Complete Works (322 page)

51. If someone is found dead, and the killer is not known and cannot be discovered by diligent efforts to trace him,
the proclamations
should be the same as laid down in former cases, being made, however, against ‘the murderer’: when the prosecutor has established his case, he must give notice in the market-place to the killer and convicted murderer of so-and-so, that he must not enter holy places nor [b] any part of the country of the deceased; he must threaten that if he does turn up and is recognized, he will be executed, denied burial, and his body ejected from the country of his victim.

So much, then, for the law on that sort of murder. In the following conditions, however, it will be right to regard the killer as innocent:

52. (a) If he catches a thief entering his home at night to steal his goods, and kills him,
he shall
be innocent.

(b) If he kills a footpad in self-defense, [c]
he shall
be innocent.

(c) If anyone sexually violates a free woman or boy,
he may
be killed with impunity by the victim of the violence, or by the victim’s father or brothers or sons.

(d) If a husband discovers his wedded wife being raped and kills the attacker,
the law
will regard him as innocent.

(e) If a man kills someone while saving the life of his father (provided the latter is not committing a crime), or while rescuing his mother or children or brothers, or the mother of his children,
he shall
be completely innocent. [d]

A
THENIAN
: Let us assume we have completed our legislation concerning the training and education that the soul needs during a man’s life (a life that is worth the living if these needs are met, but not if they are not), and the penalties that should apply in cases of death by violence. We have discussed, too, the training and education of the body, and the related topic in this case is the violent treatment, voluntary or involuntary, of one man by another. So far as we can, we must distinguish the various categories, see how many there are, and say what penalties will be appropriate for each. It looks as if this could properly form the next subject of our legislation. [e]

Even the biggest bungler you could find among would-be legislators will put cases of wounding and mutilation immediately after cases of murder. Woundings ought to be distinguished as murders were: some are inflicted involuntarily, some in anger, some through fear, while others are committed voluntarily and with premeditation. A preliminary address must be given about all these categories as follows:

It is vital that men should lay down laws for themselves and live in obedience to them; otherwise they will be indistinguishable from wild
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animals of the utmost savagery. The reason is this: no man has sufficient natural gifts
both
to discern what benefits men in their social relationships
and
to be constantly ready and able to put his knowledge to the best practical use. The first difficulty is to realize that the proper object of true political skill is not the interest of private individuals but the common good. This is what knits a state together, whereas private interests make [b] it disintegrate. If the public interest is well served, rather than the private, then the individual and the community alike are benefited.

The second difficulty is that even if a man did get an adequate theoretical grasp of the truth of all this, he might then attain a position of absolute control over a state, with no one to call him to account. In these circumstances he would never have the courage of his convictions; he would never devote his life to promoting the welfare of the community as his first concern, making his private interests take second place to the public good. His human nature will always drive him to look to his own advantage and the lining of his own pocket. An irrational avoidance of pain and [c] pursuit of pleasure will dominate his character, so that he will prefer these two aims to better and more righteous paths. Blindness, self-imposed, will ultimately lead the man’s whole being, and the entire state, into a morass of evil. But if ever by the grace of God some natural genius were born, and had the chance to assume such power, he would have no need of laws to control him. Knowledge is unsurpassed by any law or regulation; [d] reason, if it is genuine and really enjoys its natural freedom, should have universal power: it is not right that it should be under the control of anything else, as though it were some sort of slave. But as it is, such a character is nowhere to be found, except a hint of it here and there. That is why we need to choose the second alternative, law and regulation, which embody general principles, but cannot provide for every individual case.

I have pointed this out because we are now going to settle the penalty or fine to be imposed on someone who has wounded or harmed someone else. Anyone could quite easily and properly take us up on any point and [e] ask: ‘What attacker, what wound, what victim do you mean? How was the attack made, and when? The circumstances of these cases differ in a thousand and one different ways.’ Now to leave all these details to the judgment of the courts is impracticable, and equally impracticable to leave them none. In every case, however, one point in particular simply must be left to the courts: in each separate instance, they must decide whether the crime did in fact take place, or not. But on the other hand it is hardly
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feasible to produce laws oneself to cover every case, serious or trivial; one can scarcely leave the courts no discretion at all about the fine or punishment that ought to be imposed on a criminal of this kind.

C
LINIAS
: Well, then, where do we go from here?

A
THENIAN
: We conclude that some details ought to be left to the courts, but not others; these should be regulated by the legislator.

C
LINIAS
: Which points, then, ought to be in the legal code, and which ought to be referred to the judgment of the courts?

A
THENIAN
: In this connection, here’s the next thing to notice: sometimes [b] we find in a state that the juries are useless, dumb things; the individual jurymen keep their opinions a mystery known only to themselves and give their decisions by secret ballot. It’s even more serious when so far from keeping silent when they hear a case they make a tremendous disturbance as though they were in a theatre, and hurl shouts of applause or disapproval at the speaker on either side in turn. All this puts the state at large into an awkward predicament. It is a wretched business to be forced to lay down laws for courts of that type, but if one is forced, the right thing to do is to hand over to them the assessment of penalties only in very trivial cases, providing for the majority in explicit laws of one’s own—[c] if, that is, one ever does legislate for a state organized in this way. But in a country where the regulation of the courts is as satisfactory as can be achieved and the jurymen-to-be have received a good education and been examined by all kinds of tests, it is right and proper to grant them complete discretion on all points to do with the punishments or fines that convicted criminals should suffer. In the present case we cannot be blamed if we leave to their discretion the most frequent and important points that arise, [d] because they are points which even inadequately educated jurymen could grasp and apply when they have to give each individual crime a penalty appropriate both to the damage done and to the wickedness which is at the root of the actual deed. We believe, in fact, that the people for whom we are legislating may well turn out quite conspicuously able judges of these matters, so we should leave most decisions to them. Even so, in enacting earlier parts of our legal code, we mentioned the practice of [e] sketching some examples of penalties—models for the judges to imitate, to stop them exceeding the due limits of justice. We suited the action to the word; it was the right course then and it is the right course now, as I once again resume our legislation.

Our law on wounding, then, should be written in the following terms:

53 A. If a man deliberately intends to kill a fellow citizen (unless the latter is one of those whose death is sanctioned by the law [52(a-e)]), and wounds him without being able to kill him, no pity should be wasted on the man who has inflicted a wound with that sort of intention:
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he should be treated with no more respect than a killer, and made to stand trial for murder.

But we should have due respect for the luck that has saved him from total ruin, and for his guardian angel too, who in pity for the attacker and the wounded man has stopped the injury of the latter from proving fatal, and prevented the disastrous ill luck of the former from bringing a curse down upon his head. We should duly thank his guardian spirit and not obstruct its wishes:

53 A. cont.
He who
has inflicted the wound shall be spared the death penalty, but [b] he must suffer life-long banishment to some neighboring state, with full freedom to enjoy all the income from his property; he must pay full compensation for whatever injury he has done the wounded man, the sum to be assessed by the court that tries the case. (The court will consist of the same people who would have tried him for murder if his victim had died of the wounds sustained.)

B. If with similar premeditation
(a) a child wounds his parents, or
(b) a slave wounds his master,
death
is to be the penalty.

C. If similarly
(a) a brother wounds a brother or a sister, or
(b) a sister wounds a brother or a sister,
[c] and is convicted of wounding with premeditation,
death
is to be the penalty.

D If with intent to kill
(a) a wife wounds her husband, or
(b) a husband wounds his wife,
he or she
must go into permanent exile. If they have sons or daughters who are still in their minority, the trustees must administer their property in trust, and care for the children as though they were orphans. If the offspring are adult, they should themselves take possession of the property, and be under no obligation to support the exile.
¹⁰
If anyone [d] who succumbs to such misfortune is childless, the relatives of the exile, as far as the children of the cousins on both the male and female side, must hold a meeting, and in consultation with the Guardians of the Laws appoint an heir for this property, the 5040th in the state.

(They should look at the matter in the following light: none of the 5040 farms belongs to its occupant or his family in general as much as to the state, which is entitled to it not only as a piece of public property but also [e] as its own private possession; and the state ought to do its best to keep its own properties as holy and prosperous as possible.) Therefore:

54. When one of the properties falls away from this condition of holiness and prosperity to such an extent that the possessor leaves no children to succeed him, being unmarried, or married but childless, and meets his end convicted of
(a) (i) deliberate murder, or

(ii) some other crime against gods or citizens for which the death penalty is specifically laid down by law, or if

(b) someone without male issue goes into permanent exile,
first of all
, this property must be cleansed and purified according to law;
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then the relatives must hold the meeting we mentioned just now, and in consultation with the Guardians of the Laws pick out a family that has the best reputation for virtue of all the families in the state and is at the same time fortunate enough to have produced several children. One of these they must adopt on behalf of the deceased’s father and forebears, who will receive him as their son; from them he will take his name, which should be an omen of good fortune. The relatives should pray that as a result of his adoption he will bring them children, and guard the hearth and look after the family affairs, both sacred and secular, with greater success than his adoptive father enjoyed. In this [b] way they should install him, according to law, as heir to the property.
(c) When such disasters as we have mentioned [54.(a,b)] overwhelm the sinner,
they should
let him lie nameless in his grave, childless and deprived of his family estate.

We can see that it is not universally true that one district extends right up to the boundary of another. In some cases there is a no man’s land in between, which will extend so as to touch either boundary and occupy an intermediate position between the two. This, we said,
¹¹
was true of an act done in anger: it falls somewhere between voluntary and involuntary. Our regulations concerning wounding inflicted in anger should therefore run as follows:

55 A. If a man is found guilty, and [c]

(a) the wound turns out to be curable,
he must
pay double damages;
(b) if it is incurable,
he must
pay quadruple damages.
(c) If he has inflicted a wound which, though curable, makes the wounded man feel acutely embarrassed and ashamed,
he must
pay triple damages.

B. If one man wounds another and injures not only his victim but the state, by rendering him unable to defend his fatherland against the enemy,
he must
, in addition to the other penalties, make restitution to the state for the loss it has sustained, viz. he must perform not only his own military service but that of the incapacitated person as well by serving [d] in the army on his behalf.

C. If he fails so to serve,
he shall
be liable under the law to a charge of evading military service, at the hands of anyone who wishes.

A. cont. The assessment of the damages, double, triple, or quadruple, must be made by the judges who found him guilty.

D. If one relative wounds another in any of these ways,
the fellow clansmen
and close relatives, male and female, as far as sons of cousins on both the male and female side, must hold a meeting, and [e] when they have reached their verdict, they must entrust the assessment to the natural parents. If the assessment is challenged, the assessment of the relatives on the male side must be taken as final. If they cannot agree themselves, they must, in the end, hand over the matter to the Guardians of the Laws.