Treason. Both at Athens and in the Laws the penalty for treason was death (Telfy, 1027: Laws IX 856 E), and refusal of burial in the country (Telfy, 1028: Laws IX 855 A).
Sheltering exiles. “If a man receives an exile, he shall be punished with death” (Laws XII 955 B). So, too, in Athenian law (Telfy, 1034).
Wounding. Athenian law compelled a man who had wounded another to go into exile; if he returned, he was to be put to death (Telfy, 1142). Plato only punishes the offence with death when children wound their parents or one another, or a slave wounds his master (Laws IX 877).
Bribery. Death was the punishment for taking a bribe, both at Athens (Telfy, 1054) and in the Laws (XII 955); but Athenian law offered an alternative—the payment of a fine of ten times the amount of the bribe.
Theft. Plato, like Athenian law (Telfy, 1150 and following), punishes the theft of public property by death (Laws XIII 941: compare, however, IX 857); the theft of private property in both involves a fine of double the value of the stolen goods (Telfy, 1575: Laws IX 857).
Suicide. He “who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend,” is regarded in the same spirit by Plato and by Athenian law. Plato (Laws IX 873) would have him “buried ingloriously on the borders of the twelve portions of the land, in such places as are uncultivated and nameless,” and “no column or inscription is to mark the place of his interment.” Athenian law enacted that the hand which did the deed should be separated from the body and be buried apart (Telfy, 1141).
Injury. In cases of wilful injury, Athenian law compelled the guilty person to pay double the damage; in cases of involuntary injury, simple damages (Telfy, 1552). Plato (Laws IX 878) enacts that if a man wounds another in passion, and the wound is curable, he shall pay double the damage, if incurable or disfiguring, fourfold damages. If, however, the wounding is accidental, he shall simply pay for the harm done (IX 879).
Treatment of parents. Athenian law allowed anyone to indict another for neglect or ill-treatment of parents (Telfy, 1164). So Plato bids bystanders assist a father who is assaulted by his son (IX 881), and allows anyone to give information against children who neglect their parents (XI 932).
Execution of sentences. Both Plato and Athenian law give to the winner of a suit power to seize the goods of the loser, if he does not pay within the appointed time (Telfy, 763 n.: Laws XII 958). At Athens the penalty was also doubled (Telfy, 761); not so in Plato. Plato however punishes contempt of court by death (XII 958), which at Athens seems only to have been visited with a further fine (Telfy, 768).
Property. (a) Both at Athens and in the Laws a man who has disputed property in his possession must give the name of the person from whom he received it (Telfy, 1458: Laws XI 915 C, D); and anyone searching for lost property must enter a house naked (Telfy, 1579), or, as Plato says (Laws XII 954 A), “naked, or wearing only a short tunic and without a girdle.” (b) Athenian law, as well as Plato, did not allow a father to disinherit his son without good reason and the consent of impartial persons (Telfy, 1329: Laws XI 929). Neither grants to the eldest son any special claim on the paternal estate (Telfy, 1386: Laws XI 923 C). In the law of inheritance both prefer males to females (Telfy, 1387: Laws XI 925 A). (c) Plato and Athenian law enacted that a tree should be planted at a fair distance from a neighbour’s property (Telfy, 1463: Laws VIII 843), and that when a man could not get water, his neighbour must supply him (Telfy, 1462: Laws VIII 844). Both at Athens and in Plato there is a law about bees, the former providing that a beehive must be set up at not less a distance than 300 feet from a neighbour’s (Telfy, 1464), and the latter forbidding the decoying of bees (Laws VIII 843).
Orphans. A ward must proceed against a guardian whom he suspects of fraud within five years of the expiration of the guardianship. This provision is common to Plato (Laws XI 928 C) and to Athenian law (Telfy, 1584). Further, the latter enacted that the nearest male relation should marry or provide a husband for an heiress (Telfy, 1046)—a point in which Plato follows it closely (Laws XI 925 and following).
Contracts. Plato’s law (XI 920 D) that “when a man makes an agreement which he does not fulfil, unless the agreement be of a nature which the law or a vote of the assembly does not allow, or which he has made under the influence of some unjust compulsion, or which he is prevented from fulfilling against his will by some unexpected chance—the other party may go to law with him,” according to Pollux (quoted in Telfy’s note on 1492) prevailed also at Athens.
Trade regulations. (a) Lying was forbidden in the agora both by Plato and at Athens (Laws XI 917: Telfy, 1543). (b) Athenian law allowed an action of recovery against a man who sold an unsound slave as sound (Telfy, 1499). Plato’s enactment is more explicit: he allows only an unskilled person (i.e. one who is not a trainer or physician) to take proceedings in such a case (XI 916). (c) Plato diverges from Athenian practice in the disapproval of credit, and does not even allow the supply of goods on the deposit of a percentage of their value (Telfy, 1495, 1496). He enacts that “when goods are exchanged by buying and selling, a man shall deliver them and receive the price of them at a fixed place in the agora, and have done with the matter” (XI 915 D), and that “he who gives credit must be satisfied whether he obtain his money or not, for in such exchanges he will not be protected by law” (VIII 850 A). (d) Athenian law forbad an extortionate rate of interest (Telfy, 1505); Plato allows interest in one case only—if a contractor does not receive the price of his work within a year of the time agreed—and at the rate of 200 per cent. per annum (“for every drachma a monthly interest of an obol”; Laws XI 921). (e) Both at Athens and in the Laws sales were to be registered (Telfy, 1496: Laws XI 914 C), as well as births (Telfy, 1324: Laws VI 785).
Sumptuary laws. Extravagance at weddings (Telfy, 1357, 1,359: Laws VI 774), and at funerals (Laws XII 959: Telfy, note on 1443) was forbidden at Athens and also in the Magnesian state.
There remains the subject of family life, which in Plato’s Laws partakes both of an Athenian and Spartan character. Under this head may conveniently be included the condition of women and of slaves. To family life may be added citizenship.
As at Sparta, marriages are to be contracted for the good of the state (VI 773 E); and they may be dissolved on the same ground, where there is a failure of issue (VI 784 B)—the interest of the state requiring that every one of the 5,040 lots should have an heir. Divorces are likewise permitted by Plato where there is an incompatibility of temper (XI 929 E), as at Athens by mutual consent. The duty of having children is also enforced by a still higher motive, expressed by Plato in the noble words:—“A man should cling to immortality, and leave behind him children’s children to be the servants of God in his place” (VI 774 A; compare IV 721 C). Again, as at Athens, the father is allowed to put away his undutiful son, but only with the consent of impartial persons (XI 929: Telfy, 1329), and the only suit which may be brought by a son against a father is for imbecility (XI 929). The class of elder and younger men and women are still to regard one another, as in the Republic, as standing in the relation of parents and children. This is a trait of Spartan character rather than of Athenian. A peculiar sanctity and tenderness was to be shown towards the aged; the parent or grandparent stricken with years was to be loved and worshipped like the image of a God, and was to be deemed far more able than any lifeless statue to bring good or ill to his descendants (XI 931). Great care is to be taken of orphans: they are entrusted to the fifteen eldest Guardians of the Law, who are to be “lawgivers and fathers to them not inferior to their natural fathers” (XI 926 E), as at Athens they were entrusted to the Archons. Plato wishes to make the misfortune of orphanhood as little sad to them as possible.
Plato, seeing the disorder into which half the human race had fallen at Athens and Sparta, is minded to frame for them a new rule of life. He renounces his fanciful theory of communism, but still desires to place women as far as possible on an equality with men. They were to be trained in the use of arms, they are to live in public. Their time was partly taken up with gymnastic exercises; there could have been little family or private life among them. Their lot was to be neither like that of Spartan women, who were made hard and common by excessive practice of gymnastic and the want of all other education—nor yet like that of Athenian women, who, at least among the upper classes, retired into a sort of oriental seclusion—but something better than either. They were to be the perfect mothers of perfect children, yet not wholly taken up with the duties of motherhood, which were to be made easy to them as far as possible (VII 789; compare Republic V 460), but able to share in the perils of war and to be the companions of their husbands. Here, more than anywhere else, the spirit of the Laws reverts to the Republic. In speaking of them as the companions of their husbands we must remember that it is an Athenian and not a Spartan way of life which they are invited to share, a life of gaiety and brightness, not of austerity and abstinence, which often by a reaction degenerated into licence and grossness.
In Plato’s age the subject of slavery greatly interested the minds of thoughtful men (VI 776); and how best to manage this “troublesome piece of goods” exercised his own mind a good deal. He admits that they have often been found better than brethren or sons in the hour of danger (VI 776 D), and are capable of rendering important public services by informing against offenders—for this they are to be rewarded; and the master who puts a slave to death for the sake of concealing some crime which he has committed, is held guilty of murder (IX 872 C). But they are not always treated with equal consideration. The punishments inflicted on them bear no proportion to their crimes. They are to be addressed only in the language of command. Their masters are not to jest with them, lest they should increase the hardship of their lot (VI 778 A). Some privileges were granted to them by Athenian law of which there is no mention in Plato; they were allowed to purchase their freedom from their master, and if they despaired of being liberated by him they could demand to be sold, on the chance of falling into better hands. But there is no suggestion in the Laws that a slave who tried to escape should be branded with the words—κατέχε με, φεύγω, or that evidence should be extracted from him by torture, that the whole household was to be executed if the master was murdered and the perpetrator remained undetected: all these were provisions of Athenian law. Plato is more consistent than either the Athenians or the Spartans; for at Sparta too the Helots were treated in a manner almost unintelligible to us. On the one hand, they had arms put into their hands, and served in the army, not only, as at Plataea, in attendance on their masters, but, after they had been manumitted, as a separate body of troops called Neodamodes: on the other hand, they were the victims of one of the greatest crimes recorded in Greek history (Thucydides IV 80). The two great philosophers of Hellas sought to extricate themselves from this cruel condition of human life, but acquiesced in the necessity of it. A noble and pathetic sentiment of Plato, suggested by the thought of their misery, may be quoted in this place:—“The right treatment of slaves is to behave properly to them, and to do to them, if possible, even more justice than to those who are our equals; for he who naturally and genuinely reverences justice, and hates injustice, is discovered in his dealings with any class of men to whom he can easily be unjust. And he who in regard to the natures and actions of his slaves is undefiled by impiety and injustice, will best sow the seeds of virtue in them; and this may be truly said of every master, and tyrant, and of every other having authority in relation to his inferiors” (VI 777 D, E).
All the citizens of the Magnesian state were free and equal; there was no distinction of rank among them, such as is believed to have prevailed at Sparta. Their number was a fixed one, corresponding to the 5,040 lots. One of the results of this is the requirement that younger sons or those who have been disinherited shall go out to a colony (Laws XI 929). At Athens, where there was not the same religious feeling against increasing the size of the city, the number of citizens must have been liable to considerable fluctuations. Several classes of persons, who were not citizens by birth, were admitted to the privilege. Perpetual exiles from other countries, people who settled there to practise a trade (Telfy, 17), anyone who had shown distinguished valour in the cause of Athens (18), the Plataeans who escaped from the siege (20), metics and strangers who offered to serve in the army (37), the slaves who fought at Arginusae (45)—all these could or did become citizens. Even those who were only on one side of Athenian parentage were at more than one period accounted citizens. But at times there seems to have arisen a feeling against this promiscuous extension of the citizen body, an expression of which is to be found in the law of Pericles—μόνους Ἀθηναίους εἶναι τοὺς ἐκ δυοῖν Ἀθηναίων γεγονότας (Plutarch, “Pericles” 37); and at no time did the adopted citizen enjoy the full rights of citizenship—e.g. he might not be elected archon or to the office of priest (Telfy, 19, 20), although this prohibition did not extend to his children, if born of a citizen wife. Plato never thinks of making the metic, much less the slave, a citizen. His treatment of the former class is at once more gentle and more severe than that which prevailed at Athens. He imposes upon them no tax but good behaviour (VIII 850), whereas at Athens they were required to pay twelve drachmae per annum, and to have a patron: on the other hand, he only allows them to reside in the Magnesian state on condition of following a trade; they were required to depart when their property exceeded that of the third class, and in any case after a residence of twenty years, unless they could show that they had conferred some great benefit on the state. This privileged position reflects that of the ἰσοτελεῖς at Athens, who were excused from the μετοίκιον. It is Plato’s greatest concession to the metic, as the bestowal of freedom is his greatest concession to the slave.
Lastly, there is a more general point of view under which the Laws of Plato may be considered—the principles of Jurisprudence which are contained in them. These are not formally announced, but are scattered up and down, to be observed by the reflective reader for himself. Some of them are only the common principles which all courts of justice have gathered from experience; others are peculiar and characteristic. That judges should sit at fixed times and hear causes in a regular order (XII 956), that evidence should be laid before them, that false witnesses should be disallowed (XI 937), and corruption punished (XII 955 C), that defendants should be heard before they are convicted—these are the rules, not only of the Hellenic courts, but of courts of law in all ages and countries. But there are also points which are peculiar, and in which ancient jurisprudence differs considerably from modern; some of them are of great importance … It could not be said at Athens, nor was it ever contemplated by Plato, that all men, including metics and slaves, should be equal “in the eye of the law.” There was some law for the slave, but not much; no adequate protection was given him against the cruelty of his master … It was a singular privilege granted, both by the Athenian and Magnesian law, to a murdered man, that he might, before he died, pardon his murderer, in which case no legal steps were afterwards to be taken against him (IX 869 D). This law is the remnant of an age in which the punishment of offences against the person was the concern rather of the individual and his kinsmen than of the state … Plato’s division of crimes into voluntary and involuntary and those done from passion, only partially agrees with the distinction which modern law has drawn between murder and manslaughter; his attempt to analyze them is confused by the Socratic paradox, that “All vice is involuntary” (cf. supra) … It is singular that both in the Laws and at Athens theft is commonly punished by a twofold restitution of the article stolen. The distinction between civil and criminal courts or suits was not yet recognized … Possession gives a right of property after a certain time … The religious aspect under which certain offences were regarded greatly interfered with a just and natural estimate of their guilt … As among ourselves, the intent to murder was distinguished by Plato from actual murder (IX 876 E) … We note that both in Plato and the laws of Athens, libel in the marketplace and personality in the theatre were forbidden … Both in Plato and Athenian law, as in modern times, the accomplice of a crime is to be punished as well as the principal … Plato does not allow a witness in a cause to act as a judge of it … Oaths are not to be taken by the parties to a suit … Both at Athens and in Plato’s Laws capital punishment for murder was not to be inflicted, if the offender was willing to go into exile … Respect for the dead, duty towards parents, are to be enforced by the law as well as by public opinion … Plato proclaims the noble sentiment that the object of all punishment is the improvement of the offender (IX 854 D) … Finally, he repeats twice over, as with the voice of a prophet, that the crimes of the fathers are not to be visited upon the children (IX 855 A, 856 C). In this respect he is nobly distinguished from the Oriental, and indeed from the spirit of Athenian law (compare Telfy, 1012—δεῖ καὶ αὐτοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐκ τούτων ἀτίμους εἶναι), as the Hebrew in the age of Ezekial (c. 18) is from the Jewish people of former ages.
Of all Plato’s provisions the object is to bring the practice of the law more into harmony with reason and philosophy; to secure impartiality, and while acknowledging that every citizen has a right to share in the administration of justice, to counteract the tendency of the courts to become mere popular assemblies.
Thus we have arrived at the end of the writings of Plato, and at the last stage of philosophy which was really his. For in what followed, which we chiefly gather from the uncertain intimations of Aristotle, the spirit of the master no longer survived. The doctrine of Ideas passed into one of numbers; instead of advancing from the abstract to the concrete, the theories of Plato were taken out of their context, and either asserted or refuted with a provoking literalism; the Socratic or Platonic element in his teaching was absorbed into the Pythagorean or Megarian. His poetry was converted into mysticism; his unsubstantial visions were assailed secundum artem by the rules of logic. His political speculations lost their interest when the freedom of Hellas had passed away. Of all his writings the Laws were the furthest removed from the traditions of the Platonic school in the next generation. Both his political and his metaphysical philosophy are for the most part misinterpreted by Aristotle. The best of him—his love of truth, and his “contemplation of all time and all existence,” was soonest lost; and some of his greatest thoughts have slept in the ear of mankind almost ever since they were first uttered.
We have followed him during his forty or fifty years of authorship, from the beginning when he first attempted to depict the teaching of Socrates in a dramatic form, down to the time at which the character of Socrates had disappeared, and we have the latest reflections of Plato’s own mind upon Hellas and upon philosophy. He, who was “the last of the poets,” in his book of Laws writes prose only; he has himself partly fallen under the rhetorical influences which in his earlier dialogues he was combating. The progress of his writings is also the history of his life; we have no other authentic life of him. They are the true self of the philosopher, stripped of the accidents of time and place. The great effort which he makes is, first, to realize abstractions, secondly, to connect them. In the attempt to realize them, he was carried into a transcendental region in which he isolated them from experience, and we pass out of the range of science into poetry or fiction. The fancies of mythology for a time cast a veil over the gulf which divides phenomena from onta (“Meno,” “Phaedrus,” “Symposium,” “Phaedo”). In his return to earth Plato meets with a difficulty which has long ceased to be a difficulty to us. He cannot understand how these obstinate, unmanageable ideas, residing alone in their heaven of abstraction, can be either combined with one another, or adapted to phenomena (“Parmenides,” “Philebus,” “Sophist”). That which is the most familiar process of our own minds, to him appeared to be the crowning achievement of the dialectical art. The difficulty which in his own generation threatened to be the destruction of philosophy, he has rendered unmeaning and ridiculous. For by his conquests in the world of mind our thoughts are widened, and he has furnished us with new dialectical instruments which are of greater compass and power. We have endeavoured to see him as he truly was, a great original genius struggling with unequal conditions of knowledge, not prepared with a system nor evolving in a series of dialogues ideas which he had long conceived, but contradictory, enquiring as he goes along, following the argument, first from one point of view and then from another, and therefore arriving at opposite conclusions, hovering around the light, and sometimes dazzled with excess of light, but always moving in the same element of ideal truth. We have seen him also in his decline, when the wings of his imagination have begun to droop, but his experience of life remains, and he turns away from the contemplation of the eternal to take a last sad look at human affairs.
And so having brought into the world “noble children” (“Phaedrus” 261 A), he rests from the labours of authorship. More than two thousand two hundred years have passed away since he returned to the place of Apollo and the Muses. Yet the echo of his words continues to be heard among men, because of all philosophers he has the most melodious voice. He is the inspired prophet or teacher who can never die, the only one in whom the outward form adequately represents the fair soul within; in whom the thoughts of all who went before him are reflected and of all who come after him are partly anticipated. Other teachers of philosophy are dried up and withered—after a few centuries they have become dust; but he is fresh and blooming, and is always begetting new ideas in the minds of men. They are one-sided and abstract; but he has many sides of wisdom. Nor is he always consistent with himself, because he is always moving onward, and knows that there are many more things in philosophy than can be expressed in words, and that truth is greater than consistency. He who approaches him in the most reverent spirit shall reap most of the fruit of his wisdom; he who reads him by the light of ancient commentators will have the least understanding of him.
We may see him with the eye of the mind in the groves of the Academy, or on the banks of the Ilissus, or in the streets of Athens, alone or walking with Socrates, full of those thoughts which have since become the common possession of mankind. Or we may compare him to a statue hid away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no longer existing on earth, a statue which has a look as of the God himself. Or we may once more imagine him following in another state of being the great company of heaven which he beheld of old in a vision (“Phaedrus” 248). So, “partly trifling, but with a certain degree of seriousness” (“Symposium” 197 E), we linger around the memory of a world which has passed away (“Phaedrus” 250 C).