Complete Works

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

  97. (a) if anyone successfully prosecutes in court a foreigner or slave on a charge of theft of some piece of public property,

  a decision must be reached as to the fine or penalty he should pay in view of the fact that he can probably be cured.

  (b) If a citizen, in spite of the education he will have enjoyed, is convicted [942] of plundering or attacking his fatherland, whether he is caught in the act or not,

  he must be punished by death, as being virtually beyond cure.

  Military service is a subject on which we need to give a great deal of advice and have a large number of regulations. The vital point is that no one, man or woman, must ever be left without someone in charge of him; nobody must get into the habit of acting alone and independently, either in sham fighting [b] or the real thing, and in peace and war alike we must give our constant attention and obedience to our leader, submitting to his guidance even in tiny details. When the order is given we should stand, march, exercise, wash, feed, stay awake at night on duty as guards or messengers, and even in the midst of dangers not pursue the enemy or yield without a sign from our [c] commander. In short, we must condition ourselves to an instinctive rejection of the very notion of doing anything without our companions; we must live a life in which we never do anything, if possible, except by combined and united action as members of a group. No better or more powerful or efficient weapon exists for ensuring safety and final victory in war, and never will. This is what we must practice in peacetime, right from childhood—the exercise of authority over others and submission to them in turn. Freedom from [d] control must be uncompromisingly eliminated from the life of all men, and of all the animals under their domination.

  In particular, all choruses should be calculated to encourage prowess in the field, and for the same reason people must learn to put a brave and cheerful face on it when they have to put up with poor food and drink, extreme cold and heat, and rough bedding. Most important, they must not ruin the natural powers of head and feet by wrapping them round with artificial protection, so discouraging the spontaneous growth of the [e] cap and shoes that nature provides. When these two extremities are in sound condition they help to keep the whole body at the peak of efficiency, whereas their ruin is its ruin too. The feet are the most willing servants the body has, and the head is the organ of supreme control, the natural seat of all the principal senses of the body.

  [943] That’s the praise of military life that ought, in my view, to ring in a young man’s ears. Here are the regulations. When a man is called up, or detailed for some special duty, he is obliged to perform his military service. If he is a coward and fails to present himself, without the permission of his commanders, a prosecution for failure to serve should be brought before the military authorities after return from the field. Such cases must be judged by the soldiers who have fought in the campaign; the various categories (infantry, cavalry and the other branches of the armed forces) should meet separately, infantrymen being brought before infantrymen, [b] cavalrymen before cavalrymen, and the others before their own comrades similarly.

  98. If a defendant is found guilty,

  (a) he must in future be debarred from

  (i) competing for any kind of military distinction,

  (ii) bringing a charge against anyone else for refusing to perform military service, and

  (b) the court must assess the additional penalty or fine he is to pay.

  Afterwards, when the charges of refusal to serve have been decided, the commanders must reconvene each arm of the forces and in the presence of the candidates’ fellow soldiers seek decisions on those applying for awards of distinction. Supporting statements by eye-witnesses and other [c] evidence adduced by the candidates must not relate to any previous campaign, but only to the one they have just fought. The prize in each case is to be a wreath of olive, which the winner should take to the temple of whichever god of war he pleases and dedicate it, suitably inscribed, as life-long evidence that the first, second or third prize was awarded to him. If a man does go on active service, but returns home before the commanders [d] withdraw the troops, he should be prosecuted on a charge of desertion before the same court as is concerned with refusal of service.

  99. If he is found guilty,

  the same penalties should apply as before [98].

  Naturally, everyone who brings a prosecution ought to be very wary of inflicting an unjustified punishment, whether in cold blood or by accident. Justice is said—and well said—to be the daughter of Respect, and both [e] are the natural scourges of falsehood. So in general we must be careful not to offend against justice, and particularly as regards the abandonment of weapons in the field: we mustn’t reproach an enforced abandonment in mistake for an ignominious one, and so inflict penalties as undeserved as the victims are undeserving of them. Although it is by no means easy to tell the two cases apart, a rough and ready distinction must be attempted [944] in the legal code. We can explain the point with the help of a story. If Patroclus had pulled round after being carried to his tent without his weapons (as has happened in thousands of other cases)—the weapons which the poet tells us were presented to Peleus by the gods as a dowry when he married Thetis, and which had been taken by Hector—then it would have been open to all the scoundrels of the time to reproach the son of Menoetius for abandoning his arms.1 Again, sometimes men have lost their weapons because of being thrown down from a height, or when [b] at sea, or when suddenly caught up by a tremendous onrush of water during their struggles in a storm. There are countless similar circumstances one could plausibly adduce to excuse and palliate a disaster that positively invites denigration. So we must do our best to distinguish the more serious and reprehensible disasters from the other kind, and in a rough and ready way the distinction can be expressed by varying our expressions of rebuke. Thus ‘he abandoned his shield’ can sometimes be properly replaced by ‘he [c] lost his weapons’. When you are robbed of your shield with some force, you have not ‘abandoned’ it in the same way as if you had thrown it away deliberately: the two cases are fundamentally different. The distinction should be written into the legal code in the following terms:

  If a man finds the enemy at his heels and instead of turning round and defending himself with the weapons he has, deliberately lets them drop or throws them away, preferring a coward’s life of shame to the glorious and blessed death of a hero, then there should certainly be a penalty for [d] losing his weapons by abandonment. But when he has lost his weapons in the other way we’ve described the judge must not fail to take the fact into account. It is the criminal you need to punish, to reform him, not someone who’s simply been unlucky—that’s useless. So what will be the right penalty when someone has made good his escape by throwing away the weapons that could have protected him? Unfortunately, it’s beyond the power of man to do the opposite of what people say some god did to Caeneus of Thessaly—that is, change him from a woman into a man. If only we could inflict the reverse transformation, from man to woman, that [e] would be, in a sense, the most appropriate punishment for a man who has thrown away his shield. But what we can do is to reward him for saving his skin by giving him the closest possible approximation to such a penalty: we can make him spend the rest of his days in utter safety, so that he lives with his ghastly disgrace for as long as possible. Here’s the law that will deal with such people:

  100. If a man is convicted on a charge of shamefully dropping his weapons of war;

  [945] (a) no general or any other army officer must employ him as a soldier again, or appoint him to any position whatever;

  (b) and in addition to being thus permitted, like the natural coward he is, to avoid the risks that only real men can run, the guilty man must also pay a sum of money: one thousand drachmas if he belongs to the highest property-class, five hundred if to the second, three hundred if [b] to the third, and one hundred if to the lowest.2

  101. If an officer disobeys and posts the coward again,

  the officer’s Scrutin
eer is to condemn him to pay the same fine: one thousand drachmas if he belongs to the highest property-class, five hundred if to the second, three hundred if to the third, and one hundred if to the fourth.

  Well then, what will be the proper policy for us to adopt on the subject of Scrutineers? So far, we simply have a corps of officials, some appointed for a single year by the luck of the draw, others chosen from a preliminary slate of selected candidates to serve for several years. What if one of them proves so inadequate to the dignity and weight of his office that he gets ‘out of true’ and does something crooked? Who will be capable of making a man like that go straight again? It is desperately difficult to find someone of high moral standards to exercise authority over the authorities, so to [c] speak, but try we must. So where are our god-like ‘straighteners’ to be found? The point is this: a state has many crucial parts that prevent it from disintegrating, just as a ship has its stays and bracing ropes and a body its tendons and associated sinews. (Features of this kind are a very widespread phenomenon, and in spite of the many different names we give them in different contexts, they are basically the same sort of thing.) Now the office of Scrutineer is the single most crucial factor determining whether a state survives or disintegrates. If the Scrutineers are better men [d] than the officials they scrutinize, and display irreproachable impartiality and integrity, the entire state and country flourishes and prospers. But if their investigation of the officials is conducted badly, then the sense of justice that unites all the interests in the state is destroyed, with the result that all the officials go their different ways and refuse to pull together any longer; they fragment the state into lots of smaller states by filling it with [e] the party-strife that so speedily wrecks it. That is why it is absolutely vital that the moral standards of the Scrutineers should be exemplary. So let’s try to produce these officials by some such procedure as this:

  Every year after the summer solstice the entire state should congregate in a precinct dedicated jointly to Apollo and the Sun, in order to present to the god three out of their number. Each citizen is to propose that person, [946] apart from himself, whom he believes to be perfect in every way; the candidate is to be at least fifty years of age. This preliminary list should be divided into two halves (on the assumption that the total is an even number; if not, the person with the fewest votes should be excluded before the division is made), and the half consisting of those with the most votes should be selected to proceed to the next stage after the other half with fewer votes have been eliminated. If some names receive the same number of votes, so that the selected candidates are too numerous, the excess should be removed by eliminating the youngest candidates. The selected candidates that remain should be voted for again until only three are left, [b] each with a different number of votes. If two of them, or all three, attract equal support, then the decision should be left to chance and the gods of good luck: the first, second and third choices must be determined by lot, crowned with olive and given the rewards of their success. Next, a public proclamation must be made to the effect that the state of the Magnesians, now by the grace of God securely re-established, presents to the Sun-god her three best men; and these, her choicest fruits, in accordance with the [c] law of old, she consecrates for the term of their judicial office as a joint gift to Apollo and the Sun. In the first year twelve such Scrutineers are to be appointed, each to retain office till the age of seventy-five; thereafter three more are to be added every year.

  The Scrutineers are to divide all the officials into twelve groups and look into their conduct by making all such inquiries as are consistent with the dignity of a gentleman. During their period of office as Scrutineers they are to live in the precinct of Apollo and the Sun where they were [d] elected. When they have sat in judgment, either privately and individually, or in association with colleagues, on those at the end of their term of office in the service of the state, they must make known, by posting written notice in the market-place, what penalty or fine in their opinion each official ought to pay. Any official who refuses to admit that he has been judged impartially should haul the Scrutineers before the Select Judges, and if he is deemed innocent of the accusations he should accuse the [e] Scrutineers themselves, if he so wishes. But

  102. If he is convicted, and

  (a) the Scrutineers had decided on death as his penalty,

  he must die (a penalty which in the nature of the case cannot be increased); but

  (b) if his penalty is one that it is possible to double,

  then double he must pay.

  Now we ought to hear about the scrutiny of the Scrutineers themselves. What will it be, and how will it be organized?

  [947] During their lifetime these men, whom the whole state has thought fit to dignify with the highest honors, should sit in the front seat at all the festivals; moreover, when the Greeks assemble to perform sacrifices or see spectacles together, or congregate for other sacred purposes, the leaders of the delegations sent by the state should be chosen from the Scrutineers; and the Scrutineers are to be the only citizens whose heads may be graced by a crown of laurel. They should all be priests of Apollo and the Sun; the chief priesthood should be an annual office, held by the Scrutineer [b] who has come top of the list of those appointed that year—which must be recorded under his name, so as to provide a framework for the calendar for as long as the state endures.

  After the death of a Scrutineer, his laying-out, his last journey and his tomb must be on a grander scale than for ordinary citizens. All cloth used must be white, dirges and laments must be banned, and a chorus of fifteen girls and another of fifteen youths must stand one on each side of the bier [c] and sing alternately a kind of hymn of praise to the dead priest, celebrating his glory in song throughout the day. As dawn comes up the following day the bier shall be taken to the tomb escorted by a hundred of the youths who attend the gymnasia, chosen by the relatives of the dead man. In front must go the young men who are as yet unmarried, each rigged out in his own military equipment; the cavalry should bring their horses, the infantry their weapons, and so on. Around the bier itself, towards the front, will be [d] boys chanting the traditional strains, followed by girls, and women who have finished bearing children. The Priests and Priestesses will bring up the rear; they are of course banned from other funerals, but provided the oracle at Delphi also approves, they shall attend this one, as it will not defile them. The Scrutineer’s tomb shall be an oblong crypt built of choice3 stone of the most indestructible kind obtainable; in this, on benches of stone set side by side, they will lay him who has gone to his reward. On top of the tomb they [e] will pile a circular mound, and plant a sacred grove of trees around it—except on one side, to allow for the indefinite extension of the tomb, where more earth will have to be piled up to cover subsequent burials. Every year the citizens will hold competitions in the Scrutineers’ honor, one athletic, one equestrian, and one of the arts. All these honors will be bestowed on Scrutineers whose conduct has borne scrutiny.

  If a Scrutineer relies on his election to protect him and goes to the bad, thus showing he’s only too human after all, the law will order a charge to be brought against him by anyone who feels inclined to prosecute. The trial should be held in court according to the following procedure. [948] Guardians of the Laws, and all the Scrutineers, active or retired, must sit in conjunction with the court of the Select Judges, and the charge brought by the prosecutor against the defendant must be to the effect that ‘so-and-so is a disgrace to his distinctions and his office.’

  103. If the defendant is convicted,

  he must be ejected from his office, denied the special tomb, and stripped of the honors he has already received.

  104. If the prosecutor fails to win one fifth of the votes,

  he must pay a fine of twelve hundred drachmas if he belongs to the highest property-class, eight hundred if to the second, six hundred if to [b] the third, and two hundred if to the lowest.

  Rhadamanthus should be admired f
or the way in which, according to report, he decided the suits that came before him. He realized that his contemporaries were absolutely convinced of the existence of gods—and not surprisingly, as most people alive then were actually descended from them, and this is traditionally true of Rhadamanthus himself. I suppose it was because he thought that no mere man should be given the task of judging, but only gods, that he managed to make his judgments so swift and straightforward. Whatever the subject of dispute, he made the litigants take an oath, a device which enabled him to get through his list of cases [c] rapidly and without making mistakes. Nowadays, however, some people (as we remarked) don’t believe in gods at all, while others believe they are not concerned about mankind; and there are others—the worst and most numerous category—who hold that in return for a miserable sacrifice here and a little flattery there, the gods will help them to steal enormous sums of money and rescue them from all sorts of heavy penalties. So in the modern world the legal procedure used by Rhadamanthus will hardly do. The climate of opinion about the gods has changed, so the law must [d] change too, and a legislator who knows his business ought to abolish the oaths sworn by each side in a lawsuit. When a man brings a charge against someone, he should put his accusations in writing without taking an oath; the defendant should similarly write out his denial and hand it to the officials unsworn. It would be dreadful, you see, to know quite well, in view of the frequent lawsuits that occur in the state, that although pretty [e] nearly half our citizens4 have perjured themselves, they go on mixing with each other at common meals and other public and private gatherings without the slightest qualms.