix.178–79.

6
.
Odyssey
xi.568–71.

7
. Hesiod frg. 144 (Merkelbach-West).

8
. Thespis was the first playwright to win a prize at the Athenian festival of Dionysus, about 535
B.C.
Phrynichus was a tragic playwright active in the early fifth century.

9
. According to legend, after Minos defeated the Athenians, he exacted a tribute every nine years of seven maidens and seven young men, whom he imprisoned in the Labyrinth, eventually to be devoured by the Minotaur, the ‘bull of Minos’.

10
.
Iliad
i.263,
Odyssey
iv.532, and elsewhere.

LAWS

Translated by Trevor J. Saunders. Text: Budé, bks. I–VI ed. E. des Places, VII–XII ed. A. Diès, Paris (1951, 1956).

This work, Plato’s longest and a product of his last years, was left unpublished at his death, perhaps because he felt it still needed revision. Plato’s associate Philip of Opus is said to have transcribed it for publication. It seems to be complete as it stands.

Three elderly gentlemen, all apparently fictional—Clinias from Crete, Megillus, a Spartan, and an unnamed Athenian—begin a journey on foot from Cnossus in Crete to the shrine of Zeus’ birthplace on Mount Ida. The Athenian begins a conversation on ‘laws and constitutions’ (which continues till the end of book III) by querying the central purpose of his Cretan and Spartan friends’ famously similar civic institutions: the optimal conduct of war, as Clinias maintains. As one might expect in an Athenian, this strikes him as too narrow and exclusive a focus on one aspect of civic life, and that a secondary one: wars are undertaken to make secure the activities of peacetime. Laws should indeed see to the training of citizens in the virtues of wartime, but also, and even more, in those of peace. A broader and culturally deeper education and range of experience are needed to produce truly good human beings. Athens itself, however, had been ruined by its predilection for the personal freedoms provided by democratic institutions; the best laws would follow the Cretan and Spartan lead by establishing strong civic authority and discipline, but they would aim at the fullest possible development of all the human virtues.

At the end of book III Clinias reveals that he is one of ten commissioners entrusted with establishing the laws for a new city being founded in Crete, and the conversation continues, with the Athenian now offering his advice on the laws that will be needed to achieve this objective. Since these are to be citizens of a free, self-governing state, the laws must have ‘preambles’ that explain the purposes for which they are instituted, so as to gain the willing acquiescence of those to whom they apply: commands backed by threats (contained in the bare text of the law) are otherwise not appropriately addressed to a free person (book IV). And it is in the preliminary discussion and preambles to the laws set out in the following books—running the gamut from family law and education to administrative, trade, property, and criminal law—that we find the philosophical core of the dialogue’s jurisprudence and social and political theory.

Of special note are the theory of punishment and its legitimate purposes in book IX and the elaborate argument in book X to prove the existence of gods and to establish the law forbidding behavior that denies them due deference and enacting the appropriate punishments for infractions.

Understandably, most people nowadays read the
Laws
for its theoretical ideas more than for any practical applications. Scholars debate whether the constitution of
Laws
replaces—and implicitly criticizes—the constitution of
Republic,
with its rule by philosopher-kings essentially untrammeled by law. And they compare—and contrast—the accounts of the rule of law and its philosophical basis given in
Statesman
and
Laws.
But Plato’s Academy was not merely an institute for higher education and for research in mathematics, the sciences, philosophy, and ethical and political thought; Plato and his associates were called upon also for concrete advice about ‘laws and constitutions’ in reforming existing states and founding new ones. In writing
Laws
Plato was perhaps not engaging in pure constitutional and legislative theory, as in
Statesman
and
Republic.
In considering
Laws
in relation to these other works, one should bear in mind this context of possible practical applications.

J.M.C.

Book I

A
THENIAN
: Tell me, gentlemen, to whom do you give the credit for
[624]
establishing your codes of law? Is it a god, or a man?

C
LINIAS
: A god, sir, a god—and that’s the honest truth. Among us Cretans it is Zeus; in Sparta—which is where our friend here hails from—they say it is Apollo, I believe. Isn’t that right?

M
EGILLUS
: Yes, that’s right.

A
THENIAN
: You follow Homer, presumably, and say that every ninth year Minos used to go to a consultation with his father Zeus,
¹
and laid [b] down laws for your cities on the basis of the god’s pronouncements?

C
LINIAS
: Yes, that’s our Cretan version, and we add that Minos’ brother, Rhadamanthus—doubtless you know the name—was an absolute paragon
[625]
of justice. We Cretans would say that he won this reputation because of the scrupulously fair way in which he settled the judicial problems of his day.

A
THENIAN
: A distinguished reputation indeed, and one particularly appropriate for a son of Zeus. Well then, since you and your companion have been raised under laws with such a splendid ancestry, I expect you will be quite happy if we spend our time together today in a discussion about constitutions and laws, and occupy our journey in a mutual exchange [b] of views. I’ve heard it said that from Cnossus to Zeus’ cave and shrine is quite a long way, and the tall trees along the route provide shady resting-places which will be more than welcome in this stiflingly hot weather. At our age, there is every excuse for having frequent rests in them, so as to refresh ourselves by conversation. In this way we shall come to the end of the whole journey without having tired ourselves out.

[c] C
LINIAS
: And as you go on, sir, you find tremendously tall and graceful cypress trees in the sacred groves; there are also meadows in which we can pause and rest.

A
THENIAN
: That sounds a good idea.

C
LINIAS
: It is indeed, and it’ll sound even better when we see them. Well then, shall we wish ourselves
bon voyage,
and be off?

A
THENIAN
: Certainly. Now, answer me this. You have meals which you eat communally; you have a system of physical training, and a special type of military equipment. Why is it that you give all this the force of law?

C
LINIAS
: Well, sir, I think that these customs are quite easy for anyone to understand, at any rate in our case. You see the Cretan terrain in general [d] does not have the flatness of Thessaly: hence we usually train by running (whereas the Thessalians mostly use horses), because our land is hilly and more suited to exercise by racing on foot. In this sort of country we have to keep our armor light so that we can run without being weighed down, and bows and arrows seem appropriate because of their lightness. All these Cretan practices have been developed for fighting wars, and that’s [e] precisely the purpose I think the legislator intended them to serve when he instituted them. Likely enough, this is why he organized the common meals, too: he observed that when men are on military service they are all obliged by the pressure of events, for their own protection, to eat together throughout the campaign. In this, I think, he censured the stupidity of ordinary men, who do not understand that they are all engaged in a never-ending lifelong war against all other states. So, if you grant the
[626]
necessity of eating together for self-protection in war-time, and of appointing officers and men in turn to act as guards, the same thing should be done in peace-time too. The legislator’s position would be that what most men call ‘peace’ is really only a fiction, and that in cold fact all states are by nature fighting an undeclared war against every other state. If you see things in this light, you are pretty sure to find that the Cretan legislator established all these institutions of ours, both in the public sphere and the private, with an eye on war, and that this was the spirit in which he gave [b] us his laws for us to keep up. He was convinced that if we don’t come out on top in war, nothing that we possess or do in peace-time is of the slightest use, because all the goods of the conquered fall into the possession of the victors.

A
THENIAN
: You certainly have had a splendid training, sir! It has, I think, enabled you to make a most penetrating analysis of Cretan institutions. But explain this point to me rather more precisely: the definition you gave [c] of a well-run state seems to me to demand that its organization and administration should be such as to ensure victory in war over other states. Correct?

C
LINIAS
: Of course, and I think our companion supports my definition.

M
EGILLUS
: My dear sir, what other answer could one possibly make, if one is a Spartan?

A
THENIAN
: But if this is the right criterion as between states, what about as between villages? Is the criterion different?

C
LINIAS
: Certainly not.

A
THENIAN
: It is the same, then?

C
LINIAS
: Yes.

A
THENIAN
: Well now, what about relations between the village’s separate households? And between individual and individual? Is the same true?