The Laws

The main points of this section are (i) the necessity of law as a means of reconciling conflicting interests, (2) the dangers of unchecked power concentrated in one person, and conversely (3) the need of a balance of power in a state between the various ruling elements – in the case of Sparta, between kings, ephors and elders. We may also note the belief, common in the ancient world, that primitive man, being untouched by civilization, was morally ‘better’.

LIFE AFTER THE FLOOD

ATHENIAN: We can take that as settled, then. But what about [BK III] political systems? How are we to suppose they first came into [676a] existence? I feel sure that the best and easiest way to see their origins is this.

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: To use the same method that we always have to adopt when we look into a state’s moral progress or decline.

CLEINIAS: What method have you in mind?

ATHENIAN: We take an indefinitely long period of time and [b] study the changes that occur in it.

CLEINIAS: How do you mean?

ATHENIAN: Look, do you think you could ever grasp how long it is that states have existed and men have lived under some sort of political organization?

CLEINIAS: No, not very easily.

ATHENIAN: But at any rate you realize it must be an enormously long time?

CLEINIAS: Yes, I see that, of course.

ATHENIAN: So surely, during this period, thousands upon thousands of states have come into being, while at least as many, in equally vast numbers, have been destroyed? Time and again each one of them has adopted every type of political system. [c] And sometimes small states have become bigger, and big ones have grown smaller; superior states have deteriorated and bad ones have improved.

CLEINIAS: Inevitably.

ATHENIAN: Let’s try to pin down just why these changes took place, if we can; then perhaps we shall discover how the various systems took root and developed.

CLEINIAS: Admirable! Let’s get down to it. You must do your best to explain your views, and we must try to follow you.

ATHENIAN: Do you think there is any truth in tradition? [677a]

CLEINIAS: What sort of tradition do you mean?

ATHENIAN: This: that the human race has been repeatedly annihilated by floods and plagues and many other causes, so that only a small fraction of it survived.

CLEINIAS: Yes, of course, all that sort of thing strikes everyone as entirely credible.

ATHENIAN: Now then, let’s picture just one of this series of annihilations – I mean the effect of the flood.

CLEINIAS: What special point are we to notice about it?

ATHENIAN: That those who escaped the disaster must have [b] been pretty nearly all hill-shepherds – a few embers of mankind preserved, I imagine, on the tops of mountains.

CLEINIAS: Obviously.

ATHENIAN: Here’s a further point: such men must have been in general unskilled and unsophisticated. In particular, they must have been quite innocent of the crafty devices that city-dwellers use in the rat-race to do each other down; and all the other dirty tricks that men play against one another must have been unknown.

CLEINIAS: Quite likely.

[c] ATHENIAN: And we can take it, can’t we, that the cities that had been built on the plains and near the sea were destroyed root-and-branch?

CLEINIAS: Yes, we can.

ATHENIAN: So all their tools were destroyed, and any worth-while discovery they had made in politics or any other field was entirely lost? You see, my friend, if their discoveries had survived throughout at the same level of development as they have attained today, it is difficult to see what room there can ever have been for any new invention.¹

[d] CLEINIAS: The upshot of all this, I suppose, is that for millions of years these techniques remained unknown to primitive man. Then, a thousand or two thousand years ago, Daedalus and Orpheus and Palamedes made their various discoveries, Marsyas and Olympus pioneered the art of music, Amphion invented the lyre, and many other discoveries were made by other people. All this happened only yesterday or the day before, so to speak.

ATHENIAN: How tactful of you, Cleinias, to leave out your friend, who really was born ‘yesterday’!

CLEINIAS: I suppose you mean Epimenides?

[e] ATHENIAN: Yes, that’s the man. His discovery, my dear fellow, put him streets ahead of all the other inventors. Hesiod had foreshadowed it in his poetry long before, but it was Epimenides who achieved it in practice, so you Cretans claim.²

CLEINIAS: We certainly do claim that.

ATHENIAN: Perhaps we can describe the state of mankind after the cataclysm like this: in spite of a vast and terrifying desolation, plenty of fertile land was available, and although animals in general had perished it happened that some cattle still survived, together with perhaps a small stock of goats. They were few enough, but sufficient to maintain the correspondingly [678a] few herdsmen of this early period.

CLEINIAS: Agreed.

ATHENIAN: But at the moment we are talking about the state, and the business of legislation and political organization. Is it conceivable that any trace at all of such things survived – even, so to speak, in the memory?

CLEINIAS: Of course not.

ATHENIAN: So out of those conditions all the features of our present-day life developed: states, political systems, technical skills, laws, rampant vice and frequent virtue.

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: My dear sir, can we really suppose that the men of [b] that period, who had had no experience of city life in all its splendour and squalor, ever became totally wicked or totally virtuous?

CLEINIAS: A good point. We see what you mean.

ATHENIAN: So it was only as time went on, and the numbers of the human race increased, that civilization advanced and reached its present stage of development?

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: The process was probably not sudden, but gradual, and took a considerable time.

CLEINIAS: Yes, that’s perfectly plausible. [c]

ATHENIAN: I imagine men were all numbed with fear at the prospect of descending from the hills to the plains.

CLEINIAS: Naturally enough.

ATHENIAN: And what a pleasure it must have been to see each other, there being so few of them at that time! However, pretty well all vehicles they might have used to visit each other by land or sea had been destroyed, and the techniques used to construct them had been lost, so that I suppose they found getting together none too easy. They suffered from a scarcity [d] of timber, because iron, copper and mineral workings in general had been overlaid with sludge and had been lost to sight, so that it was virtually impossible to refine fresh supplies of metal. Even if there was the odd tool left somewhere on the mountains, it was quickly worn down to nothing by use. Replacements could not be made until the technique of mining sprang up again among men.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: And how many generations later did that happen, on our calculation?

CLEINIAS: A good many, obviously. [e]

ATHENIAN: Well then, during that period, or even longer, all techniques that depend on a supply of copper and iron and so on must have gone out of use?

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: For several reasons, then, war and civil war alike came to an end.

CLEINIAS: How so?

ATHENIAN: In the first place, men’s isolation prompted them to cherish and love one another. Second, their food supply [679a] was nothing they needed to quarrel about. Except perhaps for a few people in the very early stages, there was no shortage of flocks and herds, which is what men mostly lived on in that age. They always had a supply of milk and meat, and could always add to it plenty of good food to be got by hunting. They also had an abundance of clothes, bedding, houses, and equipment for cooking and other purposes. (Moulding pottery and weaving, skills that have no need of iron, were a [b] gift from God to men – his way, in fact, of supplying them with all that kind of equipment. His intention was that whenever the human race was reduced to such a desperate condition it could still take root and develop.) Because of all this, they were not intolerably poor, nor driven by poverty to quarrel with each other; but presumably they did not grow rich either, in view of the prevailing lack of gold and silver. Now the community in which neither wealth nor poverty exists will generally produce the finest characters, because tendencies to [c] violence and crime, and feelings of jealousy and envy, simply do not arise. So these men were good, partly for that very reason, partly because of what we might call their ‘naïveté’. When they heard things labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they were so artless as to think it a statement of the literal truth and believe it. This lack of sophistication precluded the cynicism you find today: they accepted as the truth the doctrine they heard about gods and men, and lived their lives in accordance with it. That is why they were the sort of people we have described.

[d] CLEINIAS: Megillus and I, at least, agree with your account.

ATHENIAN: If we compare them with the era before the flood and with the modern world, we shall have to say that the many generations which lived in that way were inevitably unskilled and ignorant of techniques in general, and particularly of the military devices used on land and sea nowadays. They must also have been innocent of the techniques of warfare peculiar to city-life – generally called ‘lawsuits’ and ‘party-strife’ – in which men concoct every possible device to [e] damage and hurt each other by word and deed. Weren’t our primitive men simpler and manlier and at the same time more restrained and upright in every way? We have already explained why.

CLEINIAS: Yes, you’re quite right.

AUTOCRACY

ATHENIAN: Let’s remind ourselves that this reconstruction, and the conclusions we shall draw from it, are supposed to make us appreciate how early man came to feel the need of [680a] laws, and who their lawgiver was.

CLEINIAS: Well reminded!

ATHENIAN: Presumably they felt no need for legislators, and in that era law was not yet a common phenomenon. Men born at that stage of the world cycle ³ did not yet have any written records, but lived in obedience to accepted usage and ‘ancestral’ law, as we call it.

CLEINIAS: Quite likely.

ATHENIAN: But this is already a political system, of a sort.

CLEINIAS: What sort?

ATHENIAN: Autocracy – the name which everyone, I believe, [b] uses for the political system of that age. You can still find it in many parts of the world today, both among Greeks and non-Greeks. I suppose this is what Homer is describing in his account of the household of the Cyclopes:⁴

‘No laws, no councils for debate have they:

They live on the tips of lofty mountains

In hollow caves; each man lays down the law

To wife and children, with no regard for neighbour.’ [c]

CLEINIAS: That poet of yours sounds as if he was a charming fellow. I have gone through other verses of his, and very polished they were too. Not that I know his work to any great extent – we Cretans don’t go in for foreign poetry very much.

MEGILLUS: But we at Sparta do, and we think Homer is the prince of epic poets, even though the way of life he describes [d] is invariably Ionian rather than Spartan. In this instance he certainly seems to bear you out when he points in his stories to the wild life of the Cyclopes as an explanation of their primitive customs.

ATHENIAN: Yes, he does testify in my favour. So let’s take him as our evidence that political systems of this kind do sometimes develop.

CLEINIAS: Very well.

ATHENIAN: And they arise among these people who live scattered in separate households and individual families in the confusion that follows the cataclysms. In such a system the [e] eldest member rules by virtue of having inherited power from his father or mother; the others follow his lead and make one flock like birds. The authority to which they bow is that of their patriarch: they are governed, in effect, by the most justifiable of all forms of kingship.

CLEINIAS: Yes, of course.

THE PRIMITIVE CITY AND THE ORIGIN OF LEGISLATION

ATHENIAN: The next stage is when several families amalgamate and form larger communities. They turn their attention to [681a] agriculture, initially in the foot-hills, and build rings of dry stones to serve as walls to protect themselves against wild animals. The result now is a single large unit, a common homestead.

CLEINIAS: I suppose that’s quite probable.

ATHENIAN: Well then, isn’t this probable too?

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: As these original relatively tiny communities grew bigger, each of the small constituent families lived under its own ruler – the eldest member – and followed its own particular customs which had arisen because of its isolation from the [b] others. The various social and religious standards to which people had grown accustomed reflected the bias of their ancestors and teachers: the more restrained or adventurous the ancestor, the more restrained or adventurous would be the character of his descendants. Consequently, as I say, the members of each group entered the larger community with laws peculiar to themselves, and were ready to impress their own inclinations on their children and their children’s children.

CLEINIAS: Naturally.

ATHENIAN: And of course each group inevitably approved of [c] its own laws and looked on those of other people with rather less favour.

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: So it looks as if we have unwittingly stumbled on the origin of legislation.

CLEINIAS: We certainly have.

ATHENIAN: At any rate the next and necessary step in this amalgamation is to choose some representatives to review the rules of all the families, and to propose openly to the leaders and heads of the people – the ‘kings’, so to speak – the [d] adoption of those rules that particularly recommend themselves for common use. These representatives will be known as lawgivers, and by appointing the leaders as officials they will create out of the separate autocracies a sort of aristocracy, or perhaps kingship. And while the political system passes through this transitional stage they will administer the state themselves.

CLEINIAS: Yes, that sort of change would certainly come about by stages.

TROY

ATHENIAN: So we can now go on to describe the birth of a third type of political system, one which in fact admits all systems and all their modifications and exhibits equal variety and change in the actual states as well.

CLEINIAS: What type is this?

[e] ATHENIAN: The one which Homer too listed as the successor of the second. This is how he describes the origin of the third:⁵ ‘He founded Dardania’ – I think this is how it goes – ‘when holy Ilium,

A town upon the plain for mortal men, had not been built:

For still they lived upon the lower slopes of many-fountained Ida.’

[682a] He composed these lines, as well as those about the Cyclopes, under some sort of inspiration from God. And how true to life they are! This is because poets as a class are divinely gifted and are inspired when they sing, so that with the help of Graces and Muses they frequently hit on how things really happen.

CLEINIAS: They do indeed.

ATHENIAN: Let’s carry on with the story we are telling: it may suggest something to our purpose. I take it this is what we ought to do?

[b] CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Ilium was founded, according to us, when men had descended from the hills to a wide and beautiful plain. They built their city on a hill of moderate height near several rivers which poured down from Ida above.

CLEINIAS: So the story goes.

ATHENIAN: I suppose we may assume that this descent of theirs took place many ages after the flood?

CLEINIAS: Yes, naturally, many ages later.

ATHENIAN: I mean that apparently the disaster we’ve just described must have been forgotten to a quite remarkable degree if they founded their city on the lower reaches of [c] several rivers flowing down from the mountains, and put their trust in hills that were none too high.

CLEINIAS: Yes, a clear proof that they were far removed in time from any such experience.

ATHENIAN: With the increase in the human population many other cities, one supposes, were already being founded.

CLEINIAS: Naturally.

ATHENIAN: These cities also mounted an expedition against Ilium, probably by sea as well, because by then all mankind had overcome its fear and had taken to ships.

CLEINIAS: So it seems. [d]

ATHENIAN: And after a siege of about ten years the Achaeans sacked Troy.

CLEINIAS: Indeed they did.

ATHENIAN: They besieged Ilium for ten years, and during this period the domestic affairs of the individual attackers took a turn for the worse. The younger generation revolted, and the ugly and criminal reception they gave the troops when they returned to their own cities and homes led to murder, massacre [e] and expulsion on a large scale. When the exiles came back again they adopted a new name, and were now known as Dorians instead of Achaeans, in honour of Dorieus, who had rallied them while they were in exile. A full and exhaustive account of subsequent events can be found in your traditional Spartan stories.

MEGILLUS: Of course.

THE DORIAN LEAGUE

ATHENIAN: When we were starting to discuss legislation, the question of the arts and drinking cropped up, and we made a digression.⁶ But now we really do have a chance to come to grips with our subject. As if God himself were guiding us, we’ve come back to the very point from which we digressed: the actual foundation of Sparta. You maintained that Sparta [683a] was established on the right lines,⁷ and you said the same of Crete, because it has laws that bear a family resemblance to Sparta’s. We have had a rather random discussion about various foundations and political systems, but we have achieved at least this much: we have watched the first, second and third types of state being founded in succession over a vast period of time, and now we discover this fourth state (or ‘nation’, if you like) whose historical foundation and development we are tracing down to its maturity today.⁸ After [b] all this, perhaps we can get some idea of what was right and wrong in the way these foundations were established. Can we see what kinds of laws are responsible for continued preservation of the features that survive and the ruin of those that collapse? What detailed alterations will produce happiness in a state? If we can understand all this, Cleinias and Megillus, we shall have to discuss the whole business all over again: it will be like making a fresh start.⁹ However, we may be able to find some fault in our account so far.

MEGILLUS: Well, sir, if some god were to give us his word that [c] if we do make a second attempt to look at the problem of legislation, we shall hear an account of at least the quality and length of the one we have just had, I for one would willingly extend our journey, and the present day would seem not a moment too long – though it is in fact pretty well the longest day of summer.

ATHENIAN: So it looks as if we must press on with the investigation.

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Let’s imagine that we are living at the time when the territory of Sparta, Argos and Messene, and the districts [d] nearby, had in effect come under the control of your ancestors, Megillus. Their next decision, or so the story goes, was to split their forces into three and establish three states – Argos, Messene and Sparta.

MEGILLUS: That’s quite right.

ATHENIAN: Temenos became king of Argos, Cresphontes of Messene, and Procles and Eurysthenes of Sparta.

MEGILLUS: True.

ATHENIAN: And all their contemporaries swore to them that they would go to their help if anybody tried to subvert their [e] thrones.

MEGILLUS: Precisely.

ATHENIAN: Now when a monarchy is overthrown (and indeed when any other type of authority has been destroyed at any time) surely no one but the rulers themselves are to blame? That was the line we took when the subject cropped up a little time ago ¹⁰ – or have we forgotten by now?

MEGILLUS: No, of course not.

ATHENIAN: So now we can put our thesis on a firmer footing, because it looks as if our study of history has led us to the same conclusion as before. This means we shall carry on our investigation on the basis of the actual facts rather than [684a] conjecture. The facts are, of course, as follows: each of the three royal families, and each of the three royal states they ruled, exchanged oaths in accordance with mutually binding laws which they had adopted to regulate the exercise of authority and obedience to it. The kings swore never to stiffen their rule as the nation continued down the years; the others undertook, provided the rulers kept to their side of the bargain, never themselves to overthrow the kingships nor tolerate an attempt to do so by others. The kings would help the kings [b] and peoples if they were wronged, and the peoples would help the peoples and the kings likewise. That’s right, isn’t it?

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Now whether it was the kings or someone else who laid down laws for this political system thus established in the three states, the crucial provision, surely, was this –

MEGILLUS: What?

ATHENIAN: Whenever a given state broke the established laws, an alliance of the other two would always be there to take the field against it.

MEGILLUS: Obviously.

ATHENIAN: Of course, most people only ask their legislators [c] to enact the kind of laws that the population in general will accept without objection. But just imagine asking your trainer or doctor to give you pleasure when he trains or cures your body!

MEGILLUS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: In fact, you often have to be satisfied if you can restore your body to health and vigour without undue pain.

MEGILLUS: True.

[d] ATHENIAN: In another respect too the people of that time were particularly well placed to make legislation a painless process.

MEGILLUS: What respect?

ATHENIAN: Their legislators’ efforts to establish a certain equality of property among them were not open to one particularly damaging accusation which is frequently made in other states. Suppose a legal code is being framed and someone adopts the policy of a change in the ownership of land and a cancellation of debts, because he sees that this is the only way in which equality can be satisfactorily achieved. [e] ‘Hands off fundamentals’ is the slogan everybody uses to attack a legislator who tries to bring in that kind of reform, and his policy of land-redistribution and remission of debts earns him only curses. It’s enough to make any man despair. So here is another tremendous advantage the Dorians enjoyed: the absence of resentment. No one could object to the way the land was parcelled out, and large long-standing debts did not exist.

MEGILLUS: True.

ATHENIAN: Then why on earth, my friends, did this foundation and its legislation turn out such a dismal failure?

[685a] MEGILLUS: What do you mean by that? What’s your objection?

ATHENIAN: Three states were founded but in two of them the political system and the legal code were quickly corrupted. Only the third settlement survived – that of your state, Sparta.

MEGILLUS: A pretty difficult problem you’re posing!

ATHENIAN: Nevertheless, it demands our attention. So now let’s look into it, and while away the journey, as we said when we set out, by amusing ourselves with laws – it’s a dignified [b] game and it suits our time of life.

MEGILLUS: Of course. We must do as you say.

ATHENIAN: No laws could form a better subject for our investigation than those by which these states have been administered. Or are there any bigger or more famous states whose foundation we might examine?

MEGILLUS: No, it’s not easy to think of alternatives.

ATHENIAN: Well then, it’s pretty obvious that they intended the arrangements they made to protect adequately not only the Peloponnese but the Greeks in general against any possible [c] attack by non-Greeks – as for example occurred when those who then lived in the territory of Ilium trusted to the power of the Assyrian empire, which Ninos had founded, and provoked the war against Troy by their arrogance. You see, a good deal of the splendour of the Assyrian empire still remained, and the dread of its united organization was the counterpart in that age of our fear of the Great King of Persia today. The Assyrians had a tremendous grudge against the Greeks: Troy, which was part of the Assyrian empire, had been captured for [d] a second time.¹¹ To meet such dangers the Dorian army formed a single unified body, although at that period it was distributed among the three states under the command of the kings (who were brothers, being sons of Hercules). It seemed to be excellently conceived and equipped – better even than the army which sailed against Troy. For a start, people thought the sons of Hercules were, as commanders, a cut above the grandsons of Pelops;¹² secondly, they rated the prowess of the army itself higher than that of the expedition [e] which went to Troy. After all, they calculated, that had consisted of Achaeans, the very people the Dorians had defeated. So may we take it that this was the nature and purpose of the arrangements they made?

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And for various reasons they probably expected these arrangements would be permanent and last a long time. [686a] They had been comrades in a great many toils and dangers in the past, and now they had been brought under the control of a single family (the kings being brothers); and they had also consulted a large number of prophets, notably Apollo’s at Delphi.

MEGILLUS: Yes, that’s probable enough, of course.

WHY DID THE LEAGUE FAIL?

ATHENIAN: But apparently these large expectations evaporated pretty quickly, except, as we said a minute ago, in the case of [b] just one small part of the alliance – your state, Sparta. And right up to the present day Sparta has never stopped fighting the other two members. But if they had done as they intended and had agreed on a common policy, their power would have been irresistible, militarily speaking.

MEGILLUS: It certainly would.

ATHENIAN: So just how did their plans misfire? This is surely a problem we ought to look into: why was such a vast and tremendous organization unlucky enough to be destroyed?

MEGILLUS: True: this is the right direction to look. Neglect [c] these, and you’ll never find any other laws or political systems preserving (or eliminating) such remarkable and important features.

ATHENIAN: What a stroke of luck! It looks as if we’ve somehow got on to a crucial point.

MEGILLUS: No doubt about it.

ATHENIAN: Well now, my fine fellow, what hackneyed thoughts we’ve been having, without realizing it! When people see some tremendous achievement, they always think to themselves, ‘What terrific results it would have led to, if [d] someone had known how to set about putting it to proper use!’ Here and now, perhaps our ideas on the topic we are discussing are just as wrong and unrealistic as anybody else’s who looks at anything in that sort of way.

MEGILLUS: Well really, what do you mean? What are we supposed to think you’re driving at when you say that?

ATHENIAN: I was poking fun at no one but myself, my friend. I was thinking about the army we are discussing and it occurred to me how splendid it was and what a marvellous tool (as I said) had been put into the hands of the Greeks – if [e] only someone had put it to the proper use at the time!

MEGILLUS: And you were quite right and sensible in everything you said, and we heartily agreed with you – equally rightly and sensibly.

ATHENIAN: Maybe so. Still, my view is that everyone who sets eyes on something big and strong and powerful immediately gets the feeling that if the owner knew how to take advantage of its size and scale he would get tremendous results and be a happy man.

MEGILLUS: And this again is surely right and proper. Or do [687a] you see it differently?

ATHENIAN: Well now, just consider what criteria a man ought to employ if he is going to be ‘right’ to give such praise in an individual case. What about the one we are discussing, for a start? Suppose those who undertook the organization of the army in that age had known their job: somehow, they would have succeeded in it – but the question is how. They ought, of course, to have consolidated their army and kept it on a permanent footing; this would have ensured them their own freedom while they ruled over anybody else they liked, and in general it would have enabled them to do whatever they or [b] their children wanted all over the world, among Greeks and non-Greeks indifferently. This is what men would praise them for, isn’t it?

MEGILLUS: It is indeed.

ATHENIAN: Again, anyone who notices a case of great wealth or exceptional family distinction or something like that takes precisely the same line. He assumes that just because a man enjoys these advantages his every wish will be granted – or at any rate most of them, and the most important ones.

MEGILLUS: Quite likely.

ATHENIAN: Now then, this shows that there is one specific [c] desire common to all mankind. Isn’t this the upshot of our discussion?

MEGILLUS: What desire?

ATHENIAN: That events should obey whatever orders one feels like giving – invariably, if possible, but failing that, at least where human affairs are concerned.

MEGILLUS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: So seeing that this is the constant wish of us all, right from childhood to old age, isn’t it inevitably what we are always praying for too?

MEGILLUS: Of course.

[d] ATHENIAN: And I suppose our prayers on behalf of those whom we love will be for precisely what they themselves pray for on their own behalf?

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: A man who is a father loves the child who is his son?

MEGILLUS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Yet there is a good deal in the son’s prayers that the father will beg the gods never to grant.

MEGILLUS: You mean when the son who prays is still young and irresponsible?

ATHENIAN: Yes, and I’m thinking too of when the father is senile or even unduly impulsive because of second childhood, [e] and has lost all sense of what is right and proper. He gets into the same state as Theseus when he dealt with Hippolytus, who died so wretchedly,¹³ and his prayers become very vehement indeed. But if the son understands the situation, do you think he will join in his father’s prayers, given those circumstances?

MEGILLUS: I know what you mean. Your point, I take it, is that you should demand your own way in your prayers only if your wishes are supported by your rational judgement – and this, a rational outlook, should be the object of the prayers and efforts of us all, states and individuals alike.

[688a] ATHENIAN: It should indeed, and in particular – let me remind myself – it should always be the aim of a state’s legislator when he frames the provisions of his laws. And I remind you again – to recollect the beginning of our discussion – of what you two recommended: you said that the good legislator should construct his entire legal code with a view to war; for my part, I maintained that this was to order him to establish his laws with an eye on only one virtue out of the four. I said [b] he ought to keep virtue as a whole in mind but especially and pre-eminently the virtue that heads the list – judgement and wisdom, and a strength of mind such that desires and appetites are kept under control. Our discussion has come full circle, and being the speaker at the moment I make the same point as before. You can treat it as a joke if you like, but if you prefer, you can take it seriously: I maintain that, if you lack wisdom, praying is a risky business, because you get the opposite of what you want.¹⁴ If you like to suppose that I am [c] in earnest, do so: I’m confident that if you follow the line of argument we opened up a moment ago you’ll soon discover that the cause of the ruin of the kings and the whole enterprise was not cowardice nor a lack of military expertise in the commanders or in those whose role it was to obey them. The disaster was caused by every other sort of vice, and in particular ignorance about mankind’s most vital concerns. And if that was true then it is even more so today; and precisely [d] the same will be true in the future. If you like, I’ll try to press on with the next stages in the argument and develop the point. As you are my friends, I’ll do my very best to make it clear.

CLEINIAS: To make a speech in your praise, sir, would be a tasteless thing to do. Our actions rather than our words will show our regard for you: we shall give you our closest attention. This is the best way to tell whether a gentleman approves or not.

MEGILLUS: Well said, Cleinias. Let’s do as you say. [e]

CLEINIAS: And so we shall, God willing. Now let’s have your explanation.

ATHENIAN: Well then, to get back on to the track of the argument, we maintain that crass ignorance destroyed that great empire, and that it has a natural tendency to produce precisely the same results today. If this is so, it means that the legislator must try to inspire states with as much good sense as possible, and eradicate folly, as far as he can.

CLEINIAS: Obviously.

ATHENIAN: So what kind of ignorance would deserve the title [689a] ‘crass’? See if you agree with my description. I suggest this kind.

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: The kind involved when a man thinks something is fine and good, but loathes it instead of liking it, and conversely when he likes and welcomes what he believes is wicked and unjust. I maintain that this disaccord between his feelings of pleasure and pain and his rational judgement constitutes the very lowest depth of ignorance. It is also the most ‘crass’, in that it affects the most extensive element in the soul (the [b] element that experiences pleasure and pain, which corresponds to the most extensive part of a state, the common people). So when the soul quarrels with knowledge or opinion or reason, its natural ruling principles, you have there what I call ‘folly’. This applies both to the state in which people disobey their rulers and laws, and to the individual, when the fine principles in which he really believes prove not only ineffective but actually harmful. It’s all these examples of ignorance that I should put down as the worst kind of discord [c] in a state and individual, not the mere professional ignorance of a workman. I hope you see what I mean, gentlemen.

CLEINIAS: We do, my friend, and we agree with what you say.

ATHENIAN: So let’s adopt this as an agreed statement of policy: no citizens who suffer from this kind of ignorance should be entrusted with any degree of power. They must be reproved for their ignorance, even if their ability to reason is outstanding and they have worked hard at every nice accomplishment [d] that makes a man quick-witted. It is those whose characters are at the other extreme who must be called ‘wise’, even if, as the saying is, ‘they cannot read, they cannot swim’; and it is these sensible people who must be given the offices of state. You see, my friends, without concord,¹⁵ how could you ever get even a glimmer of sound judgement? It’s out of the question. But we should be entirely justified in styling the greatest and most splendid concord of all ‘the greatest wisdom’. Anyone who lives a rational life shares in this wisdom, but the man who lacks it will invariably turn out to be a spendthrift and no saviour¹⁶ to the city – quite the reverse, because he suffers from this particular kind of ignorance. So as we said [e] just now, let’s adopt this as the statement of our views.

CLEINIAS: Adopted it is.

SEVEN TITLES TO AUTHORITY

ATHENIAN: Now, I take it that states must contain some people who govern and others who are governed?

CLEINIAS: Naturally.

ATHENIAN: Good. Well then, what titles are there to either [690a] rank? Can we count them? (I mean both in the state and in the family, in each case irrespective of size.) One claim, surely, could be made by father and mother; and in general the title of parents to exercise control over their children and descendants would be universally acknowledged, wouldn’t it?

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Close behind comes the title of those of high birth to govern those of low birth. Next in order comes our third demand: that younger people should consent to be governed by their elders.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: The fourth is that slaves should be subject to the [b] control of their masters.

CLEINIAS: No doubt about it.

ATHENIAN: And I suppose the fifth is that the stronger should rule and the weaker should obey.

CLEINIAS: A pretty compelling claim to obedience, that!

ATHENIAN: Yes, and one which prevails throughout the animal kingdom – by decree of nature, as Pindar of Thebes once remarked.¹⁷ But it looks as if the most important claim will be the sixth, that the ignorant man should follow the leadership of the wise and obey his orders. In spite of you, my clever [c] Pindar, what I’d call the ‘decree of nature’ is in fact this spontaneous and willing acceptance of the rule of law; I’m certainly not prepared to say it’s unnatural.

CLEINIAS: Quite right.

ATHENIAN: And we persuade a man to cast lots, by explaining that this, the seventh title to authority, enjoys the favour of the gods and is blessed by fortune. We tell him that the fairest arrangement is for him to exercise authority if he wins, but to be subject to it if he loses.

CLEINIAS: That’s very true.

[d] ATHENIAN: ‘So you see, O legislator’ (as we might jocularly address someone who sets about legislation with undue optimism), ‘you see how many titles to authority there are, and how they naturally conflict with each other. Now here’s a source of civil strife we’ve discovered for you, which you must put to rights. First, though, join us in trying to find out how the kings of Argos and Messene went astray and broke these rules, and so destroyed themselves and the power of Greece, [e] for all its splendour at that time. Wasn’t it because they didn’t appreciate the truth of Hesiod’s remark that the half is often greater than the whole.¹⁸ He thought that when it is harmful to get the whole, and the half is enough, then enough is better than a feast, and is the preferable alternative.’

CLEINIAS: True enough.

ATHENIAN: So where do we suppose this destructive process invariably starts? Among kings or people?

[691a] CLEINIAS: Most instances suggest that this is probably a disease of kings whose life of luxury has made them arrogant.

ATHENIAN: So it is clear that it was the kings of that era who were first infected by the acquisitive spirit in defiance of the law of the land. The precise point to which they had given their seal of approval by their word and oath became the ground of their disagreement, and this lack of harmony (which is, in our view, the ‘crassest’ stupidity, though it looks like wisdom) put the whole arrangement jarringly off key and out of tune: hence its destruction.

CLEINIAS: Quite likely.

§4. THE LESSONS OF HISTORY (I): LEGISLATION AND THE BALANCE OF POWERS