Plato: Laws Book 3

[676a]

Athenian
So much for that, then! Now, what are we to say about the origin of government? Would not the best and easiest way of discerning it be from this standpoint?

Clinias
What standpoint?

Athenian
That from which one should always observe the progress of States as they move towards either goodness or badness.

Clinias
What point is that?

Athenian
The observation, as I suppose, of an infinitely long period of time [676b] and of the variations therein occurring.

Clinias
Explain your meaning.

Athenian
Tell me now: do you think you could ever ascertain the space of time that has passed since cities came into existence and men lived under civic rule?

Clinias
Certainly it would be no easy task.

Athenian
But you can easily see that it is vast and immeasurable?

Clinias
That I most certainly can do.

Athenian
During this time, have not thousands upon thousands of States come into existence, and, on a similar computation, just as many perished? [676c] And have they not in each case exhibited all kinds of constitutions over and over again? And have they not changed at one time from small to great, at another from great to small, and changed also from good to bad and from bad to good?

Clinias
Necessarily.

Athenian
Of this process of change let us discover, if we can, the cause; for this, perhaps, would show us what is the primary origin of constitutions, as well as their transformation.

Clinias
You are right; and we must all exert ourselves,—you to expound your view about them, and we to keep pace with you. [677a]

Athenian
Do you consider that there is any truth in the ancient tales?

Clinias
What tales?

Athenian
That the world of men has often been destroyed by floods, plagues, and many other things, in such a way that only a small portion of the human race has survived.

Clinias
Everyone would regard such accounts as perfectly credible.

Athenian
Come now, let us picture to ourselves one of the many catastrophes,—namely, that which occurred once upon a time through the Deluge.1

Clinias
And what are we to imagine about it? [677b]

Athenian
That the men who then escaped destruction must have been mostly herdsmen of the hills, scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops.

Clinias
Evidently.

Athenian
Moreover, men of this kind must necessarily have been unskilled in the arts generally, and especially in such contrivances as men use against one another in cities for purposes of greed and rivalry and all the other villainies which they devise one against another. [677c]

Clinias
It is certainly probable.

Athenian
Shall we assume that the cities situated in the plains and near the sea were totally destroyed at the time?

Clinias
Let us assume it.

Athenian
And shall we say that all implements were lost, and that everything in the way of important arts or inventions that they may have had,—whether concerned with politics or other sciences,— perished at that time? For, supposing that things had remained all that time ordered just as they are now, how, my good sir, could anything new have ever been invented? [677d]

Clinias
Do you mean that these things were unknown to the men of those days for thousands upon thousands of years, and that one or two thousand years ago some of them were revealed to Daedalus, some to Orpheus, some to Palamedes, musical arts to Marsyas and Olympus, lyric to Amphion, and, in short, a vast number of others to other persons—all dating, so to say, from yesterday or the day before?

Athenian
Are you aware, Clinias, that you have left out your friend who was literally a man of yesterday?

Clinias
Is it Epimenides2 you mean?

Athenian
Yes, I mean him. For he far outstripped everybody you had, my friend, by that invention of his of which he was the actual producer, as you Cretans say, although Hesiod3 had divined it and spoken of it long before. [677e]

Clinias
We do say so.

Athenian
Shall we, then, state that, at the time when the destruction took place, human affairs were in this position: there was fearful and widespread desolation over a vast tract of land; most of the animals were destroyed, and the few herds of oxen and flocks of goats that happened to survive afforded at the first but scanty sustenance [678a] to their herdsmen?

Clinias
Yes.

Athenian
And as to the matters with which our present discourse is concerned—States and statecraft and legislation,—do we think they could have retained any memory whatsoever, broadly speaking, of such matters?

Clinias
By no means.

Athenian
So from those men, in that situation, there has sprung the whole of our present order—States and constitutions, arts and laws, with a great amount both of evil and of good?

Clinias
How do you mean? [678b]

Athenian
Do we imagine, my good Sir, that the men of that age, who were unversed in the ways of city life—many of them noble, many ignoble,—were perfect either in virtue or in vice?

Clinias
Well said! We grasp your meaning.

Athenian
As time went on and our race multiplied, all things advanced—did they not?—to the condition which now exists.

Clinias
Very true.

Athenian
But, in all probability, they advanced, not all at once, but by small degrees, during an immense space of time. [678c]

Clinias
Yes, that is most likely.

Athenian
For they all, I fancy, felt as it were still ringing in their ears a dread of going down from the highlands to the plains.

Clinias
Of course.

Athenian
And because there were so few of them round about in those days, were they not delighted to see one another, but for the fact that means of transport, whereby they might visit one another by sea or land, had practically all perished along with the arts? Hence intercourse, I imagine, was not very easy. [678d] For iron and bronze and all the metals in the mines had been flooded and had disappeared; so that it was extremely difficult to extract fresh metal; and there was a dearth, in consequence, of felled timber. For even if there happened to be some few tools still left somewhere on the mountains, these were soon worn out, and they could not be replaced by others until men had rediscovered the art of metal-working.

Clinias
They could not.

Athenian
Now, how many generations, do we suppose, had passed before this took place? [678e]

Clinias
A great many, evidently.

Athenian
And during all this period, or even longer, all the arts that require iron and bronze and all such metals must have remained in abeyance?

Clinias
Of course.

Athenian
Moreover, civil strife and war also disappeared during that time, and that for many reasons.

Clinias
How so?

Athenian
In the first place, owing to their desolate state, they were kindly disposed and friendly towards one another; and secondly, they had no need to quarrel about food. [679a] For they had no lack of flocks and herds (except perhaps some of them at the outset), and in that age these were what men mostly lived on: thus they were well supplied with milk and meat, and they procured further supplies of food, both excellent and plentiful, by hunting. They were also well furnished with clothing and coverlets and houses, and with vessels for cooking and other kinds; for no iron is required for the arts of moulding and weaving, [679b] which two arts God gave to men to furnish them with all these necessaries, in order that the human race might have means of sprouting and increase whenever it should fall into such a state of distress. Consequently, they were not excessively poor, nor were they constrained by stress of poverty to quarrel one with another; and, on the other hand, since they were without gold and silver, they could never have become rich. Now a community which has no communion with either poverty or wealth is generally the one in which the noblest characters will be formed; [679c] for in it there is no place for the growth of insolence and injustice, of rivalries and jealousies. So these men were good, both for these reasons and because of their simple-mindedness, as it is called; for, being simple-minded, when they heard things called bad or good, they took what was said for gospel-truth and believed it. For none of them had the shrewdness of the modern man to suspect a falsehood; but they accepted as true the statements made about gods and men, and ordered their lives by them. Thus they were entirely of the character we have just described. [679d]

Clinias
Certainly Megillus and I quite agree with what you say.

Athenian
And shall we not say that people living in this fashion for many generations were bound to be unskilled, as compared with either the antediluvians or the men of today, and ignorant of arts in general and especially of the arts of war as now practised by land and sea, including those warlike arts which, disguised under the names of law-suits and factions, are peculiar to cities, contrived as they are with every device of word and deed to inflict mutual hurt and injury; [679e] and that they were also more simple and brave and temperate, and in all ways more righteous? And the cause of this state of things we have already explained.

Clinias
Quite true.

Athenian
We must bear in mind that the whole purpose of what we have said and of what we are going to say next is this,—that we may understand [680a] what possible need of laws the men of that time had, and who their lawgiver was.

Clinias
Excellent.

Athenian
Shall we suppose that those men had no need of lawgivers, and that in those days it was not as yet usual to have such a thing? For those born in that age of the world's history did not as yet possess the art of writing, but lived by following custom and what is called patriarchal law.

Clinias
That is certainly probable.

Athenian
But this already amounts to a kind of government.

Clinias
What kind? [680b]

Athenian
Everybody, I believe, gives the name of “headship” to the government which then existed,—and it still continues to exist to-day among both Greeks and barbarians in many quarters.4 And, of course, Homer mentions its existence in connection with the household system of the Cyclopes, where he says— “No halls of council and no laws are theirs, But within hollow caves on mountain heights Aloft they dwell, each making his own law. ” [680c]

  “For wife and child; of others reck they naught.
  ”
  Hom. Od. 9.112

Clinias
This poet of yours seems to have been a man of genius. We have also read other verses of his, and they were extremely fine; though in truth we have not read much of him, since we Cretans do not indulge much in foreign poetry.

Megillus
But we Spartans do, and we regard Homer as the best of them; all the same, the mode of life he describes is always Ionian rather than Laconian. [680d] And now he appears to be confirming your statement admirably, when in his legendary account he ascribes the primitive habits of the Cyclopes to their savagery.

Athenian
Yes, his testimony supports us; so let us take him as evidence that polities of this sort do sometimes come into existence.

Clinias
Quite right.

Athenian
Did they not originate with those people who lived scattered in separate clans or in single households, owing to the distress which followed after the catastrophes; for amongst these the eldest holds rule, owing to the fact that the rule proceeds from the parents, [680e] by following whom they form a single flock, like a covey of birds, and live under a patriarchal government and a kingship which is of all kingships the most just?

Clinias
Most certainly.

Athenian
Next, they congregate together in greater numbers, and form larger droves; and first they turn to farming on the hill-sides, [681a] and make ring-fences of rubble and walls to ward off wild beasts, till finally they have constructed a single large common dwelling.

Clinias
It is certainly probable that such was the course of events.

Athenian
Well, is not this also probable?

Clinias
What?

Athenian
That, while these larger settlements were growing out of the original small ones, each of the small settlements continued to retain, clan by clan, both the rule of the eldest [681b] and also some customs derived from its isolated condition and peculiar to itself. As those who begot and reared them were different, so these customs of theirs, relating to the gods and to themselves, differed, being more orderly where their forefathers had been orderly, and more brave where they had been brave; and as thus the fathers of each clan in due course stamped upon their children and children's children their own cast of mind, these people came (as we say) into the larger community furnished each with their own peculiar laws.

Clinias
Of course. [681c]

Athenian
And no doubt each clan was well pleased with its own laws, and less well with those of its neighbors.

Clinias
True.

Athenian
Unwittingly, as it seems, we have now set foot, as it were, on the starting-point of legislation.

Clinias
We have indeed.

Athenian
The next step necessary is that these people should come together and choose out some members of each clan who, after a survey of the legal usages of all the clans, shall notify publicly to the tribal leaders and chiefs (who may be termed their “kings”) which of those usages please them best, [681d] and shall recommend their adoption. These men will themselves be named “legislators,” and when they have established the chiefs as “magistrates,” and have framed an aristocracy, or possibly even a monarchy, from the existing plurality of “headships,” they will live under the constitution thus transformed.

Clinias
The next steps would certainly be such as you describe.

Athenian
Let us go on to describe the rise of a third form of constitution, in which are blended all kinds and varieties of constitutions, and of States as well.5 [681e]

Clinias
What form is that?

Athenian
The same that Homer himself mentioned next to the second, when he said that the third form arose in this way. His verses run thus— “Dardania he founded when as yet The Holy keep of Ilium was not built Upon the plain, a town for mortal folk, But still they dwelt upon the highland slopes Of many-fountained Ida. ”Hom. Il. 20.216 ff. [682a] Indeed, these verses of his, as well as those he utters concerning the Cyclopes, are in a kind of unison with the voices of both God and Nature. For being divinely inspired in its chanting, the poetic tribe, with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the truth of history.

Clinias
It certainly does.

Athenian
Now let us advance still further in the tale that now engages us; for possibly it may furnish some hint regarding the matter we have in view. Ought we not to do so? [682b]

Clinias
Most certainly.

Athenian
Ilium was founded, we say, after moving from the highlands down to a large and noble plain, on a hill of no great height which had many rivers flowing down from Ida above.

Clinias
So they say.

Athenian
And do we not suppose that this took place many ages after the Deluge?

Clinias
Many ages after, no doubt.

Athenian
At any rate they seem to have been strangely forgetful [682c] of the catastrophe now mentioned, since they placed their city, as described, under a number of rivers descending from the mount, and relied for their safety upon hillocks of no great height.

Clinias
So it is evident that they were removed by quite a long interval from that calamity.

Athenian
By this time, too, as mankind multiplied, many other cities had been founded.

Clinias
Of course.

Athenian
And these cities also made attacks on Ilium, probably by sea too, as well as by land, since by this time all made use of the sea fearlessly.

Clinias
So it appears. [682d]

Athenian
And after a stay of ten years the Achaeans sacked Troy.

Clinias
Very true.

Athenian
Now during this period of ten years, while the siege lasted, the affairs of each of the besiegers at home suffered much owing to the seditious conduct of the young men. For when the soldiers returned to their own cities and homes, [682e] these young people did not receive them fittingly and justly, but in such a way that there ensued a vast number of cases of death, slaughter, and exile. So they, being again driven out, migrated by sea; and because Dorieus6 was the man who then banded together the exiles, they got the new name of “Dorians,” instead of “Achaeans.” But as to all the events that follow this, you Lacedaemonians relate them all fully in your traditions.

Megillus
Quite true.

Athenian
And now—as it were by divine direction—we have returned once more to the very point in our discourse on laws where we made our digression,7 when we plunged into the subject of music and drinking-parties; and we can, so to speak, get a fresh grip upon the argument, now that it has reached this point,—the settlement of Lacedaemon, [683a] about which you said truly that it and Crete were settled under kindred laws. From the wandering course of our argument, and our excursion through various polities and settlements, we have now gained this much: we have discerned a first, a second and a third State,8 all, as we suppose, succeeding one another in the settlements which took place during vast ages of time. And now there has emerged this fourth State—or “nation,” if you so prefer—which was once upon a time in course of establishment and is now established. [683b] Now, if we can gather from all this which of these settlements was right and which wrong, and which laws keep safe what is kept safe, and which laws ruin what is mined, and what changes in what particulars would effect the happiness of the State,—then, O Megillus and Clinias, we ought to describe these things again, making a fresh start from the beginning,—unless we have some fault to find with our previous statements.

Megillus
I can assure you, Stranger, that if some god were to promise us that, [683c] in making this second attempt to investigate legislation, we shall listen to a discourse that is no worse and no shorter than that we have just been listening to, I for one would go a long way to hear it; indeed, this would seem quite a short day, although it is, as a matter of fact, close on midsummer.

Athenian
So it seems that we must proceed with our enquiry.

Megillus
Most certainly.

Athenian
Let us, then, place ourselves in imagination at that epoch when Lacedaemon, together with Argos and Messene and the adjoining districts, had become completely subject, [683d] Megillus, to your forefathers. They determined next, according to the tradition, to divide their host into three parts, and to establish three States,—Argos, Messene and Lacedaemon.

Megillus
Very true.

Athenian
And Temenus became King of Argos, Cresphontes of Messene, and Proclus and Eurysthenes of Lacedaemon.

Megillus
Of course.

Athenian
And all the men of that time swore that they would assist these kings [683e] if anyone should try to wreck their kingdoms.

Megillus
Quite so.

Athenian
Is the dissolution of a kingdom, or of any government that has ever yet been dissolved, caused by any other agency than that of the rulers themselves? Or, though we made this assertion a moment ago when we happened upon this subject, have we now forgotten it?9

Megillus
How could we possibly have forgotten?

Athenian
Shall we further confirm that assertion now? For we have come to the same view now, as it appears, in dealing with facts of history; so that we shall be examining it with reference not to a mere abstraction, [684a] but to real events. Now what actually took place was this: each of the three royal houses, and the cities under their sway, swore to one another,10 according to the laws, binding alike on ruler and subject, which they had made,—the rulers that, as time went on and the nation advanced, they would refrain from making their rule more severe, and the subjects that, so long as the rulers kept fast to their promise, they would never upset the monarchy themselves, nor would they allow others to do so; and they swore that the kings should aid both kings and peoples [684b] when wronged, and the peoples aid both peoples and kings. Was not that the way of it?

Megillus
It was.

Athenian
In the polities legally established—whether by the kings or others—in the three States, was not this the most important principle?

Megillus
What?

Athenian
That the other two States should always help against the third, whenever it disobeyed the laws laid down.

Megillus
Evidently.

Athenian
And surely most people insist on this,— [684c] that the lawgivers shall enact laws of such a kind that the masses of the people accept them willingly; just as one might insist that trainers or doctors should make their treatments or cures of men's bodies pleasurable.

Megillus
Exactly so.

Athenian
But in fact one often has to be content if one can bring a body into a sound and healthy state with no great amount of pain.

Megillus
Very true. [684d]

Athenian
The men of that age possessed also another advantage which helped not a little to facilitate legislation.11

Megillus
What was that?

Athenian
Their legislators, in their efforts to establish equality of property, were free from that worst of accusations which is commonly incurred in States with laws of a different kind, whenever anyone seeks to disturb the occupation of land, or to propose the abolition of debts, since he perceives that without these measures equality could never be fully secured. In such cases, if the lawgiver attempts to disturb any of these things, [684e] everyone confronts him with the cry, “Hands off,” and they curse him for introducing redistributions of land and remissions of debts, with the result that every man is rendered powerless. But the Dorians had this further advantage, that they were free from all dread of giving offence, so that they could divide up their land without dispute; and they had no large debts of old standing.12

Megillus
True

Athenian
How was it then, my good sirs, that their settlement and legislation turned out so badly? [685a]

Megillus
What do you mean? What fault have you to find with it?

Athenian
This, that whereas there were three States settled, two of the three13 speedily wrecked their constitution and their laws, and one only remained stable—and that was your State, Megillus.

Megillus
The question is no easy one.

Athenian
Yet surely in our consideration and enquiry into this subject, indulging in an old man's sober play with laws, we ought to proceed on our journey [685b] painlessly, as we said14 when we first started out.

Megillus
Certainly, we must do as you say.

Athenian
Well, what laws would offer a better subject for investigation than the laws by which those States were regulated? Or what larger or more famous States are there about whose settling we might enquire?

Megillus
It would be hard to mention better instances than these.

Athenian
It is fairly evident that the men of that age intended this organization of theirs to serve as an adequate protection [685c] not only for the Peloponnesus, but for the whole of Hellas as well, in case any of the barbarians should attack them just as the former dwellers around Ilium were emboldened to embark on the Trojan War through reliance on the Assyrian power as it had been in the reign of Ninus.15 For much of the splendor of that empire still survived and the people of that age stood in fear of its confederate power, just as we men of today dread the Great King. For since Troy was a part of the Assyrian empire, the second16 capture of Troy [685d] formed a grave charge against the Greeks. It was in view of all this that the Dorian host was at that time organizes and distributed amongst three States under brother princes, the sons of Heracles17; and men thought it admirably devised, and in its equipment superior even to the host that had sailed to Troy. For men reckoned, first, that in the sons of Heracles they had better chiefs than the Pelopidae,18 and further, [685e] that this army was superior in valor to the army which went to Troy, since the latter, which was Achaean, was worsted by the former, which was Dorian. Must we not suppose that it was in this way, and with this intention, that the men of that age organized themselves?

Megillus
Certainly.

Athenian
Is it not also probable that they would suppose this to be a stable arrangement, and likely to continue quite a long time, [686a] since they had shared together many toils and dangers, and were marshalled under leaders of a single family (their princes being brothers), and since, moreover, they had consulted a number of diviners and, amongst others, the Delphian Apollo?

Megillus
That is certainly probable.

Athenian
But it seems that these great expectations speedily vanished, except only, as we said, in regard to that small fraction, your State of Laconia; [686b] and ever since, up to the present day, this fraction has never ceased warring against the other two. For if the original intention had been realized, and if they had been in accord about their policy, it would have created a power invincible in war.

Megillus
It certainly would.

Athenian
How then, and by what means, was it destroyed? Is it not worth while to enquire by what stroke of fortune so grand a confederacy was wrecked?

Megillus
Yes for, if one passed over these examples, [686c] one would not be likely to find elsewhere either laws or constitutions which preserve interests thus fair and great, or, on the contrary, wreck them totally.

Athenian
Thus by a piece of good luck, as it seems, we have embarked on an enquiry of some importance.

Megillus
Undoubtedly.

Athenian
Now, my dear sir, do not men in general, like ourselves at the present moment, unconsciously fancy that every fine object they set eyes on would produce marvellous results, if only a man understood the right way to make a fine use of it? [686d] But for us to hold such an idea in regard to the matter before us would possibly be both wrong and against nature; and the same is true of all other cases where men hold such ideas.

Megillus
What is it you mean? And what shall we say is the special point of your remarks ?

Athenian
Why, my dear sir, I had a laugh at my own expense just now. For when I beheld this armament of which we are speaking, I thought it an amazingly fine thing, and that, if anyone had made a fine use of it at that time, it would have proved, as I said, [686e] a wonderful boon to the Greeks.

Megillus
And was it not quite right and sensible of you to say this, and of us to endorse it?

Athenian
Possibly; I conceive, however, that everyone, when he beholds a thing that is large, powerful and strong, is instantly struck by the conviction that, if its possessor knew how to employ an instrument of that magnitude and quality, he could make himself happy by many wonderful achievements. [687a]

Megillus
Is not that a right conviction? Or what is your view?

Athenian
Just consider what one ought to have in view in every instance, in order to justify the bestowal of such praise. And first, with regard to the matter now under discussion,—if the men who were then marshalling the army knew how to organize it properly, how would they have achieved success? Must it not have been by consolidating it firmly and by maintaining it perpetually, so that they should be both free themselves and masters over all others whom they chose, and so that both they and their children should do [687b] in general just what they pleased throughout the world of Greeks and barbarians alike? Are not these the reasons why they would be praised?

Megillus
Certainly.

Athenian
And in every case where a man uses the language of eulogy on seeing great wealth or eminent family distinctions or anything else of the kind, would it not be true to say that, in using it, he has this fact specially in mind,—that the possessor of such things is likely, just because of this, to realize all, or at least the most and greatest, of his desires.

Megillus
That is certainly probable. [687c]

Athenian
Come now, is there one object of desire—that now indicated by our argument—which is common to all men?

Megillus
What is that?

Athenian
The desire that, if possible, everything,—or failing that, all that is humanly possible—should happen in accordance with the demands of one's own heart.

Megillus
To he sure.

Athenian
Since this, then, is what we all wish always, alike in childhood and manhood and old age, it is for this, necessarily, that we should pray continually.

Megillus
Of course. [687d]

Athenian
Moreover, on behalf of our friends we will join in making the same prayer which they make on their own behalf.

Megillus
To be sure.

Athenian
And a son is a friend to his father, the boy to the man.

Megillus
Certainly.

Athenian
Yet the father will often pray the gods that the things which the son prays to obtain may in no wise he granted according to the son's prayers.

Megillus
Do you mean, when the son who is praying is still young and foolish?

Athenian
Yes, and also when the father, either through age or through the hot temper of youth, [687e] being devoid of all sense of right and justice, indulges in the vehement prayers of passion (like those of Theseus against Hippolytus19, when he met his luckless end), while the son, on the contrary, has a sense of justice,—in this case do you suppose that the son will echo his father's prayers?

Megillus
I grasp your meaning. You mean, as I suppose, that what a man ought to pray and press for is not that everything should follow his own desire, while his desire in no way follows his own reason; but it is the winning of wisdom that everyone of us, States and individuals alike, ought to pray for and strive after. [688a]

Athenian
Yes. And what is more, I would recall to your recollection, as well as to my own, how it was said20 (if you remember) at the outset that the legislator of a State, in settling his legal ordinances, must always have regard to wisdom. The injunction you gave was that the good lawgiver must frame all his laws with a view to war: I, on the other hand, maintained that, whereas by your injunction the laws would be framed with reference to one only of the four virtues, it was really essential [688b] to look to the whole of virtue, and first and above all to pay regard to the principal virtue of the four, which is wisdom and reason and opinion, together with the love and desire that accompany them. Now the argument has come hack again to the same point, and I now repeat my former statement,—in jest, if you will, or else in earnest; I assert that prayer is a perilous practice for him who is devoid of reason, and that what he obtains is the opposite of his desires. [688c] For I certainly expect that, as you follow the argument recently propounded, you will now discover that the cause of the ruin of those kingdoms, and of their whole design, was not cowardice or ignorance of warfare on the part either of the rulers or of those who should have been their subjects; but that what ruined them was badness of all other kinds, and especially ignorance concerning the greatest of human interests. That this was the course of events then, and is so still, [688d] whenever such events occur, and will be so likewise in the future,—this, with your permission, I will endeavor to discover in the course of the coming argument, and to make it as clear as I can to you, my very good friends.

Clinias
Verbal compliments are in poor taste, Stranger; but by deed, if not by word, we shall pay you the highest of compliments by attending eagerly to your discourse; and that is what best shows whether compliments are spontaneous or the reverse.

Megillus
Capital, Clinias! Let us do just as you say. [688e]

Clinias
It shall be so, God willing. Only say on.

Athenian
Well then, to advance further on the track of our discourse,—we assert that it was ignorance, in its greatest form, which at that time destroyed the power we have described, and which naturally produces still the same results; and if this is so, it follows that the lawgiver must try to implant in States as much wisdom as possible, and to root out folly to the utmost of his power.

Clinias
Obviously. [689a]

Athenian
What kind of ignorance would deserve to be called the “greatest”? Consider whether you will agree with my description; I take it to be ignorance of this kind,—

Clinias
What kind?

Athenian
That which we see in the man who hates, instead of loving, what he judges to be noble and good, while he loves and cherishes what he judges to be evil and unjust. That want of accord, on the part of the feelings of pain and pleasure, with the rational judgment is, I maintain, the extreme form of ignorance, and also the “greatest” because it belongs to the main mass of the soul,— [689b] for the part of the soul that feels pain and pleasure corresponds to the mass of the populace in the State.21 So whenever this part opposes what are by nature the ruling principles—knowledge, opinion, or reason,—this condition I call folly, whether it be in a State, when the masses disobey the rulers and the laws, or in an individual, when the noble elements of reason existing in the soul produce no good effect, but quite the contrary. [689c] All these I would count as the most discordant forms of ignorance, whether in the State or the individual, and not the ignorance of the artisan,—if you grasp my meaning, Strangers.

Clinias
We do, my dear sir, and we agree with it.

Athenian
Then let it be thus resolved and declared, that no control shall be entrusted to citizens thus ignorant, but that they shall be held in reproach for their ignorance, even though they be expert calculators, and trained in all accomplishments and in everything that fosters agility [689d] of soul, while those whose mental condition is the reverse of this shall be entitled “wise,” even if—as the saying goes—“they spell not neither do they swim”22; and to these latter, as to men of sense, the government shall be entrusted. For without harmony,23 my friends, how could even the smallest fraction of wisdom exist? It is impossible. But the greatest and best of harmonies would most properly be accounted the greatest wisdom; and therein he who lives rationally has a share, whereas he who is devoid thereof [689e] will always prove to be a home-wrecker and anything rather than a saviour of the State, because of his ignorance in these matters. So let this declaration stand, as we recently said, as one of our axioms.

Clinias
Yes, let it stand.

Athenian
Our States, I presume, must have rulers and subjects.

Clinias
Of course. [690a]

Athenian
Very well then: what and how many are the agreed rights or claims in the matter of ruling and being ruled, alike in States, large or small, and in households? Is not the right of father and mother one of them? And in general would not the claim of parents to rule over offspring be a claim universally just?

Clinias
Certainly.

Athenian
And next to this, the right of the noble to rule over the ignoble; and then, following on these as a third claim, the right of older people to rule and of younger to be ruled.

Clinias
To be sure. [690b]

Athenian
The fourth right is that slaves ought to be ruled, and masters ought to rule.

Clinias
Undoubtedly.

Athenian
And the fifth is, I imagine, that the stronger should rule and the weaker be ruled.

Clinias
A truly compulsory form of rule!

Athenian
Yes, and one that is very prevalent among all kinds of creatures, being “according to nature,” as Pindar of Thebes once said.24 The most important right is, it would seem, the sixth, which ordains that the man without understanding should follow, and the wise man lead and rule. Nevertheless, [690c] my most sapient Pindar, this is a thing that I, for one, would hardly assert to be against nature, but rather according thereto—the natural rule of law, without force, over willing subjects.

Clinias
A very just observation.

Athenian
Heaven's favour and good-luck mark the seventh form of rule, where we bring a man forward for a casting of lots, and declare that if he gains the lot he will most justly be ruler, but if he fails he shall take his place among the ruled.

Clinias
Very true. [690d]

Athenian
“Seest thou, O legislator,”—it is thus we might playfully address one of those who lightly start on the task of legislation— “how many are the rights pertaining to rulers, and how they are essentially opposed to one another? Herein we have now discovered a source of factions, which thou must remedy. So do thou, in the first place, join with us in enquiring how it came to pass, and owing to what transgression of those rights, that the kings of Argos and Messene brought ruin alike on themselves and on the Hellenic power, [690e] splendid as it was at that epoch. Was it not through ignorance of that most true saying of Hesiod25 that 'oftimes the half is greater than the whole'?”

Clinias
Most true, indeed.

Athenian
Is it our view, then, that this causes ruin when it is found in kings rather than when found in peoples? [691a]

Clinias
Probably this is, in the main, a disease of kings, in whom luxury breeds pride of life.

Athenian
Is it not plain that what those kings strove for first was to get the better of the established laws, and that they were not in accord with one another about the pledge which they had approved both by word and by oath; and this discord—reputed to be wisdom, but really, as we affirm, the height of ignorance, owing to its grating dissonance and lack of harmony, brought the whole Greek world to ruin?

Clinias
It would seem so, certainly. [691b]

Athenian
Very well then: what precaution ought the legislator to have taken at that time in his enactments, to guard against the growth of this disorder? Verily, to perceive that now requires no great sagacity, nor is it a hard thing to declare; but the man who foresaw it in those days—if it could possibly have been foreseen—would have been a wiser man than we.

Megillus
To what are you alluding?

Athenian
If one looks at what has happened, Megillus, among you Lacedaemonians, it is easy to perceive, and after perceiving to state, what ought to have been done at that time.

Megillus
Speak still more clearly.

Athenian
The clearest statement would be this—

Megillus
What? [691c]

Athenian
If one neglects the rule of due measure, and gives things too great in power to things too small—sails to ships, food to bodies, offices of rule to souls—then everything is upset, and they run, through excess of insolence, some to bodily disorders, others to that offspring of insolence, injustice.26 What, then, is our conclusion? Is it not this? There does not exist, my friends, a mortal soul whose nature, when young and irresponsible, will ever be able to stand being in the highest ruling position upon earth without getting surfeited in mind with that greatest of disorders, [691d] folly, and earning the detestation of its nearest friends; and when this occurs, it speedily ruins the soul itself and annihilates the whole of its power. To guard against this, by perceiving the due measure, is the task of the great lawgiver. So the most duly reasonable conjecture we can now frame as to what took place at that epoch appears to be this—

Megillus
What?

Athenian
To begin with, there was a god watching over you; and he, foreseeing the future, restricted within due bounds the royal power by making [691e] your kingly line no longer single but twofold. In the next place, some man,27 in whom human nature was blended with power divine, observing your government to be still swollen with fever, blended the self-willed force [692a] of the royal strain with the temperate potency of age, by making the power of the eight-and-twenty elders of equal weight with that of the kings in the greatest matters. Then your “third saviour,”28 seeing your government still fretting and fuming, curbed it, as one may say, by the power of the ephors, which was not far removed from government by lot. Thus, in your case, according to this account, owing to its being blended of the right elements and possessed of due measure, the kingship not only survived itself but ensured the survival of all else. [692b] For if the matter had lain with Temenus and Cresphontes29 and the lawgivers of their day—whosoever those lawgivers really were,—even the portion of Aristodemus30 could never have survived, for they were not fully expert in the art of legislation; otherwise they could hardly have deemed it sufficient to moderate by means of sworn pledges31 a youthful soul endowed with power such as might develop into a tyranny; but now God has shown of what kind the government ought to have been then, and ought to be now, if it is to endure. That we should understand this, [692c] after the occurrence, is—as I said before32—no great mark of sagacity, since it is by no means difficult to draw an inference from an example in the past; but if, at the time, there had been anyone who foresaw the result and was able to moderate the ruling powers and unify them,—such a man would have preserved all the grand designs then formed, and no Persian or other armament would ever have set out against Greece, or held us in contempt as a people of small account.

Clinias
True. [692d]

Athenian
The way they repulsed the Persians, Clinias, was disgraceful. But when I say “disgraceful,” I do not imply that they did not win fine victories both by land and sea in those victorious campaigns: what I call “disgraceful” is this,—that, in the first place, one only of those three States defended Greece, while the other two were so basely corrupt that one of them33 actually prevented Lacedaemon from assisting Greece by warring against her with all its might, and Argos, the other,—which stood first of the three in the days of the Dorian settlement— [692e] when summoned to help against the barbarian, paid no heed and gave no help.34 Many are the discreditable charges one would have to bring against Greece in relating the events of that war; indeed, it would be wrong to say that Greece defended herself, for had not the bondage that threatened her been warded off by the concerted policy of the Athenians [693a] and Lacedaemonians, practically all the Greek races would have been confused together by now, and barbarians confused with Greeks and Greeks with barbarians,—just as the races under the Persian empire today are either scattered abroad or jumbled together and live in a miserable plight. Such, O Megillus and Clinias, are the charges we have to make against the so-called statesmen and lawgivers, both of the past and of the present, in order that, by investigating their causes, we may discover [693b] what different course ought to have been pursued; just as, in the case before us, we called it a blunder to establish by law a government that is great or unblended, our idea being that a State ought to be free and wise and in friendship with itself, and that the lawgiver should legislate with a view to this. Nor let it surprise us that, while we have often already proposed ends which the legislator should, as we say, aim at in his legislation, [693c] the various ends thus proposed are apparently different. One needs to reflect that wisdom and friendship, when stated to be the aim in view, are not really different aims, but identical and, if we meet with many other such terms, let not this fact disturb us.

Clinias
We shall endeavor to bear this in mind as we traverse the arguments again. But for the moment, as regards friendship, wisdom and freedom,—tell us, [693d] what was it you intended to say that the lawgiver ought to aim at?

Athenian
Listen. There are two mother-forms of constitution, so to call them, from which one may truly say all the rest are derived. Of these the one is properly termed monarchy, the other democracy, the extreme case of the former being the Persian polity, and of the latter the Athenian; the rest are practically all, as I said, modifications of these two. Now it is essential for a polity to partake of both these two forms, if it is to have freedom and friendliness combined with wisdom. [693e] And that is what our argument intends to enjoin, when it declares that a State which does not partake of these can never be rightly constituted.35

Clinias
It could not.

Athenian
Since the one embraced monarchy and the other freedom, unmixed and in excess, neither of them has either in due measure: your Laconian and Cretan States are better in this respect, as were the Athenian and Persian in old times— [694a] in contrast to their present condition. Shall we expound the reasons for this?

Clinias
By all means—that is if we mean to complete the task we have set ourselves.

Athenian
Let us attend then. When the Persians, under Cyrus, maintained the due balance between slavery and freedom, they became, first of all, free themselves, and, after that, masters of many others. For when the rulers gave a share of freedom to their subjects and advanced them to a position of equality, the soldiers were more friendly [694b] towards their officers and showed their devotion in times of danger; and if there was any wise man amongst them, able to give counsel, since the king was not jealous but allowed free speech and respected those who could help at all by their counsel,—such a man had the opportunity of contributing to the common stock the fruit of his wisdom. Consequently, at that time all their affairs made progress, owing to their freedom, friendliness and mutual interchange of reason.

Clinias
Probably that is pretty much the way in which the matters you speak of took place. [694c]

Athenian
How came it, then, that they were ruined in Cambyses' reign, and nearly restored again under Darius? Shall I use a kind of divination to picture this?

Clinias
Yes that certainly will help us to gain a view of the object of our search.

Athenian
What I now divine regarding Cyrus is this,—that, although otherwise a good and patriotic commander, he was entirely without a right education, and had paid no attention to household management.

Clinias
What makes us say this? [694d]

Athenian
Probably he spent all his life from boyhood in soldiering, and entrusted his children to the women folk to rear up; and they brought them up from earliest childhood as though they had already attained to Heaven's favour and felicity, and were lacking in no celestial gift; and so by treating them as the special favorites of Heaven, and forbidding anyone to oppose them, in anything, and compelling everyone to praise their every word and deed, they reared them up into what they were.

Clinias
A fine rearing, I should say! [694e]

Athenian
Say rather, a womanish rearing by royal women lately grown rich, who, while the men were absent, detained by many dangers and wars, reared up the children.

Clinias
That sounds reasonable.

Athenian
And their father, while gaining flocks and sheep and plenty of herds, both of men and of many other chattels, [695a] yet knew not that the children to whom he should bequeath them were without training in their father's craft, which was a hard one, fit to turn out shepherds of great strength, able to camp out in the open and to keep watch and, if need be, to go campaigning. He overlooked the fact that his sons were trained by women and eunuchs and that the indulgence shown them as “Heaven's darlings” had ruined their training, whereby they became [695b] such as they were likely to become when reared with a rearing that “spared the rod.” So when, at the death of Cyrus, his sons took over the kingdom, over-pampered and undisciplined as they were, first, the one killed the other,36 through annoyance at his being put on an equality with himself, and presently, being mad with drink and debauchery, he lost his own throne at the hands of the Medes, under the man then called the Eunuch,37 who despised the stupidity of Cambyses.

Clinias
That, certainly, is the story, and probably it is near to [695c] the truth.

Athenian
Further, the story tells how the kingdom was restored to the Persians through Darius and the Seven.

Clinias
It does.

Athenian
Let us follow the story and see how things went.38 Darius was not a king's son, nor was he reared luxuriously. When he came and seized the kingdom, with his six companions, he divided it into seven parts, of which some small vestiges remain even to this day; [695d] and he thought good to manage it by enacting laws into which he introduced some measure of political equality, and also incorporated in the law regulations about the tribute-money which Cyrus had promised the Persians, whereby he secured friendliness and fellowship amongst all classes of the Persians, and won over the populace by money and gifts; and because of this, the devotion of his armies won for him as much more land as Cyrus had originally bequeathed. After Darius came Xerxes, and he again was brought up with the luxurious rearing of a royal house: “O Darius”—for it is thus one may rightly address the father—“how is it that you have ignored the blunder of Cyrus, [695e] and have reared up Xerxes in just the same habits of life in which Cyrus reared Cambyses?” And Xerxes, being the product of the same training, ended by repeating almost exactly the misfortunes of Cambyses. Since then there has hardly ever been a single Persian king who was really, as well as nominally, “Great.”39 And, as our argument asserts, the cause of this does not lie in luck, [696a] but in the evil life which is usually lived by the sons of excessively rich monarchs; for such an upbringing can never produce either boy or man or greybeard of surpassing goodness. To this, we say, the lawgiver must give heed,—as must we ourselves on the present occasion. It is proper, however, my Lacedaemonian friends, to give your State credit for this at least,—that you assign no different honor or training whatsoever to poverty or wealth, to the commoner or the king, [696b] beyond what your original oracle40 declared at the bidding of some god. Nor indeed is it right that pre-eminent honors in a State should be conferred on a man because he is specially wealthy, any more than it is right to confer them because he is swift or comely or strong without any virtue, or with a virtue devoid of temperance.

Megillus
What do you mean by that, Stranger?

Athenian
Courage is, presumably, one part of virtue.

Megillus
Certainly.

Athenian
Now that you have heard the argument, judge for yourself whether you would welcome as housemate or neighbor a man who is extremely courageous, but licentious rather than temperate. [696c]

Megillus
Don't suggest such a thing!

Athenian
Well then,—a man wise in arts and crafts, but unjust.

Megillus
Certainly not.

Athenian
But justice, surely, is not bred apart from temperance.

Megillus
Impossible.

Athenian
Nor is he whom we recently proposed41 as our type of wisdom,—the man who has his feelings of pleasure and pain in accord with the dictates of right reason and obedient thereto.

Megillus
No, indeed. [696d]

Athenian
Here is a further point we must consider, in order to judge about the conferment of honors in States, when they are right and when wrong.

Megillus
What point?

Athenian
If temperance existed alone in a man's soul, divorced from all the rest of virtue, would it justly be held in honor or the reverse?

Megillus
I cannot tell what reply to make.

Athenian
Yet, in truth, you have made a reply, and a reasonable one. For if you had declared for either of the alternatives in my question, you would have said what is, to my mind, quite out of tune.

Megillus
So it has turned out to be all right.

Athenian
Very good. Accordingly, the additional element in objects deserving of honor [696e] or dishonor will be one that demands not speech so much as a kind of speechless silence.42

Megillus
I suppose you mean temperance.

Athenian
Yes. And of the rest, that which, with the addition of temperance, benefits us most would best deserve to be held in the highest honor, and the second in degree of benefit put second in order of honor; and so with each of the others in succession—to each it will be proper to assign the honor due to its rank. [697a]

Megillus
Just so.

Athenian
Well then, shall we not declare that the distribution of these things is the lawgiver's task?

Megillus
Certainly.

Athenian
Is it your wish that we should hand over the whole distribution to him, to deal with every case and all the details, while we—as legal enthusiasts ourselves also—confine ourselves to making a threefold division, and endeavor to distinguish what comes first in importance, and what second and third?43

Megillus
By all means.

Athenian
We declare, then, that a State which is to endure, [697b] and to be as happy as it is possible for man to be, must of necessity dispense honors rightly. And the right way is this: it shall be laid down that the goods of the soul are highest in honor and come first, provided that the soul possesses temperance; second come the good and fair things of the body; and third the so-called goods of substance and property. And if any law-giver or State transgresses these rules, either by promoting wealth to honors, or by raising one of the lower goods [697c] to a higher rank by means of honors, he will be guilty of a breach both of religion and of statesmanship. Shall this be our declaration, or what?

Megillus
By all means let us declare this plainly.

Athenian
It was our investigation of the polity of the Persians that caused us to discuss these matters at greater length. We find that they grew still worse, the reason being, as we say, that by robbing the commons unduly of their liberty and introducing despotism in excess, they destroyed [697d] in the State the bonds of friendliness and fellowship. And when these are destroyed, the policy of the rulers no longer consults for the good of the subjects and the commons, but solely for the maintenance of their own power; if they think that it will profit them in the least degree, they are ready at any time to overturn States and to overturn and burn up friendly nations; and thus they both hate and are hated with a fierce and ruthless hatred. And when they come to need the commons, to fight in their support, they find in them no patriotism [697e] or readiness to endanger their lives in battle; so that, although they possess countless myriads of men, they are all useless for war, and they hire soldiers from abroad as though they were short of men, and imagine that their safety will be secured by hirelings and aliens. And besides all this, [698a] they inevitably display their ignorance, inasmuch as by their acts they declare that the things reputed to be honorable and noble in a State are never anything but dross compared to silver and gold.

Megillus
Very true.

Athenian
So let this be the conclusion of our account of the Persian empire, and how its present evil administration is due to excess of slavery and of despotism.

Megillus
By all means.

Athenian
We ought to examine next, in like manner, the Attic polity, and show how complete liberty, unfettered by any authority, is vastly inferior to a moderate form of government under elected magistrates. [698b] At the time when the Persians made their onslaught upon the Greeks—and indeed one might say on nearly all the nations of Europe—we Athenians had an ancient constitution,44 and magistrates based on a fourfold grading; and we had Reverence, which acted as a kind of queen, causing us to live as the willing slaves of the existing laws. Moreover, the vastness of the Persian armament that threatened us both by sea and land, by the desperate fear it inspired, bound us still more closely in the bonds of slavery [698c] to our rulers and our laws; and because of all this, our mutual friendliness and patriotism was greatly intensified. It was just about ten years before the seafight at Salamis that the Persian force arrived under Datis, whom Darius had despatched expressly against the Athenians and Eretrians, with orders to bring them back in chains, and with the warning that death would be the penalty of failure. So within a very short time [698d] Datis, with his many myriads, captured by force the whole of the Eretrians; and to Athens he sent on an alarming account of how not a man of the Eretrians had escaped him: the soldiers of Datis had joined hands and swept the whole of Eretria clean as with a draw-net. This account—whether true, or whatever its origin—struck terror into the Greeks generally, and especially the Athenians; but when they sent out embassies in every direction to seek aid, all refused, [698e] except the Lacedaemonians; and they were hindered by the war they were then waging against Messene, and possibly by other obstacles, about which we have no information, with the result that they arrived too late by one single day for the battle which took place at Marathon. After this, endless threats and stories of huge preparations kept arriving from the Persian king. Then, as time went on, news came that Darius was dead, and that his son, who had succeeded to the throne, was a young hothead, and still keen on the projected expedition. [699a] The Athenians imagined that all these preparations were aimed against them because of the affair at Marathon; and when they heard of how the canal had been made through Athos, and the bridge thrown over the Hellespont, and were told of the vast number of vessels in the Persian flotilla, then they felt that there was no salvation for them by land, nor yet by sea. By land they had no hopes that anyone would come to their aid; for they remembered how, on the first arrival of the Persians and their subjugation of Eretria, nobody helped them or [699b] ventured to join in the fight with them; and so they expected that the same thing would happen again on this occasion. By sea, too, they saw no hope of safety, with more than a thousand war-ships bearing down against them. One solitary hope of safety did they perceive—a slight one, it is true, and a desperate, yet the only hope—and it they derived from the events of the past, when victory in battle appeared to spring out of a desperate situation; and buoyed up by this hope, they discovered that they must rely for refuge on themselves only and on the gods. [699c] So all this created in them a state of friendliness one towards another—both the fear which then possessed them, and that begotten of the past, which they had acquired by their subjection to the former laws—the fear to which, in our previous discussions,45 we have often given the name of “reverence,” saying that a man must be subject to this if he is to be good (though the coward is unfettered and unaffrighted by it). Unless this fear had then seized upon our people, they would never have united in self-defence, nor would they have defended their temples and tombs and fatherland, and their relatives and friends as well, [699d] in the way in which they then came to the rescue; but we would all have been broken up at that time and dispersed one by one in all directions.

Megillus
What you say, Stranger, is perfectly true, and worthy of your country as well as of yourself.

Athenian
That is so, Megillus: it is proper to mention the events of that period to you, since you share in the native character of your ancestors. But both you and Clinias must now consider whether what we are saying is [699e] at all pertinent to our law-making; for my narrative is not related for its own sake, but for the sake of the law-making I speak of. Just reflect: seeing that we Athenians suffered practically the same fate as the Persians—they through reducing their people to the extreme of slavery, we, on the contrary, by urging on our populace to the extreme of liberty—what are we to say was the sequel, if our earlier statements have been at all nearly correct? [700a]

Megillus
Well said! Try, however, to make your meaning still more clear to us.

Athenian
I will. Under the old laws, my friends, our commons had no control over anything, but were, so to say, voluntary slaves to the laws.

Megillus
What laws do you mean?

Athenian
Those dealing with the music of that age, in the first place,—to describe from its commencement how the life of excessive liberty grew up. Among us, at that time, music was divided into various classes and styles: [700b] one class of song was that of prayers to the gods, which bore the name of “hymns”; contrasted with this was another class, best called “dirges”; “paeans” formed another; and yet another was the “dithyramb,” named, I fancy, after Dionysus. “Nomes” also were so called as being a distinct class of song; and these were further described as “citharoedic nomes.”46 So these and other kinds being classified and fixed, it was forbidden to set one kind of words to a different class of tune.47 [700c] The authority whose duty it was to know these regulations, and, when known, to apply them in its judgments and to penalize the disobedient, was not a pipe nor, as now, the mob's unmusical shoutings, nor yet the clappings which mark applause: in place of this, it was a rule made by those in control of education that they themselves should listen throughout in silence, while the children and their ushers and the general crowd were kept in order by the discipline of the rod. [700d] In the matter of music the populace willingly submitted to orderly control and abstained from outrageously judging by clamor; but later on, with the progress of time, there arose as leaders of unmusical illegality poets who, though by nature poetical, were ignorant of what was just and lawful in music; and they, being frenzied and unduly possessed by a spirit of pleasure, mixed dirges with hymns and paeans with dithyrambs, and imitated flute-tunes with harp-tunes, and blended every kind of music with every other; [700e] and thus, through their folly, they unwittingly bore false witness against music, as a thing without any standard of correctness, of which the best criterion is the pleasure of the auditor, be he a good man or a bad.48 By compositions of such a character, set to similar words, they bred in the populace a spirit of lawlessness in regard to music, and the effrontery of supposing themselves capable of passing judgment on it. Hence the theater-goers became noisy [701a] instead of silent, as though they knew the difference between good and bad music, and in place of an aristocracy in music there sprang up a kind of base theatrocracy.49 For if in music, and music only, there had arisen a democracy of free men, such a result would not have been so very alarming; but as it was, the universal conceit of universal wisdom and the contempt for law originated in the music, and on the heels of these came liberty. For, thinking themselves knowing, men became fearless; and audacity begat effrontery. For to be fearless [701b] of the opinion of a better man, owing to self-confidence, is nothing else than base effrontery; and it is brought about by a liberty that is audacious to excess.

Megillus
Most true.

Athenian
Next after this form of liberty would come that which refuses to be subject to the rulers;50 and, following on that, the shirking of submission to one's parents and elders and their admonitions; then, as the penultimate stage, comes the effort to disregard the laws; while the last stage of all is to lose all respect for oaths or pledges or divinities,—wherein men display and reproduce the character of the Titans of story, [701c] who are said to have reverted to their original state, dragging out a painful existence with never any rest from woe. What, again, is our object in saying all this? Evidently, I must, every time, rein in my discourse, like a horse, and not let it run away with me as though it had no bridle51 [701d] in its mouth, and so “get a toss off the donkey”52 (as the saying goes): consequently, I must once more repeat my question, and ask—“With what object has all this been said?”

Megillus
Very good.

Athenian
What has now been said bears on the objects previously stated.

Megillus
What were they?

Athenian
We said53 that the lawgiver must aim, in his legislation, at three objectives—to make the State he is legislating for free, and at unity with itself, and possessed of sense. That was so, was it not?

Megillus
Certainly. [701e]

Athenian
With these objects in view, we selected the most despotic of polities and the most absolutely free, and are now enquiring which of these is rightly constituted. When we took a moderate example of each—of despotic rule on the one hand, and liberty on the other,—we observed that there they enjoyed prosperity in the highest degree but when they advanced, the one to the extreme of slavery, the other to the extreme of liberty, then there was no gain to either the one or the other. [702a]

Megillus
Most true.

Athenian
With the same objects in view we surveyed,54 also, the settling of the Doric host and the homes of Dardanus at the foot of the hills and the colony by the sea and the first men who survived the Flood, together with our previous discourses55 concerning music and revelry, as well as all that preceded these. The object of all these discourses was to discover how best [702b] a State might be managed, and how best the individual citizen might pass his life. But as to the value of our conclusions, what test can we apply in conversing among ourselves, O Megillus and Clinias?

Clinias
I think, Stranger, that I can perceive one. It is a piece of good luck for me that we have dealt with all these matters in our discourse. For I myself have now come nearly to the point when I shall need them, and my meeting with you and Megillus here was quite opportune. I will make no secret to you of what has befallen me; [702c] nay, more, I count it to be a sign from Heaven. The most part of Crete is undertaking to found a colony, and it has given charge of the undertaking to the Cnosians, and the city of Cnosus has entrusted it to me and nine others. We are bidden also to frame laws, choosing such as we please either from our own local laws or from those of other countries, taking no exception to their alien character, provided only that they seem superior. Let us, then, grant this favour to me, and yourselves also; [702d] let us select from the statements we have made, and build up by arguments the framework of a State, as though we were erecting it from the foundation. In this way we shall be at once investigating our theme, and possibly I may also make use of our framework for the State that is to be formed.

Athenian
Your proclamation, Clinias, is certainly not a proclamation of war! So, if Megillus has no objection, you may count on me to do all I can to gratify your wish.

Clinias
It is good to hear that.

Megillus
And you can count on me too. [702e]

Clinias
Splendid of you both! But, in the first place, let us try to found the State by word.

1 Deucalion's Flood: cp. Polit. 270 C.

2 Cp. Plat. Laws 642d.

3 Hes. WD 640f. νήπιοι, οὐδὲ ἴασιν ὅσωι πλέον ἥμισυ παντός, οὐδ᾽ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχηι τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλωι μέγ᾽ ὄνειαπ. Hesiod's allusion to the “great virtue residing in mallow and asphodel” is supposed to have suggested to Epimenides his “invention” of a herbal concoction, or “elixir of life.”

4 Cp. Aristot. Pol. 1252b 17ff. This “headship,” which is the hereditary personal authority of the father of a family or chief of a clan, we should term “patriarchy.”

5 For this “mixed” polity of the “city of the plain,” cp. the description of democracy in Plat. Rep. 557d ff.

6 We do not hear of him elsewhere; and the account here is so vague that it is hard to say what events (or traditions) are alluded to. The usual story is that Dorian invaders drove out the Achaeans from S. Greece (about 900 B.C.)

7 Cp. Plat. Laws 638d.

8 i.e., (I) the family or clan, under patriarchal “headship”; (2) the combination of clans under an aristocracy (or monarchy); (3) the “mixed” state (or “city of the plain,” like Troy); and (4) the confederacy, consisting, in the example, of three States leagued together.

9 Cp.Plat. Laws 682d, 682e.

10 Cp.Plat. Laws 692b.

11 Cp. Plat. Laws 736c.

12 i.e., the Dorian settlers, by right of conquest, were free to do as they pleased: none of the old owners or creditors could assert rights or claims.

13 viz., Argos and Messene,—the third being Laconia.

14 Cp. Plat. Laws 625b.

15 The mythical founder of the Assyrian empire, husband of Semiramis, and builder of Nineveh (dated about 2200 B.C.).

16 The first “capture” was by Heracles, in the reign of Laomedon, father of Priam. Cp. Hom. Il. 5.640 ff.

17 viz., Temenus, king of Argos, Procles and Eurystheus of Laconia, Cresphontes of Messene.

18 viz., Agamemnon and Menelaus.

19 Hippolytus was accused by his stepmother, Phaedra, of attempting to dishonor her: therefore his father (Theseus) invoked a curse upon him, and Poseidon (father of Theseus) sent a bull which scared the horses of H.'s chariot so that they upset the chariot and dragged him till he was dead.

20 Plat. Laws 630d ff.

21 In this comparison between the Soul and the State both are regarded as consisting of two parts or elements, the ruling and the ruled, of which the former is the noblest, but the latter the “greatest” in bulk and extent. The ruling element in the Soul is Reason (νοῦς, λόγος), and in the State it is Law (νόμος) and its exponents: the subject element in the Soul consists of sensations, emotions and desires, which (both in hulk and in irrationality) correspond to the mass of the “volgus” in the State. Plato's usual division of the Soul is into three parts—reason (νοῦς), passion (θυμός), and desire (ἐπιθυμία): cp. Plat. Rep. 435ff.

22 i.e., are ignorant of even the most ordinary accomplishments.

23 Cp. Plat. Rep. 430e; 591d.

24 Cp. Plat. Gorg. 484b Πίνδαρος . . . λέγει ὅτι Νόμος . . . <κατὰ ρύσιν> ἄγει δικαιῶν τὸ βιαιότατον ὑπερτάτᾳ χεπί.

25 Cp. Hes. WD 638 ff.; Rep. 466 C.: the meaning is that when “the whole” is excessive, the moderate “half” is preferable; this maxim being here applied to excesses of political power.

26 Cp. Soph. OT 873: ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον

27 Lycurgus.

28 Theopompus, king of Sparta about 750 B.C. The institution of the Ephorate is by some ascribed to him (as here), by others to Lycurgus. Cp. Aristot. Pol. 1313a 19ff.

29 See Plat. Laws 683d.

30 i.e., Lacedaemon: Aristodemus was father of Eurysthenes and Procles (cp. Plat. Laws 683d).

31 Cp. Plat. Laws 684a.

32 Plat. Laws 691b

33 Messene

34 Cp. Hdt. 7.148ff. The reference is to the Persian invasion under Mardonius in 490 B.C.; but there is no other evidence for the charge here made against Messene.

35 Cp. Plat. Laws 756e; Aristot. Pol. 1266a 1ff.

36 i.e., Cambyses killed Smerdis.

37 i.e., the Magian, Gomates, who personated Smerdis and claimed the kingdom. After seven months' reign this usurper was slain by seven Persian nobles, of whom Darius was one (521 B.C.).

38 Cf. Hdt. 3.68-88.

39 The Persian monarch was commonly styled “the Great King.”

40 The laws of Lycurgus.

41 Cp. Plat. Laws 689d.

42 i.e., “temperance,” regarded as merely an adjunct to civic merit, requires no further discussion at this point.

43 Cp. Plat. Laws 631b, c; Plat. Laws 661a ff.; Plat. Laws 726a ff.; Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1098b 12 ff.

44 That of Solon.

45 Cp. Plat. Laws 646e, 647c, 671d.

46 i.e., solemn chants sung to the “cithara” or lyre. “Dithyrambs” were choral odes to Dionysus; “paeans” were mostly hymns of praise to Apollo.

47 Cp. Plat. Laws 657c ff., 699c ff.

48 Cp. Plat. Rep. 3.397a ff.

49 i.e., “rule of the audience”; as we might say, the pit and gallery sat in judgment. Cp. Aristot. Pol. 8.6.

50 Cp. Plat. Rep. 4.424e.

51 Cp. Eur. Ba. 385.

52 A play on ἀπ᾽ ὄνου=ἀπὸ νοῦ: “to show oneself a fool”: cr. Artist. Nubes 1274: τί δῆτα ληρεῖς, ὥσπερ ἀπ᾽ ὄνου καταπεσών.

53 Cp. Plat. Laws 693b.

54 i.e., in Bk. iii. 676-693 (taken in the reverse order).

55 i.e., in Books i. and ii.