Plato’s principles of legislation, not consistent — comparison of them with the Attic law about Eranoi.
A remark must here be made upon Plato’s refusal to allow any legal redress in such matters as sale on credit, or payments for the purpose of mutual succour and relief. Such refusal appears to contradict his general manner of proceeding: for his usual practice is, to estimate offences not according to the mischief which they inflict, but according to the degree of wickedness or impiety which he supposes them to imply in the doer. Now the contributor to an association for mutual succour, who, after paying his contributions for the aid of his associates, finds that they refuse to contribute to his aid when the hour of his necessity arrives — suffers not only heavy calamity but grievous disappointment: which implies very bad dispositions on the part of those who, not being themselves distressed, nevertheless refuse. Of such dispositions Plato takes no notice in the present case. He does not expatiate (as he does in many other cases far more trifling and disputable) upon the displeasure of the Gods when they see a man who has been benefited in distress by his neighbour’s contributions, refusing all requital at the time of that neighbour’s need. Plato indeed treats it as a private affair between friends. You do a service to your friend, and you must take your chance whether he will do you a service in return: you must not ask for legal redress, if he refuses: what you have contributed was a present voluntarily given, not a loan lent to be repaid. This is an intelligible point of view, but it excludes those ethical and sentimental considerations which Plato usually delights in enforcing.[413] His ethics here show themselves by leading him to turn aside from that which takes the form of a pecuniary contract. It was in this form that the Eranoi or Mutual Assurance Associations were regarded by Attic judicature: that is, they seem to have been considered as a sort of imperfect obligation, which the Dikastery would enforce against any citizen whose circumstances were tolerably prosperous, but not against one in bad circumstances. Such Eranic actions before the Attic Dikastery were among those that enjoyed the privilege of speedy adjudication (ἔμμηνοι δίκαι).[414]
[413] In Xenophon’s ideal legislation, or rather education of the Persian youth, in the Cyropædia, he introduces legal trial and punishment for ingratitude generally (Cyropæd. i. 2, 7). The Attic judicature took cognizance of neglect or bad conduct towards parents, which Xenophon ranks as a sort of ingratitude — but not of ingratitude towards any one else (Xenoph. Memor. ii. 2, 13). There is an interesting discussion in Seneca (De Beneficiis, iii. 6-18) about the propriety of treating ingratitude as a legal offence.
[414] Respecting the ἐρανικαὶ δίκαι at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadversiones in Salmasium, vi. 1, p. 407 seq.; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 540 seq.; K. F. Hermann, Staats Alterth. s. 146, not. 9.
The word ἔρανος meant very different things — a pic-nic banquet, a club for festive meetings kept up by subscription with a common purse, a contribution made to relieve a friend in distress, carrying obligation on the receiver to requite it if the donor fell into equal distress. This last sense is the prevalent one in the Attic orators, and is brought out well in the passage of Theophrastus — Περὶ Μεμψιμοιρίας. Probably the Attic ἐρανικαὶ δίκαι took cognizance of complaints arising out of ἔρανος in all its senses.
Regulations about slaves, and about freedmen.
As to property in slaves, Plato allows any owner to lay hold of a fugitive slave belonging either to himself or to any friend. If a third party reclaims the slave as being not rightfully in servitude, he must provide three competent sureties, and the slave will then be set free until legal trial can be had. Moreover, Plato enacts, respecting one who has been a slave, but has been manumitted, that such freedman (ἀπελεύθρος), if he omits to pay “proper attention” to his manumitter, may be laid hold of by the latter and re-enslaved. Proper attention consists in: 1. Going three times per month to the house of his former master, to tender service in all lawful ways. 2. Not contracting marriage without consulting his former master. 3. Not acquiring so much wealth as to become richer than his former master: if he should do so the latter may appropriate all that is above the limit. The freed man, when liberated, does not become a citizen, but is only a non-citizen or metic. He is therefore subject to the same necessity as all other metics — of departing from the territory after a residence of twenty years,[415] and of never acquiring more wealth than is possessed by the second class of citizens enrolled in the Schedule.
[415] Plato, Legg. xi. p. 915 A-B.
The duties imposed by Plato on the freedman towards his former master — involving a formal recognition at least of the prior dependence, and some positive duties besides — are deserving of remark, as we know so little of the condition or treatment of this class of persons in antiquity.
Provisions in case a slave is sold, having a distemper upon him.