Complete Works (317 page)

It looks as if the right way to organize the food supply and distribute agricultural produce will be to adopt something like the regulations in force in Crete. Every citizen must divide each crop into twelve parts corresponding to the twelve periods in which it is consumed. Take wheat or barley, for instance (though the same procedure must be followed for all the other crops too, as well as for any livestock there may be for sale in
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each district): each twelfth part should be split proportionately into three shares, one for the citizens, one for their slaves, and the third for workmen and foreigners in general (i.e., communities of resident aliens in need of the necessities of life, and occasional visitors on some public or private business). It should be necessary to sell only this third share of all the necessities of life; there should be
no
necessity to sell any part of the other [b] two. So what will be the right way to arrange the division? It’s obvious, for a start, that the shares we allocate will in one sense be equal, but in another sense unequal.

C
LINIAS
: What do you mean?

A
THENIAN
: Well, the land will grow a good crop of one thing and a bad crop of another. That’s inevitable, I take it.

C
LINIAS
: Of course.

A
THENIAN
: None of the three shares—for masters, slaves and foreigners—must be better than the others: when the distribution is made, each group should be treated on an equal footing and get the same share. Each citizen must take his two shares and distribute them at his discretion to the slaves [c] and free persons in his charge (quality and quantity being up to him). The surplus should be distributed by being divided up according to the number of animals that have to be supported by the produce of the soil, and rationed out accordingly.

Next, the population should have houses grouped in separate localities. This entails the following arrangements. There should be twelve villages, one in the middle of each of the twelve divisions of the state; in each [d] village the settlers should first select a site for a market-place with its temples for gods and their retinue of spirits. (Local Magnesian gods, and sanctuaries of other ancient deities who are still remembered, must be honored as they were in earlier generations.) In each division they must establish shrines of Hestia, Zeus, Athena, and the patron deity of the district; after this their first job must be to build houses on the highest ground in a circle round these temples, so as to provide the garrison with [e] the strongest possible position for defense.

Thirteen groups of craftsmen must be formed to provide for all the rest of the territory. One should be settled in the central city and the others distributed all round it on the outskirts in twelve further sub-groups corresponding to the twelve urban districts; and the categories of craftsmen useful to farmers must be established in each village. They must all be under the supervision of the chief Country-Wardens, who must decide the number and type required in each district and say where they should settle in order to prove their full worth to the farmers and cause them as little trouble as possible. Similarly the board of City-Wardens must assume
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permanent responsibility for the craftsmen in the city.

The detailed supervision of the market must naturally be in the hands of the Market-Wardens. Their first job is to ensure that no one does any damage to the temples round the marketplace; secondly, to see whether people are conducting their business in an orderly or disorderly fashion, and inflict punishment on anyone who needs it. They must ensure that every commodity the citizens are required to sell to the aliens is sold in [b] the manner prescribed by law. The law will be simply this. On the first day of the month the agents (the foreigners or slaves who act for the citizens) must produce the share that has to be sold to the aliens, beginning with the twelfth part of corn. At this first market an alien must buy corn and related commodities to last him the whole month. On the tenth day the respective parties must buy and sell a whole month’s supply of liquids.[c] The third
¹⁴
market should be on the twentieth, when they should hold a sale of the livestock that individuals find they need to buy or sell, and also of all the equipment or goods sold by the farmers, and which aliens cannot get except by purchase—skins, for example, and all clothing, woven material, felt, and all that sort of thing. But these goods (and barley and wheat ground into flour and every other kind of food) should never be [d] bought by, or sold to, a citizen or his slave through
retail
channels. The proper place for ‘retail’ trading (as it’s generally called) in corn and wine is the foreigners’ market, where foreigners are to sell these goods to craftsmen and their slaves; and when the butchers have cut up the animals, it is to foreigners that they must dispose of the meat. Any foreigner who wishes may buy any kind of firewood wholesale any day from the district agents and sell it to other foreigners whenever he likes and in whatever [e] quantity he pleases.

All other goods and equipment needed by various people should be brought to the general market and put up for sale in the place allotted them. (The Guardians of the Laws and the Market-Wardens, in conjunction with the City-Wardens, will have marked out suitable spaces and decided where each article is to be sold.) Here they must exchange money for goods and goods for money, and never hand over anything without getting something in return; anyone who doesn’t bother about this and trusts the other party must grin and bear it whether or not he gets
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what he’s owed, because for such transactions there will be no legal remedy. If the amount or value of the object bought or sold is greater than is allowed by the law which forbids increase or diminution of a man’s property above or below a given limit, the excess must immediately be registered with the Guardians of the Laws; but if there is a deficiency, it must be cancelled. The same rules are to apply to the registration of the property of resident aliens.

Anyone who wishes may come to live in the state on specified conditions. (a) There will be a community of foreigners open to anyone willing and [b] able to join it. (b) The alien must have a skill and (c) not stay longer than twenty years from the date of registration. (d) He need pay no alien-tax, even a small one (apart from behaving himself), nor any tax on any purchase or sale. (e) When his time has expired, he is to collect his possessions and depart. (f) If during this period he has distinguished himself for some notable service to the state, and is confident he can persuade the council and the assembly to grant his request for an official extension of his [c] stay, either temporarily or for life, he should present himself and make out his case; and he must be allowed to enjoy to the full whatever concessions the state grants him. (g) Children of resident aliens must be craftsmen, and (h) their period of residence must be deemed to have started when they reach the age of fifteen. On these conditions they may stay for twenty years, after which they must depart to whatever destination they like. If they wish to stay longer, they may do so provided they obtain permission as already specified. (i) Before a departing alien leaves he must cancel the entries that he originally made in the records kept in the custody of the officials.

1
. Orpheus’ singing was said to be able to charm animals and trees and even rocks. Thamyras was a bard who boasted that not even the Muses could rival his music.

2
. The translation of this parenthesis is something of a paraphrase of some difficult and obscure Greek.

3
. Military exercises.

4
. This speech and Clinias’ next one are attributed to Megillus in the Budé text.

5
. The runner in a sixth race? The passage is confusingly written. (A ‘length’ = a ‘stade’ = about 200 yards; 60 lengths = about 7 miles; 100 lengths = about 11½ miles.)

6
. A form of wrestling-cum-boxing that permitted kicking and choking as well.

7
. In myth, Laius (Oedipus’ father) abducted his host Pelops’ son, thus inaugurating homosexual attachments between men and teenage boys.

8
. Thyestes had intercourse with his own daughter; Oedipus married his own mother.

9
. A proverbial expression of disapproval for fundamental social and political change. Cf. 684e.

10
. See 761d–e.

11
. The autumn equinox.

12
. This offense is thus brought under the umbrella of the general law mentioned in 842e–843b.

13
. For these officials, see 759d–e.

14
. Reading
trit
ē
in b8.

Book IX

A
THENIAN
: Next, in accordance with the natural arrangement of our legal
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code, will come the legal proceedings that arise out of all the occupations we have mentioned up till now. To some extent, so far as agricultural affairs and related topics are concerned, we have already listed the acts that should be prosecuted, but the most serious have yet to be specified. Our next task is to enumerate these one by one, mentioning what penalty [b] each should attract and to which court it should be assigned.

C
LINIAS
: That’s right.

A
THENIAN
: The very composition of all these laws we are on the point of framing is, in a way, a disgrace: after all, we’re assuming we have a state which will be run along excellent lines and achieve every condition favorable to the practice of virtue. The mere idea that a state of this kind could give birth to a man affected by the worst forms of wickedness found in other countries, so that the legislator has to anticipate his appearance by threats—this, as I said, is in a way a disgrace. It means we have to lay [c] down laws against these people, to deter them and punish them when they appear, on the assumption that they will certainly do so. However, unlike the ancient legislators, we are not framing laws for heroes and sons of gods. The lawgivers of that age, according to the story told nowadays, were descended from gods and legislated for men of similar stock. But we are human beings, legislating in the world today for the children of humankind, and we shall give no offense by our fear that one of our citizens will turn out to be, so to speak, a ‘tough egg’, whose character [d] will be so ‘hard-boiled’ as to resist softening; powerful as our laws are, they may not be able to tame such people, just as heat has no effect on tough beans. For their dismal sake, the first law I shall produce will deal with robbery from temples, in case anyone dares to commit this crime. Now in view of the correct education our citizens will have received, we should hardly want any of them to catch this disease, nor is there much reason to expect that they will. Their slaves, however, as well as foreigners and the slaves of foreigners, may well make frequent attempts at such
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crimes. For their sake principally—but still with an eye on the general weakness of human nature—I’ll spell out the law about robbery from temples, and about all the other similar crimes which are difficult or even impossible to cure.

Following the practice we agreed earlier, we must first compose preambles, in the briefest possible terms, to stand at the head of all these laws. Take a man who is incited by day and kept awake at night by an evil impulse which drives him to steal some holy object. You might talk to him and exhort him as follows:

[b] ‘My dear fellow, this evil impulse that at present drives you to go robbing temples comes from a source that is neither human nor divine. It is a sort of frenzied goad, innate in mankind as a result of crimes of long ago that remained unexpiated; it travels around working doom and destruction, and you should make every effort to take precautions against it. Now, take note what these precautions are. When any of these thoughts enters your head, seek the rites that free a man from guilt; seek the shrines of the gods who avert evil, and supplicate them; seek the company of men [c] who have a reputation in your community for being virtuous. Listen to them as they say that every man should honor what is fine and just—try to bring yourself to say it too. But run away from the company of the wicked, with never a backward glance. If by doing this you find that your disease abates somewhat, well and good; if not, then you should look upon death as the preferable alternative, and rid yourself of life.’

These are the overtures we make to those who think of committing all these impious deeds that bring about the ruin of the state. When a man obeys us, we should silently omit the actual law; but in cases of disobedience, we must change our tune after the overture and sing this resounding strain:

[d] 41. If a man is caught thieving from a temple and is (a) a foreigner or slave,
a brand
of his misfortune shall be made on his face and hands, and he shall be whipped, the number of lashes to be decided by his judges. Then he shall be thrown out beyond the boundaries of the land, naked.

(Perhaps paying this penalty will teach him restraint and make him a better man: after all, no penalty imposed by law has an evil purpose, but [e] generally achieves one of two effects: it makes the person who pays the penalty either more virtuous or less wicked.)

(b) If a citizen is ever shown to be responsible for such a crime—to have perpetrated, that is, some great and unspeakable offense against the gods or his parents or the state,
the penalty
is death.

The judge should consider him as already beyond cure; he should bear in mind the kind of education and upbringing the man has enjoyed from his earliest years, and how after all this he has still not abstained from acts of the greatest evil. But the very tiniest of evils will be what the offender suffers, indeed, he will be of service to others, by being a lesson to them
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when he is ignominiously banished from sight beyond the borders of the state. And if the children and family escape taking on the character of the father, they should be held in honor and win golden opinions for the spirit and persistence with which they have shunned evil and embraced the good.