Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  CLINIAS: There are no firs or pines worth mentioning, and not much by way of cypress, though you’ll find a small quantity of plane and Aleppo pine, which is, of course, the standard material shipwrights must have to construct the interior parts of a boat.

  ATHENIAN: That too is a feature of the country which will do it no harm.

  CLINIAS: Oh?

  ATHENIAN: It’s a good thing that a state should find it difficult to lower [d] itself to copy the wicked customs of its enemies.

  CLINIAS: And what on earth has been said to prompt that remark?

  ATHENIAN: My dear sir, cast your mind back to the beginning of our discussion and watch what I’m up to. Do you remember the point we made about the laws of the Cretans having only one object, and how in particular the two of you asserted that this was warfare? I took you up on the point and argued that in so far as such institutions were established with virtue as their aim, they were to be approved; but I took strong exception to their aiming at only a part of virtue instead of the whole. [e] Now it’s your turn: keep a sharp eye on this present legislation, in case I lay down some law which is not conducive to virtue, or which fosters only a part of it. I’m going on the assumption that a law is well enacted only if it constantly aims, like an archer, at that unique target which is the [706] only object of legislation to be invariably and uninterruptedly attended by some good result; the law must ignore everything else (wealth or anything like that), if it happens not to meet the requirements I have stipulated. This ‘disgraceful copying of enemies’ to which I was referring occurs when people live by the sea and are plagued by such foes as Minos, who once forced the inhabitants of Attica to pay a most onerous tribute (though of course in saying this I’ve no wish at all to hark back to our old grudges against you).3 Minos exercised tremendous power at sea, whereas the Athenians had not yet acquired the fighting ships they have today, [b] nor was their country so rich in supplies of suitable timber that they could readily construct a strong fleet; consequently they couldn’t turn themselves into sailors at a moment’s notice and repel the enemy by copying the Cretan use of the sea. Even if they had been able to do that, it would have done them more good to lose seven boys over and over again rather than [c] get into bad habits by forming themselves into a navy. They had previously been infantrymen, and infantrymen can stand their ground; but sailors have the bad habit of dashing at frequent intervals and then beating a very rapid retreat indeed back to their ships. They see nothing disgraceful at all in a craven refusal to stand their ground and die as the enemy attacks, nor in the plausible excuses they produce so readily when they drop their weapons and take to their heels—or, as they put it, ‘retreat without dishonor’. This is the sort of terminology you must expect if you make your soldiers into sailors; these expressions are not ‘beyond praise’ (far [d] from it): men ought never to be trained in bad habits, least of all the citizen-elite. Even from Homer, I suspect, you can see that this is bad policy. He has Odysseus pitching into Agamemnon for ordering the ships to be put to sea just when the Achaeans were being hard put to it in their fight with the Trojans. In his anger, Odysseus says to him:

  [e] Why bid the well-benched ships be put to sea,

  When in our ears the noise of battle rings?

  Do you want the Trojans’ dearest wish fulfilled,

  and utter ruin send us to the grave?

  Put the ships to sea, and watch the Achaeans

  buckle to the fight! No: they’ll scuttle off

  and shrink away from battle. The advice you give

  will mean the end of us.4

  [707] So Homer too realized that it is bad tactics to have triremes lined up at sea in support of infantry in the field. This is the sort of habit-training that will soon make even lions run away from deer. And that’s not all. When a state which owes its power to its navy wins a victory, the bravest soldiers never get the credit for it, because the battle is won thanks to the skill of [b] steersman, boatswain and rower and the efforts of a motley crowd of ragamuffins, which means that it is impossible to honor each individual in the way he deserves. Rob a state of its power to do that, and you condemn it to failure.

  CLINIAS: I suppose that’s more or less inevitable. But in spite of that, sir, it was by fighting at sea at Salamis against the barbarians that the Greeks saved their country—according to us Cretans, anyway.

  [c] ATHENIAN: Yes, that’s what most people say, Greek and non-Greek alike. Still, my friend, we—Megillus here and myself—are arguing in favor of two battles fought on land: Marathon, which first got the Greeks out of danger, and Plataea, which finally made them really safe. We maintain that these battles improved the Greeks, whereas the fighting at sea had the opposite effect. I hope this isn’t too strong language to use about battles that at the time certainly helped to ensure our survival (and I’ll concede you the battle at Artemisium as well as the one at Salamis). That’s all very [d] well, but when we examine the natural features of a country and its legal system, our ultimate object of scrutiny is of course the quality of its social and political arrangements. We do not hold the common view that a man’s highest good is to survive and simply continue to exist. His highest good is to become as virtuous as possible and to continue to exist in that state as long as life lasts. But I think we’ve already taken this line before.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: Then we need consider only one thing: is the method we are following the same as before? Can we assume it is the best way to found a state and legislate for it?

  CLINIAS: Yes, it’s by far the best.

  [e] ATHENIAN: Now for the next point. Tell me, what people will you be settling? Will your policy be to accept all comers from the whole of Crete, on the grounds that the population in the individual cities has exceeded the number that can be supported by the land? I don’t suppose you’re taking all comers from the Greeks in general—though in fact I notice that some settlers from Argos and Aegina and other parts of Greece have come [708] to settle in your country. But tell me what you intend on this occasion where do you think your citizen body will come from this time?

  CLINIAS: They will probably come from all over Crete; as for the other Greeks, I imagine settlers from the Peloponnese will be particularly welcome. You are quite right in what you said just now, that there are some here from Argos: they include the Gortynians, the most distinguished of the local people, who hail from the well-known Gortyn in the Peloponnese.

  ATHENIAN: So it won’t be all that easy for the Cretan states to found [b] their colony. The emigrants, you see, haven’t the unity of a swarm of bees: they are not a single people from a single territory settling down to form a colony with mutual goodwill between themselves and those they have left behind. Such migrations occur because of the pressures of land-shortage or some similar misfortune: sometimes a given section of the community may be obliged to go off and settle elsewhere because it is harassed by civil war, and on one occasion a whole state took to its heels after being overcome by an attack it could not resist. In all these cases to found a state [c] and give it laws is, in some ways, comparatively easy, but in others it’s rather difficult. When a single people speaks the same language and observes the same laws you get a certain feeling of community, because everyone shares the same religious rites and so forth; but they certainly won’t find it easy to accept laws or political systems that differ from their own. Sometimes, when it’s bad laws that have stimulated the revolt, and the rebels try in their new home to keep to the same familiar habits that ruined them before, their reluctance to toe the line presents the founder [d] and lawgiver with a difficult problem. On the other hand, a miscellaneous combination of all kinds of different people will perhaps be more ready to submit to a new code of laws—but to get them to ‘pull and puff as one’ (as they say of a team of horses) is very difficult and takes a long time. There’s no escaping it: founding a state and legislating for it is a superb test that separates the men from the boys.

  CLINIAS: I dare say
; but what do you mean? Please be a little clearer.

  ATHENIAN: My dear fellow, now that I’m going back to considering [e] legislators again, I think I’m actually going to insult them: but no matter, so long as the point is relevant. Anyway, why should I have qualms about it? It seems true of pretty nearly all human affairs.

  CLINIAS: What are you getting at?

  ATHENIAN: I was going to say that no man ever legislates at all. Accidents [709] and calamities occur in a thousand different ways, and it is they that are the universal legislators of the world. If it isn’t pressures of war that overturn a constitution and rewrite the laws, it’s the distress of grinding poverty; and disease too forces us to make a great many innovations, when plagues beset us for years on end and bad weather is frequent and prolonged. Realizing all these possibilities, you may jump to conclusions [b] and say what I said just now, that no mortal ever passes any law at all, and that human affairs are almost entirely at the mercy of chance. Now of course this same view could equally plausibly be taken of the profession of the steersman or doctor or general—but at the same time there’s another point that could be made about all these examples, and with no less justification.

  CLINIAS: What?

  ATHENIAN: That the all-controlling agent in human affairs is God, assisted by the secondary influences of ‘chance’ and ‘opportunity’. A less uncompromising [c] way of putting it is to acknowledge that there must be a third factor, namely ‘skill’, to back up the other two. For instance, in a storm the steersman may or may not use his skill to seize any favorable opportunity that may offer. I’d say it would help a great deal if he did, wouldn’t you?

  CLINIAS: Yes.

  ATHENIAN: So the same will apply in the other cases too, and legislation in particular must be allowed to play the same role. If a state is to live in happiness, certain local conditions must be present, and when all these coincide, what the community needs to find is a legislator who understands the right way to go about things.

  CLINIAS: Very true.

  [d] ATHENIAN: So a professional man in each of the fields we’ve enumerated could hardly go wrong if he prayed for conditions in which the workings of chance needed only to be supplemented by his own skill.

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: And all the other people we’ve instanced would of course be able to tell you what conditions they were praying for, if you asked them.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: And I fancy a legislator would do just the same.

  CLINIAS: I agree.

  [e] ATHENIAN: ‘Well now, legislator,’ let’s say to him, ‘tell us your requirements. What conditions in the state we are going to give you will enable you to run it properly on your own from now on?’ What’s the right answer to a question like that? (We’re giving the legislator’s answer for him, I take it.)

  CLINIAS: Yes.

  ATHENIAN: Then this is what he’ll say: ‘Give me a state under the absolute control of a dictator, and let the dictator be young, with a good memory, quick to learn, courageous, and with a character of natural elevation. And [710] if his other abilities are going to be any use, his dictatorial soul should also possess that quality which was earlier agreed to be an essential adjunct to all the parts of virtue.’

  CLINIAS: I think the ‘essential adjunct’ our companion means, Megillus, is self-control. Right?

  ATHENIAN: Yes, Clinias—but the everyday kind, not the kind we speak of in a heightened sense, when we compel self-control to be good judgment as well. I mean the spontaneous instinct that flowers earlier in life in children and animals and in some cases succeeds in imposing a certain restraint in the search for pleasure, but fails in others. We said that if this quality existed in isolation from the many other merits we are discussing, [b] it was not worth consideration. You see my point, I take it.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: This is the innate quality our dictator must have, in addition to the others, if the state is going to get, as quickly and efficiently as possible, a political system that will enable it to live a life of supreme happiness. You see, there is no quicker or better method of establishing a political system than this one, nor could there ever be.

  CLINIAS: Well sir, how can a man convince himself that he is talking [c] sense in maintaining all this? What arguments are there for it?

  ATHENIAN: It’s easy enough, surely, to see that the very facts of the case make the doctrine true.

  CLINIAS: What do you mean? If we were to get a dictator, you say, who is young, restrained, quick to learn, with a retentive memory, courageous and elevated—

  ATHENIAN: —and don’t forget to add ‘lucky’ too, in this one point: he should be the contemporary of a distinguished lawgiver, and be fortunate enough to come into contact with him. If that condition is fulfilled, God [d] will have done nearly all that he usually does when he wants to treat a state with particular favor. The next best thing would be a pair of such dictators; the third best would be several of them. The difficulties are in direct proportion to the numbers.

  CLINIAS: It looks as if your position is this: the best state will be the product of a dictatorship, thanks to the efforts of a first-rate legislator and a well-behaved dictator, and this will be the quickest and easiest way to bring about the transformation. The second best will be to start with an oligarchy—is that your point, or what?—and the third to start with [e] a democracy.

  ATHENIAN: Certainly not. The ideal starting point is dictatorship, the next best is constitutional kingship, and the third is some sort of democracy. Oligarchy comes fourth, because it has the largest number of powerful people, so that it admits the growth of a new order only with difficulty. And we maintain, of course, that such a growth takes place when circumstances throw up a genuine lawgiver who comes to share a degree of power with the most influential persons in the state. Where the most influential element [711] is both extremely powerful and numerically as small as it could be, as in a dictatorship, you usually get a rapid and trouble-free transition.

  CLINIAS: How? We don’t understand.

  ATHENIAN: We’ve made the point more than once, I think. Perhaps you two have not so much as seen a state under the control of a dictator.

  CLINIAS: No, and I don’t particularly want to, either.

  ATHENIAN: Still, suppose you did: you’d notice something we remarked [b] on just now.

  CLINIAS: What’s that?

  ATHENIAN: That when a dictator wants to change the morals of a state, he doesn’t need to exert himself very much or spend a lot of time on the job. He simply has to be the first to set out on the road along which he wishes to urge the citizens—whether to the practice of virtue or vice—and give them a complete moral blueprint by setting his own personal [c] example; he must praise and commend some courses of action and censure others, and in every field of conduct he must see that anyone who disobeys is disgraced.

  CLINIAS: And why should we expect the citizens to obey, with such alacrity, a man who combines persuasion with compulsion like that?

  ATHENIAN: My friends, there’s no quicker or easier way for a state to change its laws than to follow the leadership of those in positions of power; there is no other way now, nor will there be in the future, and we shouldn’t let anyone persuade us to the contrary. Actually, you see, it’s not simply [d] this that is impossible or difficult to achieve. What is difficult, and a very rare occurrence in the history of the world, is something else; but when it does occur, the state concerned reaps the benefit on a grand scale—indeed, there’s no blessing that will pass it by.

  CLINIAS: What occurrence do you mean?

  ATHENIAN: A situation in which an inspired passion for the paths of restraint and justice guides those who wield great power. The passion may seize a single supreme ruler, or perhaps men who owe their power [e] to exceptional wealth or high birth; or you may get a reincarnation of Nestor, who, superior as he was to all mankind for the vigor of his speech, is said to have put them in the shade e
ven more by his qualities of restraint. In Trojan times, they say, such a paragon did exist, but he is certainly unheard of today. Still, granted someone like that did in fact exist in the past or is going to in the future, or is alive among us now, blessed is the life of this man of moderation, and blessed they who listen to the words [712] that fall from his lips. And whatever the form of government, the same doctrine holds true: where supreme power in a man joins hands with wise judgment and self-restraint, there you have the birth of the best political system, with laws to match; you’ll never achieve it otherwise. So much for my somewhat oracular fiction! Let’s take it as established that though in one sense it is difficult for a state to acquire a good set of laws, in another sense nothing could be quicker or easier—granted, of course, the conditions I’ve laid down.

  CLINIAS: How so?

  [b] ATHENIAN: What about pretending the fiction is true of your state, Clinias, and having a shot at making up its laws? Like children, we old men love a bit of make-believe.

  CLINIAS: Yes, what are we waiting for? Let’s get down to it.

  ATHENIAN: Let us therefore summon God to attend the foundation of the state. May he hear our prayers, and having heard, come graciously and benevolently to help us settle our state and its laws.

  CLINIAS: May he come indeed.

  ATHENIAN: Well now, what political system do we intend to impose on the state? [c]

  CLINIAS: Please be a little more explicit about what you really mean by that question. Do you mean we have to choose between a democracy, an oligarchy, and an aristocracy? Presumably you’re hardly contemplating a dictatorship—or so we’d think, at any rate.

  ATHENIAN: Well then, which of you would be prepared to answer first and tell us which of these terms fits the political system of your homeland?

  MEGILLUS: Isn’t it right and proper for me to answer first, as the elder?

  CLINIAS: Perhaps so. [d]

  MEGILLUS: Very well. When I consider the political system in force at Sparta, sir, I find it impossible to give you a straight answer: I just can’t say what one ought to call it. You see, it really does look to me like a dictatorship (it has the ephors, a remarkably dictatorial institution), yet on occasions I think it gets very close to being run democratically. But then again, it would be plain silly to deny that it is an aristocracy; and there is [e] also a kingship (held for life), which both we and the rest of the world speak of as the oldest kingship of all. So when I’m asked all of a sudden like this, the fact is, as I said, that I can’t distinguish exactly which of these political systems it belongs to.