Regulations about witnesses on judicial trials.
The rules provided by Plato about witnesses in judicial trials and indictments for perjury, are pretty much the same as those prevalent at Athens: with some peculiarities. Thus he permits a free woman to bear witness, and to address the court in support of a party interested, provided she be above forty years of age. Moreover, she may institute a suit, if she have no husband: but not if she be married.[445] A slave or a child may bear witness at a trial for murder; provided security be given that they will remain in the city to await an indictment for perjury, if presented against them.
[445] Plato, Legg. xi. p. 937 A-B.
It appears that women were not admitted as witnesses before the Athenian Dikasteries. Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, pp. 667-668. The testimony of slaves was received after they had been tortured; which was considered as a guarantee for truth, required in regard to them, but not required in regard to a free-man. The torture is not mentioned in this Platonic treatise. Plato treats a male as young up to the age of thirty (compare Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 35), a female as young up to the age of forty (pp. 932 B-C, 961 B).
Censure of forensic eloquence, and the teachers of it. Penalties against contentious litigation.
Among Plato’s prohibitions, we are not surprised to find one directed emphatically against forensic eloquence, and against those who professed to teach it. Every thing beneficial to man (says he) has its accompanying poison and corruption. Justice is a noble thing, the great civilising agent in human affairs: to aid any one in obtaining justice, is of course a noble thing also. But these benefits are grossly abused by men, who pretend to possess an art, whereby every one may be sure of judicial victory, either as principal or as auxiliary, whether his cause be just or unjust:— and who offer to teach this art to all who pay a stipulated price. Whether this be (as they pretend) a real art, or a mere inartificial knack — it would be a disgrace to our city, and must be severely punished. Whoever gives show of trying to pervert the force of justice in the minds of the Dikasts, or indulges in unseasonable and frequent litigation, or even lends his aid to other litigants — may be indicted by any citizen as guilty of abuse of justice, either as principal or auxiliary. He shall be tried before the Court of Select Judges: who, if they find him guilty, will decide whether he has committed the offence from love of money, or from love of contention and ambitious objects. If from love of contention, he shall be interdicted, for such time as the Court may determine, from instituting any suit at law on his own account as well as from aiding in any suit instituted by others.[446] If from love of money, the citizen found guilty shall be capitally punished, the non-citizen shall be banished in perpetuity. Moreover the citizen convicted of committing this offence even from love of contention, if it be a second conviction for the offence, shall be put to death also.[447]
[446] Plato, Legg. xi. p. 938 B. τιμᾷν αὐτῷ τὸ δικαστήριου ὅσου χρὴ χρόνου τὸν τοιοῦτον μηδενὶ λαχεῖν δίκην μηδὲ ξυνδικῆσαι. I cannot understand why Stallbaum, in his very useful notes on the Leges, observes upon this passage (p. 330):— “λαγχάνειν δίκην de caussidicis accipiendum, qui caussam aliquam pro aliis in foro agendam ac defendendam suscipiunt”. This is the explanation belonging to ξυνδικῆσαι: λαχεῖν δίκην is the well known phrase for a plaintiff or a prosecutor as principal.
[447] Plato, Legg. xi. pp. 937 E, 938 C.
Many of Plato’s laws are discharges of ethical antipathy. The antipathy of Melêtus against Sokrates was of the same character.
The vague and undefined character of this offence, for which Plato denounces capital punishment, shows how much his penal laws are discharges of ethical antipathy and hostility against types of character conceived by himself — rather than measures intended for application, in which he had weighed beforehand the practical difficulties of singling out and striking the right individual. On this matter the Athenian public had the same ethical antipathy as himself; and Melêtus took full advantage of it, when he brought his accusation against Sokrates. We know both from the Apologies of Plato and Xenophon, and from the Nubes of Aristophanes — that Sokrates was rendered odious to the Athenian people and Dikasts, partly as heterodox and irreligious, but partly also as one who taught the art of using speech so as to make the worse appear the better reason. Both Aristophanes and Melêtus would have sympathised warmly with the Platonic law. If there had been any Solonian law to the same effect, which Melêtus could have quoted in his accusatory speech, his case against Sokrates would have been materially strengthened. Especially, he would have had the express sanction of law for his proposition of death as the penalty: a proposition to which the Athenian Dikasts would not have consented, had they not been affronted and driven to it by the singular demeanour of Sokrates himself when before them. It would be irrelevant here to say that Sokrates was not guilty of what was imputed to him: that he never came before the Dikastery until the time of his trial — and that he did not teach “the art of words”. If he did not teach it, he was at least believed to teach it, not merely by Aristophanes and by the Athenian Dikasts, but also by intelligent men like Kritias and Charikles,[448] who knew him perfectly well: while the example of Antiphon shows that a man might be most acute and efficacious as a forensic adviser, without coming in person before the Dikastery.[449] What the defence really makes us feel is, the indefinite nature of the charge: which is neither provable nor disprovable, and which is characterised, both by Xenophon and in the Platonic Apology, as one of the standing calumnies against all philosophising men.[450] Here, in the Platonic Leges, this same unprovable offence is adopted and made capital: the Select Platonic Dikasts being directed to ascertain, not only whether a man has really committed it, but whether he has been impelled to commit it by love of money, or by love of victory and personal consequence.