It would be amusing to hear a celestial conversation between Plato and Dr Johnson on the latter’s remark that ‘there are few ways in which a man is more innocently employed than in getting money’. Plato, it is clear, would disagree violently: the key to this section is his wish, in the interests of morality, to restrict trade to the smallest practicable compass, on the grounds that it tends to encourage a pernicious desire to make as much money as possible. Thus – to state very summarily the economic system of Magnesia – retail trading for profit is to be confined to resident aliens whose consequent moral turpitude will hardly affect the state; the citizen farmers are to sell a fixed part of their crops wholesale to aliens for retail distribution, and buy manufactured goods and services from them in return; even so, the actual selling of the crops must be conducted not by the citizens themselves, but by their slaves as overseers of the farms. The regulations of this section are, so far as they go, self-explanatory, but details are often vague.
THE FOOD SUPPLY (1)
[b] ATHENIAN: Well then, this is the stage we’ve reached now. We can assume that communal meals have been established (a thing that would be a problem in other countries, we notice, but not in Crete, where no one would think of doing anything else). But how should they be organized? On the Cretan model, or the Spartan? Or is there some third type that would suit us better than either? I don’t think this is a difficulty, and there’s not much to be gained from settling the point. The arrangements we have made are quite satisfactory as they are.
The next question is the organization of a food supply in [c] keeping with our communal meals. In other states the sources of supply are many and varied – in fact, at least twice as many as in ours, because most Greeks draw on both the land and the sea for their food, whereas our citizens will use the land alone. For the legislator, this makes things simpler. It’s not just that half the number of laws or even substantially fewer [d] will do, but they’ll be more suitable laws for gentlemen to observe. Our state’s legislator, you see, need not bother his head very much about the merchant-shipping business, trading, retailing, inn-keeping, customs duties, mining, money-lending and compound interest. Waving aside most of these and a thousand other such details, he’ll legislate for farmers, shepherds, bee-keepers, for the protectors of their stock and the supervisors of their equipment. His laws already cover [e] such major topics as marriage and the birth and rearing of children, as well as their education and the appointment of the state’s officials, so the next topic to which he must turn in his legislation is their food, and the workers who co-operate in the constant effort to produce it.
AGRICULTURAL LAWS
Let’s first specify the ‘agricultural’ laws, as they’re called. The first law – sanctioned by Zeus the Protector of Boundaries – shall run as follows:
No man shall disturb the boundary stones of his neighbour, whether fellow-citizen or foreigner (that is, when a proprietor’s land is on the boundary of the state), in the conviction that this would be ‘moving the immovable’1 in the crudest sense. Far better that a man should want to try to move the biggest stone [843a] that does not mark a boundary, than a small one separating friend’s land from foe’s, and established by an oath sworn to the gods. Zeus the God of Kin is witness in the one case, Zeus the Protector of Foreigners in the other. Rouse him in either capacity, and the most terrible wars break out. If a man obeys the law he will escape its penalties, but if he holds it in contempt he is to be liable to two punishments, the first at the hands of [b] the gods, the second under the law. No man, if he can help it, must move the boundary stones of his neighbour’s land, but if anyone does move them, any man who wishes should report him to the farmers, who should take him to court.
26. If anyone is found guilty of such a charge,
he must be regarded as a man who has tried to reallocate land, whether clandestinely or by force; and the court must bear that in mind when assessing what penalty he should suffer or what fine he should pay.
DUTIES TO NEIGHBOURS
Next we come to those numerous petty injuries done by neighbour to neighbour. The frequent repetition of such injuries makes feelings run high, so that relations between neighbours [c] become intolerably embittered. That’s why everyone should do everything he can to avoid offending his neighbour; above all, he must always go out of his way to avoid all acts of encroachment. Hurting a man is all too easy, and we all get the chance to do that; but it’s not everyone who is in a position to do a good turn.
27. If a man oversteps his boundaries and encroaches on his neighbour’s land,
he should pay for the damage, and also, by way of cure for [d] such uncivilized and inconsiderate behaviour, give the injured party a further sum of twice that amount.
In all these and similar cases the Country-Wardens should act as inspectors, judges and assessors (the entire divisional company in the graver cases, as indicated earlier,2 and the Guards-in-Chief in the more trivial).
28. If a man lets his cattle graze on someone else’s land,
these officials must inspect the damage, reach a decision, and assess the penalty.
29. If anyone takes over another man’s bees, by making rattling noises to please and attract them, so that he gets them for [e] himself,
he must pay for the injury he has done.
30. If anyone burns his own wood without taking sufficient precautions to protect his neighbour’s,
he must be fined a sum decided by the officials.
31. If when planting trees a man fails to leave a suitable gap between them and his neighbour’s land,
the same regulation is to apply.
THE WATER SUPPLY (1)
These are points that many legislators have dealt with perfectly adequately, and we should make use of their work rather than demand that the grand architect of our state should legislate on a mass of trivial details that can be handled by any run-of-the-mill lawgiver. For instance, the water supply [844a] for farmers is the subject of some splendid old-established laws – but there’s no call to let them overflow into our discussion! It is fundamental that anyone who wants to conduct a supply of water to his own land may do so, provided his source is the public reservoirs and he does not intercept the surface springs of any private person. He may conduct the water by any route he likes, except through houses, temples and tombs, and he must do no damage beyond the actual construction of the conduit. But in some naturally dry [b] districts the soil may fail to retain the moisture when it rains, so that drinking water is in short supply. In that case the owner must dig down to the clay, and if he fails to strike water at that depth he should take from his neighbours sufficient drinking water for each member of his household. If the neighbours too are short of water, he should share the available supply with them and fetch his ration daily, the amount to be fixed by the Country-Wardens. A man may injure the [c] farmer or householder next door on higher ground by blocking the flow of rainwater; on the other hand he may discharge it so carelessly as to damage the man below. If the parties are not prepared to co-operate in this matter, anyone who wishes should report the matter to an official – a City-Warden in the city, and a Country-Warden in the country – and obtain a ruling as to what each side should do. Anyone refusing to abide by the ruling must take the consequences of being a [d] grudging and ill-tempered fellow:
32. if found guilty,
he should pay twice the value of the damage to the injured party as a penalty for disobeying the officials.
THE HARVEST
Everyone should take his share of the fruit harvest on roughly the following principles. The goddess of the harvest has graciously bestowed two gifts3 upon us, (a) the fruit which pleases Dionysus so much, but which won’t keep, and (b) the produce which nature has made fit to store. So our law about the harvest should run as follows.
33. Anyone who consumes any part of the coarse crop of grapes or figs, whether on his own land or another’s, before [e] the rising of Arcturus4 ushers in the vintage,
must owe
(a) fifty drachmas, to be presented to Dionysus, if he takes the fruit from his own trees,
(b) 100 if from his neighbour’s, and
(c) sixty-six and two-thirds drachmas if from anyone else’s trees.
If a man wants to gather in the ‘dessert’ grapes or figs (as they are called nowadays), he may do so whenever and however he likes, provided they come from his own trees; but
34. (a) if he takes them from anyone else’s trees, without permission,
he must be punished in accordance with the provisions of the law which forbids the removal of any object except by the [845a] depositor.5
(b) If a slave fails to get the landowner’s permission before touching any of this kind of fruit,
he must be whipped, the number of lashes to be the same as the number of grapes in the bunch or figs picked off the fig tree.
A resident alien may buy dessert fruit and gather it in as he wishes. If a foreigner on a visit from abroad feels inclined to eat some fruit as he travels along the road, he may, if he wishes, take some of the dessert crop gratis, for himself and one attendant, as part of our hospitality. But foreigners must [b] be prevented by law from sharing with us the ‘coarse’ and similar fruits.
35. If a foreigner, master or slave, touches such fruit in ignorance of the law,
(a) the slave is to be punished with a whipping;
(b) the free man is to be dismissed with a warning and told to stick to the crop that is unsuitable to be kept in store in the form of raisins, wine or dried figs.
There should be nothing to be ashamed of in helping oneself [c] inconspicuously to apples and pears and pomegranates and so on, but
36. (a) if a man under thirty is caught at it,
he should be cuffed and driven off, provided he suffers no actual injury.
A citizen should have no legal redress for such an assault on his person. (A foreigner is to be entitled to a share of these fruits too, on the same terms as he may take some of the dessert grapes and figs.) If a man above thirty years of age touches some fruits, consuming them on the spot and taking none away with him, he shall share them all on the same terms as the foreigner, but
[d] (b) if he disobeys the law,
he should be liable to be disqualified from competing for awards of merit, if anyone draws the attention of the assessors to the facts when the awards are being decided.
THE WATER SUPPLY (2)
Water is the most nourishing food a garden can have, but it’s easily fouled, whereas the soil, the sun and the winds, which co-operate with the water in fostering the growth of the plants that spring up out of the ground, are not readily interfered with by being doctored or channelled off or stolen. But in the nature of the case, water is exposed to all these hazards. That [e] is why it needs the protection of a law, which should run as follows.
If anyone deliberately spoils someone else’s water supply, whether spring or reservoir, by poisons or excavations or theft, the injured party should take his case to the City-Wardens and submit his estimate of the damage in writing.
37. Anyone convicted of fouling water by magic poisons
should, in addition to his fine, purify the spring or reservoir, using whatever method of purification the regulations of the Expounders6 prescribe as appropriate to the circumstances and the individuals involved.
BRINGING IN CROPS
A man may bring home any crop of his own by any route he [846a] pleases, provided he does no one any damage, or, failing that, benefits to at least three times the value of the damage he does his neighbour. The authorities must act as inspectors in this business, as well as in all other cases when someone uses his own property deliberately to inflict violent or surreptitious damage on another man or some piece of his property without his permission. When the damage does not exceed three minas, the injured party must report it to the magistrates and obtain redress; but if he has a larger claim to bring against someone, he must get his redress from the culprit by taking [b] the case to the public courts.
38. If one of the officials is judged to have settled the penalties in a biased fashion,
he must be liable to the injured person for double the damages.
Offences committed by the authorities in handling any claim should be taken to the public courts by anyone who may wish to do so. (There are thousands of procedural details like this that must be observed before a penalty can be imposed: the complaint has to be lodged, the summonses issued and served in the presence of two witnesses – or whatever the proper [c] number is. All this sort of detail must not be left to look after itself, but it is not important enough for a legislator who is getting on in years. Our younger colleagues must settle these points, using the broad principles laid down by their predecessors as a guide for their own detailed regulations, which they must apply as need arises. They must thus proceed by trial and error until they think they have got a satisfactory set of formalities, and once the process of modification is over, they should finalize their rules of procedure and render them lifelong obedience.)
ARTISANS
As for craftsmen in general, our policy should be this. First, [d] no citizen of our land nor any of his servants should enter the ranks of the workers whose vocation lies in the arts and crafts. A citizen’s vocation, which demands a great deal of practice and study, is to establish and maintain good order in the community, and this is not a job for part-timers. Following two trades or two callings efficiently – or even following one [e] and supervising a worker in another – is almost always too difficult for human nature. So in our state this must be a cardinal rule: no metal worker must turn to carpentry and no carpenter must supervise workers in metal instead of practising his own craft. We may, of course, be met with the excuse that supervising large numbers of employees is more sensible [847a] – because more profitable – than just following one’s own trade. But no! In our state each individual must have one occupation only, and that’s how he must earn his bread. The City-Wardens must have the job of enforcing this rule.
39. If a citizen born and bred turns his attention to some craft instead of to the cultivation of virtue,
the City-Wardens must punish him with marks of disgrace and dishonour until they’ve got him back on the right lines.
40. If a foreigner follows two trades,
[b] the Wardens must punish him by prison or fines or expulsion from the state, and so force him to play one role, not many.
As for craftsmen’s pay, and cases of refusal to take delivery of their work, or any other wrong done to them by other parties or by them to others, the City-Wardens must adjudicate if the sum at issue does not exceed fifty drachmas; if more, the public courts must decide the dispute as the law directs.
IMPORTS AND EXPORTS
In our state no duties will have to be paid by anyone on either imports or exports. No one must import frankincense and [c] similar foreign fragrant stuff used in religious ritual, or purple and similar dyes not native to the country, or materials for any other process which only needs imports from abroad for inessential purposes; nor, on the other hand, is anyone to export anything that it is essential to keep in the state. The twelve Guardians of the Laws next in order of seniority after the five eldest must act as inspectors and supervisors in this entire field. But what about arms and other military equipment? [d] Well, if we ever need, for military purposes, some technique, vegetable product, mineral, binding material or animal that has to be obtained from abroad, the state will receive the goods and pay for them, and the Cavalry-Commanders and the Generals are to be in charge of importing them and exporting other goods in exchange. The Guardians of the Laws will lay down suitable and adequate regulations on the subject. Nowhere in the whole country and the whole state are these – or any other7 – goods to be retailed [e] for profit.
THE FOOD SUPPLY (2)
It looks as if the right way to organize the food supply and distribute agricultural produce will be to adopt something like the regulations in force in Crete. Every citizen must divide each crop into twelve parts corresponding to the twelve periods in which it is consumed. Take wheat or barley, for instance (though the same procedure must be followed for all the other crops too, as well as for any livestock there may be for sale in each district): each twelfth part should be split [848a] proportionately into three shares, one for the citizens, one for their slaves, and the third for workmen and foreigners in general (i.e. communities of resident aliens in need of the necessities of life, and occasional visitors on some public or private business). It should be necessary to sell only this third share of all the necessities of life; there should be no necessity to sell any part of the other two.8 So what will be the right [b] way to arrange the division? It’s obvious, for a start, that the shares we allocate will in one sense be equal, but in another sense unequal.
CLEINIAS: What do you mean?
ATHENIAN: Well, the land will grow a good crop of one thing and a bad crop of another. That’s inevitable, I take it.
CLEINIAS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: None of the three shares – for masters, slaves and foreigners – must be better than the others: when the distribution is made, each group should be treated on an [c] equal footing and get the same share.9 Each citizen must take his two shares and distribute them at his discretion to the slaves and free persons in his charge (quality and quantity being up to him). The surplus should be distributed by being divided up according to the number of animals that have to be supported by the produce of the soil, and rationed out accordingly.
DWELLING HOUSES
Next, the population should have houses grouped in separate localities. This entails the following arrangements. There should be twelve villages, one in the middle of each of the [d] twelve divisions of the state; in each village the settlers should first select a site for a market-place with its temples for gods and their retinue of spirits. (Local Magnesian gods, and sanctuaries of other ancient deities who are still remembered, must be honoured as they were in earlier generations.) In each division they must establish shrines of Hestia, Zeus, Athena, and the patron deity of the district; after this their first job [e] must be to build houses on the highest ground in a circle round these temples, so as to provide the garrison with the strongest possible position for defence.
Thirteen groups of craftsmen must be formed to provide for all the rest of the territory. One should be settled in the city and distributed all round it on the outskirts, after further division into twelve sub-groups corresponding to the twelve urban districts; and the categories of craftsmen useful to farmers must be established in each village. They must all be under the supervision of the chief Country-Wardens, who must decide the number and type required in each district and say where they should settle in order to prove their full worth to the farmers and cause them as little trouble as possible. Similarly the board of City-Wardens must assume permanent [849a] responsibility for the craftsmen in the city.
THE MARKETS
The detailed supervision of the market must naturally be in the hands of the Market-Wardens. Their first job is to ensure that no one does any damage to the temples round the market-place; secondly, to see whether people are conducting their business in an orderly or disorderly fashion, and inflict punishment on anyone who needs it. They must ensure that every commodity the citizens are required to sell10 to the aliens is sold in the manner prescribed by law. The law will be simply [b] this. On the first day of the month the agents (the foreigners or slaves who act for the citizens) must produce the share that has to be sold to the aliens, beginning with the twelfth part of corn. At this first market an alien must buy corn and related commodities to last him the whole month. On the tenth day the respective parties must buy and sell a whole month’s supply of liquids. The third market should be on the twentieth, [c] when they should hold a sale of the livestock that individuals find they need to buy or sell, and also of all the equipment or goods sold by the farmers, and which aliens cannot get except by purchase – skins, for example, and all clothing, woven material, felt, and all that sort of thing. But these goods (and barley and wheat ground into flour and every other kind of food) should never be bought by, or sold to, a citizen or his slave through retail channels. The proper place for ‘retail’ [d] trading (as it’s generally called) in corn and wine is the foreigners’ market, where foreigners are to sell these goods to craftsmen and their slaves; and when the butchers have cut up the animals, it is to foreigners, craftsmen and their slaves that they must dispose of the meat. Any foreigner who wishes may buy any kind of firewood wholesale any day from the district agents and sell it to other foreigners whenever he likes and in whatever quantity he pleases. [e]
All other goods and equipment needed by various people should be brought to the general market and put up for sale in the place allotted them. (The Guardians of the Laws and the Market-Wardens, in conjunction with the City-Wardens, will have marked out suitable spaces and decided where each article is to be sold.) Here they must exchange money for goods and goods for money, and never hand over anything without getting something in return; anyone who doesn’t bother about this and trusts the other party must grin and bear it whether or not he gets what he’s owed, because for [850a] such transactions there will be no legal remedy. If the amount or value of the object bought or sold is greater than is allowed by the law which forbids increase or diminution of a man’s property above or below a given limit, the excess must immediately be registered with the Guardians of the Laws; but if there is a deficiency, it must be cancelled.11 The same rules are to apply to the registration of the property of resident aliens.
RESIDENT ALIENS
Anyone who wishes may come to live in the state on specified conditions. (a) There will be a community of foreigners open [b] to anyone willing and able to join it. (b) The alien must have a skill and (c) not stay longer than twenty years from the date of registration. (d) He need pay no alien-tax, even a small one (apart from behaving himself), nor any tax on any purchase or sale. (e) When his time has expired, he is to collect his possessions and depart. (f) If during this period he has distinguished himself for some notable service to the state, and is confident he can persuade the council and the assembly to grant his request for an official extension of his stay, either [c] temporarily or for life, he should present himself and make out his case; and he must be allowed to enjoy to the full whatever concessions the state grants him. (g) Children of resident aliens must be craftsmen, and (h) their period of residence must be deemed to have started when they reach the age of fifteen. On these conditions they may stay for twenty years, after which they must depart to whatever destination they like. If they wish to stay longer, they may do so provided they obtain permission as already specified. (i) Before a departing alien leaves he must cancel the entries that he originally made in the records kept in the custody of the officials.