Texts in political thought

Summary

ATHENIAN: If anyone passes himself off as an ambassador or herald from the city, on an unauthorised mission to another city; or, when he is sent as an ambassador, fails to convey the actual message with which he was sent – or equally, if it becomes clear on his return as ambassador or herald, whether from enemies or indeed friends, that he is not reporting what they said correctly – then there shall be prosecutions for these offences, for illegally failing to respect the messages and ordinances of Hermes and Zeus, with an assessment, for anyone found guilty, of what is to happen to them or what they should pay.

Theft of property is demeaning – and outright robbery a disgrace. None of the sons of Zeus has ever delighted in deception or violence, nor engaged in either of these activities. Therefore let nobody, striking the wrong note in this connection, be deceived by poets or mischief-making storytellers, or misled into thinking that if he steals or uses violence he is not doing anything to be ashamed of, but only what gods themselves do. That is neither true nor plausible, and anyone who acts illegally in this kind of way is not for one moment either a god or the child of gods. This is something a lawgiver is far more likely to know about than all the poets put together. Anyone who listens to what we say is fortunate, and may he continue fortunate for all time; he who does not listen, let him, as a next step, find himself up against the law, something like this: Any theft of public property, be it substantial or indeed trivial, calls for the same penalty, because the person who steals something small has the same desire to steal – merely less power; and the one who makes off with something larger, not having deposited it there in the first place, is a wrong-doer through and through. Therefore if the law decides on a lesser punishment for either of them, it is not on account of the scale of the theft, but rather because one offender might perhaps be curable, whereas another is incurable.

Plato's Laws is one of the most important surviving works of ancient Greek political thought. It offers sustained reflection on the enterprise of legislation, and on its role in the social and religious regulation of society in all its aspects. Many of its ideas were drawn upon by later political thinkers, from Aristotle and Cicero to Thomas More and Montesquieu. This book presents the first translation of the complete text of the Laws for thirty-five years, in Tom Griffith's readable and reliable English. Malcolm Schofield, a leading scholar of Greek philosophy, introduces the main themes and characteristics of the work, as well as supplying authoritative notes on the structure and detail of Plato's argument, together with a guide to further reading. The book will be a key resource for those interested in Greek philosophy and of the history of political thought.

Summary

ATHENIAN: Once the children have been born – male and female – the next topic for discussion, presumably, if we go about things in the right way, will be upbringing and education. To say nothing about these is totally out of the question, but if we do talk about them, then it would clearly be appropriate to employ a degree of instruction and admonition, in preference to legislation. In people's private and domestic lives a great many things are done – trivial things, hidden from public view – which are prompted by the pains and pleasures and desires of particular individuals, and which can easily run counter to the intentions of the lawgiver, resulting in all kinds of variety and inconsistency in the characters of the citizens. This, for cities, is a bad thing. The triviality and frequency of this behaviour makes it inappropriate and unbecoming for the person making laws to make them punishable offences, and in any case it undermines the written laws if people get into the habit of breaking the law through repeated petty infringements. So it is a pretty hopeless task trying to make laws in this area, and yet out of the question to say nothing about it. But I think I had better try and clarify what I mean – maybe an example or two would shed a little light on things, as it were, since so far we are pretty much in the dark.

CLEINIAS: That's certainly true.

ATHENIAN: Very well. Now, it is an absolute requirement of correct upbringing that it should be clearly capable of producing the finest and best possible bodies and souls. We were correct in saying that, I take it.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And the finest bodies, I imagine – to start with the simplest case – need to grow as straight as possible, right from early childhood.

CLEINIAS: They certainly do.

ATHENIAN: How about this, then? We notice, don't we, that it is the first spurt of growth, in any living organism, which is naturally and easily the greatest and most abundant – in fact, many people would strongly argue that, after the age of 5, human height does not get to double itself in the next twenty years.

Summary

ATHENIAN: Well, then, everyone please listen – anyone who was listening to what we have been saying about the gods and the ancestors we love, since of all the things he possesses, that which is closest to the gods, that which is most his own, is his soul.

Everything that belongs to a person, and this is true for everybody, falls into two classes: things which are stronger and better – masters, in fact – and things which are weaker and worse – their slaves. Among things that belong to him, he must honour the master elements at all times above the slave elements. So when I say, as I just did, that second only to the gods our masters and those who keep them company, a person needs to value his own soul, that is correct advice. And yet virtually none of us values it in the correct way – though we think we do. Value, I take it, is something which comes from the gods, and is good; nothing that is evil can be of value, and anyone who thinks he is going to develop his soul by words or gifts, or by indulging it, without in some way making it a better soul than it was before, may think he values it, but in fact does nothing of the kind.

From earliest childhood every human being immediately regards himself as capable of learning everything. He thinks that in order to value his soul, all he has to do is praise it, after which he actively encourages it to do whatever takes its fancy. But if he acts in this way – this is what we are saying now – then he is damaging his soul, not valuing it. What he needs to be doing, as we have said, is valuing it second only to the gods. The same goes for a person who on any particular occasion regards others, rather than himself, as responsible for his faults – however great or numerous they may be – and exempts himself, in every instance, from blame. He may think he values his soul, but he could not be more wrong; in reality he is damaging it.

Summary

ATHENIAN: Very well, then. Now, what is this city going to be? We need a clear idea about that. I don't mean, what is its name now, or what will it be called in the future. I dare say that will resolve itself when the city is founded – or else some place, or the name of a river or spring, or one of the local gods, might confer their own repute on our city after it has come into being. No, the thing I want to know, when I ask the question, is this – will it be a city by the sea, or will it be inland?

CLEINIAS: It's about ten miles from the sea, my friend, the city in question.

ATHENIAN: What about harbours? Does it have any on that side? Or is it entirely harbourless?

CLEINIAS: It has good harbours on that side, my friend. None better.

ATHENIAN: Ouch, that's bad news. And how about the land round it? Is it self-sufficient? Or are there some things it is lacking in?

CLEINIAS: No, there's practically nothing it is lacking in.

ATHENIAN: And the nearest neighbouring city? Will that be close by?

CLEINIAS: No, not at all. That's why the colony is being founded. It's a place which was left deserted in the past by emigration from the region – heaven knows how long ago.

ATHENIAN: And flat ground, mountains, woodland? How about them? What proportion of each are we going to find the place blessed with?

CLEINIAS: It resembles the rest of Crete as a whole in its character.

ATHENIAN: Steep and hilly, rather than flat, in other words.

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: In which case, acquiring goodness would not be an impossible dream. If it was going to be on the sea, with good harbours, and not self-sufficient, but lacking in all sorts of things, then to stop these characteristics resulting in bad habits of any and every kind, the city would stand in need of some great saviour, and inspired lawgivers. As it is, those ten miles are a bit of a blessing, though it certainly does lie closer to the sea than is ideal, given that you describe it as having good harbours.

Summary

ATHENIAN: Our business dealings with one another would come next; they call for regulation, as appropriate. A simple principle, I imagine, might be something like this: nobody, as far as possible, is to lay a finger on my possessions, or move them an inch, without getting my agreement in some shape or form; and I will observe the same rule, if I have any sense, in regard to the property of others.

In this context, let's begin with treasure: suppose someone, not one of my ancestors, has hidden it away for himself and his family; may I never pray to the gods to let me find it; or if I do find it, may I not make off with it, nor for that matter share the information with the so-called seers, who, one way or another, as I see it, are always going to advise people to help themselves to what has been put there in the ground. The financial benefit to me from helping myself could not possibly be as great as the solid gain, in terms of excellence of soul and justice, which I should derive from not helping myself; weighing possession against possession, I would be better off, and in a better part of myself, putting justice in my soul rather than money in the bank. It is a good saying, in many situations – ‘If it's not for moving, don't move it’ – and we can regard this as one of those situations. We should listen, too, to the popular stories – how this kind of thing is bad for fertility.

But if someone is not concerned about children, and has no time for the person who laid down this law; if he helps himself to a hoard which neither he himself nor any of his father's fathers put there, without the consent of the person who did put it there, undoing that finest and simplest of laws, the rule laid down by that man – noble through and through – who said ‘If you didn't put it there, don't pick it up’; if he shows contempt for these two lawgivers, and helps himself to some substantial sum which he didn't put there himself, and which may on occasion be a huge quantity of treasure: what ought to happen to him?

Summary

The goal of legislation and a political system (Books 1–3)

Summary

ATHENIAN: Legal proceedings are our next topic; given the principles on which we are arranging our laws, they follow on naturally from the activities we have just been talking about. Of the offences which can give rise to these proceedings, some have been dealt with – those to do with farming and its related activities – but the most important have not yet been dealt with; it is these which follow next in order, and which we must now specify, specifying, for each particular offence, what penalty it should carry and exactly which court it should be assigned to.

CLEINIAS: Correct.

ATHENIAN: It is in a way something of a disgrace to be making laws at all for any of the things we are now about to make laws for – in a city like ours which will be well run, we maintain, and which will realise all the right conditions for the practice of human goodness. In such a city, the very idea that anyone could grow up and get involved in the worst villainies found in other cities, with the consequent requirement for us as lawgivers to forestall the appearance of any such person by means of threats, and, with a view to deterring them and punishing them if they do appear, make laws against them as if they were certain to do so – well, as I said, this is something of a disgrace. However, we are not the lawgivers of yesteryear, making laws, so the legend now runs, for heroes who were the children of gods; sprung from the gods themselves, they made laws for others of like origin. No, we are human beings, making laws, here and now, for the seed of human beings; it cannot be held against us if we are apprehensive that we might have among our citizens one of those ‘rogue beans’ which are by their nature so unyielding as to be incapable of being softened, and which can no more be softened by our laws, powerful as they are, than those seeds can be softened by fire.

Summary

The Laws was Plato's last and longest dialogue. Its fortunes have fluctuated. Like many readers since, Aristotle in Book 2 of his Politics treated it dismissively as a mere pendant to the Republic. But he also took it as the unacknowledged model for much of his sketch of an ideal polity in Books 7 and 8 of the treatise. And plenty of later thinkers have found engagement with the Laws important for their own projects in political theory, from Cicero in On Laws among the ancients to Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws among the moderns. The dialogue was not greatly read, nor (when read) appreciated, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But interest in it, indicated by the volume of associated scholarly publication, has been steadily rising over the last quarter of a century. The Laws is coming to be seen as ‘the first work of genuine political philosophy in the Western tradition’, and indeed as a multi-dimensional exercise in reflection on how such philosophising should be conducted.

First words

The dialogue begins with a question: ‘Is it a god, my friend, who in your view should take the credit for your legal arrangements? Or some human?’ As often in a Platonic dialogue, the opening words are designed to adumbrate some of the key preoccupations it will be pursuing. The very first word of the Greek text – θεός, ‘god’ – foreshadows the development of the theological and religious framework for all the substantive theorising that is to be developed. ‘Legal arrangements’ specifies the topic the participants to the discussion will explore. ‘My friends’ marks this as an encounter between individuals from different cities or countries who are bound by a tie of mutual hospitality (ξένοι, the word rendered here by ‘friends’, embraces both guests and hosts): as it will transpire, it is an encounter between two very different cultures, each of which will challenge the other's presuppositions.

The next few conversational moves establish that the location is the island of Crete (not the Athens usual in a Platonic dialogue), and that the visitor's Cretan addressee already has with him a companion from Sparta. It will take a couple of pages before it is established for the reader that the speaker of the opening sentence is from Athens (1.626d).

Summary

ATHENIAN: The next step, logically, is to draw up a list of festivals and, with oracular guidance from Delphi, to lay down in law which sacrifices (and to which gods) would have the greater merit and profit for the city when it is sacrificing; the precise occasions, however, and actual number of sacrifices, would be pretty much up to us, I dare say, to lay down in law.

CLEINIAS: I dare say, when it comes to the actual number.

ATHENIAN: Then let the actual number be where we begin. Let us have no fewer than 365 of these festivals, so that there may always be one of the officials performing sacrifice to one of the gods or guardian spirits, for the benefit of the city and the citizens themselves and their possessions. On these occasions, the interpreters, priests and priestesses, and seers shall come together, with the guardians of the law, and set out arrangements for those details which the lawgiver is, of necessity, obliged to omit. What is more, this very question – what has been omitted – should be a matter for these same people to decide. And what the law will lay down is that there are to be twelve festivals, to the twelve gods after whom each of the tribes is named; that they are to perform monthly sacrifices to each of these gods; and that they are to allocate choruses and musical competitions, and athletic competitions, with an eye to what is appropriate both to the gods themselves and to the various seasons; and that they are to allocate women's festivals – both those which should properly be held without men present, and those which need not be.

Then there's the question of the gods below, and the gods whom we ought to call heavenly, and which of the rites associated with them must be kept separate and not mingled with the others; these they must assign to the twelfth month, the month of Pluto, as the law requires. And being people of a warlike disposition, they must not take exception to a god of this character, but must honour him as someone who is at all times a very good thing for the human race, since for soul and body (as I cannot emphasise too strongly), union is in no way a better thing than separation.

Summary

ATHENIAN: The next point to consider here, by the looks of it, is whether this is the only good – this insight into our natures – to be found in the correct use of wine in company, or whether there is some other great benefit which merits serious attention. What do we say about that? Yes, there is a great benefit – or so our argument appears to suggest. As for where the benefit is and what form it takes, well, we need to listen to the argument with great care. We don't want to be tripped up by it somehow.

CLEINIAS: Go ahead.

ATHENIAN: Very well. What I'd like to do is remind you just what we say correct education is, since this activity, properly managed, is in fact a safeguard of education, I now venture to suggest.

CLEINIAS: A large claim.

ATHENIAN: Well, I maintain that with children, their first childish perception is pleasure and pain, and that it is in these that goodness and badness first make their appearance in the soul. As for wisdom and true opinions which can be relied on, well, you're lucky if they make their appearance even in old age – certainly the person who has acquired them, and all the good things that go with them, is a complete human being. Now education, I maintain, is this goodness as it is making its first appearance in children; if pleasure, friendship, pain, and hatred arise in the proper way in the souls of those who cannot as yet grasp the reason for them, and if, when they do grasp the reason, their feelings are consonant with that reason because they have been correctly trained by the appropriate habits, then this consonance is in general called human goodness, while the part of it which has had a proper upbringing where pleasure and pain are concerned, so that, from the very beginning to the very end, they hate what they should hate and love what they should love – well, separate off this part in your account and give it the name ‘education’, and in my opinion at least you will be giving it the right name.

CLEINIAS: Yes, my friend. The things you said earlier about education seemed to us to be correct – and the same goes for the things you've just been saying.

Summary

ATHENIAN: Well, all that discussion just about brings us on to the establishment of public offices in your city.

CLEINIAS: Yes, that is what comes next.

ATHENIAN: There are in fact two dimensions to the ordering of a political system: first, the establishing of offices and the people who are going to hold them; how many of them should there be, and how should appointments to them be made? After that, each office must be given its own particular laws – whatever laws, in number and character, are the right ones for it to have. But hang on a minute – before we make our selection, there's an observation we need to make which is not without some bearing on the subject.

CLEINIAS: What observation is that?

ATHENIAN: This. It's obvious to anyone, I suppose, this kind of thing, but lawgiving is a serious business, so if a city which has been well catered for appoints unsuitable officials to supervise laws that are well framed, not only does it get no advantage from them, well framed as they are – not to mention exposing the city to complete ridicule – but, broadly speaking, by far the greatest injuries and violence in cities arise from this cause.

CLEINIAS: That goes without saying.

ATHENIAN: In which case, my friend, let's pay a bit of attention to this point and its bearing on the political system and city we're now talking about. You can see for a start that the correct way for people to approach the responsibilities of office is for them to have been thoroughly tested – not just the men themselves, but their families as well – from childhood right up to their selection; and then secondly, that the people who are going to make the selection must in their turn have been brought up in the ways of the law, well educated in the likes and dislikes which give them the ability to choose or reject those who, in either case, deserve it. But this is a problem for people who have only just come together, with no knowledge of one another, and (so far) no education; how could they possibly select magistrates without making a mess of it?

Summary

ATHENIAN: After cases of assault, let us have a once-for-all statement of the general principle relating to violence, as follows: no one is to take away or drive off anything belonging to anybody else, or even make use of any of his neighbour's possessions without the owner's consent, since that is the kind of behaviour which has been, which is, and which always will be at the root of all the evils we have been talking about. Apart from those, the most serious offences are undisciplined acts of aggression on the part of the young – most seriously against temples, especially holy places which are public, or held in joint ownership by members of a tribe or something of that sort. Offences against private shrines and tombs come second, and are second in point of severity. Against parents, third, any act of aggression other than those described earlier. The fourth kind of aggression is when someone, out of contempt for the magistrates, drives off or takes away, or uses, something of theirs, without their consent. Fifth, any violation of the rights of any individual citizen which demands legal redress. We must publish legislation to cover each of these offences.

For temple robbery, either with violence or by stealth, it has been stated, in general terms, what the penalty should be. But for all those offences against the gods, which a person commits by word or deed, in his speech or actions, the statement of the penalty should be preceded by some words of positive encouragement. Let them be as follows: nobody who believes that the gods exist, as the laws require, has ever intentionally performed an impious action or breathed a word contrary to law. No, people do these things in one of three frames of mind: either lacking the belief I mentioned; or second, believing that there are gods, but that they care nothing for human beings; or third, that they are easily won over by inducements in the form of sacrifice and prayer.

CLEINIAS: How, in that case, should we deal with them? How talk to them?

ATHENIAN: Well, no offence, but let's first listen to them, to the lighthearted and contemptuous things I'm prepared to bet they say about us.

Summary

My dear Peter Giles, I am almost ashamed to be sending you after nearly a year this little book about the Utopian commonwealth, which I'm sure you expected in less than six weeks. For, as you were well aware, I faced no problem in finding my materials, and had no reason to ponder the arrangement of them. All I had to do was repeat what you and I together heard Raphael relate. Hence there was no occasion for me to labour over the style, since what he said, being extempore and informal, couldn't be couched in fancy terms. And besides, as you know, he is a man not so well versed in Latin as in Greek; so that my language would be nearer the truth, the closer it approached to his casual simplicity. Truth in fact is the only thing at which I should aim and do aim in writing this book.

I confess, my dear Peter, that having all these materials ready to hand left hardly anything at all for me to do. Otherwise, thinking through this topic from the beginning and disposing it in proper order might have demanded no little time and work, even if one were not entirely deficient in talent and learning. And then if the matter had to be set forth with eloquence, not just factually, there is no way I could have done that, however hard I worked, for however long a time. But now when I was relieved of all these concerns, over which I could have sweated forever, there was nothing for me to do but simply write down what I had heard. Well, little as it was, that task was rendered almost impossible by my many other obligations. Most of my day is given to the law – pleading some cases, hearing others, arbitrating others, and deciding still others. I pay a courtesy call to one man and visit another on business; and so almost all day I'm out dealing with other people, and the rest of the day I give over to my family and household; and then for myself – that is, my studies – there's nothing left.

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Book 12

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Plato: Laws

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Laws

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Thomas More to Peter Giles

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Plato: Laws

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