Complete Works (305 page)

So much for these buildings, together with those round the marketplace, and gymnasia and all the schools: they are now ready and waiting to be entered, and the theaters are prepared for the arrival of their audiences. Now let’s pass on to the next item in our legislation, the time after the wedding.

C
LINIAS
: By all means.

[e] A
THENIAN
: Let’s suppose the ceremony is over, Clinias; between then and the birth of a child there may well be a complete year. Now, in a state which sets its sights higher than others, how this year is to be spent by a bride and groom (you remember we broke off when we got to this point) is not the easiest thing in the world to specify. We’ve had knotty problems like this before, but the common man will find our policy this time more difficult to swallow than ever. However, we should never shrink from speaking the truth as we see it, Clinias.

C
LINIAS
: Of course.

[780]
A
THENIAN
: Take someone who proposes to promulgate laws to a state about the correct conduct of the public life of the community. What if he reckons that
in principle
one ought not to use compulsion—even in so far as one
can
use it in private affairs? Suppose he thinks that a man ought to be allowed to do what he likes with the day, instead of being regulated at every turn. Well, if he excludes private life from his legislation, and expects that the citizens will be prepared to be law-abiding in their public life as a community, he’s making a big mistake. Now, what’s made me say this? It’s because we are going to assert that our newly-marrieds ought to attend communal meals [b] no more and no less than they did before their wedding. I know that this custom of eating together caused eyebrows to be raised when it was introduced in your parts of the world, but I suppose it was dictated by war or some other equally serious emergency that pressed hard on a small people in a critical situation. But once you had had this enforced experience of communal meals, you realized just how much the custom contributed to your security. It must have been in some such way that the practice of communal [c] feeding established itself among you.

C
LINIAS
: That sounds plausible enough.

A
THENIAN
: As I was saying, it was once an astonishing custom and some people were apprehensive about imposing it. But if a legislator wanted to impose it today, he wouldn’t have half so much trouble. But the custom points to another measure, which would probably prove equally successful, if tried. Today, it’s absolutely unheard-of, and that’s what makes the legislator ‘card his wool into the fire’, as the saying is, and make so many efforts fruitlessly. This measure is neither easy to describe nor simple in execution. [d]

C
LINIAS
: Well then, sir, what’s the point you’re trying to make? You seem to be awfully reluctant to tell us.

A
THENIAN
: Listen to me, then: let’s not waste time lingering over this business. The blessings that a state enjoys are in direct proportion to the degree of law and order to be found in it, and the effects of good regulations in some fields are usually vitiated to the extent that things are controlled either incompetently or not at all in others. The point is relevant to the subject in hand. Thanks to some providential necessity, Clinias and Megillus, [e] you have a splendid and—as I was saying—astonishing institution: communal meals for men. But it is entirely wrong of you to have omitted
[781]
from your legal code any provision for your women, so that the practice of communal meals for them has never got under way. On the contrary, half the human race—the female sex, the half which in any case is inclined to be secretive and crafty, because of its weakness—has been left to its own devices because of the misguided indulgence of the legislator. Because you neglected this sex, you gradually lost control of a great many things which would be in a far better state today if they had been regulated by law. You see, leaving women to do what they like is not just to lose
half
[b] the battle (as it may seem): a woman’s natural potential for virtue is inferior to a man’s, so she’s proportionately a greater danger, perhaps even twice as great. So the happiness of the state will be better served if we reconsider the point and put things right, by providing that all our arrangements apply to men and women alike. But at present, unhappily, the human race has not progressed as far as that, and if you’re wise you won’t breathe a [c] word about such a practice in other parts of the world where states do not recognize communal meals as a public institution at all. So when it comes to the point, how on earth are you going to avoid being laughed to scorn when you try to force women to take their food and drink in public? There’s nothing the sex is likely to put up with more reluctantly: women have got used to a life of obscurity and retirement, and any attempt to force them into the open will provoke tremendous resistance from them, [d] and they’ll be more than a match for the legislator. Elsewhere, as I said, the very mention of the correct policy will be met with howls of protest. But perhaps this state will be different. So if you want our discussion about political systems to be as complete as theory can ever be, I’d like to explain the merits and advantages of this institution—that is, if you are equally keen to listen to me. If not, then let’s skip it.

C
LINIAS
: No, no, sir: we’re very anxious to hear the explanation.

A
THENIAN
: Let’s listen, then. But don’t be disconcerted if I appear to be [e] starting a long way back. We’ve time to spare, and there’s no compelling reason why we shouldn’t look into the business of legislation from all possible angles.

C
LINIAS
: You’re quite right.

A
THENIAN
: Let’s go back to what we said at the beginning.
¹⁶
Here’s something that everyone must be perfectly clear about:
either
mankind had
[782]
absolutely no beginning in time and will have no end, but always existed and always will,
or
it has existed for an incalculably long time from its origin.

C
LINIAS
: Naturally.

A
THENIAN
: Well, now we may surely assume that in every part of the world cities have been formed and destroyed, and all sorts of customs have been adopted, some orderly, some not, along with the growth of every sort of taste in food, solid and liquid. And the various changes in the seasons have developed, which have probably stimulated a vast number of [b] natural changes in living beings.

C
LINIAS
: Of course.

A
THENIAN
: Well, we believe, don’t we, that at a certain point virtues made their appearance, not having existed before, and olives likewise, and the gifts of Demeter and Kore,
¹⁷
which Triptolemus, or whoever it was, handed on to us? So long as these things did not exist, we can take it that animals resorted to feeding on each other, as they do now?

C
LINIAS
: Certainly.

[c] A
THENIAN
: We observe, of course, the survival of human sacrifice among many people today. Elsewhere, we gather, the opposite practice prevailed, and there was a time when we didn’t even dare to eat beef, and the sacrifices offered to the gods were not animals, but cakes and meal soaked in honey and other ‘pure’ offerings like that. People kept off meat on the grounds that it was an act of impiety to eat it, or to pollute the altars of the gods with blood. So at that time men lived a sort of ‘Orphic’
¹⁸
life, keeping exclusively to inanimate food and entirely abstaining from eating [d] the flesh of animals.

C
LINIAS
: So it’s commonly said, and it’s easy enough to believe.

A
THENIAN
: Then the question naturally arises, why have I related all this to you now?

C
LINIAS
: A perfectly correct assumption, sir.

A
THENIAN
: Now then, Clinias, I’ll try to explain the next point, if I can.

C
LINIAS
: Carry on, then.

A
THENIAN
: Observation tells me that all human actions are motivated by a set of three needs and desires. Give a man a correct education, and [e] these instincts will lead him to virtue, but educate him badly and he’ll end up at the other extreme. From the moment of their birth men have a desire for food and drink. Every living creature has an instinctive love of satisfying this desire whenever it occurs, and the craving to do so can fill a man’s whole being, so that he remains quite unmoved by the plea that he should do anything except satisfy his lust for the pleasures of the body, so as to make himself immune to all discomfort. Our third and greatest
[783]
need, the longing we feel most keenly, is the last to come upon us: it is the flame of the imperious lust to procreate, which kindles the fires of passion in mankind. These three unhealthy instincts must be canalized
away
from what men call supreme pleasure, and
towards
the supreme good. We must try to keep them in check by the three powerful influences of fear, law, and correct argument; but in addition, we should invoke the help of the Muses and the gods who preside over competitions, to smother [b] their growth and dam their tide.

The topic which should come after marriage, and before training and education, is the birth of children. Perhaps, as we take these topics in order, we shall be able to complete each individual law as we did before, when we approached the question of communal meals—I mean that when we’ve become intimate with our citizens, perhaps we shall be able to see more clearly whether such gatherings should consist of men only or whether, after all, they should include women. Similarly, when we’ve won control of certain institutions that have never yet been controlled by law, [c] we’ll use them as ‘cover’, just as other people do, with the result I indicated just now: thanks to a more detailed inspection of these institutions, we may be able to lay down laws that take account of them better.

C
LINIAS
: Quite right.

A
THENIAN
: So let’s bear in mind the points we’ve just made, in case we find we need to refer to them later on.

C
LINIAS
: What points in particular are you telling us to remember?

A
THENIAN
: The three impulses we distinguished by our three terms: the desire for ‘food’ (I think we said) and ‘drink’, and thirdly ‘sexual stimulation’. [d]

C
LINIAS
: Yes, sir, we’ll certainly remember, just as you tell us.

A
THENIAN
: Splendid. Let’s turn our attention to the bridal pair, and instruct them in the manner and method by which they should produce children. (And if we fail to persuade them, we’ll threaten them with a law or two.)

C
LINIAS
: How do you mean?

A
THENIAN
: The bride and groom should resolve to present the state with [e] the best and finest children they can produce. Now, when human beings co-operate in any project, and give due attention to its planning and execution, the results they achieve are always of the best and finest quality; but if they act carelessly, or are incapable of intelligent action in the first place, the results are deplorable. So the bridegroom had better deal with his wife and approach the task of begetting children with a sense of responsibility, and the bride should do the same, especially during the period when no
[784]
children have yet been born to them. They should be supervised by women whom we have chosen
¹⁹
(several or only a few—the officials should appoint the number they think right, at times within their discretion). These women must assemble daily at the temple of Eileithuia
²⁰
for not more than a third of the day, and when they have convened each must report to her colleagues any wife or husband of childbearing age she has seen who is concerned with anything but the duties imposed on him or her at the time of the [b] sacrifices and rites of their marriage. If children come in suitable numbers, the period of supervised procreation should be ten years and no longer. But if a couple remain childless throughout this period, they should part, and call in their relatives and the female officials to help them decide terms of divorce that will safeguard the interests of them both. If some dispute arises about the duties and interests of the parties, they must choose ten [c] of the Guardians of the Laws as arbitrators, and abide by their decisions on the points referred to them. The female officials must enter the homes of the young people and by a combination of admonition and threats try to make them give up their ignorant and sinful ways. If this has no effect, they must go and report the case to the Guardians of the Laws, who must resort to sterner methods. If even the Guardians prove ineffective, they should make the case public and post up the relevant name, swearing on their oath that they are unable to reform so-and-so.

[d] 18. (a) Unless the person whose name is posted up succeeds in convicting in court those who published the notice,
he must
be deprived of the privilege of attending weddings and parties celebrating the birth of children.

19. If he persists in attending,
anyone who wishes
should chastise him by beating him, and not be punished for it.

18. (b) If a woman misbehaves and her name is posted up, and she fails to win the day in court,
the same
regulations are to apply to her too: she must be excluded from female processions and distinctions, and be forbidden to attend weddings and parties celebrating the birth of children.

20. When children have been produced as demanded by law, if a man [e] has intercourse with another woman, or a woman with another man, and the other party is still procreating,
they must
suffer the same penalty as was specified for those who are still having children.