Justifiable Homicide. — Some special cases are named in which he who voluntarily kills another, is nevertheless perfectly untainted. A housebreaker caught in act may thus be rightfully slain: so also a clothes-stealer, a ravisher, a person who attacks the life of any man’s father, mother, or children.[322]
[322] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 874 C.
Wounds. — Next to homicide, Plato deals with wounds inflicted: introducing his enactments by a preface on the general necessity of obedience to law.[323] Whosoever, having intended to kill another (except in the special cases wherein homicide is justifiable), inflicts a wound which proves not mortal, is as criminal as if he had killed him. Nevertheless he is not required to suffer so severe a punishment, inasmuch as an auspicious Dæmon and Fortune have interposed to ward off the worst results of his criminal purpose. He must make full compensation to the sufferer, and then be exiled in perpetuity.[324] The Dikastery will decide how much compensation he shall furnish. In general, Plato trusts much to the discretion of the Dikastery, under the great diversity of the cases of wounds inflicted. He would not have allowed so much discretion to the numerous and turbulent Dikasteries of Athens: but he regards his select Dikastery as perfectly trustworthy.[325] Peculiar provision is made for cases in which the person inflicting the wound is kinsman or relative of the sufferer — also for homicide under the same circumstances. Plato also directs how to supply the vacancy which perpetual banishment will occasion in the occupation of one among the 5040 citizen-lots.[326] If one man wounds another in a fit of passion, he must pay simple, double, or triple, compensation according as the Dikasts may award: he must farther do all the military duty which would have been incumbent on the wounded man, should the latter be disabled.[327] But if the person inflicting the wound be a slave and the wounded man a freeman, the slave shall be handed over to the wounded freeman to deal with as he pleases. If the master of the slave will not give him up, he must himself make compensation for the wound, unless he can prove before the Dikastery that the case is one of collusion between the wounded freeman and the slave; in which case the wounded freeman will become liable to the charge of unlawfully suborning away the slave from his master.[328]
[323] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 875.
[324] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 877 A.
[325] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 876 A.
[326] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 877.
[327] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 878 C.
[328] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 879 A.