Book 3 - Platonic Foundation

Laws

––––– BOOK III –––––

ATHENIAN: So, let us leave this issue then. But what is the origin of a political system? What should

we say? Wouldn’t this be appreciated most easily, and in the best way, from the following

perspective?

CLINIAS: From what perspective?

ATHENIAN: The perspective from which we should always observe the progress and transformation

of cities in the direction of excellence or evil.

CLINIAS: What perspective do you mean?

ATHENIAN: The perspective, I believe, of a vast and limitless span of time and of the changes that

occur within it.

CLINIAS: In what way?

ATHENIAN: Come on now, for a very long time there have been cities and people have lived as cit-

izens. Do you think we could ever discern for how long this has been so?

CLINIAS: That would not be at all easy.

ATHENIAN: Well at any rate, the time period would be immense and enormous.

CLINIAS: That is certainly so.

ATHENIAN: Haven’t thousands upon thousands of cities come into existence over that time period,

and, by the same reckoning, haven’t just as many of them perished, and haven’t they each

been governed at one time or another by all sorts of political systems? Sometimes a large

city has arisen from a small one, and at other times a small one from a large one, better has

arisen from worse, and worse from better.

CLINIAS: Inevitably.

ATHENIAN: Then let us discover the cause of this transformation, if we are able, for that might per-

haps reveal to us how political systems come into existence in the first place, and how they

change.

CLINIAS: Well said. So, we should get on with it, you to explain what you have in mind on these

matters, and the two of us to follow along.

ATHENIAN: Well then, do the ancient accounts seem to you to possess any degree of truth?

CLINIAS: Which ones?

ATHENIAN: Those saying that humanity has been destroyed many times by floods, plagues, and

lots of other disasters, after which only a small remnant of the human race was left.

CLINIAS: Yes, indeed, everyone finds a story like this convincing.

ATHENIAN: Come on then, let us think about one of these many destructions, the one that happened

once because of the flood.

CLINIAS: What line of thought do you want us to pursue?

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This refers to the legendary flood in the age of Deucalion. He and his wife Pyrhha were the only survivors.

ATHENIAN: That those who escaped the destruction at the time would almost all be mountain-

dwelling shepherds, I presume, little embers of the human race surviving among the high

mountain peaks.

CLINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And, indeed, men like this necessarily lack experience in the other skills, and especially

in the devices employed against one another by city dwellers to further their greed and

ambition, and any other foul deeds they decide to inflict on one another.

CLINIAS: Quite likely.

ATHENIAN: Now, may we assume that the cities situated on the plains or by the sea were destroyed

totally at the time?

CLINIAS: We may.

ATHENIAN: Wouldn’t all their tools be destroyed too, and if some significant skill in the realm of

politics or any other branch of wisdom had been discovered, shall we say that all these also

disappeared at the time? For, best of men, if these inventions had remained all the while as

undisturbed as they are now, how would anything new ever have been discovered?

CLINIAS: This means that for countless ages these matters were unknown to people at that time,

but in the past thousand or two thousand years some have been revealed to Daedalus, others

to Orpheus or Palamedes, matters musical to Marsyas and Olympus, the lyre to Amphion,

and lots of other matters to various others, all, so to speak, just yesterday or the day before.

ATHENIAN: It is good of you, Clinias, to omit mention of your acquaintance who was literally a

man of just yesterday.

CLINIAS: You mean Epimenides, don’t you?

ATHENIAN: Yes, the very man. Indeed, he far surpassed every one of you with his invention, my

friend. Hesiod had an intuition about it in theory, long before, but this man realised it in

action, as you people say.

CLINIAS: Yes, that’s what we say.

ATHENIAN: Should we say that the situation for the human race after the destruction occurred was

as follows? In spite of the terrible and widespread desolation, there was still a vast expanse

of available land, and although most other living creatures had disappeared, some herds of

cattle, and perhaps some goats, happened to survive, and these initially provided some mea-

gre sustenance at the time.

CLINIAS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: Now, our present argument has dealt with cities, political systems and legislation. Do

you think there would, in any sense, have been any memory of these at all?

CLINIAS: Not at all.

ATHENIAN: Now, it is from those people living under such circumstances, isn’t it, that everything

we have nowadays has arisen – our cities, our political systems, our skills and our laws, a

lot of degeneracy and a great deal of excellence too?

CLINIAS: How do you mean?

ATHENIAN: Do we imagine, my good man, that the people of that time, with no experience of all

the good associated with city life, or the many evils either, were ever completely excellent

or completely evil?

CLINIAS: A good question. Yes, we now understand the point you are making.

ATHENIAN: But with the passage of time and the multiplication of our race, everything eventually

came to be as everything is now.

CLINIAS: Correct.

ATHENIAN: But this in all likelihood did not happen suddenly, but gradually over an enormous span

of time.

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CLINIAS: Most likely, indeed.

ATHENIAN: Yes, for they were all, I imagine, haunted still by the fear of coming down from the

high places to the plains.

CLINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Now, although they were always glad to see one another in those days, because there

were so few of them, any means of transportation by land or by sea to visit one another

had, for the most part, all perished, so to speak, along with the relevant skills. So I do not

think they found it at all easy to get together. For iron and bronze and all other metals had

disappeared in the flood, and there were no means at all of extracting such materials from

the earth, and consequently there was a shortage of timber. Indeed, any tools that had sur-

vived in the mountains were quickly worn out and disappeared, never to reappear until the

skill of working with metal had been restored to humanity.

CLINIAS: Indeed, how could they have tools?

ATHENIAN: How many generations later do you think this happened?

CLINIAS: Very many, of course.

ATHENIAN: And wouldn’t any skills that required iron and bronze, and anything of that sort, also

have disappeared for the same amount of time or even longer?

CLINIAS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: Then civil strife and warfare too disappeared at the time for a variety of reasons.

CLINIAS: How so?

ATHENIAN: In the first place, they were kind and had a friendly disposition towards one another

because of their isolation. And what is more, food was not a matter of contention for them,

for there was no shortage of pastureland except perhaps in some cases initially, and most

of them lived off this at the time. Indeed, they were not at all lacking in milk or in meat,

and they provided plenty more wholesome food for themselves by hunting. And, indeed,

they were quite well off for clothing, bedding, dwellings, and vessels for cooking and for

other purposes. For the skills that involve moulding and weaving do not require any iron,

and God gave both these skills to humanity to provide all these necessities, so that whenever

the human race faced a challenge of this sort, it would still be able to develop and progress.

Now, under such circumstances they were not especially poor, nor did poverty force

them into conflict with themselves. Yet, they could never become wealthy either in the

absence of gold and silver, which they did not have then. Now, the noblest characters of all

generally arise in a society in which neither poverty nor riches reside, since violence and

injustice, rivalry and jealousy find no place there. Because of all this, and because of their

so-called simple-mindedness too, they were good people. Indeed, such was their simple-

mindedness that whenever they heard something described as noble or as base, they took

this to be the very truth, and they believed what was said. For unlike people nowadays,

none of them knew how to use wisdom in order to suspect falsehood. So they took what is

said about the gods and humanity to be true, and they lived in accordance with what is said.

Consequently they were, in every respect, the sort of people we have been describing.

CLINIAS: Well, I agree with you on this anyway, and so does this man here.

ATHENIAN: Therefore, shouldn’t we say that the many generations who lived in this way were

bound to be less skilled and have less understanding of skills in general than people born

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Daedalus was an inventor and master craftsman who constructed the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete; Orpheus was

a legendary musician and prophet; Palamedes was a prince from Euboca, credited with inventing, among other things,

mathematics and writing; Marsyas and Olympus were both musicians who played the doublepipe (aulos); Amphion

was a brilliant lyre player.

Epimenides was a Cretan seer to whom many magical happenings were attributed.

before the flood, or people nowadays, especially the military skills practised now in land

battles or on the open seas, or, indeed, in the city itself, where they are called law suits and

civil factions which contrive, by word and deed, to inflict mutual harm and injustice by

every possible means? Weren’t they simpler, more courageous people, more sound-minded

too, and altogether more just? And we have already explained the cause of all this.

CLINIAS: That’s right.

ATHENIAN: Now, whatever we have said, and anything we will say next as a consequence, all has

a purpose. We want to appreciate what need the people of that era had for laws, and who

their lawmaker was.

CLINIAS: Yes, you put that very well.

ATHENIAN: Wasn’t it the case that they had no need of lawgivers in that age, nor indeed was any-

thing of this sort likely to arise then? For people born during that part of the cycle

did not

yet even possess the art of writing; they lived, rather, in accordance with custom and the

so-called laws of their forefathers.

CLINIAS: Quite likely.

ATHENIAN: And yet, this already constitutes some manner of political system.

CLINIAS: What manner?

ATHENIAN: The political system of that era, which is still prevalent nowadays among the Greeks

and the non-Greeks too, is what everyone, I believe, calls a dynasty. Homer says that this

system constituted the domestic arrangement of the Cyclopes, and he says: “These people

have no institutions, no meetings for counsels;rather they make their habitations in caverns

hollowedamong the peaks of the high mountains, and each one is the lawfor his own wives

and children, and cares nothing about the others.”

CLINIAS: It seems that this poet of yours was quite charming. In fact, we have also studied other

verses of his which were most sophisticated, not many though, since we Cretans are not

much in the habit of using foreign poetry.

MEGILLUS: As for ourselves in Sparta, we do make use of Homer, and he seems superior to other

poets of this sort, even though the way of life he generally describes is more Ionian than

Spartan. But just now he seems to support your argument, when his story attributes the

ancient system of these fellows to their wildness.

ATHENIAN: Yes, he does provide support, and we may use him as evidence indicating that political

systems of this sort do arise on occasion.

CLINIAS: Good.

ATHENIAN: Don’t these originate from the people who were dispersed into single family units or

clans due to the difficulty during the destructions? Under such systems, doesn’t the eldest

person exercise authority because authority originates from the father and mother, whom

they follow like birds? Don’t they form a single flock living under paternal law, and a king-

ship that is the most just kingship of all?

CLINIAS: Very much so.

ATHENIAN: After all this, they come together in larger numbers, thus forming cities. They take to

farming, at first in the foothills, building enclosures surrounded by dry stone walls to provide

a defence against wild animals, and they construct a single large common dwelling place.

CLINIAS: Yes, that’s likely to be how all this happens.

ATHENIAN: There is something else that is likely too.

CLINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: These dwelling places grew in size out of the lesser units that were there initially. Each of

the small units arrived, clan by clan, with its own ruling elder and its own particular customs,

because of the fact that they had dwelled apart from one another. Since those who begot

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and reared them were different in each case, the customs they adopted concerning the gods

and themselves were different too. They were more orderly when they had more orderly

ancestors, and more courageous when they had more courageous ones. So, as we were say-

ing, each group arrived into the larger unit having its own particular laws, and, accordingly,

each imposed its own preferences upon their children and their children’s children.

CLINIAS: Yes, it’s inevitable.

ATHENIAN: And it is also inevitable, I presume, that each group would favour its own laws over

the laws of others.

CLINIAS: Quite so.

ATHENIAN: It seems then that we have somehow unwittingly made a foray into the origins of leg-

islation.

CLINIAS: It does indeed.

ATHENIAN: In any case, what’s needed next is for these groups that have come together to choose

some representative from among their number who will review all of the regulations.

Whatever regulations they most favour for common use, they will present openly and put

them forward for adoption by the various leaders and chiefs of the people, who are, in a

sense, their kings. The representatives themselves will be called lawgivers, and once they

have put rulers in place and thus formed an aristocracy, or indeed a kingship, instead of the

dynasties, they will themselves live under this transformed political system.

CLINIAS: Yes, that’s what would happen next, albeit gradually.

ATHENIAN: Well, let us go on to speak of a third sort of political system that arises. In this system

all forms of political systems, and of cities too, converge together, and all sorts of things

happen to them.

CLINIAS: What sort is this?

ATHENIAN: The one that Homer too indicated as coming after the second when he said that the

third sort arose as follows: “He founded Dardania”, he says, I believe, “since there was yet

no sacred Ilium he made a city in the plain to be a centre of peoples, but they lived yet in

the foothills of Ida.”

Ye s, these lines that he speaks, and the others about the Cyclopes too,

are in accord somehow with God and with nature. For the poetical folk, being inspired when

they are singing, are also, indeed, divine, and in the company of some Graces and Muses

they often lay hold of a true version of events.

CLINIAS: Yes, very much so.

ATHENIAN: Let us delve further into the story that is engaging us now, since it may perhaps indicate

something relevant to our overall purpose. Shouldn’t we do so?

CLINIAS: Yes, indeed.

ATHENIAN: Ilium was founded, we maintain, when they moved down from the high places to a

vast and beautiful plain. It was situated on a low ridge that had numerous rivers coming

down from Mount Ida.

CLINIAS: Yes, so they say.

ATHENIAN: Don’t we think that this happened many years after the deluge?

CLINIAS: Yes, it must have been many years later.

ATHENIAN: At any rate, they were, it seems, strangely forgetful of the disaster we are speaking of,

since they located their city in this way, below numerous rivers flowing down from the high

places, and put their trust in some ridges of no great height.

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The ‘cycle’ referred to here is the period of time between cataclysmic events.

Odyssey ix.112-115, Lattimore.

Iliad xx.216-218, Lattimore. Dardanus, an ancestor of the Trojan kings, ruled the entire Troad. His grandson Tros gave

his name to Troy and the Trojans. Ilium was more commonly known as Troy.

CLINIAS: It is obvious then that they were separated from the disaster by an enormous interval of

time.

ATHENIAN: And many other cities, I imagine, had already been founded by then as the human race

increased in numbers.

CLINIAS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: These presumably waged war against Ilium, and they probably did so by sea, since by

then they were all taking to the sea fearlessly.

CLINIAS: Apparently.

ATHENIAN: And after a ten-year wait, the Achaeans sacked Troy.

CLINIAS: They certainly did.

ATHENIAN: Now, during this ten-year period when Ilium was under siege, matters unfolded very

badly for the various besiegers in their own countries because of rebellion on the part of

the younger generation. And when the combatants got back to their own cities and homes,

the young did not receive them in a noble and just manner, and so there was death, slaughter

and exile on a huge scale. Those who had been expelled came back again under a changed

name, being called Dorians rather than Achaeans, after Dorieus who had gathered the exiles

together at the time. And you Spartans tell the story of all the events that happened after

this, and you describe them in detail.

MEGILLUS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: Well, as if by divine intervention, we have now arrived back again at the very point

from which we digressed in the early stages of our discussion about laws, when we came

across the subject of music and drunkenness. And our argument is letting us come to grips

with it, so to speak, for it has come around to the establishment of Sparta itself, and you

maintain that Sparta was established correctly, as was Crete, which has kindred laws. So,

we have now gained this much advantage from the wandering course of our argument, as

we deal with various political systems and settlements; in the settlements we have seen a

first, second and third city succeeding one another, we believe, over some immense span

of time. And now this fourth city,

or nation if you prefer, has arrived. It was once in the

process of being founded, and has now been founded. Now, perhaps we might be able to

understand from all this what has been properly founded and what has not, what sort of

laws save those that are saved, or ruin those that are ruined, and what sort of changes, in

what respects, would produce a happy city. If we can do so, dear Megillus and Clinias, then

we should state all this once more as if we were starting all over again, unless we find some

fault with the earlier arguments.

MEGILLUS: Well, stranger, if some god were to promise us that, in return for making a second

attempt at the enquiry into legislation, we would hear arguments that are no worse and no

shorter than what has just been presented, I for one would willingly go far to hear it, and

this day would seem short to me, even though it is almost the summer solstice when the

god turns summer days towards winter.

ATHENIAN: It seems we should conduct an enquiry then.

MEGILLUS: Very much so.

ATHENIAN: Then let us use our imagination to place ourselves in that age when Sparta, Argos,

Messene and their adjacent territories, had all more or less come under the control of your

ancestors. They decided next, so the story goes, to divide the host into three, thus founding

three cities, Argos, Messene and Sparta.

MEGILLUS: Yes, indeed.

ATHENIAN: And Temenus became king of Argos, Cresphontes of Messene, and Procles and

Eurysthenes of Sparta.

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MEGILLUS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And everyone at the time swore an oath to these kings to come to their aid should any-

one ever try to destroy their kingdom.

MEGILLUS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: But, by Zeus, is a kingdom ever brought down, or indeed has any government ever

been brought down, by anything else besides the rulers themselves? Or have we now for-

gotten that we proposed this a short time ago in those arguments we came across?

MEGILLUS: No, how could we forget?

ATHENIAN: In that case, we can now make this position more certain, since we have come across

historical events that seem to bring us to the same argument. Accordingly, we shall be inves-

tigating it on the basis of something that actually happened in truth, rather than something

abstract. What actually happened was as follows: each of the three kingships, and the cities

over which they reigned, swore an oath to one another in accordance with the common

laws which they had instituted about ruling and being ruled. The rulers swore not to make

their rule more oppressive as the years and the generations advanced. The subjects swore

that as long as the rulers upheld the agreement, they themselves would never subvert their

kingship nor allow others to do so. Kings swore to come to the aid of kings, and of the peo-

ple too, when they were wronged, and the people swore to aid other peoples, and kings too,

when they were wronged. Isn’t this so?

MEGILLUS: It is indeed.

ATHENIAN: Wasn’t this the most important factor in the settled order of the political systems in the

three cities as established by law, whether enacted by kings or anyone else?

MEGILLUS: What?

ATHENIAN: That two cities are always allies set against the other one, if it ever disregards the estab-

lished laws.

MEGILLUS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And, indeed, most people insist that their legislators pass the sort of laws that the general

populace will accept willingly. It’s as if a trainer or physician had to look after and cure

people’s bodies in a pleasant way.

MEGILLUS: Entirely so.

ATHENIAN: But very often it is quite satisfactory if one can bring about a sound and healthy con-

dition of the body, without the involvement of an enormous amount of pain.

MEGILLUS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: And the legislators at the time had a further, not insignificant, advantage in instituting

their laws easily.

MEGILLUS: What sort of advantage?

ATHENIAN: The legislators were not subject to one very serious accusation as they set about ensur-

ing equality of wealth, an accusation that arises in many other cities when they are passing

laws. Whenever someone seeks to make a change in land ownership or to cancel debts,

because he sees that without such measures it would not ever be possible for equality to

arise to any significant extent, he meets resistance. Everyone opposes a lawgiver who

attempts to change anything of this sort, telling him not to disturb the fixed systems, and

they curse him for introducing the redistribution of land and the abolition of debts, with

the result that everyone ends up perplexed. But for the Dorians there was also the advan-

tage that all this worked out nicely and without any evil consequences, because there was

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The first city is a dynasty, the second is an aristocracy, the third city is in the plains, exemplified by Troy. The fourth,

which will be described presently, is a league of cities.

no dispute over the distribution of land, and there were no large, long-standing debts.

MEGILLUS: True.

ATHENIAN: Then why ever, best of men, did their settlement and legislation turn out as badly as

it did?

MEGILLUS: In what way? What fault do you find with them?

ATHENIAN: That although three states were founded, two of the three quickly subverted their own

political systems and their laws, and one alone has remained as it was, and that is your city,

Megillus.

MEGILLUS: You are asking a difficult question.

ATHENIAN: And yet this is what we should now consider and investigate as we play this sober old

men’s game concerning laws, to relieve the pain of our journey, as we said when we first

set out.

MEGILLUS: Indeed. We should do as you say.

ATHENIAN: Well, when it comes to laws, what better enquiry could we make than an enquiry into

the laws by which these states have been regulated? And when it comes to the foundation

of cities, could we consider any that are greater and more renowned than these?

MEGILLUS: Apart from these, it is not easy to name any others.

ATHENIAN: Well, this much is fairly obvious, the people of that era intended this arrangement as

an adequate protection, not just for the Peloponnese, but for all of Greece, in case any of

the non-Greek peoples should do them wrong. This is just what those who lived around

Ilium did at the time. They placed such trust in the might of the Assyrians as it stood during

the reign of Ninos

that they arrogantly provoked the war against Troy. For the still surviving

grandeur of the Assyrian empire was quite considerable, and the Greeks of the time feared

its unified structure, just as we fear the Great King nowadays.

Indeed, the second taking

of Troy

became a great reproach against the Greeks since it was part of the empire of the

Assyrians. To deal with all these issues, there was that single arrangement of military forces,

divided then into three cities under the command of three kings who were brothers, as they

were all sons of Heracles. This, it seems, was an excellent arrangement, superior indeed to

the Trojan expedition. For in the first place, these sons of Heracles were regarded as better

commanders than the sons of Pelops.

And what’s more, this military force was thought to

be superior in excellence to the Trojan expedition which consisted of Achaeans, who,

although they had been victorious at Troy, were later defeated by the Dorians. Don’t we

imagine that people organised themselves in this way in those days, and with this intention?

MEGILLUS: Entirely so.

ATHENIAN: Now, weren’t they also likely to presume that these arrangements would possess some

stability, and would last for a considerable period of time, since they had shared many hard-

ships and dangers together, and had been organised under the command of a single family,

their kings being brothers? What’s more, they had consulted many oracles among whom

was Apollo of Delphi.

MEGILLUS: Yes, that is most likely.

ATHENIAN: But these high hopes, it seems, took flight and were gone soon after, except, as we said

just now, for a small part of the alliance, the part in your region, and this has engaged in

uninterrupted warfare against the other two parts, right down to the present day. But if the

original intention had come to fruition, and they had agreed upon a single aim, they would

have possessed military power that none could withstand.

MEGILLUS: Inevitably.

ATHENIAN: So, how was it destroyed and what led to its destruction? Isn’t it worth investigating

what turn of fortune brought down such a great confederacy as this?

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MEGILLUS: Yes. For anyone who neglects these issues and investigates something else would hardly

catch sight of laws and political systems that preserve such great and noble undertakings,

or indeed, on the contrary, bring them down completely.

ATHENIAN: Well, in that case, it seems we have fortunately embarked somehow upon a significant

investigation.

MEGILLUS: We have, indeed.

ATHENIAN: So, my good man, are we now, like most people, unwittingly presuming every time we

see some good object that it would accomplish something wonderful if only someone knew,

somehow or other, how to use this properly? But perhaps we are neither thinking correctly

nor in accordance with nature about this very issue, and neither is anyone else who thinks

in this way about any other matters.

MEGILLUS: What do you mean? What exactly is this argument of yours concerned with? What can

we say?

ATHENIAN: My good man, I was laughing just now at my own behaviour. For as soon as I beheld

this host we are talking about, it seemed glorious to me and a wonderful acquisition for the

Greeks to come by, if only, as I said, someone had used it properly at the time.

MEGILLUS: Wasn’t it sound and reasonable for you to say all this, and for us to endorse it too?

ATHENIAN: Perhaps. At any rate, I am of the view that everyone who sees something of significance,

possessing power and a lot of strength, immediately feels that if only its possessor knew

how to use this, being the sort of thing it is, being as great as it is, he would produce won-

derful results aplenty, and would enjoy happiness.

MEGILLUS: That’s correct too, isn’t it? Or what do you say?

ATHENIAN: Well, consider this. What should a person look to to ensure that he says the right thing

when bestowing such praise on anything? Firstly, in the case we are now discussing, if those

who were organising the military force at the time had known how to arrange it properly,

how would they have set about achieving their objective? Wouldn’t they have had good

grounds for praising the arrangement if they had set it up securely, safe for all time, so that

they themselves were free and had authority over others as they wished, and that they them-

selves, and their descendants too, could do as they pleased among their fellow men, Greeks

and barbarians alike?

MEGILLUS: Entirely so.

ATHENIAN: And isn’t it also the case that someone who sees enormous wealth or exceptional family

prestige, or anything else of that sort, might say the very same things? He looks at this and

assumes that through this someone might obtain everything he desires, or the most signif-

icant part of it anyway.

MEGILLUS: Quite likely.

ATHENIAN: Come on then, is there one object of desire, common to all men, that is now being

revealed by the argument, according to the argument itself?

MEGILLUS: What sort of desire?

ATHENIAN: That whatever happens would take place according to the command of his own soul,

in most cases, or failing that in the case of human affairs at least.

MEGILLUS: Indeed.

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Ninos was the legendary founder of the Assyrian Empire, an important kingdom in the Upper Tigris region in modern-

day Iraq.

The ‘Great King’ always referred to the King of the Persian empire.

According to the Iliad (v.640-651), Heracles sacked Troy a generation prior to the Trojan War.

Menelaus, king of Sparta and Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who were both leaders of the second expedition against

Troy.

ATHENIAN: Now, since all of us, children and old men alike, are wishing for something of this sort

all of the time, wouldn’t we also necessarily pray for this constantly?

MEGILLUS: Inevitably.

ATHENIAN: And, indeed, we would presumably join our loved ones in prayer for whatever they

pray for themselves.

MEGILLUS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: Now, a son, who is a child, is loved by his father, who is a man.

MEGILLUS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And yet in many cases, the father might pray to the gods that what the son prays for,

for himself, would never come to pass at all.

MEGILLUS: You mean when the prayers are uttered while his son is still young and foolish?

ATHENIAN: But what if the father, because of his old age, or out of sheer impetuousness, with no

recognition of what’s good and just, prays with great eagerness whilst gripped by passions

akin to those of Theseus towards his son Hippolytus, who died so tragically?

Do you think

that a son who realises this will join in the prayers of his father?

MEGILLUS: I understand your meaning. Indeed, you seem to me to be saying that a man must not

pray and strive that everything conform to his own wishes, but that his wishes conform to

his own wisdom. Every city, and each and every one of us, should pray and be eager for

this – to possess reason.

ATHENIAN: Ye s, and a statesman or lawgiver especially should always look to this when putting

legal arrangements in place. And I am myself reminded, and I am reminding the two of

you, that at the beginning of our discussion, if you recall, your principle was that the good

lawgiver should institute all regulations for the sake of war. But I maintained that this would

encourage them to institute the laws, aiming at only one of the four excellences, when they

should really look to all four, but most of all and primarily to the chief and leader of all

excellence combined. This would be wisdom, reason and opinion, along with the love and

desire that follow them.

So, our argument has arrived back at the same place once more, and I am now saying

once again what I said then in jest, if you please, or in all seriousness, that to have recourse

to prayer without possessing reason is perilous, and what unfolds is the opposite of what

was wished for. You may take me seriously if you wish to do so, for I really expect that you

will discover, if you follow the argument we put forward a while ago, that the cause of the

destruction of the kingdoms, and of the entire plan of action, was not cowardice or ignorance

of warfare on the part of the rulers or their proper subjects. They were ruined by evil in

general, but mostly by ignorance of the most important of human undertakings.

Now, since we are friends, I shall try my best to discover and to show you, if you

like, by going systematically through the argument that this was how matters unfolded at

the time, and still unfold today given similar circumstances, and that hereafter nothing will

happen in a different way.

CLINIAS: Well, stranger, mere words of praise would be an insult to you, so we shall praise you

heartily with our deeds, for we shall follow what you say eagerly, and that’s how a free

born man makes his approval or disapproval most evident.

MEGILLUS: Excellent, Clinias, we should do so as you say.

CLINIAS: Let it be so, God willing. Speak on.

ATHENIAN: So, following the remaining course of the argument, we maintain that what destroyed

the power at that time was enormous ignorance, and naturally it still does the same thing

today. Accordingly, if this is so, the lawgiver must try to implant as much wisdom as he

can in the cities, and do his very best to eradicate ignorance.

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CLINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: What kind of ignorance may justifiably be called the greatest? Decide whether you

both agree with what I say, for I am going to make a suggestion.

CLINIAS: What is it?

ATHENIAN: It is the ignorance whereby something seems noble and good to someone, but he does

not love this, but hates it, and loves and welcomes what seems degenerate and unjust. This

discord between pleasure and pain on the one hand, and reasoned opinion on the other, is,

I maintain, the utmost and greatest ignorance because it pervades most of the soul. Indeed,

the part of the soul that feels pain and pleasure corresponds to the general populace of a

city. Now, when this part is opposed to knowledge, opinion and reason – the soul’s natural

ruling elements – this I call folly in a city, when most of the people do not obey the rulers

and the laws. And it’s the same in a single individual too when the noble principles present

in the soul accomplish nothing, but have the very opposite effect. All these, I would suggest,

constitute the most discordant forms of ignorance in a city, and, indeed, in any one of its

citizens, but not the ignorance of its workmen, if you understand me, strangers.

CLINIAS: We understand, my friend, and we agree with what you are saying.

ATHENIAN: So that’s settled then, and let it be resolved and proclaimed that no authority should be

entrusted to those who are in the grip of such ignorance. They should be censured for their

ignorance, even if they are highly rational and well trained in all sorts of cleverness, and in

everything that naturally produces a quick-witted soul.Those, however, who are more or

less the opposite of these fellows should be hailed as wise, and authority should be given

to them because they are sensible people, even if as the saying goes, “they don’t know how

to read or to swim”.

For how, my friends, could there be wisdom even to the slightest extent in the

absence of concord? There could not. But the greatest and most exalted concord may quite

rightly be called the greatest wisdom, and whoever lives in accord with reason shares in

this. But he who is devoid of this turns out, time and again, to be a subverter of his household

and no saviour of his city, but the exact opposite because of his foolishness in these respects.

So, as we just said, let this stand as our declaration.

CLINIAS: Yes, let it stand.

ATHENIAN: Now, in our cities there must, I presume, be people who rule and people who are ruled.

CLINIAS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: So be it. And how many rights, of what sort, to rule and be ruled, are there in cities

large or small, and in households too in like manner? Isn’t one of these the right of father

and mother? And, in general, wouldn’t the right of parents to rule over their offspring be

accepted everywhere?

CLINIAS: Very much so.

ATHENIAN: Following from this, is the right of the well-born to rule over the base-born, and thirdly,

as a consequence of these, that the elder should rule and the younger be ruled.

CLINIAS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: And fourthly, that slaves should be ruled and their masters should rule them.

CLINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Fifthly, I believe that the stronger should rule and the weaker should be ruled.

CLINIAS: Yes, that one is quite inevitable.

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Hippolytus was falsely accused by Phaedra, his stepmother, of attempting to sexually assault her. Her husband, Theseus,

believed her accusations and cursed his son, asking the sea god Poseidon to kill him. Poseidon sent a bull from the sea,

which terrified the horses pulling Hippolytus’ chariot. He became entangled in their reins and was dragged to his death.

ATHENIAN: Yes, and this one is prevalent among all living creatures, and it accords with nature, as

Pindar the Theban once said.

But the most important right, it seems, would be the sixth,

declaring that the wise should lead and rule, and anyone devoid of knowledge should follow.

And yet, O wise Pindar, I myself could never maintain that such natural rule of law over

willing subjects, without use of force, is contrary to nature. It accords with nature.

CLINIAS: Absolutely correct.

ATHENIAN: We say that the seventh form of rule involves the favour of god and good fortune. So

we introduce people to a lottery system, and the most just outcome, we maintain, is that he

to whom the lot falls should rule, while he who fails should depart and be ruled.

CLINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And to someone who sets about instituting laws in a light-hearted manner, we might

say playfully, “My dear lawmaker, do you see then just how many rights there are relating

to rulership, and that they are naturally in conflict with one another? In fact, we have now

discovered a wellspring of conflicts which you need to remedy. But first, join us in an

enquiry as to how the kings of Argos and Messene destroyed themselves and, simultane-

ously, the power of the Greeks which was so wondrous at the time. What was their trans-

gression of these rights? Wasn’t it their ignorance of the excellent maxim of Hesiod that

the half is often more than the whole?

Meaning that when it is ruinous to get the whole,

and half is the right measure, he thought that what’s measured aright is more because it is

better than what’s unmeasured and worse.”

CLINIAS: A very true saying indeed.

ATHENIAN: Now, do we think that this brings about destruction when it arises among kings or

among the general population?

CLINIAS: Well, this is likely for the most part to be a disease of kings because of their opulent and

luxurious lifestyle.

ATHENIAN: Isn’t it clear, then, that the kings at the time were the first to catch this disease of greed

for more than the established laws allowed? There was no concord among them on the very

agreement they had sworn to adhere to under oath, and this discord, which, according to

us, is the greatest ignorance even though it seems like wisdom, destroyed everything through

a discordant and strident unmusicality.

CLINIAS: Quite likely.

ATHENIAN: So be it. Now, what precaution should the lawgiver have taken at the time to ensure

that this affliction did not arise? By the gods, it takes no wisdom to understand this today

and the question is easy to answer, but if it could have been foreseen at the time, whoever

had foreseen it would have been wiser than any of us.

MEGILLUS: What are you referring to?

ATHENIAN: By looking at what happened among your people, Megillus, it is possible today to come

to an understanding, and then say quite readily what should have happened at that time.

MEGILLUS: Explain this more clearly.

ATHENIAN: The clearest explanation would be along the following lines.

MEGILLUS: What?

ATHENIAN: If someone gives the greater to the lesser, be it a sail to a ship, food to a body, authority

to a soul, without regard for the measure, he turns everything upside down, and in their

wantonness some will run to disease, others to injustice born of arrogance. So what exactly

are we saying? Is it something like this? There is no mortal soul whose nature will ever be

able to bear supreme authority over human beings while still being young and irresponsible.

Its thinking will be filled with ignorance, that terrible disease, so that the soul comes to hate

its nearest and dearest, and when this happens, soul itself is quickly destroyed and all of its

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power comes to nothing. Now, to guard against this by understanding the measure is the

mark of great lawgivers. So, today it is quite reasonable to guess that this actually happened

at that time, but it seems there was also...

MEGILLUS: What?

ATHENIAN: There was some god caring for you who foresaw the impending events and expanded

your line of kings to two instead of one, thus reducing their power more in the direction of

due measure.

As well as this, someone

whose human nature had a mixture of divine

power saw that your government was still at fever pitch. So he blended the sound-minded

power of old age with the self-willed strength of the royal line by making the vote of the

twenty-eight elders equal to the power of the kings on the most important matters. And your

third saviour,

observing that your government was still wanton and inflamed, cast a sort

of bridle around them, and this was the power of the ephors,

which is close enough to the

power of the lottery. And, according to this account, your kingdom, constituted from the

appropriate mixture of elements and possessed of due measure, having saved itself, went

on to become responsible for the salvation of the others.

Since, if this had been left to

Temenus and Cresphontes and the legislators at the time, whoever those legislators may

have been, they were not sufficiently experienced in the business of legislation, so even the

portion belonging to Aristodemus

would not have survived. Otherwise they would hardly

have presumed, with a few oaths, to bring measure to a young soul that had just acquired a

position of authority that could develop into a tyranny. But now, the god has shown what

rulership should have been like then, and should indeed be like now, if it is to endure.

For us to recognise all this now that it has already happened is, as I said earlier, no

mark of wisdom, since it is not difficult to see something from an example from the past.

But if someone had foreseen all this at the time and had been able to moderate the rulers

and unify the three of them, all the noble aspirations of that era would have been preserved,

and no Persian horde or any other would ever have attacked Greece, despising us as people

of no account.

CLINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: At any rate, they repulsed them, Clinias, in a disgraceful manner. And by disgraceful I

don’t mean that the men of that age were not victorious, and I am not denying that they

won notable battles by land and by sea. No, I maintain that what was disgraceful at the time

was, firstly, that of these three cities only one came to the defence of Greece. The other two

were so badly corrupted that one of them

even impeded Sparta in her defence of Greece

by fighting against her with all their might, while the other, Argos, in spite of its primacy

at the time of the original division, when called upon to defend Greece against the barbar-

ians, paid no heed and did not defend her. And a lot more could be said about what went on

during that war which would not reflect at all well on Greece. In fact, it wouldn’t even be

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–––––

The allusion here is to a short portion of a poem by Pindar, of which only a small fragment remains (Fragment 109,

Snell).

Hesiod, Works and Days 40.

The first kings of Sparta were Procles and Eyrsthenes, twin sons of Aristodemus.

This refers to Lycurgus, founder of the Spartan Council of Elders.

‘Third saviour’ was a proverbial phrase arising from the custom of offering the third libation at banquets to Zeus the

Saviour.

A group of five overseers who were elected annually by the Assembly (all Spartan citizens were eligible) and who had

judicial, financial and administrative powers over the kings and the senators.

Sparta had two royal families, both claiming descent from Heracles. The two kings were political, military and religious

figures.

‘The portion belonging to Aristodemus’ is a reference to Sparta.

The reference here is to Messene.

right to say that Greece defended itself, because if the joint enterprise of the Athenians and

the Spartans had not repulsed that impending enslavement, almost all the Greek nations

would have been intermixed with one another by now – barbarians with Greeks, and Greeks

with non-Greeks. This is exactly the situation of those who are under the tyranny of Persia

nowadays. Having been dispersed and then jumbled together, they live out their lives

wretchedly in scattered communities.

These, Megillus and Clinias, are the criticisms we must direct at the so-called states-

men and lawmakers of past ages and of today, so that by investigating the causes of these

failings, we may discover what other courses of action besides these they should have

adopted. For instance, in the present case we said that we should not pass laws creating

positions of authority that are too powerful, or indeed too pure. We should, rather, keep in

mind that the city should be free, wise, and a friend to itself, and the lawgiver should pass

laws with his eye fixed upon this aim. Now, we have already proposed certain aims many

times that the lawgiver should look to when passing laws, but we should not be surprised

if the proposals seem different to us on each occasion. We need to reckon for ourselves that

when we maintain that he should look to sound-mindedness, or to wisdom or friendship,

these aims are not different but the same, and we should not be troubled if various other

expressions of this sort occur.

CLINIAS: We shall try to do as you suggest as we go back over the arguments. But now tell us, in

the case of friendship, wisdom and freedom, what were you intending to say the lawgiver

should aim at?

ATHENIAN: Listen then. It would be right to say that there are, as it were, two mother-forms of

political systems from which all others arise: one is called monarchy, the other democracy.

The extreme of the former is the Persian system, while that of the latter is ours. The others

are practically all, as I said, variations of these two. Now, a city must necessarily have a

share in both of these if it is to have freedom and friendship accompanied by wisdom. This,

then, is what our argument wishes to prescribe by saying that a city could never be properly

governed in the absence of these two.

CLINIAS: Indeed, how could it be?

ATHENIAN: Well, the Persian regime has embraced the monarchic, while the other, ours, has

favoured freedom exclusively, to a greater extent than they should in each case. Neither

regime has got both of these in the right measure, but your regimes in Sparta and Crete do

have it more. So did the Athenians and Persians in ancient times, but this is less so nowa-

days. Should we give the reasons why? What do you think?

CLINIAS: Of course, if we are serious about pursuing our objective.

ATHENIAN: Listen then. The Persians, during the reign of Cyrus,

observing the proper measure of

subservience and freedom, first attained freedom themselves, and then attained supremacy

over many others. For, as rulers, they granted freedom to their subjects and maintained

equality, so the soldiers were well disposed towards the generals and didn’t hold back in

the face of danger. And what’s more, if anyone among them was wise and capable of offer-

ing advice, the king did not begrudge him that opportunity. He allowed free speech and

respected those who could assist him in his deliberations, and so the benefit of a man’s wis-

dom was made available to the community at its very heart. In fact, everything prospered

for them in those days because of this freedom, friendship and communal spirit.

CLINIAS: Well, that’s likely to be how things happened, anyway.

ATHENIAN: How was it ever destroyed under Cambyses,

and more or less restored again under

Darius? Would you like us to use some sort of prophetic sense to come up with an answer?

CLINIAS: That might help with the enquiry we have embarked upon.

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ATHENIAN: The sense I now have of Cyrus is that although he was a good general who loved his

city, he had no contact at all with the right sort of education, and had never applied his mind

to economics.

CLINIAS: Why would we say this?

ATHENIAN: He spent his life, it seems, from his earliest years, on military campaigns, and entrusted

the upbringing of his children to women, who reared them from their very childhood as

though they were already favoured with the blessings of heaven, with no deficiencies. The

women would allow no one to oppose the children in anything because they were so blessed,

and they made everyone else praise whatever the children said or did. So they brought them

up to be people of a particular sort.

CLINIAS: A noble upbringing, it seems.

ATHENIAN: A feminine one, as you would expect from women of the royal household who had

recently become rich, who were rearing children in the absence of any men, because they

were all caught up in warfare with all its perils.

CLINIAS: That makes sense.

ATHENIAN: But their father acquired flocks for them, sheep too and herds of humans, and various

collections of all sorts of things, but he did not realise that he was about to give all this to

boys who had not been educated in their fathers’ own skill, the skill of a Persian. The

Persians were shepherds, sprung from a harsh land, and their skill was a tough one, just

what was needed to produce very strong shepherds well able to live in the open air, go

without sleep, and serve in the army if necessary. He simply did not notice that his sons,

having been educated by women and eunuchs, had received a corrupted Median education

because of their so-called blessedness. So, having been brought up without hearing a word

of reproach, they turned out to be the sort of people you would expect from such an upbring-

ing. Now, when Cyrus died and the children inherited the kingdom, they were infected

with luxury and licentiousness. First, one killed the other because he was angry over their

equal status, but after that, he himself, maddened by drink and ill-education, lost his king-

dom to the Medes and the so-called eunuch,

who had such utter contempt for the foolish-

ness of Cambyses.

CLINIAS: That’s what’s said anyway, and it’s quite likely that is more or less what happened.

ATHENIAN: And, indeed, it is also said, I believe, that authority reverted to the Persians through

Darius and the ‘Seven’.

CLINIAS: Indeed.

ATHENIAN: Let us look at this then, by following the account. For Darius was no king’s son and he

was not reared and educated in sumptuous luxury. When he came to power, having taken

control as one of a group of seven, he divided the kingdom into seven parts, small traces of

which remain to this day. He thought it best to administer the kingdom by passing laws

introducing some social equality, and he fixed, by law, the tribute money that Cyrus had

promised to the Persians, thus ensuring friendship and fellow-feeling among all the Persians

by winning the Persian people over with generous gifts. Consequently, his armies were so

full of goodwill that they won as much territory for him as Cyrus had originally left to him.

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–––––

Cyrus the Great, having become king of a small kingdom in Persia, by conquest he extended the territory considerably,

and in so doing founded the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire.

The reign of Cambyses, Cyrus’ son, was marred by military defeats. His successor, his son Darius, was able to steady

the ship of state through sensible policies.

This expression denotes an education in extreme luxury.

Gomates, the Eunuch, seized Cambyses’ kingdom for a short time by impersonating his dead brother while Cambyses

was away in Egypt.

After seven months, Gomates was slain by seven Persian nobles, one of whom was Darius.

After Darius came Xerxes, who had, once again, received a pampered royal educa-

tion. We could quite justifiably say to Darius, “O Darius, because you did not learn from

Cyrus’ mistake, you trained Xerxes in the very same habits that Cyrus taught to Cambyses.”

Anyway, since he was a product of the very same education, Xerxes ended up suffering

more or less the same fate as Cambyses. And since then there has hardly been a single king

among the Persians who has been truly great in anything more than name. And what is

responsible for this, according to my argument, is not ill-fortune, but the bad life that is for

the most part lived by the children of exceptionally wealthy folk and tyrants. In fact, no

child or man, old or young, could ever attain an exceptional level of excellence from such

an upbringing as this. These, then, are issues which, we maintain, the lawgiver should take

into consideration and we should do the same right now.

Well, it is only right, my Spartan friends, to grant your city this much at least: you

do not assign any special honour or training to rich or poor, king or commoner, beyond the

prophetic directions you were given at first by some god. In fact, pre-eminent civic honours

should not be conferred just because someone is especially wealthy, no more than we should

do so just because the person is swift or pretty or strong, unless he has some excellence,

and even the excellence should include sound-mindedness.

MEGILLUS: What do you mean by this, stranger?

ATHENIAN: Courage is presumably one part of excellence?

MEGILLUS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Well then, listen to the argument and decide this for yourself. Would you choose some-

one who was extremely courageous, but devoid of sound-mindedness and restraint, as your

housemate or neighbour?

MEGILLUS: What a suggestion!

ATHENIAN: What about someone who has a skill and is wise in that sense, but unjust?

MEGILLUS: Not at all.

ATHENIAN: And yet justice does not flourish without sound-mindedness.

CLINIAS: No, how could it?

ATHENIAN: Nor indeed does the wisdom we described a while ago of the person whose pleasures

and pains are in accord with and adhere to correct reasoning.

MEGILLUS: Indeed, it does not.

ATHENIAN: There is a further point we should consider on the issue of civic honours, and what sort

are correctly or incorrectly conferred on any occasion.

MEGILLUS: What point?

ATHENIAN: Would sound-mindedness, present in a soul on its own without any other excellence,

be honourable or dishonourable, rightly speaking?

MEGILLUS: I don’t know how to answer you.

ATHENIAN: And yet, you have responded quite reasonably. In fact, had you chosen either of the

two alternatives, you would, in my opinion anyway, have gone awry.

MEGILLUS: So my answer has turned out quite well.

ATHENIAN: Indeed. It is not worth saying anything about this additional element in the honourable

and dishonourable. Mute silence is a better option.

MEGILLUS: I presume you mean that sound-mindedness is the additional element.

ATHENIAN: Yes. And whatever benefits us most, when combined with this additional element,

would rightly be honoured most. The second most beneficial would be honoured second.

And if each successive benefit was given its place in the sequence of honours in this way,

that would be the right way to arrange them.

MEGILLUS: Quite so.

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ATHENIAN: Well then, shouldn’t we also say that it is once again the role of the legislator to

assign these?

MEGILLUS: Very much so.

ATHENIAN: Would you like, then, to leave it to him to deal with them all, each individual task and

all the details, while we, aspiring to be men of the law, make a threefold division in an effort

to distinguish separately between those that are most significant, and those that are in second

or third place?

MEGILLUS: Yes, certainly.

ATHENIAN: So, we are saying, it seems, that a city that is to save itself and be as happy as humanly

possible must, of necessity, assign honours and their opposites in the correct manner. It is

only right that the goods of the soul occupy the first and most honoured position, provided

the soul is possessed of sound-mindedness. In second place are the goods and beauties of

the body, and third are the so-called goods associated with property and wealth. Any law-

giver or city that goes outside of those rankings by elevating wealth to a position of honour,

or promoting any of the lesser benefits to a higher status in terms of honour, is performing

an unholy and unstatesmanlike act. May we say this or what should we say?

MEGILLUS: We may say this, plainly.

ATHENIAN: Although our investigation of the political system of the Persians made us say all

this at such length, we still find that they ended up in an even worse predicament. The

reason for this, according to us, was that they restricted the freedom of the populace

excessively, introduced more subservience than appropriate, and thus they undid the

friendship and communal spirit of their city. And once this is gone, the policy of the rulers

is no longer framed in the interests of their subjects and the populace, but in the interests

of their own authority. If they ever think it will be to their own advantage, even slightly,

they devastate whole cities, and friendly peoples too, by destroying them with fire, and

so they are hated, relentlessly and mercilessly, and they return that hatred. And when they

need the populace to fight for them, they find there is no communal spirit among them,

no willingness to do battle eagerly in the face of danger. So although in theory they have

a vast population at their disposal, they are all useless in a war, so they hire people in as

though they were in short supply, believing that their safety lies in foreign mercenaries.

As well as this, they inevitably show their ignorance by proclaiming, through their own

actions, that everything the city calls honourable and good is a mere trifle in comparison

with gold and silver.

MEGILLUS: Entirely so.

ATHENIAN: Well, let that be the end of our discussion of the Persians and how badly their affairs

are managed nowadays because of their extreme subservience and authoritarianism.

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Next we should describe the Attic political system in the same way, showing that total

freedom, without any rulers, is far worse than the regulated authority of others. Indeed, at

the time of the Persian advance upon the Greeks, or perhaps upon more or less all the inhab-

itants of Europe, we had a political system of ancient date with positions of authority based

upon four valuations. Reverence was present among us as a queen, and because of her we

were willing to live in subservience to the laws of the time. What’s more, the sheer magni-

tude of the horde that came by land and by sea struck us with fear and perplexity, and

increased our subservience to our rulers and our laws to an even greater extent. As a result

of all this, a strong bond of affection developed among ourselves.

Indeed, some ten years before the battle of Salamis, Datis arrived, leading a Persian

horde. He had been sent by Darius with explicit orders directed against the Athenians and

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Eretrians.

He was to enslave them and deport them, and his own death was the penalty

for failure. Datis did not take long to completely overpower the Eretrians with his vast army,

and he sent a frightening message to our city, Athens, that not a single Eretrian had escaped

him. In fact, Datis’ soldiers, with joined hands, had swept through the whole territory of

Eretria like a dragnet. This account, whatever its source, whether true or false, terrified the

other Greeks, and especially the Athenians, and no one except the Spartans was willing to

help them when they sent embassies everywhere. But because their war against Messene

was ongoing at the time, and perhaps because they were delayed by something else we

don’t know about, the Spartans arrived one day late for the battle of Marathon.

After this, reports of large-scale preparations and endless threats kept reaching us

from the king. Eventually we were told that Darius had died, and his son, who had inherited

the throne, was young and energetic and had no intentions of giving up on the invasion

plan. The Athenians presumed that all these preparations were directed against themselves

because of what happened at Marathon, and when they heard that a canal had been dug at

Athos, that the Hellespont had been bridged, and of the huge number of ships in the Persian

fleet, they decided that they would be safe neither by land nor by sea. They realised that no

one would help them, for they remembered that when the Persians invaded previously and

were successful in Eretria, no one came to their aid, nor did anyone run the risk of fighting

alongside them. So they were expecting the same thing to happen again this time, by land

anyway, and they lost all hope of safety by sea when they saw a thousand Persian ships, or

even more, bearing down upon them.

It occurred to them that there was only one safe course, slender and perilous, but the

only one. They looked back at what happened previously, and how, from the bleak situation

that they also faced then, military victory appeared to emerge. Uplifted by this hope, they

discovered that their own refuge lay in themselves alone, and in the gods. A number of fac-

tors combined to engender a feeling of friendship among them. One was a fear born of their

perilous circumstances at the time, while another originated in the ancient laws, a fear they

had acquired through their subservience to those laws of old. We have often referred to this

fear in our earlier discussions as ‘reverence’, and we said that anyone who is to be a good

person should be subject to this. But the coward is free of reverence and does not experience

it, and unless such people had been seized by terror at the time, they would never have

joined the defensive effort to protect their temples, tombs and fatherland, their family and

friends, by helping as they did on that occasion. We would rather have been routed then,

and all of us scattered this way and that.

MEGILLUS: Very much so, stranger, what you have said is correct and a great credit to yourself and

your fatherland.

ATHENIAN: Quite so, Megillus, and it is only right to recount the events of that age to you, since

you have inherited the character of your forefathers. Now, you and Clinias should consider

whether we are saying anything that is relevant to law-making. For I am not telling these

stories for their own sake, but for the sake of the topic I am discussing. Yes, look, the same

thing, somehow, happened to ourselves as happened to the Persians, except that they totally

subjugated the populace, while we, in contrast, urged the masses in the direction of total

freedom. So, what should we say next, and how should we express it, since our previous

arguments have in a way been quite well stated?

MEGILLUS: Good point, but please try to explain what you are saying to us a bit more clearly.

ATHENIAN: I will. Under our ancient laws, my friends, the populace was not the master. The pop-

ulace was rather, in a sense, willingly subject to the laws.

MEGILLUS: To what sort of laws?

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1,104 | LAWS III – 698d–700a

ATHENIAN: Firstly, to the laws concerning the music of that era. Let’s look there so that we may

describe, from the beginning, the development of this excessively free lifestyle. At the time,

our music was in fact divided into various forms and structures. One was a form of song

consisting of prayers to the gods, which were called hymns. Another form of song, almost

the opposite of this, consisted of what are best called dirges, and there was another consist-

ing of paeans, and one more which is called a dithyramb,

which is about the birth of

Dionysus, I think. Nomes were given this particular name as being a different kind of song,

which they said was for the cithara. Once these and some others had been duly set in order,

it was not permitted to apply one form of melody to another form. The ultimate authority

to understand these principles, and indeed pass judgement and impose penalties upon those

who transgressed them, did not lie, as it does nowadays, with the trumpeting and uncouth

clamouring of the multitude, nor their approving applause. The educated folk themselves

agreed to listen in silence to the very end, while for children, their attendants and the com-

mon crowd, the rod of chastisement kept them in order. So in these matters, the majority of

the citizens accepted such regulation and authority, and did not dare to pass judgement by

clamouring.

After this, with the passage of time, poets arose who were responsible for an unmu-

sical lawlessness, and although they were poetical by nature, they did not understand what

was right and lawful in the realm of the Muses. Frenzied, and much in the grip of pleasure,

they mixed dirges with hymns, paeans with dithyrambs, and even imitated the sound of

flutes on the cithara. By combining everything with everything, they, in their ignorance,

unintentionally perpetuated the false notion that there is no such thing as correctness in

music, and that it is quite alright to pass judgement based upon the pleasure it affords to

whomever enjoys it, regardless of whether that person is good or bad. By composing works

of this sort and adding words of a similar sort, they instilled musical lawlessness into most

of the people and the audacity to believe that they were themselves competent judges. And

so, the spectators became noisy folk rather than a quiet people, as though they themselves

understood what was good and bad in the realm of music, and so instead of the rule by the

best, a degenerate rule by the spectators arose. Now, if a democracy of free men had arisen

in music alone that would not have been a particularly serious development. But our current

notion that everyone is wise about everything began with music, as did lawlessness, and

following close behind them came liberty, for believing that they knew so much, they

had no fear, and their lack of fear begat an absence of shame, for it is surely shamelessness

of the lowest order not to fear the opinion of the best because of an impudence born of

excessive liberty.

MEGILLUS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: Next, after this freedom comes another, which is an unwillingness to be subservient to

rulers, and after this comes a flight from any subservience to, or correction by, father, mother

or elders. As the end approaches, they have an urge to pay no heed to any laws, and finally,

towards the very end of the process, they disregard oaths, entreaties, and anything to do

with the gods, as they display and imitate the fabled ancient nature of Titans.

And reverting

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LAWS III – 700b–701c | 1,105

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Datis was the commander of the first Persian expedition. He was sent to punish the island of Eretria, north of Athens,

for taking part, along with Athens, in the revolt against Persian domination in Ionia.

Paeans are hymns in honour of Apollo, and the dithyramb is a choral ode to Dionysos.

Nomos (meaning law, custom, tradition) also refers to a style of song with a prescribed harmonia (tuning) and a definite

rhythm.

The Titans, the older generation of gods, were the first-born children of Uranus and Gaia. The Titans were overthrown

by their children, the Olympian gods.

once more to the same conditions as those fellows, they usher in a harsh age of unrelenting

evils. Well, what again is the point of saying all this? Apparently I should restrain the argu-

ment from time to time and not allow myself to be borne along by the force of the argument,

like a horse with no bridle in its mouth, and, as the saying goes, “fall off my donkey”. So I

repeat the question once more. What is the point of saying all this?

MEGILLUS: Good question.

ATHENIAN: The point relates to what was said previously.

MEGILLUS: Which was?

ATHENIAN: We said that the lawgiver should frame laws with three aims in view: that the city under

his laws will be free, friendly towards itself, and possessed of reason. These were the aims,

were they not?

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: With these aims in view, we picked the most authoritarian system of government and

the one that allowed most freedom, and we are now considering which of these two is gov-

erned in the correct manner. Taking a moderate example of each of these, of authoritarianism

on the one hand and of freedom on the other, we saw that everything went exceptionally

well for them in each case. But when they went on to the extreme, either of subservience

in one case or its opposite in the other, there was no benefit to either of them.

MEGILLUS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And, indeed, for the same reasons we looked at the settlement of the Dorian horde, the

settlement of Dardanos in the foothills, the maritime settlement too, and indeed the first

people who survived the deluge, in addition to our previous discussions about music and

drinking and the topics prior to these. All this was said for the same reason, in order to see

clearly how exactly a city may best be governed and, in the case of an individual, how he

may best live his own life. But have we achieved anything worthwhile? What test for our-

selves may we suggest, Megillus and Clinias?

CLINIAS: I think I have one, stranger. It seems that a certain providence has governed these argu-

ments we have just gone through. For I was at a stage where I was in need of these, and

your arrival, along with Megillus here, was most opportune. I shan’t conceal my present

predicament from you two, in fact I regard your presence as an omen. For most of Crete is

engaged in forming a colony, and the people of Cnossus have been put in charge of the

process, and their city has assigned the task to myself and nine others. At the same time

they directed us to frame laws based upon any local laws that we approved of, and any laws

from elsewhere that in our view were best, regardless of the fact that they were foreign. So

let’s do this favour to myself and to yourselves. Let’s construct a city, in words, as though

we were founding it from the very beginning, by drawing upon what we have said so far.

At the same time, this will also constitute our enquiry into the topic we are investigating,

and, what’s more, I may find this process useful for my future city.

ATHENIAN: Well Clinias, that’s not a declaration of war, so if Megillus has no objection, you may

presume that as far as I am concerned you can count on my fullest possible cooperation.

CLINIAS: Well said.

MEGILLUS: And the same goes for me.

CLINIAS: Thank you both. So let’s first try to found our city in words.

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1,106 | LAWS III – 701d–702e

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