[333] K. F. Hermann, De Vestigiis, ut suprà, p. 54. Compare Demosthenes adv. Theokrin. p. 1331.
In respect to the offence of beating, he does not follow the Attic law, when he permits it between citizens of the same age, and throws the beaten person upon his powers of self-defence. This is Spartan, not Athenian. It is also Spartan when he makes the criminality, in giving blows, to turn upon the want of reverence for age: upon the circumstance, that the person beaten is twenty years older than the beater.[334]
[334] Plato, Legg. ix. p. 879 C. He admits the same provision as to blows between ἥλικες into his Republic (v. p. 464 E).
Compare, about Sparta, Xenophon, Rep. Laced. iv. 5; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 27; Pausanias, iii. 14: Dionys. Halikarnass. Arch. Rom. xx. 2. Λακεδαιμόνιοι ὅτι τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις ἐπέτρεπον τοὺς ἀκοσμοῦντας τῶν πολιτῶν ἐν ὅτῳ δή τινι τῶν δημοσίων τόπων ταῖς βακτηρίαις παίειν.
Impiety or outrage offered to divine things or places.
From these various crimes — sacrilege or plunder of holy places, theft, homicide, wounding, beating — Plato passes in the tenth book to insult or outrage (ὕβρις). These outrages (he considers) are essentially the acts of wild young men. Outrage may be offered towards five different subjects. 1. Public temples. 2. Private chapels and sepulchres. 3. Parents. 4. The magistrates, in their dignity or their possessions. 5. Private citizens, in respect of their civic rights and dignity.[335] The tenth book is devoted entirely to the two first-mentioned heads, or to impiety and its alleged sources: the others come elsewhere, not in any definite order.[336]
[335] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 884-885.
[336] Treatment of parents comes xi. pp. 930-931.
All impiety arises from one or other of three heresies. 1. No belief in the Gods. 2. Belief that the Gods interfere very little. 3. Belief that they may be appeased by prayer and sacrifice.
Plato declares that all impiety, either in word or deed, springs from one of three heretical doctrines. 1. The heretic does not believe in the Gods at all. 2. He believes the Gods to exist, but believes also that they do not interest themselves about human affairs; or at least that they interfere only to a small extent. 3. He believes that they exist, and that they direct every thing; but that it is perfectly practicable to appease their displeasure, and to conciliate their favour, by means of prayer and sacrifice.[337]