Lastly, there is a more general point of view under which the Laws of Plato may be considered—the principles of Jurisprudence which are contained in them. These are not formally announced, but are scattered up and down, to be observed by the reflective reader for himself. Some of them are only the common principles which all courts of justice have gathered from experience; others are peculiar and characteristic. That judges should sit at fixed times and hear causes in a regular order (XII 956), that evidence should be laid before them, that false witnesses should be disallowed (XI 937), and corruption punished (XII 955 C), that defendants should be heard before they are convicted—these are the rules, not only of the Hellenic courts, but of courts of law in all ages and countries. But there are also points which are peculiar, and in which ancient jurisprudence differs considerably from modern; some of them are of great importance … It could not be said at Athens, nor was it ever contemplated by Plato, that all men, including metics and slaves, should be equal “in the eye of the law.” There was some law for the slave, but not much; no adequate protection was given him against the cruelty of his master … It was a singular privilege granted, both by the Athenian and Magnesian law, to a murdered man, that he might, before he died, pardon his murderer, in which case no legal steps were afterwards to be taken against him (IX 869 D). This law is the remnant of an age in which the punishment of offences against the person was the concern rather of the individual and his kinsmen than of the state … Plato’s division of crimes into voluntary and involuntary and those done from passion, only partially agrees with the distinction which modern law has drawn between murder and manslaughter; his attempt to analyze them is confused by the Socratic paradox, that “All vice is involuntary” (cf. supra) … It is singular that both in the Laws and at Athens theft is commonly punished by a twofold restitution of the article stolen. The distinction between civil and criminal courts or suits was not yet recognized … Possession gives a right of property after a certain time … The religious aspect under which certain offences were regarded greatly interfered with a just and natural estimate of their guilt … As among ourselves, the intent to murder was distinguished by Plato from actual murder (IX 876 E) … We note that both in Plato and the laws of Athens, libel in the marketplace and personality in the theatre were forbidden … Both in Plato and Athenian law, as in modern times, the accomplice of a crime is to be punished as well as the principal … Plato does not allow a witness in a cause to act as a judge of it … Oaths are not to be taken by the parties to a suit … Both at Athens and in Plato’s Laws capital punishment for murder was not to be inflicted, if the offender was willing to go into exile … Respect for the dead, duty towards parents, are to be enforced by the law as well as by public opinion … Plato proclaims the noble sentiment that the object of all punishment is the improvement of the offender (IX 854 D) … Finally, he repeats twice over, as with the voice of a prophet, that the crimes of the fathers are not to be visited upon the children (IX 855 A, 856 C). In this respect he is nobly distinguished from the Oriental, and indeed from the spirit of Athenian law (compare Telfy, 1012—δεῖ καὶ αὐτοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐκ τούτων ἀτίμους εἶναι), as the Hebrew in the age of Ezekial (c. 18) is from the Jewish people of former ages.
Of all Plato’s provisions the object is to bring the practice of the law more into harmony with reason and philosophy; to secure impartiality, and while acknowledging that every citizen has a right to share in the administration of justice, to counteract the tendency of the courts to become mere popular assemblies.
Thus we have arrived at the end of the writings of Plato, and at the last stage of philosophy which was really his. For in what followed, which we chiefly gather from the uncertain intimations of Aristotle, the
