Plato is more rigorous on these matters than the Attic law. See K. F. Hermann, Griech. Privat-Alterthümer, s. 62.
[421] Plato, Legg. xi. p. 917 B-C. I do not quite see how this is to be reconciled with Plato’s direction that the prices of articles sold shall be fixed by the magistrates; but both of the two are here found.
[422] Plato, Legg. xi. p. 917 B-D.
Comparison with the lighter punishment inflicted by Attic law.
Compare this enactment in Plato with the manner in which the Attic law would have dealt with the like offence. The defrauded buyer would have brought his action before the Dikastery against the fraudulent seller, who, if found guilty, would have been condemned in damages to make good the wrong: perhaps fined besides. The penalties inflicted by the usual course of law at Athens were fine, disfranchisement, civil disability of one kind or other, banishment, confiscation of property: occasionally imprisonment — sometimes, though rarely, death by the cup of hemlock in prison.[423] Except in very rare cases, an accused person might retire into banishment if he chose, and might thus escape any penalty worse than banishment and confiscation of property. But corporal punishment was never inflicted by the law at Athens. The people, especially the poorer citizens, were very sensitive on this point,[424] regarding it as one great line of distinction between the freeman and the slave. At Sparta, on the contrary, corporal chastisement was largely employed as a penalty: moreover the use of the fist in private contentions, by the younger citizens, was encouraged rather than forbidden.[425]
[423] See Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, B. iv. Chap. 13, 740.
[424] See Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 58.
[425] Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 3, 11: De Republ. Laced. ii. 8, iv. 6, ix. 5; Aristophanes, Aves, 1013.
Plato follows the analogy of Sparta in preference to that of Athens. Here, as elsewhere, he employs corporal punishment abundantly as a penalty. Here, as elsewhere, he not only prescribes that it shall be inflicted by a public agent under the supervision of magistrates, but also directs it to be administered, against certain offenders, by private unofficial citizens. I believe that this feature of his system would have been more repugnant than any other, to the feelings of all classes of Athenian citizens — to all the different types of character represented by Perikles, Nikias, Kleon, Isokrates, Demosthenes, and Sokrates. Abstinence from manual violence was characteristic of Athenian manners. Whatever licence might be allowed to the tongue, it was at least a substitute for the aggressive employment of the arm and hand. Athens exhibited marked respect for the sanctity of the person against blows — much equality of dealing between man and man — much tolerance, public as well as private, of individual diversity in taste and character — much keenness of intellectual and oral competition, liable to degenerate into unfair stratagem in political, forensic, professional, and commercial life, as well as in rhetorical, dialectical, and philosophical exercises. All these elements, not excepting even the first, were distasteful to Plato. But those who copy the disparaging judgment which he pronounces against Athenian manners, ought in fairness to take account of the point of view from which that judgment is delivered. To a philosopher whose ideal is depicted in the two treatises De Republicâ and De Legibus, Athenian society would appear repulsive enough. We learn from these two treatises what it was that a great speculative politician of the day desired to establish as a substitute.
Regulations about Orphans and Guardians: also about Testamentary powers.