The Special Laws III

Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

There was a time once when, at leisure for philosophy and for the contemplation of the world and the things in it, I enjoyed a mind that was truly beautiful, deeply longed-for, and blessed, always keeping company with divine words and doctrines, in which I rejoiced with an insatiable and unquenchable delight, thinking nothing low or groveling, nor grubbing about after reputation or wealth or the comforts of the body, but seeming always to be borne aloft on high by a kind of divine possession of the soul, and to travel in the company of the sun and moon and the whole of heaven and the cosmos.

It was then, then indeed, that peering down from above, from the aether, and stretching out the eye of my understanding as though from a watchtower, I used to survey the untold spectacles of everything on earth, and I counted myself blessed for having, with all my strength, escaped the calamities of mortal life.

But it seems that the most grievous of evils was lying in wait for me: envy, the hater of the good, which fell upon me suddenly and did not stop dragging me down by force until it had thrown me into the great sea of the cares of public life, in which I am carried along, unable even to swim to the surface.

Yet, groaning, I hold fast, for I have a longing for learning fixed in my soul since my earliest years, and this longing, ever taking pity and compassion on me, lifts me up and gives me relief. Because of it there are times when I raise my head and, with the eyes of my soul—dimly, for the mist of alien affairs has clouded their sharpness—still, out of sheer necessity, I look about me on every side, yearning to draw in a life that is pure and unmixed with evils.

And if, even unexpectedly, a brief calm and fair weather comes to me amid the tumults of public life, I am borne up on wings, all but flying through the air, wafted by the breezes of knowledge, which often persuades me to run away and spend my days with her, as though escaping from harsh masters—not only men, but also affairs pouring in from every direction like a torrent, one upon another.

But indeed, even for these things it is fitting to give thanks to God, that although I am submerged I am not swallowed down into the depths; rather, the eyes of my soul, which I had already supposed to be blinded through despair of any good hope, I now open, and I am illumined by the light of wisdom, not having been surrendered for my whole life to darkness. See, then, I dare not only to engage with the sacred interpretations of Moses, but also, out of love of knowledge, to peer into each of them and to unfold and bring to light whatever is not familiar to the many.

Since, of the ten oracles which God himself pronounced without prophet or interpreter, five have already been discussed—those engraved on the first tablet, together with whatever particular laws bore upon them—it is necessary at present to weave together, as well as I am able, the remaining commandments on the other tablet as well; I shall attempt again to fit the particular laws to each of the general categories.

The first commandment on the second tablet is this: "You shall not commit adultery," because, I think, everywhere in the inhabited world pleasure blows mightily, and no part has escaped its dominion—not on land, not on sea, not in the air; for creatures of the land, the winged creatures, and those in the water, all of them without exception, are dumbstruck by it and attend to it and yield to its commands at a single glance and nod, and even if it should bristle with arrogance they welcome it gladly and all but anticipate its bidding with the swiftness and unhesitating speed of their service.

Now natural pleasure, too, incurs much and frequent blame, whenever someone uses it without measure and without restraint, like those who are insatiable for food, even if they partake of nothing forbidden, and like the lovers of women who are mad for intercourse and consort more lasciviously than they should even with women who are not another's but their own.

The blame in this, according to most people, belongs to the body rather than to the soul, since the body has within it a great flame, which, having consumed the food thrown to it, soon seeks out more, and a great fluid, whose flowing stream, channeled through the generative organs, produces itchings and gnawings and ceaseless ticklings.

But as for those who are mad for the wives of others, and sometimes even of their own relatives and friends, and who live for the ruin of their neighbors, attempting to corrupt whole populous families, rendering void both the prayers made at weddings and the hopes placed in children—these suffer from an incurable disease of the soul, and as common enemies of the whole human race they must be punished with death, so that they may not, by living on with impunity, destroy still more households, nor become teachers to others who are eager to imitate wicked practices.

Indeed, the law has also made excellent provision for other matters concerning intercourse. For it commands abstention not only from the wives of others, but also from widowed stepmothers, with whom it is not lawful to come together.

The Persian custom he turned away from at once and, abhorring it, rejected it as the greatest impiety; for the leading men among the Persians marry their own mothers, and consider the children born of such unions to be of the noblest birth and, so the story goes, worthy of the greatest kingship.

What impiety could be more unholy than this? To defile a dead father's marriage bed, which ought to have been kept untouched as sacred; to feel no shame before old age or before a mother; for the same man to become both son and husband of the same woman, and, in turn, for the same woman to become both wife and mother of the same man; and for the children of both to be, on the father's side, his brothers, and on the mother's side, her grandchildren; and for the woman who bore them to be both their mother and their grandmother, while the man who begot them is, in the same breath, both their father and their brother by the same mother—

such things were done long ago also among the Greeks, at Thebes, in the case of Oedipus the son of Laius, and were done in ignorance, not by deliberate choice, and yet the marriage brought such a flood of evils that nothing was lacking to complete the utmost depth of misfortune.

For successions of civil and foreign wars were left behind, like an inheritance, to children and descendants from fathers and forebears, and the greatest cities of Greece were sacked, and there were destructions of military forces, both native and those coming as allies, and repeated destructions of the best commanders on each side, and, on account of irreconcilable hatreds over power and rule, fratricides, through which not only families and homelands but the greatest part of the entire Greek nation was utterly ruined; for cities once flourishing with men were left empty of inhabitants, memorials of Greece's disasters—an unhappy sight for those who beheld it.

Nor indeed are the Persians, among whom these practices are followed, free of similar evils; for they are always engaged in campaigns and battles, killing and being killed, at one time overrunning their neighbors, at another warding off those who rise up against them; and many rise up from many quarters, since the barbarian nature is not disposed to remain at rest; at any rate, before the conflict at hand has been settled, another springs up, so that no season of the year is exempted for peace, but they bear arms both summer and winter, by day and by night, spending more time suffering hardship in camps under the open sky than dwelling in their cities, for want of peace.

I say nothing of the great and monstrous prosperity of their kings, for whom the first contest, straightaway upon assuming the rule, is the greatest pollution of all—fratricide—since they divine the attack that may come from their brothers, in order to seem to kill them with good reason.

All this, it seems to me, results from the disordered unions of sons with mothers, since Justice, the overseer of human affairs, avenges these unholy acts upon the impious; and impious are not only those who commit them, but also all who, by deliberate consent, join in complicity with those who do.

So great a safeguard has our law made concerning this matter that it has not even permitted a stepson, after his father's death, to marry his stepmother, both out of honor for the father and because the name of stepmother is akin to that of mother, even if the feeling in the soul is not in harmony with it.

For the man who has been taught to abstain from a woman who is not his own kin, simply because she was called stepmother, will abstain far more from his mother by nature; and if anyone, out of remembrance of his father, respects the woman who was once his father's wife, it is clear that, for the honor owed to both parents, he will contemplate nothing untoward regarding his mother, since it would be quite foolish to seem to show favor to half of one's lineage while neglecting the whole and complete family.

Next comes the commandment that one must not take a sister in marriage—a very serious rule, contributing both to self-mastery and to good order. Now the Athenian Solon permitted marriage with sisters who shared the same father, but forbade it with those who shared the same mother, while the Spartan lawgiver, prophesying the opposite, turned toward marriage with sisters of the same womb, and forbade it with those of the same father.

But the lawgiver of the Egyptians, making a mockery of the caution shown by both, as though they were making only half-hearted regulations in the interest of license, lavishly indulging a hard-to-cure disease of bodies and souls—incontinence—granted permission to marry all sisters: those belonging to one parent only, whichever it might be, and those from both parents, and not only younger ones but also older ones and those of the same age; for twins, too, were often born, whom nature at their very birth separated and set apart, but whom licentiousness and love of pleasure called into a union that ought not to be shared, and into a harmony that is discordant.

These practices the most sacred Moses abhorred as alien and hostile to a blameless commonwealth, and as inciting and priming people toward the most shameful practices, and he forbade with all his strength coming together with a sister, whether she was born of both parents or of only one.

For why must one shame the beauty of modesty? Why make colorless the young women who ought naturally to blush? And why should one restrict fellowship and intercourse with other people, crowding each household into a small space, when a great and splendid family is capable of extending and spreading over continents and islands and the whole inhabited world? For marriages with those outside the family produce new kinships that are in no way inferior to those of blood—

and do not fall short of blood-relations. For this reason he forbade many other unions as well, ordering that a man must not marry his granddaughter, whether through a son or a daughter, nor his aunt on his father's or his mother's side, nor a woman who has been the wife of his uncle or his son or his brother; nor again his stepdaughter, whether while his wife still lives — far be it — or even after she has died. For in effect a father-in-law counts as a father, and must therefore reckon his wife's daughter in the rank of his own daughter.

Again, he does not permit the same man to take two sisters, whether at the same time or at different times, even if it should happen that he has divorced the one he married first. For while the woman he lives with is still alive, or even if she has been separated from him, whether she remains a widow or is married to another, he judged it unholy for him to proceed to the sister of the unfortunate woman, teaching in advance that the rights of kinship must not be dissolved, nor should one trample on the misfortunes of a woman so united to oneself by birth, nor plume oneself and revel in being courted by that woman's enemies while courting them in return.

For from such things arise harsh jealousies and implacable rivalries that bring on countless swarms of evils. It is like the parts of a body that, departing from their natural harmony and fellowship, should war against one another, which produces incurable diseases and corruption. Sisters, even though they have become divided parts, are nevertheless fitted together and united by nature and by a single kinship. But jealousy, that most grievous passion,

breaking this apart, contrives harsh evils that are hard to cure. "Nor, again," he says, "contract a marriage-union with a foreigner, lest, led astray by conflicting customs, you give way and unknowingly wander off the road toward piety, turned aside onto a trackless path." Perhaps you yourself, having been schooled from earliest youth in the best precepts, which your parents were forever chanting into you as they taught the sacred laws, will hold firm. But there is no small fear concerning sons and daughters, for they may well be enticed by foreign customs in preference to their own and run the risk of unlearning the honor due to the one God, which is the beginning and end of the deepest misery.

"And if," he says, "a woman, separated from her husband on whatever pretext it may happen, marries another and is again widowed, whether the second husband is alive or has died, let her not return to her former husband, but let her be bound in truce with all others rather than become his again, since she has transgressed the ancient ordinances by choosing new attachments in place of the old and forgetting them."

And if any man is willing to come to terms with such a woman, let him be branded with a reputation for softness and unmanliness, having had cut away from his soul that most useful of passions, hatred of wrongdoing, by which the affairs both of households and of cities are set right; and let him be understood as having easily wiped away two of the greatest offenses, adultery and pandering — for a reconciliation of this kind a second time is proof of both. Let him pay the penalty of death, together with the woman.

When the flow of a woman's monthly courses occurs, let her husband not touch her, but let him hold back from intercourse for that time, out of reverence for the law of nature, and at the same time being taught in advance not to sow imperfect seed for the sake of untimely and unmusical pleasure. For it is like a farmer who, out of drunkenness or derangement, should sow wheat and barley into pools and torrents instead of onto plowland; for it is into dry fields that seed must be cast, so that it may bear good fruit.

Nature too purges the womb each month, as though it were some wondrous plowland, and the good farmer must watch closely for its season, so that while it is still being flooded he holds back the seed — for otherwise he will unknowingly be swept away by the flow of moisture, having not merely relaxed the generative forces but utterly dissolved them (these are the forces that in the womb, nature's workshop, mold living things and bring each part, of body and of soul alike, to completion with the utmost artistry) — but if the monthly flow should hold back, then let him with confidence sow seed capable of generation, no longer fearing the destruction of what is cast down.

Blame is also due to those who plow hard and stony ground; and who could these be but men who couple with barren women? For merely in the hunt for unrestrained pleasure, like the most lecherous of men, they destroy the seed by deliberate intent. For what other reason would they marry such women? Certainly not in hope of children, which they know will inevitably come to nothing, but out of excessive lust and incurable intemperance.

Now those who marry girls in ignorance of their condition, and find good or, on the contrary, poor fruitfulness at once, but who, when after a long time they perceive from their barrenness that the women are sterile, do not send them away — these deserve pardon, overcome by habit, that most compelling of forces, and unable to break the old affections stamped upon their souls by long companionship.

But those who court women already proven barren by other husbands, mounting them merely like pigs or goats, let them be inscribed on the pillars of the impious, as adversaries of God. For to him, since he loves living things and loves mankind, it belongs, through all his providence, to bring about safety and continuance for every kind of creature; whereas those who, at the very moment of insemination, contrive extinction for the seed, are admittedly enemies of nature.

But another evil, far greater than the one just described, has come revelling into our cities: pederasty. This, which formerly was accounted a great disgrace even to speak of, is now a boast, not only to those who commit it but also to those who suffer it, who, growing accustomed to enduring the feminine disease, waste away in both soul and body, allowing no ember of the male stock to smolder on within them, so conspicuously do they braid and adorn the hair of their heads, and rub and paint their faces with white lead and rouge and similar things, and anoint themselves richly with fragrant perfumes — for a sweet scent above all else is what attracts in men so trained toward outward elegance — and, contriving by artifice to change their male nature into a female one, they do not blush.

Against these it is right to be enraged, obeying the law which commands that the man-woman who falsifies the coinage of nature be put to death without atonement, not to be allowed to live a single day or even an hour, since he is a disgrace to himself, to his household, to his homeland, and to the whole human race.

And let the pederast know that he will undergo the same penalty, since he pursues a pleasure contrary to nature and, for his part, renders the cities desolate and empty of inhabitants by destroying the seed, and moreover claims to become the guide and teacher of the young in the two greatest evils, unmanliness and softness, by beautifying them and feminizing the flower of their prime, which ought rather to have been trained toward vigor and strength; and finally, like a bad farmer, he lets the deep and fertile fields lie fallow, contriving barrenness upon them, while he labors day and night upon those from which no growth whatsoever is to be expected.

The cause, I think, is that among many peoples prizes are set up for intemperance and softness. One can see the man-women forever strutting through the crowded marketplace, leading processions at festivals, allotted charge of sacred rites though themselves unholy, presiding over mysteries and initiations, and celebrating the rites of Demeter.

And some of them, straining their fine youthfulness still further, have reached out for a complete transformation into women, and have even cut off their generative organs, going about clothed in purple robes like men responsible for great benefits to their homelands, escorted by a bodyguard, turning the heads of those they pass.

But if there were the same indignation as prevails among our own lawgiver against those who dare such things, and if such men were removed without pardon as common pollutions and defilements of their homelands, many others would in consequence be brought to their senses; for the inexorable punishments of those condemned beforehand produce no small check upon those who are zealous for similar practices.

But indeed, some, emulating the appetites of the Sybarites and of men even more lecherous still, at first trained themselves in gluttony and drunkenness and the other pleasures of the belly and what lies beneath the belly, and then, once sated, ran riot — for satiety is by nature apt to breed wanton excess — so that, through derangement of mind, they raged and grew mad, no longer for human beings, whether male or female, but even for irrational animals, just as they say that, long ago in Crete, the wife of King Minos, named Pasiphaë,

having fallen in love with a bull and writhing under the affliction because of her despair of intercourse with it — for love, when it fails of its object, is intensified beyond measure — reported the misfortune that possessed her to Daedalus, who was the finest craftsman of his time; and he, being extremely clever in devising means of hunting the unhuntable, constructed a wooden cow and placed Pasiphaë inside through an opening in its side, and the bull, rushing at it as at a creature of its own kind, mounted it; and she, having conceived, in due time gave birth to the mixed creature called the Minotaur.

It is likely that there will be other Pasiphaës as well, if the passions are left unbridled, and that not only women but men too will go mad for beasts, from which monstrosities of ill repute will come to be — evidence of mankind's surpassing foulness; on account of which, perhaps, even the natures of the Hippocentaurs and Chimeras and the like, which never existed and are mere myth, will come to be.

So great, it seems, is the foresight shown in the sacred laws that, to prevent men from admitting any unlawful union, it is even ordained that no beast be allowed to be mounted by one of a different kind. No Jewish shepherd will allow a he-goat to mount a ewe, nor a ram a she-goat, nor a bull a mare; and if he does, he will pay the penalty as one who dissolves an ordinance of nature, whose concern it is to preserve the highest kinds undebased.

Some prize mules above all other beasts of burden, because their bodies are compact and exceedingly well-sinewed, and in their horse-studs and stables they rear oversized donkeys, which they call jackasses, so that these may mount the female foals, which give birth to the mixed creature, the mule; and Moses, knowing that its generation is contrary to nature, forbade it outright by a still more general command, not permitting creatures of unlike kind to mount or be mounted.

He took forethought, then, in proportion to what is fitting and consonant with nature, and, as though from a watchtower far off, brought men to their senses, so that, being instructed beforehand by these examples, men and women together might restrain themselves from lawless unions.

"If, then, a man mounts a four-footed beast, or a woman is mounted by a four-footed beast, let both the human beings and the four-footed beasts die" — the humans because they drove beyond the bounds of self-control itself, becoming inventors of perverse desires, and because they devised pleasures most unpleasant, whose very telling is most shameful; the beasts because they served such disgraces, and so that nothing of ill repute might be borne or begotten, as would likely come from such pollutions.

Besides, those who care even a little for what is fitting would no longer make use of such creatures for any service of life, loathing and turning away from them and finding even the sight of them distasteful, and thinking that whatever they touch immediately becomes unclean; and to live with no use whatever to life, even if it costs nothing, is nonetheless a superfluous "burden of the earth," as someone has said.

Again, the constitution ordained by Moses does not admit the prostitute, that woman alien to modesty and reverence and self-control and the other virtues, who fills the souls of men and women alike with licentiousness, shaming the deathless beauty of the mind while prizing the short-lived comeliness of the body, throwing herself at any man who happens along, selling her prime like some article for sale in the marketplace, saying and doing everything to hunt young men, and setting the lovers against each other, offering herself as the basest prize to whoever brings the most money. Let her be stoned as a plague and a ruin and a common defilement, for she has corrupted the graces of nature which it was fitting to adorn further with true nobility of character.

As for adultery, the law declared guilty those cases confirmed either by being caught in the act or by clear proof, but it did not think it right that those based on mere suspicion should be examined before men; instead it brought them before the tribunal of nature, since men are judges only of what is visible, but God is judge also of what is hidden, he alone being able to see the soul clearly.

So the law says to the man who suspects his wife: write out a summons, go to the holy city with your wife, and standing before the judges, lay bare the feeling of suspicion that has come upon you — not as a slanderer or a schemer bent on winning at all costs, but as a strict examiner of the truth, free of sophistry.

Let the woman, facing two dangers, one for her life and one for the shame of her whole existence — a thing more grievous than any death — weigh the matter within herself; and if she is pure, let her defend herself boldly, but if she is convicted by her own conscience, let her be humbled, making modesty a veil for her wrongs; for to remain shameless to the end is the height of wickedness.

But if what has been said is disputed and neither side prevails, let them go to the temple, and the husband, standing opposite the altar in the presence of whoever is serving as priest that day, shall declare his suspicion, bringing at the same time barley meal, a kind of sacrifice on behalf of his wife, as a sign that he brings the accusation not out of malice but from a sound mind, on reasonable grounds of doubt.

The priest, taking it, shall hold it out to the woman, and having removed her head-covering — so that she may be judged with head bared, stripped of the symbol of modesty which it is customary for the wholly innocent to wear at all times. Neither oil nor frankincense shall be present as in other sacrifices, because this sacrifice is to be carried out not for a joyful occasion but for one exceedingly painful.

The meal is of barley, perhaps because barley food is of doubtful standing, fitting both for irrational animals and for unfortunate men — a symbol that the adulteress is no different from beasts, whose matings occur indiscriminately and without oversight, while the woman who is free of the charge has aspired to the way of life proper to human beings.

The priest, it says, taking an earthenware vessel, shall pour into it pure water drawn from a spring, and shall add a clod of earth from the floor of the temple. These things too, I think, contribute toward the search for truth by way of symbols: the earthenware vessel points to adultery, because of its fragility — for death is the penalty against adulterers — while the earth and water point to being cleared of the charge, since it is through both of these that the coming-to-be, growth, and completion of all things occur.

Hence he has fittingly adorned each with its name: he says the water must be taken 'pure' and 'living,' since if the woman is not guilty she is pure in her life and ought to live; and the earth not from any chance place but from the holy ground, which represents virtue, as does the self-controlled woman herself.

When these things have been made ready, the woman, with head uncovered, shall come forward bringing the barley meal, as has been said, and the priest, facing her, shall hold the earthenware vessel in which are the water and the earth,

and shall say the following: 'If you have not transgressed the laws of marriage, nor has another man had intercourse with you in violation of the rights owed to the man joined to you by law, be free of guilt and unharmed. But if you have disregarded your husband and pursued strange desires, whether being the one who loved or yielding to one who loved you, betraying and adulterating the most necessary and dearest bonds, know that you have become subject to every curse, the proof of which you will show forth on your body.'

'Come then, drink the drink of testing, which will now strip bare and expose what is hidden and undisclosed.' Having written these words on a small papyrus and washed them off into the water in the vessel, he shall hold it out to the woman; and having drunk it she shall depart, expecting either the prize of self-control or the utmost punishment of licentiousness. For if she has been slandered, let her look forward to the sowing and begetting of children, free from fears and anxieties over barrenness and childlessness; but if she is guilty, let her know that a swelling and distended womb awaits her, and a terrible affliction of the womb, since she did not see fit to keep it pure for the husband who married her according to ancestral custom.

So great is the law's forethought regarding the sanctity of marriage that it does not even allow men and women who come together as husband and wife under the ordinances of marriage, when they rise from the marriage bed, to touch anyone before using washings and purifying rites — warding off adultery, and the charges that attend it, from far off.

If someone forces and shames a widow whose husband has died, or a woman otherwise divorced, he commits a lighter offense than adultery, roughly half as grave; let him be spared the penalty of death, but let him be accused for violence and outrage and licentiousness and shamelessness — regarding the basest acts as though they were the finest — and let the court determine what he must suffer or pay for them. Concerning seduction.

Seduction is a sister offense, akin to adultery, born, as it were, from the same mother, licentiousness — a thing some who are accustomed to dress up shameful acts with fine names call 'love,' blushing to admit the truth. Yet even though it is akin, it is not altogether the same, in that the wrong does not extend into several households, as happens with adultery, but is confined to a single one, that of the young woman.

So one must say to the man who desires a citizen girl: turn away, sir, from rashness and shameless boldness, or from traps laid in ambush, or anything of that kind, so that you may not be found wicked either openly or in secret.

But if you truly feel something proper toward the girl in your soul, go to her parents, if they happen to be living, or otherwise to her brothers or guardians or other persons in authority, and having laid bare your own feeling, as a free man should, ask for her in marriage and entreat that you not be judged unworthy.

For no one who cares for the girl could be so churlish as to oppose such earnest pleas, especially once he has examined the matter and found the feeling not to be feigned or superficial but genuine and firmly rooted.

But if someone, raging and maddened, having bid a hearty farewell to every consideration of reason, taking his frenzy and desire as sovereign, and setting the violence of passion — as some call it — above the law, seizes and violates free women as though they were slave-girls, doing in peacetime the deeds of war, let him be brought before the judges.

And if the violated woman has a father, let him deliberate about a betrothal to the one who violated her; then if he refuses, let the seducer pay a dowry for the girl, being punished with money in another way, but if the father consents and agrees to it, let him marry her without delay, acknowledging an equal dowry in return, and let him have neither the power to draw back nor to decline — both for his own sake, so that he not seem to have violated her more for lust than for lawful love, and for the girl's sake, so that the misfortune of her first union may be consoled by the most secure of marriages, one which nothing but death shall dissolve.

But if she happens to be an orphan without a father, let her be asked by the judges whether she wishes to live with him or not; and whether she consents or refuses, let the same terms hold as would have been agreed while her father was living. Concerning betrothal.

Some suppose that an offense committed between betrothal and marriage is a borderline case between seduction and adultery, namely when the agreements of betrothal have already been made but the marriage has not yet been completed, and another man, deceiving her or forcing her, comes to have intercourse with her. But in my judgment this too is a kind of adultery; for the agreements of betrothal are equivalent in force to marriage, since in them the names of the man and the woman and the other terms of the union are recorded in writing.

For this reason the law has ordered that both be stoned, provided they set upon their wrongdoing from one and the same intention, acting in concert; for it is not possible for those who did not set out from the same design to be considered as sharing in the wrongdoing, since they did not truly share in it.

Indeed, the offense is found to increase or diminish according to the difference of place; for it is, as one would expect, greater if it is committed within the city, but lesser if it is done outside the walls in a deserted place. For there no one at all is present to help the girl, whatever she may say or do to keep her virginity untouched and unassailed, whereas in the city there are councils, courts, crowds of generals, market officials, city officials, and other magistrates, and along with them the whole populace.

For indeed there exists in the soul of every person, even if he happens to be a private individual, a hatred of wrongdoing, which, once stirred, shows the one who has it, at that moment, to be a champion and self-appointed defender on behalf of the one who seems to have been wronged.

For the doer of violence, there follows justice everywhere, since he can find nothing in the difference of place to serve as a defense of his outrage and lawlessness; but for the girl, as I said, sometimes pity and pardon will attend her, and sometimes inexorable punishment.

And concerning this the judge must inquire carefully, not referring everything to the place; for it is possible for a woman to be violated against her will in the middle of the city, and, outside the city, to yield willingly to an unlawful union. This is why the law, in a most careful and admirable defense of the girl who is ravished in the wilderness, says: "The young woman cried out, and there was no one to help her" (Deuteronomy 22:27), so that if she neither cried out nor resisted, but went along willingly, she would be guilty, having used the place as a pretext to make it appear that she was violated.

And indeed, of what use could it be, in a city, to a woman who is willing to do everything for her own honor but is powerless because of the strength of the one who outrages her? For what benefit would come from those living nearby, if, along with everything else, he bound her or stopped up her mouth so that she could not even utter a cry? For in a sense, a woman who dwells in a city but has no one to help her is as though in a wilderness, deprived as she is of any who might come to her aid; and the other woman, even if no one happens to be present, if she is said to have gone along willingly, would be no different from the one in the city.

There are some men who are fickle in their intimacies, mad for women and yet women-haters at the same time, full of jumbled and mixed characters, who yield at once to their first impulses, whatever they happen to be, letting them run unbridled when they ought to be reining them in, and who fall recklessly and blindly, like blind men, into bodies and affairs alike, so that by the rush and violent force with which they push and overturn, they suffer no less than what they inflict.

Concerning these men the following is legislated: if men take girls in lawful marriage, and after the wedding sacrifices and feasting, retaining no proper affection for their wives, but abusing them and treating them like common women though they are citizens, contrive a divorce, finding no honest ground for separation, and then turn to slander, and for lack of any manifest charge turn their accusations to what is hidden, coming forward to charge that, though they supposed they had married virgins, they discovered on the first union that they were dealing with women who were not virgins — then the whole council of elders must assemble for judgment, and the parents of the accused women must come forward to make their defense, since the danger concerns them jointly.

For the danger touches not only the daughters, as regards the purity of their bodies, but also their guardians, not only because they failed to keep watch over the most critical time of their maturity, but also because they gave in marriage, as virgins, women who had already been corrupted by others, deceiving and cheating the men who received them.

Then, if the parents prevail in the just cause, the judges must penalize those who fabricated the false charge with fines of money, and with the outrages inflicted through blows upon the bodies, and — the most unpleasant thing of all for such men — the confirmation of the marriage, if the wives are still willing to live with such husbands; for the law permits the wives, if they wish, either to remain or to be released, but declares that the husbands have authority over neither option, in return for their slanderous accusation. Against murderers.

The name "manslaughter" is applied to one who kills a human being, but the true deed is sacrilege, and the greatest of all sacrileges, because among the possessions and treasures in the world there is nothing more sacred, nothing more godlike, than a human being.

…a most beautiful impression of a most beautiful image, stamped after the pattern of the archetypal rational Idea. The murderer, then, must at once be regarded as impious and unholy, committing the greatest of unholy and impious acts, one who, having done what admits of no communion with others, must be destroyed, since, though deserving countless deaths, he undergoes only one, because punishment, though undying, is not by nature able to be multiplied along with the number of his victims; yet there is nothing harsh in his suffering the very thing that he inflicted on another.

And yet how is it the same thing, if it differs in time, in action, in intention, and in persons? Is it not true that to begin unjust violence is one thing, and to repel it is another, coming later? And is not murder the most lawless of acts, while the punishment of murderers is the most lawful? And has not the killer fulfilled his desire by destroying the one he had chosen to destroy, while the one who has suffered, having been removed from among the living, is unable either to retaliate or to feel any satisfaction in return? And is it not natural that the one plots with his own hand by himself, while for the other the pursuit of justice remains incomplete unless kinsmen or friends come forward to fight on his behalf, moved by pity for his suffering?

If someone brandishes a sword with intent to kill, even if he does not carry out the killing, let him be held guilty of murder by intention, even though the outcome did not accord with his purpose. And let the same penalty be suffered by one who, through cunning, from ambush, not daring to make a direct attempt, plots and contrives murder by deceit; for he too is impure, even if not yet in his hands, then certainly in his…

…soul. For just as, I think, we regard as enemies not only those who are already fighting at sea or on land, but also those who have made ready for either kind of combat and are bringing up siege-engines with arrows against our harbors and walls, even if they have not yet killed anyone but are merely doing everything toward destruction, whether openly or in secret, even if they have not yet accomplished the wrong.

But if, out of cowardice or recklessness — passions that fight against each other and lead men astray — they dare to take refuge in the sanctuary, hoping to find asylum there, they must be prevented; and if they are discovered slipping in, they must be handed over for execution, with these words added: that the sanctuary grants no asylum to the unholy. For everyone who does what is incurable is an enemy to God; and murderers do what is incurable, since those who are murdered have suffered what is incurable.

For if, to those who have committed no wrong, the temple is forbidden until they have washed themselves and been purified with the customary rites of purification by sprinkling, is it not fitting that those guilty of unwashable pollutions — whose stains no length of time will ever cleanse — should be barred from haunting and lingering about the sacred precincts, precincts which not even a household of respectable men who care for holy things would receive them into?

Adding wrongdoing to wrongdoing, then — to murder, lawlessness and impiety — it is necessary to lead away for punishment those who, as I said, have committed deeds deserving countless deaths, not one; especially since, for the kinsmen and friends of the man treacherously murdered, the sanctuary will be shut off, if the murderer lingers within it, since they would not endure to come to the same place as he; and it is absurd that, for the sake of one man, and the most lawless one at that, the many who have been wronged should be driven out — men who, besides having done no wrong, have also taken on a premature grief.

Perhaps too, being by nature able to look with keen discernment even upon distant things, he took thought in advance that murder should not occur in the sanctuary itself, on occasion of the visits of the friends of the murdered man, whom natural affection — a passion that cannot be enslaved — would provoke, as it does those possessed and inspired, to come very near to killing the murderer with their own hands; and if that were to happen, one of the most unholy things would occur, for the blood of murderers would be mingled with the blood of sacrifices, the blood of things consecrated mingling with what is unclean. For these reasons, then, he commands that the murderer be handed over for punishment even from the very altars.

But those who kill with swords or spears or missiles or clubs or stones or similar things can do so without premeditation, without having reasoned out the crime within themselves for a long time beforehand, moved on the spur of the moment and overcome by anger stronger than reason, so that the deed of murder is, so to speak, only half accomplished, since the mind has not been possessed beforehand, over a long time, by the pollution.

But there are others most wicked, defiled in hand and in purpose alike: sorcerers and poisoners. They give themselves leisure and withdrawal to devise timely attacks, and they discover all manner of arts and contrivances against the misfortunes of their neighbors.

For this reason he commands that poisoners, both men and women, should not survive a single day, not even a single hour, but should die the very moment they are caught, with no pretext allowed for any postponement or deferral of the punishment; for one can guard against those who plot openly, but it is not easy to detect the arts of those who secretly compose and contrive their attacks by means of poisons.

It is necessary, then, that the perpetrators be made to suffer beforehand what others were going to suffer because of them. For besides, one who kills openly with a sword or some similar weapon will destroy only a few people at a time, but with deadly poisons he can destroy countless numbers who have no forewarning of the plot, mixing and blending the poison into various foods.

Indeed, before now, when great numbers gathered at common meals in fellowship, sharing the same salt and the same table, they suffered, amid libations, things worthy of no libation, being suddenly destroyed, and exchanged death for what should have been a feast. For this reason it is fitting that, against such men, even the most reasonable and the most even-tempered should become bloodthirsty, all but becoming executioners themselves, and thinking it a holy thing not to entrust the punishment to others but to take it upon themselves.

For how is it not utterly monstrous, to contrive death by means of food, which is the cause of life, and to work a destructive change in things that are by nature nourishing, so that some, driven by natural necessity to eat and drink, not foreseeing the ambush, take as if they were saving remedies the very things that cause utter ruin?

Let the same punishment be endured also by those who, even without composing deadly mixtures, administer substances by which prolonged illnesses are brought on; for death is often preferable to sickness, and especially to sicknesses of this kind, which stretch out over long periods of time and have no fortunate end; for the ailments produced by poisons are hard to cure, and altogether beyond remedy.

More grievous things, however, tend to befall the body, and derangements and unbearable madnesses fall upon it, through which the mind — the greatest gift that God bestowed upon the human race — being afflicted with every kind of harm, when it despairs of any means of preservation, migrates and moves elsewhere, leaving behind in the body the inferior form of the soul, the irrational part, which even beasts share in; since everyone bereft of reason, the better part of the soul, has been changed into the nature of a wild beast, even if

the outward features of the body still remain human in shape. As for the true magic, which is a science of vision, by which the works of nature are illumined with clearer visions, it seems a venerable and much-contested art, and not only private individuals but also kings, and the greatest of kings, especially the kings of the Persians, so devote themselves to it that they say no one among them can be sent forward to kingship unless he has first shared in the race of the Magi.

Magic of this counterfeit kind, or more accurately vile craft, is practiced by begging priests of Cybele and buffoons, and by the most worthless of little women and slaves. They profess to purify and cleanse people, and promise, by means of love-charms and certain incantations, to turn those who are affectionate toward each other into implacable enemies, and those who hate each other into overflowing goodwill. Then they deceive and hook those of simple and utterly guileless character, until these have taken on the greatest calamities — calamities through which whole large and populous circles of household and kin, gradually draining away without a sound, are swiftly destroyed.

It was with all this in view, I think, that our lawgiver did not allow lawsuits against sorcerers to be postponed to a later time, but ordered that the penalties be exacted at once. For delays incite the guilty to seize further opportunities for the same wrongdoing, since they are already courting death anyway, while they fill those under suspicion of being victims with an even more terrible dread, since they consider the sorcerers' continued life to be their own death.

Just as, when we see scorpions and other venomous creatures, before they bite or wound or even attack at all, we kill them on sight without delay, guarding in advance against suffering any harm because of the evil inherent in them — in the same way it is right to punish also those human beings who, though they have been allotted by nature a gentle rational soul because of their fellowship with the rest of humankind, have through their own practice changed themselves into the savagery of untamed beasts, placing all their pleasure and profit in doing harm to as many as they can.

Let this suffice for the present concerning sorcerers. It is proper, however, not to be ignorant of this either: that unintended occasions often arise in which someone commits homicide without having set out to do so or having made preparation for it, but is suddenly seized by anger — an incurable and treacherous passion, which does the greatest harm both to the one who feels it and to the one against whom it is directed.

For sometimes a man goes out to the marketplace on some pressing business, and meeting someone too quick-tempered who tries to abuse or strike him, or himself starting the quarrel with that person, comes to blows with him; and in order to break free and escape more quickly, he strikes him with his hand, or picks up a stone and throws it.

If the blow lands in a vital spot and the victim dies at once, then the one who struck him must die too, suffering in exact measure what he inflicted. But if the victim does not die immediately from the blow, but falls ill and is confined to bed, and then, after receiving proper care, rises again and goes about, even if he is not able to walk on sound feet but only with others supporting him or leaning on a staff, then the one who struck him must pay a double penalty: one for the loss of his time from work, the other to cover the cost of his medical treatment.

Having paid this, let him be released from the penalty of death, even if the one who received the blow should later die; for perhaps his death came not from the blow — since he had recovered enough to go out walking — but from other causes, which often suddenly attack and destroy even the healthiest of bodies.

But if a man grappling with a pregnant woman deals her a blow to the belly, and she miscarries, then, if the child that was miscarried was still without shape or form, he is to be fined, both for the outrage and because he obstructed nature, which was fashioning and crafting that most beautiful of living creatures, a human being, so as to prevent it from coming to life. But if the child was already formed, with all its limbs having taken on their proper arrangement and qualities, he must die.

For such a being is indeed a human being, one whom the craftsman slew while it still lay in nature's workshop, since nature did not yet judge it time to bring it forth into the light — like a statue lying in a sculptor's studio, needing nothing further but to be brought out and released.

By this same command another, still greater thing is also forbidden: the exposure of infants, which among many of the other nations has become, through their natural inhumanity, a tame and habitual impiety.

For if we must take thought for the child not yet brought forth at its appointed time of birth, so that it may suffer no terrible harm through a plot against it, how much more must we take thought for the child already fully born and, as it were, sent forth into the settlement allotted to human beings, so that it may share in nature's gifts — the gifts she sends up from earth and water and air and heaven, granting the sight of heavenly things and mastery and dominion over earthly things, supplying to every one of the senses an abundance of all things, and to the mind, as to a great king, some things through the senses, as through bodyguards, namely all that is perceptible, and other things without their aid, namely all that is grasped by reason?

Those, then, who deprive their children of so many good things, giving them no share in any of these from the moment of their birth, the parents who abandon them — let them know that they are overturning the laws of nature and accusing themselves of the gravest charges: love of pleasure, hatred of humankind, murder, and — the most terrible pollution of all — the killing of one's own children.

Lovers of pleasure they are, since it is not for the sake of begetting children and perpetuating their line that they come together with women, but pursuing, after the manner of pigs or goats, the enjoyment that comes from intercourse. And who could be haters of humankind more than those who are enemies and implacable foes to their own offspring? Unless one is so foolish as to suppose that men who have declared war on those united to them by blood could ever be at peace with strangers.

As for the murders and the killing of their own children, they establish these by the clearest proofs: some become murderers with their own hands, choking and crushing the infants' first breath through savagery and terrible lack of feeling; others cast them into a river or the depths of the sea, having first hung a weight on them so that it might drag them down the more quickly by its heaviness.

Still others carry them off to expose in some desert place, in the hope, so they themselves say, that they may be saved, but in truth, as it really is, to the most grievous of calamities. For all the wild beasts that feed on human flesh, with no one to stop them, come and feast upon the infants — a fine banquet, laid out by the very ones who alone should have cared for them and who, before all others, ought to have kept them safe: father and mother. And the flesh-eating birds too, swooping down, lick up what remains, when they have not sensed the danger in time; but if they do sense it, they contend for the whole carcass with the beasts of the land.

Suppose, then, that some passersby, moved by a gentle feeling, take pity and compassion on the exposed children, so as to pick them up, give them food, and see to their care in every other way — what are we to think of such kindly deeds? Are they not a condemnation of the parents, if strangers have practiced toward another's children the goodwill that the parents themselves did not practice even toward the children of strangers? It was for this reason, then, that the law long ago, and by clear implication, forbade the exposure of infants as a form of death,

having defined, as I said, the crime against those who cause miscarriage as applying to children already formed in women already pregnant. And yet what is still attached to the womb, contained within the belly of a pregnant woman, is said, both by natural philosophers who devote themselves to the contemplative life and by the most reputable of physicians — those who have carefully investigated the structure of the human being, examining with precision, through dissection, both what is visible and what is hidden — to be a part of the mother, so that, should some need for treatment arise, nothing might be overlooked through ignorance and become the cause of great danger.

But what has been brought forth is severed from that natural union, and, released, has become a living being in its own right, lacking nothing of what completes human nature, so that it is beyond doubt murder to kill an infant, since the law is displeased not on the ground of age but on the ground that a member of the human race has been wronged.

If, however, age too had to be taken into account, it seems to me that one would rightly be even more indignant at those who kill infants; for against grown men there are countless plausible pretexts for quarrels and disputes, but against those who are utterly infant, only just having come forth into the light and into human life, it is not even possible to invent a charge, since they are utterly incapable of wrongdoing. For this reason those who strip for the attack against such helpless victims would be judged the most savage and merciless of all, men whom the sacred law, hating them, has declared guilty.

Concerning the man killed not by the deliberate intent of the one who killed him, the sacred law says that he was delivered by God into the hands of the killer (Exodus 21:13) — on the one hand defending the man who seems to have killed him, as one who killed a man already guilty —

for the God who is gracious and forgiving would never, in a case of killing, hand over the innocent man; rather, it is the man who, though he cleverly escapes the judgments of men because of his many resources, when brought before the unseen tribunal of nature is caught — the tribunal in which alone the most unadulterated truth is seen, not overshadowed by the arts of rhetoric, since it does not admit speeches at all, but strips bare men's intentions and brings their hidden purposes into the open. On the other hand, the law does not make the man who killed him liable for murder, on the ground that he seems to have served a divine judgment, but only for a pollution that is obscure and altogether slight, one that is pardonable and forgivable.

For God uses those who err in small and remediable matters as instruments of punishment against those who have committed the greatest and incurable wrongs, not approving of the former, but taking them up, as it were, as fitting tools for retribution, so that no one, however righteous, who has remained pure his whole life and comes from pure stock, should ever lay hold of murder.

He therefore prescribed flight for the man who kills unintentionally, not just anywhere and not forever; for he assigned six cities — an eighth portion of those allotted to the consecrated tribe — to those convicted, cities which, from what befalls the men who dwell there, he named "places of refuge"; and as the length of the exile he further legislated the lifetime of the high priest, permitting return after that man's death.

The prior reason for this is as follows: the tribe mentioned received these cities as a prize for a homicide that was pure and holy, one which must be reckoned the most illustrious and greatest of all acts of valor that have ever occurred.

For when the prophet had been called up to the loftiest and most sacred of the mountains in that region and was there proclaiming the several kinds of particular laws, and was invisible for many days, those whose natures were not peaceable filled everything with the evils that spring from anarchy, and crowned it all with impiety: mocking the best and noblest instructions concerning the honor due to the God who truly is, they fashioned a golden bull — an imitation of Egyptian vanity — and offered unholy sacrifices, celebrated unfestive festivals, and performed danceless dances, accompanied by songs and hymns that were really dirges.

For when the prophet, summoned up onto the loftiest and most sacred of the mountains in that region, was uttering oracles concerning the various kinds of particular laws, and had been invisible for many days, those whose natures were not peaceable filled everything with the vices of anarchy, and crowned it all with impiety: mocking the best and noblest instructions concerning the honor due to him who truly is God, they fashioned a golden bull, an imitation of Egyptian delusion, and offered sacrifices that were no sacrifices, kept festivals that were no festivals, and performed dances that were no dances, accompanied by songs and hymns in place of dirges.

The tribe I have mentioned, bearing very badly this sudden change of way of life and set ablaze with zeal through a passion that hated wickedness, all brimming with anger, frenzied, possessed, as though at a single signal armed themselves, and in utter contempt went about slaying, one after another, those drunk with a double intoxication—the one of impiety, the other of wine—beginning with their nearest and dearest, since they reckoned that friendship and kinship consisted in nothing but being beloved of God. And in a small part of a single day twenty-four thousand were slain, and their calamities admonished those who were about to share in the same madness, through fear of suffering the like.

This campaign, undertaken voluntarily and self-commanded on behalf of piety and holiness toward him who truly is God, not without great dangers for those who took up the struggle, the Father of all himself approved; and having judged, in his own presence, that those who did the slaying were pure of all defilement and pollution, he bestows on them, in return for their manly courage, the office of priesthood.

The one, then, who commits an unwilling homicide, he commands to flee to certain of the cities allotted to these men, for the sake of consolation and so that he need not utterly despair of his safety forever, being reminded by the place itself of freedom from fear, and reckoning that if to those who kill deliberately not only amnesty but also great and contested prizes and much good fortune have been granted, much more should this hold for those who kill without premeditation—even if none of the honors, at least this last thing, that they not be put to death in turn. By this it is made clear that not every killing of a man is culpable, but only that which is joined with injustice; and that among the rest, killing out of longing and zeal for virtue is praiseworthy, while the unwilling kind is not blameworthy.

Let this, then, be stated as the first reason; the second must now at once be disclosed. The law wishes to preserve the one who has killed unwillingly, knowing that he is not guilty in intention, though his hands have served the justice that oversees human affairs; for the dead man's nearest kinsmen lie in wait, murderous enemies, who through excessive grief and inconsolable mourning rush to vengeance in an irrational impulse, without examining the truth and what is just by nature.

He permitted, then, such a man to take refuge neither in a temple, since he is not yet purified, nor in some neglected and obscure place, lest he be handed over easily, held in contempt; but in a sacred city, which is a borderland between the sacred and the profane place, a kind of second sanctuary. For the cities of the priesthood are more venerable than the rest, to the degree, I think, that their inhabitants are more honored than other inhabitants; for the law wishes, through the privilege of the city that receives him, to secure the most certain safety for the one who has fled there.

The time of his return, as I said, he fixed at the death of the high priest, for the following reason: just as, for each one who has been treacherously murdered, his kinsmen stand ready to exact justice and vengeance upon the murderers, so too the high priest is the kinsman and common next-of-kin of the whole nation, presiding as arbiter of justice for those in dispute according to the laws, and offering prayers and sacrifices each day and asking for good things as though on behalf of brothers and parents and children, so that every age and every part of the nation might be joined, as of one body, into one and the same fellowship of peace and good order, all reaching toward the same end.

Let every man, then, who has killed unwillingly be wary of him, as the champion and defender of those who were slain, and let him be shut up within the city to which he has fled, not venturing to go outside its walls, if indeed he has any regard for safety and for living without danger.

So when the law says, 'let the fugitive not return until the high priest dies,' it means something equivalent to this: until the common kinsman of all dies, to whom alone it is granted to arbitrate over both the living and the dead.

This, then, happens to be the reason that fits the ears of the younger; but the one which it is right to impart to the older and mature in character is this: as for voluntary offenses, let it be granted that ordinary priests alone are free of them—let anyone say this, too, of the other priests if he wishes—but as for both voluntary and involuntary offenses alike, by a special reckoning, the high priest must be free of them.

For it is not lawful that any stain of guilt attach to him at all, neither from premeditation nor from an unwilled turning of the soul, so that, being the revealer of sacred things, he may be adorned in both respects, employing a mind beyond reproach and a life of good conduct to which no disgrace attaches.

It would follow, then, that even those who have killed unwillingly should be regarded with suspicion by such a man—not as accursed, but not as pure either and wholly free from all fault, even if they seem to have served, in the fullest degree, the purposes of nature, which through them exacted vengeance on those who were slain, on whom she herself, judging secretly within herself, had passed a sentence of death. This applies, then, to the free and the citizens; next the law legislates concerning household servants who have been violently killed. Against those who kill household servants.

Household servants have a lesser lot in fortune, but partake of the same nature as their masters. For the divine law's standard of justice is not that of fortune but that of nature, in harmony with itself. Therefore masters ought not to use their powers over their servants to excess, displaying arrogance and contempt and dreadful cruelty; for these are not marks of a peaceable soul, but of one that, through lack of self-control, aspires to be unaccountable, after the manner of a tyrant's power.

For the man who fortifies his own house like a citadel, granting none of those within any freedom of speech, but savage toward everyone through an innate—or perhaps also cultivated—hatred of humankind, is a tyrant operating with lesser resources.

From this it is proved that such a man will not stop at the same point, should he gain greater resources; for he will pass at once to cities and lands and nations, having first enslaved his own homeland, as a demonstration that he intends to treat none of his other subjects with gentleness.

Let such a man, then, know clearly that he will not have license to go on offending continually and against many; for justice, which hates wickedness, the helper and champion of those wronged, will oppose him, and will demand from him an account and a reckoning for the calamity he has inflicted on his victims.

And should he claim that he inflicted blows for the sake of admonition, without intending to kill, he shall not walk away rejoicing at once, but shall be led before a tribunal and examined by exact assessors of the truth as to whether he killed willingly or unwillingly; and if he is found to have plotted with an unholy purpose, let him die, gaining nothing from the fact that he is a master, toward his own preservation.

But if those who were beaten do not die at once from the blows, but live a day or even two, then the master shall no longer be equally liable for murder, since he has gained an advantage for his defense—namely that he neither killed by the immediate blows nor afterward, though he had the man in his house, but let him live for as long a time as he was able to live, even if altogether short—apart from the fact that no one is so foolish as to attempt to harm another in matters where he himself will be the one wronged.

But one who kills a household servant harms himself far more beforehand, being deprived of the services he had from him while living and suffering a loss in value, perhaps a very great one. If, however, the servant happens to have done things deserving death, let the master bring him before the judges and make the wrongdoing known, making the laws, and not himself, the authority over the punishment. Against irrational animals which become the cause of death.

If a bull gores and kills someone, let it be stoned—for it is not fit to be slaughtered as a sacrificial victim—and let its flesh be inedible. Why? Because it is not holy for the flesh of what has killed a man to become food, or a relish for food, for other men.

But if the owner of the animal, knowing it to be wild and untamed, neither tied it up nor kept it shut up under guard, and had happened, moreover, to learn from others that it was not tame, yet let it out to graze freely, he shall be liable as though he were himself responsible; and the animal that did the goring shall be put to death at once, while the owner shall either be put to death in addition, or shall pay a ransom and price of deliverance, and the court shall decide what he must suffer or pay. If, however, the one killed should be a slave, let the master's loss in value be made good to him.

But if it gores not a man but a beast, let the owner of the one killed take the dead animal, and let the owner of the killer pay its equivalent, since he failed to guard against the savagery of his own animal though he had perceived it beforehand; and if, moreover, the animal itself kills another animal belonging to someone else, again let him pay the equivalent, being grateful that he does not have to bear a greater penalty for having begun the mischief.

Some are accustomed to dig pits in the earth very deep, either to stop up springs that well up, or to receive rainwater, and then, having widened underground channels out of sight, though it was necessary either to build a wall around the openings or to cover them over, through some dreadful carelessness or derangement of mind they leave them gaping open, to the destruction of some.

If, then, one of those passing by on the road, not perceiving it beforehand, steps into the empty space and is carried down and dies, let those who wish bring an accusation on behalf of the deceased against those who made the pit, and let the court assess what must be suffered or paid. But if an animal falls in and dies, let them, taking the carcass themselves, make good to the owner its full value as though it were still alive.

A crime akin and closely related to the one just mentioned is committed also by those who, in constructing houses, leave the roofs flat without surrounding them with a parapet, though it is necessary, so that no one may fall unnoticed to his death; for, to tell the truth, they commit murder, even if no one happens to be swept off and die, so far as their own part in the matter is concerned. Let them, then, be punished equally with those who leave the openings of their pits gaping.

Since wicked natures have no limit to their offending, but always go to extremes, exceeding themselves, intensifying their vices and stretching them out to the immeasurable and unbounded, the lawgiver would have decreed a thousand deaths against them, if that had been possible; but since it was not, he ordains a further punishment, commanding that those who kill be impaled.

Having prescribed this, he returns again to his own humanity, growing gentle toward those who have done savage deeds, and says: let the sun not go down upon the impaled, but let them be hidden in the earth before sunset, once taken down. For it was necessary that those who had raised themselves up on high as enemies of every part of the world should be shown punished before the sun, the sky, the air, the water, and the earth, but then be dragged away again to the region of the dead and buried, so that they should not pollute the regions above the earth.

Excellently, too, is this ordained: that fathers should not die on behalf of sons, nor sons on behalf of parents, but that each of those who has done deeds worthy of death should be put to death alone, on his own account — a rule made because of those who prize violence above justice, or who are excessively affectionate.

For these latter, out of an excessive and overflowing goodwill, will often be glad to die first in place of another, offering themselves, though blameless, on behalf of the guilty, thinking it a great gain not to see their children punished, if they are fathers, or their parents, if they are sons, since they would count the time that followed as unlivable and harder than any death.

To these one must say: your goodwill has no proper season, and whatever is out of season is rightly blamed, since even timely acts are praised only when timely. One ought indeed to love those who do things worthy of love, but no wicked person is truly a friend. Kinship, and those called friends even among kinsmen, are alienated by wickedness when they do wrong; for kinship in righteousness and every virtue is more intimate than kinship of blood, and whoever abandons it is reckoned not merely among strangers and foreigners but even among sworn enemies.

Why then do you put on the falsely borrowed name of goodwill, which is good and humane, concealing beneath it what is really softness and want of courage? Or are they not unmanly in nature, those in whom the reckoning of pity overcomes justice? And this so that you may commit a double wrong — rescuing the guilty from punishment, while you yourselves, who have done nothing blameworthy at all,

think it right to be punished in their place? But these people at least have this in mitigation, that they seek nothing for their own advantage, and that their excessive tenderness is for those nearest to them in kin, on whose behalf they are glad to think of dying for their safety.

But the cruel-hearted and those savage by nature — who would not reject them, I do not say from among the moderate, but even from among those not especially untamed in soul — who either contrive in secret or dare openly to hang the greatest disasters on one person in place of another, alleging friendship or kinship or partnership or some similar bond as a pretext for the ruin of those who have done no wrong? And they do this sometimes though they have suffered nothing terrible themselves, but for the sake of greed or plunder.

Recently a certain tax collector appointed among us, when some of those thought to owe money fled through poverty, in fear of merciless punishments, seized by force the wives and children and parents and the rest of the household of these men, and, beating them and dragging them through the mud and inflicting every kind of outrage, in order that they should either reveal the fugitive or pay what he owed — though they could do neither, the one because they did not know, the other because they were no less destitute than the one who had fled — he did not let go until, stretching their bodies on the rack and the wheel, he killed them with newly devised forms of death.

He tied up a basket full of sand with cords and hung it around their necks, a most crushing weight, setting them up in the open air in the middle of the marketplace, so that some, worn down by concentrated tortures — the wind and the sun and the shame from those passing by and the burdens hanging from them — would be forced to give up in agony, while others watching their sufferings would suffer beforehand in anticipation;

and some of these, receiving through their eyes a sharper perception in their souls than the sufferers themselves, as though they were being tormented in the bodies of others, took leave of life before their time, by sword or poison or the noose, thinking it a great stroke of fortune amid such misery to die without torture;

and those who did not manage to kill themselves in time were led out in order, as in the allotment of inheritances, first those nearest of kin, and after them the second and third, down to the last of them; and whenever none of the kinsmen remained, the evil crossed over even to their neighbors, and sometimes even to villages and cities, which quickly became deserted and emptied of their inhabitants, as people moved away and scattered to places where they expected to escape notice.

But perhaps it is no wonder that men barbarous by nature, untasted of gentle education, obeying despotic commands, exact the annual tribute — not only from property but from bodies too — for the sake of tax-gathering, bringing dangers even upon the soul, one person suffering for another.

But even the very boundaries and rules of justice, the lawgivers themselves, looking to reputation rather than to truth, have consented to become the most unjust of all, commanding that in the case of traitors their children should be destroyed along with them, and in the case of tyrants, the five households nearest to them. Why is this?

I would say: if they shared in the wrongdoing, let them be punished together with the wrongdoers; but if they neither took part in it nor were zealous imitators of the like, nor, puffed up by the good fortune of their kin, indulged themselves in soft living, for what reason will they be destroyed? Is it for this one reason alone, that they are kinsmen? Are punishments then for lineage, or for transgressions?

Perhaps, you solemn lawgivers, the members of your own households happen to be good; but if they had turned out wicked, I do not think you would ever have entertained such decrees even in your minds — indeed, even in drafting them for others you would have been troubled — because of the foresight one takes to avoid suffering anything irreparable oneself... one who lives a life of safety ought to consider the case of those in danger, and to examine it as though he stood in the same misfortunes; for the one condition carries fear, which makes a person, guarding against it for himself, unwilling to overlook it in another, while the other condition is free of fear, and it is this that has often persuaded people to disregard the security of those who are blameless.

Our lawgiver, then, having reckoned all this, and having seen how the errors current among other peoples corrupt the best form of government, turned away from them in aversion and detested those who practiced them, whether out of carelessness or out of inhumanity and vice, and never handed over any of his fellow citizens to punishment by making him bear the addition of another's wrongdoing.

For this reason he flatly forbade that sons be put to death in place of parents, or parents in place of sons, judging it right that the punishment, whether of fines, or blows and more violent outrages, or wounds and maimings and disfigurements and exiles and all the other penalties of justice, should belong to those whose transgressions they were; for in remembering the single principle that one person should not be killed in place of another, he included within it also the lesser penalties that had been left unspoken. On women's not behaving shamelessly.

Marketplaces and council chambers and courts of law and public gatherings and assemblies of crowded companies, and the life lived in the open air through speech and action in both war and peace, are fitting for men; but for women, keeping house and staying within are fitting — for unmarried girls, the inner courtyard within the outer doors marks their boundary; for grown women, the outer gate.

For there are two kinds of city, the larger and the smaller: the larger are called towns, the smaller households. Men have been allotted the governance of the larger, whose name is statecraft, and women that of the smaller, whose name is household management.

Let a woman, then, not meddle with matters outside her household management, seeking as she does a life confined within, nor let her be seen, like something roaming loose, on the roads in the sight of other men — except when she must go to the temple, and even then taking care to go when the marketplace is not crowded — but having returned home once most people have gone back, in the manner of a free woman and truly a citizen, performing sacrifices and prayers in quiet, for the averting of evils and the sharing in good things.

But for women to dare to rush out, under pretext of alliance or aid, when men are quarreling or brawling, is reprehensible and no small degree shameless — women whom the law did not think it right to bring even into wars and campaigns and the dangers undergone for the whole of one's country, seeing what was fitting, which he intended always and everywhere to be kept unshaken, judging this very thing to be in itself better than victory and freedom and every kind of good fortune.

If, however, a woman, learning that her husband is being outraged, overcome by longing for him out of wifely affection, is forced by the passion that has seized her to rush forward, let her not, in her boldness, become more masculine than her nature, but let her remain a woman even in the ways she gives help; for it would be altogether dreadful if a woman, wishing to rescue her husband, should bring outrage upon herself, filling her own life with shame and great reproaches for a boldness beyond remedy.

For a woman will rail in the marketplace and utter some word among those forbidden, yet when another speaks ill she will not run off and stop her ears; and now some go so far that women not only, through unbridled tongue, revile and abuse in a crowd of men, but even bring their hands into action — hands trained for weaving and spinning wool, not for blows and violence, as though they were practicing pancratiasts or boxers.

And other things one might perhaps bear and endure; but this is intolerable — if a woman should be so bold as to seize hold of the genitals of the man her husband is quarreling with. Let her not be excused on the ground that she seems to be doing this in helping her husband, but let her be restrained from her excessive boldness by paying a penalty, so that she herself, wishing to commit the same offense again, will not be able to, and the rest, who are too impulsive, will be moderated by fear; and let the penalty be the cutting off of the hand that touched what it was not lawful to touch.

It is also right to praise the organizers of the athletic games, who barred women from watching, so that by being present while men were stripped naked they might not corrupt the approved currency of modesty, disregarding the ordinances that nature has fixed for each division of our kind. For neither is it fitting for men to be present while women take off their clothes; rather each sex should turn its eyes away from the other when it is stripped, following the intentions of nature.

Then again, if the eyes are liable to reproach, are not the hands far more culpable? For the eyes often see even what we do not wish to see, since they act like freedmen and force their way; but the hands, ranked among our subordinate parts, obey us and serve our commands like troops under orders.

This is the explanation commonly given by many; but I have heard another from inspired men who take most of the provisions of the laws to be visible symbols of invisible things, and spoken things standing for things unspoken. It was something like this: of the soul, as in families of kin, one part is male and belongs to men, the other female and belongs to women. The male part is the one that dedicates itself to God alone, as to a father and maker and cause of all things; the female part is the one that hangs upon things subject to becoming and decay, stretching out its power like a hand so as to grasp blindly at whatever it happens upon, welcoming a generative process that undergoes countless turns and changes, when instead it ought to cling to the unchangeable, blessed, and thrice-happy divine nature.

Reasonably, then, it has been laid down symbolically that the hand which has touched the twin parts should be cut off — not so that the body should be maimed, deprived of its most necessary member, but so that the soul should cut away every godless calculation that uses as its stepping-stone all things that come into being. For twins are a symbol of begetting and of generation.

Following the sequence of nature I will add this as well: the monad is an image of the first cause, while the dyad is an image of passive and divisible matter. Whoever, then, honors and welcomes the dyad ahead of the monad should not fail to realize that he is accepting matter rather than God. For this reason the law has judged it right that this reaching-out of the soul should be cut off like a hand; for there is no greater impiety than to ascribe to the passive the power that belongs to the agent.

One might justly find fault with those who assign penalties unlike the wrongs they punish — fines of money for assaults, or loss of civic standing for wounds and maimings, or perpetual exile and banishment for willful killing, or imprisonment for theft. For unevenness and inequality are hostile to a constitution that pursues truth.

Our law is the guide to equality, commanding that wrongdoers undergo the same things they have done: from their property, if they have wronged their neighbors in respect of property; from their bodies, if they have sinned against bodies in their parts and members and senses; and if they have plotted even against the soul, it commands that the penalty be exacted upon the soul. For to undergo one kind of thing in place of another, when the two have no community but are separated in kind, belongs to those who overturn laws, not to those who confirm them.

We say this while other cases stand differently. For it is not the same thing to strike a stranger with blows as to speak ill of a ruler or a private citizen, nor is doing something forbidden in profane places the same as doing it in sacred ones, nor is it the same on festivals and public assemblies and state sacrifices, and again on days marked by a cessation of ordinary activity or altogether inauspicious — and all other such matters must be examined carefully, for they either increase or diminish the punishment.

Again, if anyone, it says, knocks out the eye of a male or female slave, he shall set them free. Why? Just as nature, in granting the body its governing power, attached it to the head — giving it the most fitting place, the topmost point, as to a king (for nature sent it up to the height and set it there to rule, laying it as a base under the whole frame from neck to feet, as a pedestal supports a statue) — so too she gave the mastery among the senses to the eyes. She assigned them a dwelling above even these other parts, as rulers, wishing to honor them not only above the rest but with the most conspicuous and visible location.

It would take long to enumerate the uses and benefits that the eyes provide our race; but one, the finest, must be mentioned. Heaven rained down philosophy, the human mind received it, but sight was its guide; for sight was the first to behold the highways stretching across the ether.

Philosophy is the fountain of all goods that are truly good; the one who draws from it for the acquisition and use of virtue is praiseworthy, but the one who draws from it for the sake of cunning and outwitting others is blameworthy. The former resembles a good companion at a feast, who gladdens both himself and his fellow diners; the latter resembles the man who gorges himself on unmixed wine to the point of drunken violence and outrage against himself and those nearby.

In what manner, then, sight guided philosophy must now be told. Looking up into the ether, it beheld the sun and moon and the wandering and fixed stars, that most sacred army of heaven, a world within the world; then the risings and settings, the harmonious dances, and the conjunctions occurring at fixed periods of time, the eclipses, the illuminations,

then the waxings and wanings of the moon, the sun's motions in latitude, as it advances from the south toward the north and again returns from the north toward the south, bringing about the seasons of the year, by which all things come to fruition, and countless other marvels besides these; and surveying all these things over land and sea and air, it displayed them to the mind with eager care.

And the mind, seeing through sight what it was not able to grasp by itself, did not stop at the things seen alone, but, being a lover of learning and of beauty, and marveling at the spectacle, formed a reasonable conclusion: that these things had not come together automatically by irrational motions, but by the intelligence of God, whom it is right to call father and maker; and that they are not unlimited but bounded by the circumscription of a single world, embraced, city-like, by the outermost sphere of the fixed stars; and that the father who begot it cares for what has come into being by the law of nature, taking forethought for both the whole and its parts.

Then it went on to examine further what the substance of the visible is, and whether it is the same for all things in the world or different for different things, and out of what each thing was fashioned, and the causes through which it came to be, and the powers by which it is held together, and whether these are bodies or bodiless.

For what else could the inquiry into these and similar matters be called but philosophy? And what name could be more fitting for one who considers these things than 'philosopher'? For to consider God and the world and the things within it in common — both living creatures and plants — and the intelligible patterns as well as their perceptible outcomes, and the virtue and vice belonging to each individual thing that has come into being, reveals a disposition that is a lover of learning, a lover of contemplation, and truly a lover of wisdom.

This, then, is the greatest good that sight provides to human life; and it seems to me to have been granted this privilege because it stands nearer of kin to the soul than the other senses. For all of them have some affinity with the mind, but sight, as in households, has been allotted the first and highest rank, nearest of kin.

One could establish this from many considerations. For who does not know that the eyes of those who rejoice grow bright and smile, while those of the grieving are full of gloom and downcast looks? And if the burden becomes excessive, pressing and weighing them down, they weep; and when anger prevails, they swell and take on a bloodshot, fiery look, but a gracious and gentle look, if the passion relaxes.

And when reasoning and reflecting, the pupils grow fixed, as if sharing in the thought; whereas among the more simple-minded, through folly, the gaze too wanders unsettled. And in general the eyes suffer along with the passions of the soul and are naturally disposed to change together with its countless shifts, on account of their kinship; for it seems to me that God has made nothing so clear an imitation of the invisible

as sight is of reasoning. If, then, anyone has plotted against sight, the best and most authoritative of the senses, and has been caught knocking out the eye of a free person, let him suffer the same in return; but not if the victim is a slave — not because the wrongdoer deserves less blame for a lesser injury, but because the one who has suffered would gain a worse master in the one maimed in return, who would nurse the grievance forever and take vengeance every day as an implacable enemy, with commands more burdensome and harsh than his strength could bear, under which pressure he would break even his soul.

The law, then, took forethought that the plotter should not go unpunished nor the maimed person be further wronged, by commanding that if anyone knocks out the eye of a household slave, he must without hesitation grant him freedom.

For in this way the offender will receive a double penalty for what he has done, being deprived at once of the honor and of the service, and a third thing harder than either of those named — being compelled to confer the greatest benefit on an enemy whom perhaps he had prayed to be able always to harm; while the one who endured the injury will have double consolation, not only being freed but also escaping a harsh and cruel master.

The law also commands that if anyone knocks out a slave's tooth, freedom must be granted to the slave as a gift. Why? Because life is precious, and nature has fashioned teeth as instruments of life, by which the management of nourishment is carried out. Of teeth, some are cutters, deemed worthy of that name for cutting food and other edible things, and others are grinders, for their ability to crush what has been cut into smaller pieces.

For this reason the maker and father, who is not accustomed to fashion anything that is not appointed for some use, did not produce the teeth right away at the first formation, as he did each of the other parts, having considered that they would be a superfluous burden to an infant that was going to be fed on milk, and a harsh injury to the breasts, from which nourishment flows, if bitten during the drawing of the milk.

Foreseeing, then, the fitting time — and this is when the infant is weaned — he brought forth the growth of teeth, which he had stored up beforehand, once it was already able to bear the more solid nourishment that requires the organs I have mentioned, turning away from the nourishment that comes through milk.

If, then, someone yields to a servant's arrogance and knocks out a tooth, the minister and assistant of the most necessary things—nourishment and life—let him set the injured party free, being himself deprived of the service and ministry he received from the one he wronged.

Is a tooth of equal worth to an eye, someone will say? I would answer that each is of equal worth in relation to the purpose for which it came to be: the eye in relation to visible things, the tooth in relation to edible things. But if one wishes to compare them, one will find the eye the most venerable of the body's parts, since it is the spectator of the most venerable thing in the cosmos, the heaven, while the tooth is useful as the worker of nourishment, the most useful thing for living. And the one who has lost his sight is not thereby prevented from living, but for the one whose teeth have been knocked out, the most pitiable death lies in wait.

If, then, someone plots against these members in his household servants, let him not fail to recognize that he is contriving for them, by his own hand, a famine amid abundance and plenty. For what use is it for there to be no lack of food, if the instruments for managing it have been stripped away and cast off, because of harsh, implacable, and savage-hearted masters?

For this reason, elsewhere too, he forbids lenders to take a millstone or an upper millstone as a pledge from debtors, adding that the one who does this takes a soul in pledge. For the one who takes away the instruments of living rushes toward manslaughter, since he has resolved to plot even against a soul.

He took such great forethought that no one should become in any way responsible for another's death, that he holds even those who have touched a corpse—one that has met death according to nature—not to be pure at once, until they have been sprinkled and washed and so purified. Yet he did not permit even the perfectly pure to enter the sanctuary within seven days, commanding that they be purified on the third day and the seventh.

Moreover, to those entering a house in which someone has died, he commands that they touch nothing until they have washed themselves and also washed thoroughly the garments they were wearing; and he considers the vessels, the furniture, and everything else that happens to be inside the house to be, one might almost say, entirely impure.

For the soul of a human being is a precious thing, and when it departs and migrates elsewhere, everything left behind becomes defiled, being deprived of the divine image, since the human mind is godlike, having been stamped after the archetypal form, the Logos above all.

Let the other things also be impure, he says, whatever the impure person touches, defiled by sharing in what is not pure. This oracle seems somehow to reveal a more universal declaration, not resting on the body alone, but further investigating the characters and ways of the soul.

For strictly speaking, the impure one is the unjust and impious person, in whom no reverence enters for either human or divine things, who confounds and mingles everything on account of the excesses of his passions and the extremes of his vices, so that whatever matters he touches become all tainted, changing together with the depravity of the one who acts; and conversely, the deeds of good people are praiseworthy, becoming better through the virtues of those who perform them, since what comes to be tends somehow to be made like those who do it.

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