Complete Works (323 page)

E. When children inflict this kind of wound on their parents, it is essential for the judges to be parents over sixty years of age who have children of their own and not merely adopted ones. If a man is found guilty,
these judges
must decide whether a man who could do such a thing as this should die, or whether the penalty should be something even more severe,
¹²
or perhaps something a trifle less severe. None of the relations of
[879]
the culprit should act as a judge, not even if he is of the age required by law.

F. (a) If a slave wounds a free man in anger,
the owner
must hand him over to the wounded man, who may treat him in whatever way he likes.

(b) If the owner fails to hand him over,
he must
remedy the damage himself.

(c) If anyone alleges that the affair is the result of collusion between the slave and the wounded party, he must contest the point at law. If he does not win the case,
he must
pay triple damages.

If he does win, he must prosecute the author of the collusion with the slave on a charge of kidnapping.

56. If anyone involuntarily wounds someone else,
[b]
he must
pay simple damages. (No legislator is capable of regulating the workings of chance.) The judges are to be the same as those appointed to try children who wound their parents; and they will have the duty of assessing the amount of the damages.

A
THENIAN
: All the injuries we have so far mentioned involve the use of violence, and so too do the various kinds of assault. In these cases, the point that every man, woman and child should bear in mind is this:

Age is always very much more highly regarded than youth, and this is [c] so both among the gods and among men, if they intend to live in security and happiness. Therefore, the assault of an older man by a younger in public is a disgusting sight, and the gods hate to see it. No young man who is struck by an old man should ever make a fuss, but put up with his bad temper, and so establish a claim to similar respect when he himself grows old.

Our law, then, should run as follows:

Everyone in our community must show, by his words and actions, respect for his senior. A man should avoid crossing any person (male or female) who is twenty years older than himself, regarding him or her in the same way as he would his father or mother. For the sake of the gods of birth, he must always keep himself from striking anyone old enough [d] to have been his parent. Similarly, he must refrain from striking a foreigner, whether the latter is a long-established resident or a recent immigrant. He must never go so far as to punish such a person by hitting him, either by attacking him first, or in self-defense.

57 A. (a) If he thinks the foreigner is unruly and insolent in an attack on himself, and needs to be punished, he must arrest him and take him, without hitting him, to the court of the City-Wardens, so that the foreigner may learn to banish all thoughts of ever striking a citizen again. [e] The City-Wardens must take the man and interrogate him, with proper respect for the god who is the protector of foreigners. If in fact the foreigner seems to have been in the wrong in striking the citizen,
the City-Wardens
must put a stop to this unruliness, so characteristic of a foreigner; they must give him as many strokes of the lash as will equal the number of blows he himself inflicted.

(b) If he is not in the wrong,
they must
warn and rebuke the man who made the arrest, and dismiss the pair of them.

B. If one man strikes another who
(a) is about the same age, or
(b) is older, but has no children,
whether the attacker is an old man striking an old man, or a young man
[880]
striking a young man, the man attacked must defend himself by natural means—with his own bare hands, without a weapon. But if a man over forty years of age has the face to fight someone, whether

(i) he strikes the first blow, or

(ii) fights in self-defense,

he will
get the reputation of being an uncivilized boor with the manners of a slave, and this ignominious punishment will serve him right.

A man who is easily persuaded by these words of exhortation will give us no trouble; but stubborn people, who ignore the preamble, ought to be ready to take more notice of the following regulations:

C. If anyone strikes a man twenty years or more his senior, any bystander, [b] if he is neither of the same age nor younger than the combatants, should separate them,
or be treated
under the law as a wretched coward. If he is of the same age as the person attacked, or younger, he should go to his assistance as if it were his own brother or father being wronged, or some still more senior relative.

D. In addition, the man who dares to strike his senior as defined
¹³
must stand trial for assault. If he loses the case,
[c]
he must
be imprisoned for not less than a year. If the court fixes a longer imprisonment, the period it decides on shall stand.

E. If a foreigner, or a resident alien, strikes a man twenty years or more his senior, the same regulation [57C] about assistance from passers-by shall be enforced in the same way as before.

(a) A man found guilty of such a charge, if he is a foreigner not resident in the state,
must pay
his penalty by spending two years in prison.

(b) If it is a resident alien who is in breach of these regulations,
he must
go to prison for three years, except that the court may specify [d] a longer period by way of penalty.

F. The passer-by who comes across any of these cases of assault and does not give assistance as required by law
must be
fined: a member of the first property-class one hundred drachmas, a member of the second fifty drachmas, a member of the third thirty drachmas, and a member of the fourth twenty drachmas. The court in such cases is to consist of the Generals, Company-Commanders, Tribe-Leaders and Cavalry-Commanders.

Some laws, it seems, are made for the benefit of honest men, to teach them the rules of association that have to be observed if they are to live [e] in friendship; others are made for those who refuse to be instructed and whose naturally tough natures have not been softened enough to stop them turning to absolute vice. It will be they who have prompted the points I am just going to make, and it is for their benefit that the lawgiver will be compelled to produce his laws, although he would wish never to find any occasion to use them. Consider a man who will dare to lay hands on his father or mother or their forebears by way of violent assault. He will fear neither the wrath of the gods above nor the punishments said to
[881]
await him in the grave; he will hold the ancient and universal tradition in contempt, on the strength of his ‘knowledge’ in a field where he is in fact a total ignoramus. He will therefore turn criminal, and will stand in need of some extreme deterrent. Death, however, is not an extreme and final penalty; the sufferings said to be in store for these people in the world to come are much more extreme than that. But although the threat of these sufferings is no idle one, it has no deterrent effect at all on souls like these. If it did, we should never have to deal with assaults on mothers, and [b] wicked and presumptuous attacks on other forebears. I conclude, therefore, that the punishments men suffer for these crimes here on earth while they are alive should as far as possible equal the penalties beyond the grave.

Our next enactment, then, should run as follows:

G. If a man who is not in the grip of insanity dares to strike his father or mother, or their father or mother, the first point is that the passerby must render assistance as provided in former cases.

(a)(i) If the resident alien renders assistance,
he shall
be invited to a front seat at the games;

(ii) if he does not render assistance,

he must
go into permanent exile from the land.

(b)(i) If the non-resident alien renders assistance, [c]
he shall
be commended.

(ii) If he does not render assistance,

he must
be reprimanded.

(c)(i) If a slave renders assistance,
he shall
be set free.

(ii) If he does not render assistance,

he must
receive a hundred strokes of the lash.

If the crime was committed in the market-place, the whipping should be administered by the Market-Wardens; if in the city but not in the market, by the City Warden in residence; if somewhere in the countryside, by the chief Country-Wardens.

(d) Everyone of citizen birth who passes by, whether man, woman or child, must shout ‘you wicked monster’ at the attacker, and repel him. [d] If the passer-by makes no attempt to repel him,
he must
be liable under the law to a curse from Zeus, guardian of the family and protector of parents.

H. If a man is convicted of an assault on his parents,
he must
be permanently rusticated from the city to some other part of the country, and be banned from all sacred places.

I. (a) If he returns to the city,
he must
be punished by death,
(b) If he does not keep away from sacred places,
the Country-Wardens
must punish him by a whipping, and by any other method at their discretion.

J. (a) If any free man eats or drinks in company with such a person, or associates with him in some other similar fashion, even by deliberately [e] failing to cut him on meeting,
he must
not enter any temple, or market-place, or any part of the city, before he has been purified, bearing in mind that he has come into contact with a misfortune that brings a curse upon a man.

K. If he disobeys the law and in defiance of it pollutes temples and city,
any official
who discovers the fact and does not take the man to court will find that this is one of the most serious charges against him at his scrutiny.
¹⁴

L. If a slave strikes a free man, foreigner or citizen, the passer-by who
[882]
does not render assistance
must pay
the penalty prescribed for his property-class.

M. The passers-by in conjunction with the person attacked must bind the slave and hand him over to his victim; the victim must take him, [b] put him in chains, and give him as many strokes of the whip as he likes, provided he does not diminish the value of the slave to his master; he should then hand him over to the latter’s legal ownership. This legal ownership must be subject to the following provision. Any slave who has struck a free man, other than on the orders of the officials, must be [c] tied up; his master must receive him from the assaulted person and not release him before the slave persuades his victim that he deserves to live free of constraint.

The same regulations should apply in all cases (a) of women against each other, (b) of women against men, and (c) of men against women.

1
. See 719e–720e.

2
. For Tyrtaeus, see 629a and note. Lycurgus was the traditional founder of the Spartan constitution. Solon legislated for Athens in 594 and wrote poems justifying his measures.

3
. Reading
biaiou
in b8.

4
. Reading …
kai dox
ē
s, tou al
ē
thous peri to ariston ephesis, triton…
in b7.

5
. Assuming that the ‘third’ category here is equivalent to that of ‘ignorance’ as a cause of wrongdoing (863c–d), the reference here is to the ‘simple’ and ‘double’ forms of ignorance there noted, of which the latter was divided into that ‘with power’ and that ‘without power’. That would yield ‘three types’, as the Athenian goes on to say here.

6
. See the lists at 697b ff. and 743e.

7
. 855c–856a.

8
. Reading
tout
ō
n
in d7.

9
. That is, for those who
do
kill with their own hand.

10
. Reading
m
ē
for
ē
d
ē
in c6.

11
. See 866d–867c.

12
. Such as deprivation of burial.

13
. I.e., someone twenty years older.

14
. At the end of their term officials had to submit to an examination of their conduct in office before being discharged; see 945e–947b.

Book X

[884]
A
THENIAN
: So much for cases of assault. Now let’s state a single comprehensive rule to cover acts of violence. It will run more or less like this. No one may seize or make off with other people’s property, nor use any of his neighbor’s possessions without getting the permission of the owner. Contempt for this principle has always been (and still is and always will be) the source of all the evils just mentioned. But there are other acts of violence, too, of which the worst are the insolence and outrageous actions of the young. These actions are most serious when they affect sacred objects; and the damage is particularly grave when it is done to sacred property that also belongs to the public, or is held in common by the
[885]
members of a sub-division of the state, such as a tribe or some similar association. Second, and second in order of gravity, comes wanton damage to sacred objects that are privately owned, particularly tombs; third come attacks (apart from those already dealt with) on parents. A fourth category of outrageous conduct is when someone ignores the wishes of the authorities and seizes or removes or uses something belonging to them without their permission; and any violations of the civil rights of the private citizen which demand legal redress will constitute a fifth class. We have to frame a comprehensive law that will cover each individual case. As for robbery from temples, whether clandestine or open and violent, we have already specified in general terms the appropriate punishment;
¹
but our statement [b] of the penalty for offensive remarks about the gods or outrageous actions against their interests should be prefaced by these words of exhortation: