Complete Works

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

  Now for the question of property: what will it be reasonable for a man to possess? Mostly, it’s not difficult to see what it would be, and acquire it; but slaves offer difficulties at every turn. The reason is this. The terms [c] we employ are partly correct and partly not, in that the actual language we use about slaves is partly a reflection and partly a contradiction of our practical experience of them.

  MEGILLUS: Oh? What do you mean? We don’t yet see your point, sir.

  ATHENIAN: No wonder, Megillus. The Spartan helot-system is probably just about the most difficult and contentious institution in the entire Greek world;12 some people think it’s a good idea, others are against it (though less feeling is aroused by the slavery to which the Mariandynians have [d] been reduced at Heraclea, and by the race of serfs to be found in Thessaly). Faced with these and similar cases, what should our policy be on the ownership of slaves? The point I happened to bring up in my discussion of the subject, and which naturally made you ask what I meant, was this: we know we’d all agree that a man should own the best and most docile slaves he can get—after all, many a paragon of a slave has done much more for a man than his own brother or son, and they have often been [e] the salvation of their masters’ persons and property and entire homes. We know quite well, don’t we, that some people do tell such stories about slaves?

  MEGILLUS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: And don’t others take the opposite line, and say that a slave’s soul is rotten through and through, and that if we have any sense we won’t trust such a pack at all? The most profound of our poets actually [777] says (speaking of Zeus) that

  If you make a man a slave, that very day

  Far-sounding Zeus takes half his wits away.13

  Everyone sees the problem differently, and takes one side or the other. Some people don’t trust slaves as a class in anything: they treat them like animals, and whip and goad them so that they make the souls of their slaves three times—no, a thousand times—more slavish than they were. Others follow precisely the opposite policy.

  MEGILLUS: True.

  [b] CLINIAS: Well then, sir, in view of this conflict of opinion, what should we do about our own country? What’s our line on the possession of slaves, and the way to punish them?

  ATHENIAN: Look here, Clinias: the animal ‘man’ quite obviously has a touchy temper, and it looks as if it won’t be easy, now or in the future, to persuade him to fall neatly into the two categories (slave and freeman master) which are necessary for practical purposes. Your slave, therefore, [c] will be a difficult beast to handle. The frequent and repeated revolts in Messenia, and in the states where people possess a lot of slaves who all speak the same language, have shown the evils of the system often enough; and we can also point to the various crimes and adventures of the robbers who plague Italy, the ‘Rangers’, as they’re called. In view of all this you may well be puzzled to know what your general policy ought to be. In fact, there are just two ways of dealing with the problem open to us: first, [d] if the slaves are to submit to the condition without giving trouble, they should not all come from the same country or speak the same tongue, as far as it can be arranged; secondly, we ought to train them properly, not only for their sakes but above all for our own. The best way to train slaves is to refrain from arrogantly ill-treating them, and to harm them even less (assuming that’s possible) than you would your equals. You see, when a man can hurt someone as often as he likes, he’ll soon show whether or not his respect for justice is natural and unfeigned and springs from a [e] genuine hatred of injustice. If his attitude to his slaves and his conduct towards them are free of any taint of impiety and injustice, he’ll be splendidly effective at sowing the seeds of virtue. Just the same can be said of the way in which any master or dictator or person in any position of authority deals with someone weaker than himself. Even so, we should certainly punish slaves if they deserve it, and not spoil them by simply giving them a warning, as we would free men. Virtually everything you say to a slave should be an order, and you should never become at all [778] familiar with them—neither the women nor the men. (Though this is how a lot of silly folk do treat their slaves, and usually only succeed in spoiling them and in making life more difficult—more difficult, I mean, for the slaves to take orders and for themselves to maintain their authority.)

  CLINIAS: You’re quite right.

  ATHENIAN: So now that the citizen has been supplied with a sufficient number of suitable slaves to help him in his various tasks, the next thing will be to outline a housing-plan, won’t it?

  CLINIAS: Certainly. [b]

  ATHENIAN: Our state is new, and has no buildings already existing, so it rather looks as if it will have to work out the details of its entire architectural scheme for itself, particularly those of the temples and city walls. Ideally, Clinias, this subject would have been dealt with before we discussed marriage, but as the whole picture is theoretical anyway, it’s perfectly possible to turn to it now, as we are doing. Still, when we put the scheme into practice, we’ll see to the buildings, God willing, before we regulate marriage, and marriage will then crown our labors in this field. But here and now, [c] let’s just give a swift sketch of the building program.

  CLINIAS: By all means.

  ATHENIAN: Temples should be built all round the marketplace and on high ground round the perimeter of the city, for purposes of protection and sanitation. Next to them should be administrative offices and courts of law. This is holy ground, and here—partly because the legal cases involve solemn religious issues, partly because of the august divinities [d] whose temples are nearby—judgment will be given and sentence received. Among these buildings will be the courts in which cases of murder, and all other crimes which deserve the death penalty, may properly be heard.

  As for city walls, Megillus, I’d agree with the Spartan view that they should be left lying asleep and undisturbed in the ground. My reasons? As the poet neatly puts it, in those words so often cited, ‘a city’s walls should be made of bronze and iron, not stone’.14 Besides, what fools people would take us for, and rightly, if we sent our young men out into the [e] countryside every year to excavate trenches and ditches and various structures to ward off the enemy and stop them coming over the boundaries at all15—and then were to build a wall round the city! A wall never contributes anything to a town’s health, and in any case is apt to encourage a certain softness in the souls of the inhabitants. It invites them to take refuge behind [779] it instead of tackling the enemy and ensuring their own safety by mounting guard night and day; it tempts them to suppose that a foolproof way of protecting themselves is to barricade themselves in behind their walls and gates, and then drop off to sleep, as if they were brought into this world for a life of luxury. It never occurs to them that comfort is really to be won by the sweat of the brow, whereas the only result of such disgusting luxury and idleness is a fresh round of troubles, in my view. However, if [b] men are to have a city wall at all, the private houses should be constructed right from the foundations so that the whole city forms in effect a single wall: that is, all the houses should be easy to defend because they present to the street a regular and unbroken front. A whole city looking like a single house will be quite a pretty sight, and being easy to guard it will be superior to any other for safety. The job of seeing that the buildings [c] always keep to the original scheme should properly belong to their occupants, but the City-Wardens should keep an eye on them and even impose fines to force any negligent person to do his duty. They should also supervise all the sanitary arrangements of the town and stop any private person encroaching on public land by buildings or excavations. The same officials must take particular care to see that rainwater flows away properly, and in general they must make all the appropriate arrangements inside and outside the city. To deal with all these points, and to supplement any other [d] deficiency in the law (which cannot be exhaustive), the Guardians of the Laws are to make additional rules in the light of experience.

  So much fo
r these buildings, together with those round the marketplace, and gymnasia and all the schools: they are now ready and waiting to be entered, and the theaters are prepared for the arrival of their audiences. Now let’s pass on to the next item in our legislation, the time after the wedding.

  CLINIAS: By all means.

  [e] ATHENIAN: Let’s suppose the ceremony is over, Clinias; between then and the birth of a child there may well be a complete year. Now, in a state which sets its sights higher than others, how this year is to be spent by a bride and groom (you remember we broke off when we got to this point) is not the easiest thing in the world to specify. We’ve had knotty problems like this before, but the common man will find our policy this time more difficult to swallow than ever. However, we should never shrink from speaking the truth as we see it, Clinias.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  [780] ATHENIAN: Take someone who proposes to promulgate laws to a state about the correct conduct of the public life of the community. What if he reckons that in principle one ought not to use compulsion—even in so far as one can use it in private affairs? Suppose he thinks that a man ought to be allowed to do what he likes with the day, instead of being regulated at every turn. Well, if he excludes private life from his legislation, and expects that the citizens will be prepared to be law-abiding in their public life as a community, he’s making a big mistake. Now, what’s made me say this? It’s because we are going to assert that our newly-marrieds ought to attend communal meals [b] no more and no less than they did before their wedding. I know that this custom of eating together caused eyebrows to be raised when it was introduced in your parts of the world, but I suppose it was dictated by war or some other equally serious emergency that pressed hard on a small people in a critical situation. But once you had had this enforced experience of communal meals, you realized just how much the custom contributed to your security. It must have been in some such way that the practice of communal [c] feeding established itself among you.

  CLINIAS: That sounds plausible enough.

  ATHENIAN: As I was saying, it was once an astonishing custom and some people were apprehensive about imposing it. But if a legislator wanted to impose it today, he wouldn’t have half so much trouble. But the custom points to another measure, which would probably prove equally successful, if tried. Today, it’s absolutely unheard-of, and that’s what makes the legislator ‘card his wool into the fire’, as the saying is, and make so many efforts fruitlessly. This measure is neither easy to describe nor simple in execution. [d]

  CLINIAS: Well then, sir, what’s the point you’re trying to make? You seem to be awfully reluctant to tell us.

  ATHENIAN: Listen to me, then: let’s not waste time lingering over this business. The blessings that a state enjoys are in direct proportion to the degree of law and order to be found in it, and the effects of good regulations in some fields are usually vitiated to the extent that things are controlled either incompetently or not at all in others. The point is relevant to the subject in hand. Thanks to some providential necessity, Clinias and Megillus, [e] you have a splendid and—as I was saying—astonishing institution: communal meals for men. But it is entirely wrong of you to have omitted [781] from your legal code any provision for your women, so that the practice of communal meals for them has never got under way. On the contrary, half the human race—the female sex, the half which in any case is inclined to be secretive and crafty, because of its weakness—has been left to its own devices because of the misguided indulgence of the legislator. Because you neglected this sex, you gradually lost control of a great many things which would be in a far better state today if they had been regulated by law. You see, leaving women to do what they like is not just to lose half [b] the battle (as it may seem): a woman’s natural potential for virtue is inferior to a man’s, so she’s proportionately a greater danger, perhaps even twice as great. So the happiness of the state will be better served if we reconsider the point and put things right, by providing that all our arrangements apply to men and women alike. But at present, unhappily, the human race has not progressed as far as that, and if you’re wise you won’t breathe a [c] word about such a practice in other parts of the world where states do not recognize communal meals as a public institution at all. So when it comes to the point, how on earth are you going to avoid being laughed to scorn when you try to force women to take their food and drink in public? There’s nothing the sex is likely to put up with more reluctantly: women have got used to a life of obscurity and retirement, and any attempt to force them into the open will provoke tremendous resistance from them, [d] and they’ll be more than a match for the legislator. Elsewhere, as I said, the very mention of the correct policy will be met with howls of protest. But perhaps this state will be different. So if you want our discussion about political systems to be as complete as theory can ever be, I’d like to explain the merits and advantages of this institution—that is, if you are equally keen to listen to me. If not, then let’s skip it.

  CLINIAS: No, no, sir: we’re very anxious to hear the explanation.

  ATHENIAN: Let’s listen, then. But don’t be disconcerted if I appear to be [e] starting a long way back. We’ve time to spare, and there’s no compelling reason why we shouldn’t look into the business of legislation from all possible angles.

  CLINIAS: You’re quite right.

  ATHENIAN: Let’s go back to what we said at the beginning.16 Here’s something that everyone must be perfectly clear about: either mankind had [782] absolutely no beginning in time and will have no end, but always existed and always will, or it has existed for an incalculably long time from its origin.

  CLINIAS: Naturally.

  ATHENIAN: Well, now we may surely assume that in every part of the world cities have been formed and destroyed, and all sorts of customs have been adopted, some orderly, some not, along with the growth of every sort of taste in food, solid and liquid. And the various changes in the seasons have developed, which have probably stimulated a vast number of [b] natural changes in living beings.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: Well, we believe, don’t we, that at a certain point virtues made their appearance, not having existed before, and olives likewise, and the gifts of Demeter and Kore,17 which Triptolemus, or whoever it was, handed on to us? So long as these things did not exist, we can take it that animals resorted to feeding on each other, as they do now?

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  [c] ATHENIAN: We observe, of course, the survival of human sacrifice among many people today. Elsewhere, we gather, the opposite practice prevailed, and there was a time when we didn’t even dare to eat beef, and the sacrifices offered to the gods were not animals, but cakes and meal soaked in honey and other ‘pure’ offerings like that. People kept off meat on the grounds that it was an act of impiety to eat it, or to pollute the altars of the gods with blood. So at that time men lived a sort of ‘Orphic’18 life, keeping exclusively to inanimate food and entirely abstaining from eating [d] the flesh of animals.

  CLINIAS: So it’s commonly said, and it’s easy enough to believe.

  ATHENIAN: Then the question naturally arises, why have I related all this to you now?

  CLINIAS: A perfectly correct assumption, sir.

  ATHENIAN: Now then, Clinias, I’ll try to explain the next point, if I can.

  CLINIAS: Carry on, then.

  ATHENIAN: Observation tells me that all human actions are motivated by a set of three needs and desires. Give a man a correct education, and [e] these instincts will lead him to virtue, but educate him badly and he’ll end up at the other extreme. From the moment of their birth men have a desire for food and drink. Every living creature has an instinctive love of satisfying this desire whenever it occurs, and the craving to do so can fill a man’s whole being, so that he remains quite unmoved by the plea that he should do anything except satisfy his lust for the pleasures of the body, so as to make himself immune to all discomfort. Our third and greatest [783] need, the longing we feel
most keenly, is the last to come upon us: it is the flame of the imperious lust to procreate, which kindles the fires of passion in mankind. These three unhealthy instincts must be canalized away from what men call supreme pleasure, and towards the supreme good. We must try to keep them in check by the three powerful influences of fear, law, and correct argument; but in addition, we should invoke the help of the Muses and the gods who preside over competitions, to smother [b] their growth and dam their tide.

  The topic which should come after marriage, and before training and education, is the birth of children. Perhaps, as we take these topics in order, we shall be able to complete each individual law as we did before, when we approached the question of communal meals—I mean that when we’ve become intimate with our citizens, perhaps we shall be able to see more clearly whether such gatherings should consist of men only or whether, after all, they should include women. Similarly, when we’ve won control of certain institutions that have never yet been controlled by law, [c] we’ll use them as ‘cover’, just as other people do, with the result I indicated just now: thanks to a more detailed inspection of these institutions, we may be able to lay down laws that take account of them better.

  CLINIAS: Quite right.

  ATHENIAN: So let’s bear in mind the points we’ve just made, in case we find we need to refer to them later on.

  CLINIAS: What points in particular are you telling us to remember?

  ATHENIAN: The three impulses we distinguished by our three terms: the desire for ‘food’ (I think we said) and ‘drink’, and thirdly ‘sexual stimulation’. [d]

  CLINIAS: Yes, sir, we’ll certainly remember, just as you tell us.