The Law

I find man instituted by God as free and of his own arbitration and of his own power, observing in him no image and likeness of God more than the form of this kind of state.

But even the law which you accuse, which you twist into controversies, goodness dispensed, taking thought for man, that he might cleave to God, lest he should seem not so much free as cast off, to be levelled with His servants, the other animals, loosed from God and free out of His disdain;

But since from this we are now understood to be building toward this — that man's free power of arbitration is such that what befell him is to be charged not to God but to himself — lest you should from this object that he ought not to have been so instituted, if liberty and the power of arbitration was to prove destructive, this too I will first defend:

And, like Paul, the prophecy reproaches the people as not understanding the law:

And the Apostle has shown the beneficence of the law, through the passage about the Jews, writing somewhat thus:

for the law is a benefactor, able both to make the unjust just, if only they will hearken to it, and to free the others from present evils.

But force, the negation of law, what is that, Pericles?

Tell me, Pericles, he said, can you teach me what a law is?

Well, Alcibiades, there is no great difficulty about what you desire.

but law on the other hand is a rule, emanating from a certain wisdom and intelligence, that has compulsory force.

And it is difficult to obtain a right education in virtue from youth up without being brought up under right laws;

Accordingly we shall need laws to regulate the discipline of adults as well, and in fact the whole life of the people generally;

About crowns of gold and proclamations in the theater—against the laws.

On the ground that he who moved the decree is not the sort of man to be punished?

Solon, who equipped the democracy with the best of laws, a philosopher and a good lawgiver, begging you soberly, as he naturally would, by no means to hold the words of Demosthenes as more weighty than your oaths and the laws;

you shall decide my case by the laws of the land:

and while the crime with which I am charged can still be tried legally, the laws under which I was arrested do not concern my case.

I say this because if you follow my advice, it is still open to you to regret your action, and that regret can be remedied by punishing me at the second trial:

The plot was unmasked by the vigilance of Cicero, five of the traitors were summarily executed, and in the overthrow of the army that had been gathered in their support Catiline himself perished.

Let the Athenian, then, follow the laws of Solon, and the Argive those of Phoroneus, and the Spartan those of Lycurgus;

Read.

Read them this law.

Take also the mining law.

for I am well aware that for you who are citizens by birth it is sufficient to perform public services as the laws require;

and in the interest of the laws and of the oaths which you have taken as jurors punish the man who has robbed me of a verdict by giving false testimony, and make him an example to others, remembering all that you have heard from me and bearing it in mind, if they attempt to mislead you, and meeting them at every point.

To prove that I am telling the truth in this, the clerk shall read you the law itself.

whether according to the laws of the state, or according to the laws which Phormio enacts for himself.

For, if anyone should ask you in accordance with what laws we should live as citizens, you would of course answer, the established laws.

If you do this, you will have rendered a decision both just and in accordance with the laws, and moreover one that is worthy of yourselves and of my father;

I, on my part, beseech you on my own behalf and on my father’s, to bear in mind that, in support of all that I have said, I have produced before you witnesses and circumstantial evidence and laws and sworn statements;

And that I was ready on my father’s behalf to take the oath which the law prescribes when an heir is sued in court on a charge brought against one who is dead,— that, namely, I believed that my father never agreed to pay the plaintiff the money which Lycon left, and that the plaintiff was not introduced to my father by Lycon;

for the laws forbid anyone to give harborage to any exile, and make one who does so liable to the same punishment.

You are going, said he, to bring Callistratus, an exile whom the Athenians have twice condemned to death, from Methonê to Thasos to Timomachus, his kinsman by marriage.

but as it is, the question concerns the succession to a ship, and extra trierarchal expenses for five months and six days, and it concerns also the laws, whether they are to be in force, or not.

So the speakers in the Assembly, one and all, cried that the democracy was overthrown, that the laws were null and void, and so on.

For every king, every despot is the sworn foe of freedom and of law.

And indeed the law is so much more useful than divination from the gods, inasmuch as some have ere now mistaken the oracles, and, thinking that they acted according to them, did the contrary, whence, I think, they met with calamities;

” Νόμος, a Law, so great and famous a term in the political vocabulary of the later Greek society, does not occur in Homer.

Now everyone would admit, I think, that our laws have been the source of very many and very great benefits to the life of humanity.

nay, while we take our solemn oath at the beginning of each year that we will hear impartially both accusers and accused, we depart so far from this in practice, that when the accuser makes his charges we give ear to whatever he may say;

For these reasons, men who make it their duty to invent discourses of that kind should be held in higher esteem than those who propose and write down laws, inasmuch as they are rarer, have the more difficult task, and must have superior qualities of mind.

for I see that our laws have been made to secure it, that men of character and reputation pride themselves upon practicing it, and that it constitutes the chief concern of all well-regulated states;

in consequence, their fields have been laid waste, their cities sacked, their people driven from their homes, their constitutions overturned, and the laws abolished under which they were once the most fortunate among the Hellenes.

But in fact, they thought, virtue is not advanced by written laws but by the habits of every-day life;

For they saw that in cases of contract the judges were not in the habit of indulging their sense of equity but were strictly faithful to the laws;

for in that case there would be no reason why all of the Hellenes should not be on the same level, at any rate in so far as it is easy to borrow written codes from each other.

For this it is which has laid down laws concerning things just and unjust, and things base and honorable;

Regard my words as your law, and try to abide by them, knowing that those of you who most faithfully do what I desire will most quickly be able to live as they themselves desire.

You should be self-effacing in your attitude toward my authority, abiding by our customs and preserving the royal laws, but conspicuous in your services on behalf of the state and in the other duties which are assigned to you by my command.

Tillings of fields, walls, laws, and arms, and roads,

Such is the true character and definition of law.

To do this it is necessary to define the term law.

Though this doctrine may make sad havoc with constitutions and statute books, it is nevertheless law.

"For the law," he says, "of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has manumitted me from the law of delinquency and of death" — surely from that which he premised to dwell in our members.

But the power of delinquency is the law — that other one, without doubt, which he constituted in his members warring against the law of his mind, that very force of delinquency, namely, against the will.