Hunting — how far permitted or advised.
In regard to hunting, Plato thinks that it is a subject on which positive laws are unsuitable or insufficient, and he therefore gives certain general directions which partake of the nature both of advice and of law. The good citizen (he says) is one who not only obeys the positive laws prescribed by the lawgiver, but who also conforms his conduct to the general cast of the lawgiver’s opinions: practising what is commended therein, abstaining from what is blamed.[259] Plato commends one mode of hunting — the chase after quadrupeds: yet only with horses, dogs, javelins, &c., wherein both courage and bodily strength are improved — but not with nets or snares, where no such result is produced. He blames other modes — such as fishing and bird-snaring (especially by night). He blames still more emphatically theft and piracy, which he regards also as various modes of hunting.[260]
[259] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 822 E.
[260] Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 823-824.
Large general sense which Plato gives to the word hunting.
What principally deserves notice here is, the large general idea which Plato conceives to himself under the term Hunting, and the number of diverse particulars comprehended therein. 1. Hunting of quadrupeds; either with dogs and javelins openly, or with snares, by stratagem. 2. Hunting of birds, in the air. 3. Hunting of fishes, in the water. 4. Hunting after the property of other men, in the city or country. 5. Hunting after men as slaves, or after other valuables, by means of piratical vessels. 6. Hunting of public enemies, by one army against an opposite one. 7. Hunting of men to conciliate their friendship or affection, sometimes by fair means, sometimes by foul.[261]
[261] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 823. θήρα γὰρ παμπολύ τι πρᾶγμά ἐστι, περιειλημμένον ὀνόματι σχεδὸν ἑνὶ … πολλὴ δὲ ἡ κατὰ φιλίαν θηρεύουσα (823 B) … ἄγρας ἀνθρώπων κατὰ θάλατταν … κλωπείας ἐν χώρᾳ καὶ πόλει (823 E). Compare the Epinomis, p. 975 C.
So also in the Sophistês (pp. 221-222) Plato analyses and distributes the general idea of θηρευτική: including under it, as one variety, the hunting after men by violent means (τὴν βίαιον θήραν, τὴν λῃστικήν, ἀνδραποδιστικὴν, τυραννικήν, καὶ ξύμπασαν τὴν πολεμικήν) — and as another variety, the hunting after men by persuasive or seductive means (τὴν πιθανουργικήν, ἐρωτικήν, κολακικήν). In the Memorabilia of Xenophon also (ii. 6, 29-33), Sokrates expands this same idea — τὴν θήραν ἀνθρώπων — τὰ τῶν φίλων θηρατικά, &c. Compare also the conversation between Sokrates and Theodotê (iii. 11, 8-15) — θηρώμενος, ib. i. 2, 24 — and Plato Protag. init.
That all these processes — which Plato here includes as so many varieties of hunting — present to the mind, when they are compared, a common point of analogy, is not to be denied. The number of different comparisons which the mind can make between phenomena, is almost unlimited. Analogies may be followed from one to another, until at last, after successive steps, the analogy between the first and the last becomes faint or imperceptible. Yet the same word, transferred successively from the first to the last, conceals this faintness of analogy and keeps them all before the mind as one. To us, this extension of the word hunting to particular cases dissimilar in so many respects, appears more as poetical metaphor: to intelligent Greeks of the Sokratic school, it seemed a serious comparison: and to Plato, with his theory of Ideas, it ought to have presented a Real Idea or permanent One, which alone remained constant amidst an indefinite multitude of fugitive, shadowy, and deceptive, particulars. But though this is the consistent corollary, from Plato’s theory of Ideas, he does not so state it in the Treatise De Legibus, and probably he did not so conceive it. Critics have already observed that in this Treatise scarce any mention is made of the theory of Ideas. Plato had passed into other points of view: yet he neither formally renounces the points of view which we find in anterior dialogues, nor takes the trouble of reconciling them with the thoughts of the later dialogues. Whether there exists any Real, Abstract, Idea of Hunting, apart from the particular acts and varieties of hunting — is a question which he does not touch upon. Yet this is the main feature of the Platonic philosophy, and the main doctrine most frequently impugned by Aristotle as Platonic.
Number of religious sacrifices to be determined by lawgiver.