704a

Athenian: Now, what sort of State are we proposing? I am not asking for its present name or the name it will have in the future; since that might come from the circumstances of its founding or from a place, or a river or spring or some local deity might give its sacred name to the new State. What I want to know is this: will it be inland or on the coast?

704b

Clinias: The State I just mentioned, Stranger, lies roughly eighty stades from the sea. Athenian: Does it have harbors on the coast, or none at all? Clinias: It has excellent harbors on that side, Stranger, none better.

704c

Athenian: Oh, how unfortunate! What about the surrounding country? Does it produce everything, or are some products lacking? Clinias: It lacks practically nothing. Athenian: Will any other State border it? Clinias: None at all, and that is the reason for settling it. People emigrated from this district long ago, and the country has been deserted for a very long time. Athenian: How about plains, mountains and forests? How much of each does it have?

704d

Clinias: Overall, it is like the rest of Crete. Athenian: You would call it hilly rather than level? Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: Then its obstacles to developing virtue would not be beyond remedy. If the State were on the coast, with fine harbors, but lacked many products instead of producing everything, it would need a powerful savior and divine lawgivers to keep these circumstances from producing all kinds of luxurious and corrupt habits. As things stand, those eighty stades provide some comfort. Still, it is too close to the sea, especially since its harbors are good, as you say. But we must make the best of that. The sea really is a salty and bitter neighbor, although its closeness offers some sweetness in everyday life; by filling the city’s markets with foreign goods and retail trade, and teaching people to cheat and deceive, it makes the city untrustworthy and unfriendly both to its own people and to the rest of the world. But our State has a compensating advantage: it produces everything; since it is hilly, it cannot produce everything in great quantities; if it produced large surpluses for export, gold and silver money would flood back in. Perhaps nothing is more destructive to a State’s development of noble and just ways of life, as we said in our earlier discussion, if you remember.

705b

Clinias: We remember, and we agree with what you said then and now.

705c

Athenian: Then how well supplied is our district with timber for shipbuilding? Clinias: There is no fir to speak of, or pine, and there is very little cypress. There is not much larch or plane either, which shipbuilders always need for the interior fittings of ships. Athenian: Those, too, are natural features that would be good for the country. Clinias: Why?

705d

Athenian: It is good for a State to find it difficult to copy its enemies’ bad habits. Clinias: Which of our earlier points does that refer to? Athenian: My friend, keep an eye on what I say, and remember our opening statement about the Cretan laws. We said those laws had a single aim. You said that aim was military strength. I replied that laws should indeed aim at virtue, but I strongly objected to restricting that aim to one part of virtue rather than the whole. So now, in turn, watch the laws I propose as you follow the discussion, in case any of them fails to promote virtue or promotes only part of it.

705e

Athenian: My principle is that a law is rightly made only if, like an archer, it always aims solely at what is accompanied by lasting beauty. It must pass over every other target, whether wealth or anything else of that kind that lacks beauty. To show how people living by the sea and harassed by enemies come to imitate their enemies’ bad habits, I will give you an example (without wishing, of course, to bring back painful memories). When Minos long ago forced the people of Attica to pay a crushing tribute, he had great naval power, while they had no warships like the ones they have now, and their country did not have enough timber for them to build a fleet easily. So they could not quickly copy their enemies’ naval methods and drive them off by becoming sailors themselves. In fact, it would have been better for them to lose seven children many times over rather than to become marines instead of steadfast infantrymen. Marines become accustomed to repeatedly jumping ashore and running back at full speed to their ships. They feel no shame at failing to die bravely at their posts when the enemy attacks. People readily excuse them as a matter of course when they throw away their weapons and take to what they call an honorable retreat. These are the usual results of employing naval troops, and they deserve the exact opposite of endless praise. We should never accustom people to degrading habits, especially the best of the citizens. Even Homer could have taught us that such an institution is not noble. He has Odysseus rebuke Agamemnon for ordering the Achaeans to haul down their ships to the sea, when the Trojans were pressing them in battle. In his anger he says: “Are you telling our people to haul their ships with their fine benches toward the sea while war and shouting surround us? That will fulfill the Trojans’ prayers, and bring utter destruction on us! Once the ships are drawn toward the sea, our Achaeans will no longer keep fighting, but will look behind them and leave the battle. That is how destructive your advice will prove.” (Homer, Iliad 14.96)

707a

Athenian: So Homer, too, knew that triremes lined up in the sea alongside infantry fighting on land are a bad thing: even lions with habits like these would grow accustomed to running away from female deer! Moreover, States that depend on navies for their power give honors, as rewards for their safety, to a part of their forces that is not the best; they owe their safety to the skills of the pilot, captain, and rower, all kinds of men and not very respectable ones, so it would be impossible to award each of them honors justly. But how can a State be well governed if it cannot get this right?

707b

Clinias: It is almost impossible. Nevertheless, Stranger, it was the naval battle at Salamis, fought by the Greeks against the barbarians, that saved Greece, at least according to us Cretans. Athenian: Yes, that is what is said by most of the Greeks and barbarians. But our friend Megillus and I say that the land battle at Marathon began the rescue of Greece, and the battle at Plataea completed it; we also say that these battles made the Greeks better, whereas the naval battles made them worse, if we may speak that way about battles that helped at that time to save us (for I will let you count Artemisium also as a naval battle, as well as Salamis). But our present aim is political excellence, so we are considering a country’s natural character and its legal arrangements. Unlike most people, we regard the greatest possible goodness, gained and kept throughout life, as more precious than mere safety and survival. I believe we said this before, too.

707d

Clinias: It was. Athenian: Then let us consider just this: are we following the same road we chose before as the best for States when founding settlements and framing laws?

707e

Clinias: The best by far. Athenian: Next, tell me who the settlers will be. Will they include everyone who wants to go from anywhere in Crete, assuming that every city’s population has outgrown its food supply? You are not, I assume, gathering everyone who wants to go from Greece; Athenian: although I do see settlers in your country from Argos, Aegina, and other parts of Greece. So tell us where the citizens in this new expedition are likely to come from.

708a

Clinias: The settlers will probably come from the whole of Crete. Among the other Greeks, they seem most willing to admit people from the Peloponnese as fellow-settlers. As you just said, we do have people from Argos here, including our most famous clan, the Gortynians, whose settlement came from Gortys in the Peloponnese.

708b

Athenian: States will find settlement easier in some respects when, like a swarm of bees, a single people leaves one country to settle elsewhere, departing as friends from friends because there is too little room or some other urgent need. At times, too, violent internal conflict might force a whole part of a State to emigrate; and on one occasion an entire State went into exile, after being completely crushed by an overwhelming attack. Such cases make settlement and lawmaking easier in one respect but harder in another. When the people have a common ancestry, language, and laws, their unity encourages friendship, since they also share sacred rites and religious practices. But such a group does not readily accept laws or constitutions different from those of its homeland. Again, if such a group has broken away because bad laws led to internal conflict, yet long habit makes it cling to the very customs that ruined it, it will be difficult and unmanageable for whoever directs its settlement and laws. On the other hand, a people formed from several different groups might accept new laws more readily. But giving it a common spirit and making it breathe together, as they say, like a team of horses would take a long time and be extremely difficult. In fact, lawmaking and founding States require people who surpass everyone else in goodness.

708d

Clinias: Very probably; but explain more clearly what these remarks mean.

708e

Athenian: My friend, as our investigation returns to lawgivers, I may have to say something that reflects badly on them. But if it is relevant, there will be no harm in it. Why should I worry? Practically all human affairs seem to be in the same situation. Clinias: What is it you refer to? Athenian: I was about to say that nobody ever makes laws: all kinds of chance events and accidents make all our laws for us. Sometimes war violently overturns constitutions and changes laws; sometimes it is the suffering caused by severe poverty. Disease, too, often forces political change when epidemics strike and bad seasons recur for many years. Considering all this, we might reasonably say, as I just did, that no mortal makes any law and that human affairs are almost entirely matters of chance. But although this may seem entirely true of seafaring and the skills of the pilot, doctor, and general, something else can be said about these same things with equal truth.

709b

Clinias: What is that? Athenian: God controls everything, and Chance and Opportunity work with God in directing all human affairs. But it is less harsh to admit a third factor alongside these two: skill. I would certainly consider it a great advantage for a pilot’s skill to work together with Opportunity. Wouldn’t you?

709c

Clinias: It is. Athenian: Then the same reasoning must apply to the other cases, including lawmaking. When a country has all the other fortunate circumstances needed for a successful settlement, its State still needs a lawgiver who holds firmly to the truth.

709d

Clinias: Very true. Athenian: Then couldn’t a person skilled in any of these crafts pray for just the right conditions, so that, if Chance provided them, only his own skill would still be needed? Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: And if all those other craftsmen were asked to say what they were praying for, they could tell us, couldn’t they? Clinias: Of course. Athenian: And the lawgiver, I suppose, could do the same? Clinias: I suppose so. Athenian: Let us ask him, “Lawgiver, what should we give you, and in what condition should the State be, so that once you receive it you can successfully manage it yourself?”

709e

Clinias: What would be the right answer? Athenian: You mean the lawgiver’s answer? Clinias: Yes. Athenian: This is what he will say: Give me a State ruled by a tyrant. Let the tyrant be young, naturally gifted with a good memory, quick intelligence, courage, and a noble manner; and let his soul also have that quality which, as we said before, must accompany every part of virtue if his other qualities are to have any value.

710a

Clinias: I think, Megillus, that the Stranger means self-control must accompany the other qualities. Doesn’t he? Athenian: Yes, Clinias; ordinary self-control, not what people mean when, using philosophical language, they identify self-control with wisdom. I mean the natural tendency that appears from birth in children and animals, making some unable to restrain themselves in seeking pleasure and others able to do so. We said that, apart from the many things called goods, this tendency had no value. You understand, of course, what I mean.

710b

Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: Then let our tyrant have this natural quality alongside the others, if the State is to acquire, as quickly and successfully as possible, the constitution it needs for the happiest life. No quicker or better way of establishing a constitution exists or could ever arise.

710c

Clinias: How could someone convince himself that this is true, Stranger? What argument would establish it? Athenian: At least this is easy to see, Clinias: it is naturally as I have described. Clinias: What do you mean? Provided, you say, that there is a young tyrant with self-control, a quick mind, a good memory, courage, and a noble manner? Athenian: Add good fortune, too: not in other respects, but in having a praiseworthy lawgiver appear during his lifetime and, through good fortune, meet him; if that happened, God would have done almost everything he does when he wants a State to prosper exceptionally well. The second-best situation would have two such rulers; the third-best would have three, and so on. The more rulers there are, the greater the difficulty; the fewer there are, the less the difficulty.

710d

Clinias: Apparently you mean that the best State could develop from a tyranny with an outstanding lawgiver and a well-behaved tyrant, and that this would make the change easiest and quickest. An oligarchy would come second, or is that not what you mean, and a democracy third?

710e

Athenian: Not at all. The easiest change is from tyranny, the next easiest from kingship, and the third from some form of democracy. Oligarchy comes fourth: the best State would develop from it only with the greatest difficulty, because it has the most rulers. Athenian: What I say is that the change takes place when nature provides a true lawgiver and the most powerful people in the State happen to share his policy; wherever the rulers are both strongest and fewest, changes are usually quickest and easiest.

711a

Clinias: How? We do not understand. Athenian: But surely I have said it many times, not just once. Still, you have probably never even seen a State ruled by a tyrant. Clinias: No, and I have no desire to see one.

711b

Athenian: But it would give you an example of what we just discussed. Clinias: What was that? Athenian: When a tyrant decides to change a State’s moral habits, he needs neither great effort nor a very long time. He must first lead the way himself, whether he wants the citizens to practice virtue or the opposite; he must set an example, praising and honoring some things, condemning others, and disgracing those who disobey according to what each has done.

711c

Clinias: Yes, we may perhaps suppose that the rest of the citizens will quickly follow the ruler who adopts such a combination of persuasion and force. Athenian: My friends, let no one persuade us that a State could ever change its laws more quickly or easily than through its rulers’ personal example. No other method could do so, now or in the future. That is not what we find difficult or impossible to achieve. The difficult thing is something that has happened only rarely over long ages, but whenever it happens it brings a State countless blessings of every kind.

711d

Clinias: What result do you mean? Athenian: I mean the rare occasion when a divinely inspired desire for self-controlled and just institutions arises in people in high positions, whether they are tyrants, exceptionally wealthy or well born, or perhaps like Nestor, who, they say, surpassed everyone in eloquence and surpassed them even more in self-control. That was in the Trojan age, they say, certainly not in our time. Still, if such a man has existed, will exist, or exists among us now, his life is blessed, and so are the people who listen together to his words of self-control.

711e

Athenian: The same rule applies to power in general: whenever the greatest power meets wisdom and self-control in one person, the seed of the best constitution is planted. It can never come about in any other way. Take this as a story spoken by an oracle. Let us regard it as established that founding a well-governed State is difficult in one respect, but, given the condition we have described, far easier and quicker than anything else.

712a

Clinias: No doubt.

712b

Athenian: Let us apply the oracle to your State and try, like old men playing at being boys, to shape its laws in our discussion. Clinias: Yes, let us go on without further delay. Athenian: Let us call on God to be present as we establish the State. May he listen and, having listened, come to us with favor and kindness to help us shape the State and its laws. Clinias: Yes, may he come! Athenian: Then what form of constitution do we intend to give the State?

712c

Clinias: What exactly do you mean? Explain more clearly. I mean, is it a democracy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy? Surely you cannot mean a tyranny. We could never suppose that. Athenian: Which of you would like to answer first and tell me which of these types describes his own constitution at home? Megillus: Shouldn’t I answer first, since I am older?

712d

Clinias: No doubt. Megillus: To be honest, Stranger, when I think about the Spartan constitution, I do not know what to call it. It seems to me to resemble a tyranny, since its board of ephors has extraordinarily tyrannical powers; yet sometimes it strikes me as, of all States, the nearest to a democracy. Yet it would be absurd to deny that it is an aristocracy. It also has kingship for life, which everyone, not just we ourselves, calls the oldest of all kingships. But asked so suddenly, I really cannot say, as I told you, exactly which of these constitutions it is.

712e

Clinias: And I, Megillus, am equally puzzled. I find it very difficult to say that our Cnossian constitution is any one of these. Athenian: Yes, my friends, since your systems combine several constitutions. But the systems we just named are not constitutions. They are arrangements in which a State’s parts rule or serve other parts, and each is named after the ruling power. But if the State should be named after anything of that kind, it should take the name of the god who truly rules rational people.

713a

Clinias: Who is that God? Athenian: May we tell another short story to answer that question properly? Clinias: Why not? Athenian: We should. Long before even the cities whose founding we described existed, there was, they say, an exceptionally prosperous government and community in the time of Cronus. The best States now existing are modeled on it.

713b

Clinias: Clearly, hearing about it is very important. Athenian: I, for one, think so; and that is why I mentioned it. Megillus: You were perfectly right to do so; and, since the story is relevant, you should certainly tell it to the end.

713c

Athenian: I must do as you say. Tradition tells us that people in that age lived happily, with everything growing by itself in abundance. The reason, they say, was this: Cronus knew that no human being, as we have explained, can exercise unchecked control of all human affairs without becoming full of pride and injustice; so, reflecting on this, he appointed as kings and rulers of our cities beings from a nobler and more divine race, the daemons, rather than human beings. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we rule over them ourselves because we belong to a nobler race. In the same way, the god’s love for humanity led him to place the nobler race of daemons over us. They took charge of us with great ease for themselves and for us, providing abundant peace, modesty, order, and justice, and making human communities happy and free from conflict.

713e

Athenian: Even today this story tells a truth: wherever a State is ruled by a mortal rather than a god, its people have no relief from suffering and hardship; it teaches that we should do everything we can to imitate life in the age of Cronus as tradition describes it. We should govern our homes and States by obeying the immortal element within us, calling the ordering of reason “law.” But suppose an individual, an oligarchy, or a democracy has a soul that pursues pleasures and desires and tries to gorge itself on them, without self-restraint and suffering from an endless disease of insatiable evil. If it rules a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, there is, as I just said, no way to escape destruction. This, Clinias, is the claim we must examine to decide whether to believe it or what else to do.

714b

Clinias: We must, of course, believe it. Athenian: Are you aware that, according to some, there are as many kinds of laws as there are kinds of constitutions? We recently listed the commonly recognized constitutions. Please do not think the problem we have now raised is unimportant. It is extremely important. We again face the question of what justice and injustice should aim at. The people I mean claim that laws should aim neither at war nor at goodness as a whole. They should benefit the established constitution, whatever it is, so that it keeps power forever and is never overthrown. They say the best natural definition of justice is this.

714c

Clinias: In what way? Athenian: That justice is what benefits the stronger. Clinias: Explain yourself more clearly. Athenian: Their argument is this: aren’t a State’s laws always made by the stronger power? Clinias: That is quite true. Athenian: Then, they argue, would a democracy or any other government, even a tyrant, willingly make laws with any primary aim other than preserving its own authority once it has gained control?

714d

Clinias: Certainly not. Athenian: Then the lawgiver will call these enactments just and punish everyone who breaks them as guilty of injustice. Clinias: That is certainly probable. Athenian: So, on this reasoning, these enactments will always constitute justice. Clinias: That is, at any rate, what the argument asserts.

714e

Athenian: Yes, for this is one of those accepted claims about government. Clinias: What claims? Athenian: The claims we examined before about who should govern whom. We said parents should govern children, older people younger ones, and people of noble birth those of low birth. If you remember, there were many other claims, some conflicting. This claim was one of them. Quoting Pindar, we said that the law follows nature when it justifies the rule of the strongest.

715a

Clinias: Yes, that is what was said then. Athenian: Now consider which group we should entrust our State to. The situation I mean has already occurred in States thousands of times. Clinias: What condition? Athenian: When people fight over government offices, the winners monopolize power so completely that they give the defeated party and its descendants no share in office at all; each party watches the other for fear that someone will gain office and start an uprising to avenge earlier wrongs. We deny that such systems are constitutions at all, just as we deny that laws are genuine unless they serve the common good of the whole State. When laws serve only a faction, we call the system factional rule rather than a constitution. Calling such laws just is, we say, an empty use of the word. We say this because, in your State, we shall not assign office to a man because he is wealthy or has some other such advantage, like strength, size, or noble birth; we maintain that service to the gods must be assigned to the man who obeys them best and wins the State’s contest in obedience. The highest office goes to the best, the next to the second-best, and the remaining offices to the others in order. I have called those usually known as magistrates “servants of the laws,” not to invent a new phrase, but because I believe nothing matters more to a State’s survival or destruction. Where the law is subordinate and powerless, I see destruction approaching. Where the law rules the magistrates and the magistrates serve the law, I see safety and all the blessings the gods give States.

715d

Clinias: Yes, by Zeus, Stranger! Your age gives you sharp sight. Athenian: Yes. A man sees these things least clearly when young and most clearly when old.

715e

Clinias: Very true. Athenian: Then what should we do next? Shall we assume that our settlers have arrived in the country and go on to address them? Clinias: Of course. Athenian: Then let us say to them: “Men, as the old tradition tells us, God holds the beginning, the end, and the center of everything that exists.⁠a Following his natural course, he completes his circuit in a straight, unwavering line.

716a

Justice always follows him, punishing those who fall short of divine law. Everyone who wants to be happy holds firmly to her and follows her humbly and with orderly conduct; but anyone carried away by arrogance, proud of his riches, honors, or physical beauty, whose pride, youth, and foolishness fill his soul with insolence, imagines that he needs no ruler or guide and can guide others himself. God abandons such a man and leaves him behind.

716b

Left behind, he gathers others like himself, and his wild antics throw everything into confusion: many think he is someone great, but before long he pays a deserved penalty to Justice by completely ruining himself, his household, and his country. Given that this is how things are ordered, what should a sensible man do or plan, and what should he avoid doing?” Clinias: The answer is clear: everyone should plan to be among those who follow in God’s steps.

716c

Athenian: Then what conduct is dear to God and follows in his steps? An ancient saying describes it: like is dear to like when it is moderate, while things without moderation are dear neither to one another nor to what is moderate. For us, God is the measure of all things far more truly than the human being whom some people make their measure. Anyone who wants to become dear to such a being must become as much like him in character as possible; on this argument, the self-controlled person among us is dear to God because he is like him. The person without self-control is unlike him and hostile, as is the unjust person. The same reasoning applies to the other qualities. A further rule follows, the noblest and truest of all: for a good man, continual sacrifice and communion with the gods through prayers, offerings, and every kind of worship is supremely noble, good, helpful toward a happy life, and fitting. For a wicked man, it is the exact opposite.

716e

Athenian: A wicked man has an unclean soul, while a good man’s soul is clean. Neither a good man nor a god can rightly accept gifts from someone who is defiled. So all the great effort impious people devote to the gods is wasted, while the effort of the pious greatly benefits them all. That is the target we must aim at. But what arrows should we shoot, and how should they fly? Which arrows do you think would fly straightest to the target? First, we say, after honoring the Olympians and the gods who protect the State, we would aim straightest at piety by giving the gods of the underworld the even and the left as their honors, and giving the former gods their superior opposites. After these gods, the wise man will worship the daemons, and after the daemons, the heroes. After these will come private shrines legally dedicated to ancestral deities; and next, honors paid to living parents. Duty requires a man to repay his parents the first and greatest debt, the most fundamental obligation of all. He should acknowledge that everything he has belongs to those who gave him life and raised him, so he should serve them as fully as possible with his property, body, and soul. In this way he repays the care and suffering they invested in their children in earlier years and rewards them in old age, when they most need help. Throughout his life, above all else, he must take care to speak respectfully to his parents. Light and winged words carry a very heavy penalty, because Nemesis, the messenger of Justice, watches over all such matters; so a son must give way to his parents when they are angry. When they express their anger in words or actions, he must forgive them, since a father is naturally especially angry when he believes his own son has wronged him. When parents die, the most restrained funeral rites are best: a son should neither exceed the customary display nor do less than his ancestors did for their fathers. He should also properly maintain the annual observances that honor the completed funeral rites.

717e

Athenian: He should always honor them, keeping their memory continually alive and assigning the dead a proper share of whatever resources fortune provides for spending. If we acted in this way and followed these rules of life, each of us would always receive a fitting reward from the gods and all beings greater than ourselves, and would spend most of life enjoying hopes of happiness. Next come our duties to children, relatives, friends, and fellow citizens, our service to strangers for the gods’ sake, and our dealings with all these groups. Fulfilling these duties should brighten a man’s life and order it as the law commands. The laws that follow will make our State blessed and prosperous with the gods’ help, partly through persuasion and partly, when people’s habits resist persuasion, through force and just punishment. There are also matters a lawgiver who shares my view must regulate, although they are not well suited to being stated as laws; when dealing with these, I think he should provide a model for himself and for those he is legislating for. After explaining all these other matters as well as he can, he should begin making laws.

718c

Clinias: What particular form should such statements take? Athenian: It is not easy to bring them all into a single pattern of expression, so to speak. But let us think of them in this way and see whether we can say something definite about them. Clinias: Tell us what that something is. Athenian: I would want the people to be as willing as possible to learn virtue. Clearly, that is what the lawgiver will try to achieve through all his laws.

718d

Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: I thought our address might help them listen to its advice with souls that are less savage, and in a more civilized and less hostile mood. So, as I say, we may be satisfied if it makes the listener even a little more willing to learn by making him a little less hostile. There are not many people eager to become as good as possible as quickly as possible; most people show how wise Hesiod was when he said the road to wickedness is smooth and takes no sweat to travel, because it is very short (Hesiod, Works and Days 287ff.); but, he says, “In front of goodness the immortal gods have placed the sweat of labor, and the road to it is long and steep, and the first climb is rough. But once you reach the summit, the road is easy, although it was hard.” (Hesiod, Works and Days 287ff.)

719a

Clinias: I would say the poet speaks well. Athenian: He certainly does. Now I want to explain what I think follows from the preceding argument. Clinias: Do so. Athenian: Let us ask the lawgiver: “Tell us, lawgiver, if you knew what we should do and say, wouldn’t you tell us?”

719b

Clinias: Inevitably. Athenian: Didn’t we hear you say a little while ago that the lawgiver should not let poets compose whatever they please? They would probably not know which of their statements might conflict with the laws and harm the State. Clinias: That is quite true. Athenian: Would it be reasonable to address him on the poets’ behalf in these words? Clinias: What terms?

719c

Athenian: These: “Lawgiver, there is an ancient saying that we constantly repeat and everyone else accepts: when a poet sits on the Muses’ tripod, he is not in his right mind, but resembles a fountain that lets its water surge up freely. Because his art is imitation, he is often forced to contradict himself when he creates characters with conflicting feelings. He does not know which of their conflicting statements is true. But a lawgiver cannot make two such statements about a single matter in his law. He must always publish a single statement on each matter. Take one of your own recent statements as an example. A funeral may be excessive, inadequate, or moderate. You chose the moderate alternative, praised it without qualification, and prescribed it. But if, in my poem, I had an exceptionally wealthy wife who asked me to bury her, I would praise an excessively grand tomb. A poor, stingy man would praise an inadequate tomb, while a man of moderate means, if moderate himself, would praise the same tomb you do. But you should not just call something moderate, as you have done. You should explain what moderation is and how much it allows. Otherwise, it is too soon to propose making your statement law.”

719e

Clinias: Very true. Athenian: Then should the person we have put in charge of the laws begin without such an introduction, immediately state what must and must not be done and the penalty for disobedience, and move on to another law without adding a single word of encouragement or persuasion? Doctors treat us in different ways. Let us recall their two methods so that we can ask the lawgiver for the gentler treatment, like children begging a doctor to use his mildest method. Shall I give an example? Some men, we say, are doctors and others are doctors’ assistants, but we also call the assistants doctors.

720b

Clinias: We do. Athenian: These assistants, whether freeborn or enslaved, learn their craft under their masters through observation and practice, rather than by studying nature, which is how freeborn doctors have learned it and teach their own students. Would you say that these are two classes of people called doctors? Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: You also know that sick people in cities include both enslaved and free people. Enslaved people are usually treated by enslaved doctors, who either go around the town or wait in their clinics; none of these doctors explains or asks about the different household servants’ illnesses. He prescribes whatever his experience suggests, as though he knew exactly, with the confidence of an absolute ruler; then he jumps up and rushes off to another sick servant, relieving his master of some of the work of caring for the sick. But the freeborn doctor mainly visits and treats free people. He investigates their illnesses from the beginning and studies their natural course; he talks to the patient and his friends, learning from the sick and teaching them as much as he can; he gives no prescription until he has the patient’s consent. Only then does he try to restore the patient fully to health, using persuasion to keep him willing to follow the treatment. Which of these methods shows the better doctor, or, in training, the better trainer? Should a doctor carry out the same task using both methods, or use only the worse and less humane one?

720e

Clinias: The double method, Stranger, is by far the better. Athenian: Do you wish us to examine the double method and the single as applied also to actual legislation? Clinias: I certainly do. Athenian: Then tell me, by the gods, what law should the lawgiver make first? Shouldn’t he follow the order of nature and first regulate the starting point of reproduction in States?

721a

Clinias: Of course. Athenian: Isn’t the union and partnership of marriage the starting point of reproduction in every State? Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: So it seems that making marriage laws first would be the right course in every State. Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: Let us first state the law in its simple form. How would it read? Probably like this: “A man shall marry when he is at least thirty and under thirty-five. If he fails to do so, he shall be punished by a fine and a loss of civic status, with the amount of the fine and the kind of loss specified.” That is the simple form of the marriage law. The double form would be this: “A man shall marry when he is at least thirty and under thirty-five, remembering that this is how the human race naturally shares in immortality, something nature has given everyone a strong desire for. The desire to win glory rather than lie in a nameless grave has a similar aim. Humanity naturally lasts as long as time itself, accompanying it continually now and in the future. It is immortal in this way: by leaving children and grandchildren, and remaining always one and the same, it shares in immortality through reproduction. Voluntarily depriving himself of this is never a pious act. A man who denies himself a wife and children deliberately deprives himself of it. A man who obeys the law may go without penalty. A man who disobeys and has not married by thirty-five shall pay an annual fine of a specified amount, so that he does not think remaining single brings him profit and ease. He shall receive none of the honors the State’s younger men periodically pay their elders.” Hearing and comparing this law with the earlier one lets us judge in each case whether laws should be at least twice as long, combining threats with persuasion, or remain short by using threats alone.

721e

Megillus: Our Spartan custom, Stranger, is always to prefer brevity. But if asked which of these two laws I would want put in writing in my State, I would choose the longer; I would make the same choice for every law that offered these two alternatives. But our friend Clinias must also approve the laws we are making, since his State is the one proposing to use them.

722a

Clinias: I highly approve of all you have said, Megillus. Athenian: Still, arguing about whether writings are long or short is extremely foolish. What matters, I think, is how good they are, not how brief or long-winded; one of the forms of law we just discussed is twice as good in practice as the other, and our example of the two kinds of doctors offers a very close parallel. But no lawgiver seems ever to have noticed that, although they can use two methods in lawmaking, persuasion and force, as far as an uneducated population allows, they actually use only one: they do not soften compulsion with persuasion, but use force alone, without softening it. My friends, I see a third requirement that laws should meet but that is nowhere to be found at present.

722c

Clinias: What do you mean? Athenian: Something that has emerged, as though through divine guidance, from the subjects we have been discussing. It was just after dawn when we began talking about laws. Now it is noon, and here we are in this delightful resting place; we have talked about nothing but laws the whole time, yet apparently only just begun to state actual laws. Everything before that was simply a prelude to them. Why do I say this? To explain that all spoken and sung performances have preludes and warm-ups, as we might call them, which provide an artistic preparation to help the subject develop further. We have examples of beautifully worked-out preludes before the kind of lyric ode called the nome and before musical compositions of every kind. But for the true nomes, the laws we call political, no one has ever spoken, composed, or published a prelude, as though such a thing did not exist. I think our present conversation proves that it does exist. It just struck me that the laws we were stating are more than simply double: they combine two things, the law and its prelude.

722e

Athenian: The part we called the despotic prescription, comparing it to those of the enslaved doctors we mentioned, is law alone; the part before it, spoken to persuade people to accept it, is indeed persuasion, but also serves the same purpose as a speech’s prelude. I took the speaker’s clear purpose in all this persuasion to be that whoever receives the law should accept its prescription calmly, and therefore in a willing spirit. So, on my argument, the correct term for it is “prelude,” not “legal statement.” What would I want to say next? That the lawgiver must never fail to provide preludes before both the laws as a whole and each individual statute. They will then surpass their original form as much as our recent double examples surpassed the single ones.

723b

Clinias: For my part, I would instruct the expert in these matters to make laws this way and no other.

723c

Athenian: I think you are right at least in this, Clinias: all laws have preludes, and when beginning a piece of legislation, we should introduce each enactment with its natural prelude, because the statement following the prelude is important, and it matters greatly whether these statements are remembered clearly or vaguely; still, we would be wrong to require preludes equally for all laws, large and small. We should not do that for every kind of song or speech either; they all naturally have preludes, but we cannot always use them. That decision must be left in each case to the speaker, singer, or lawgiver.

723d

Clinias: What you say is, I believe, very true. But let us stop delaying, Stranger, return to our main subject, and, if you agree, start again from the statements you made earlier without treating them as a prelude. Let us start again with the second thoughts that are best, to quote the players’ proverb, treating the whole discussion as a prelude rather than an unplanned conversation. Let us explicitly recognize the opening part as a prelude. What we said about worshiping the gods and caring for ancestors is quite sufficient; try to explain what follows until we think you have set out the whole prelude adequately. After that, you can state the actual laws.

724a

Athenian: So we now agree that our earlier prelude about the gods, those next to the gods, and parents living and dead was sufficient. As I understand it, you are now asking me to bring the rest of the subject into the light of day, so to speak. Clinias: Most certainly. Athenian: Surely it is fitting, and greatly benefits both speaker and listeners, to consider next how much care or neglect people should give their souls, bodies, and property. They should reflect on this and understand education as fully as possible. That, then, is what we must discuss and listen to next.

724b

Clinias: Perfectly right.