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:

Whether, then, he means the law given together with generation, or the one given afterward — yet from God is both the law of nature and the law of learning, being one, as Plato too in the Statesman says there is one legislator, and in the Laws one who will understand the things of music, teaching by these that the Word is one and God is one.

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.

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

For instance, when he was on the Council and had taken the counsellor’s oath by which he bound himself to give counsel in accordance with the laws, it fell to his lot to preside in the Assembly when the people wanted to condemn Thrasyllus and Erasinides and their colleagues to death by a single vote.

and I withdraw my answer that whatever a despot enacts without persuasion is a law.

Everything, I think, that men constrain others to do without persuasion, whether by enactment or not, is not law, but force.

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

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

but it would not seem to make any difference whether these laws are written or unwritten, or whether they are to regulate the education of a single person or of a number of people, any more than in the case of music or athletics or any other form of training.

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

no one of you will feel any anxiety lest Demosthenes, a man high-spirited and distinguished in war, will, if he fails to receive the meed of valor, go back home and make away with himself—he who so despises honor in your eyes that on this pestilential and accountable head of his upon which Ctesiphon, in defiance of all the laws, proposes that you set a crown, he has inflicted a thousand gashes, an …

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;

The laws, the oaths, the sacrifices, the proclamations, in fact the entire proceeding in connection with trials for murder differ as profoundly as they do from the proceedings elsewhere simply because it is of supreme importance that the facts at issue, upon which so much turns, should themselves be rightly interpreted.

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;

Inasmuch as the laws, men of the jury, have granted that a special plea be entered in cases where a man, after having given a release and discharge, nevertheless brings suit, and as both of these have been given me by Pantaenetus here, I have pleaded, as you have just now heard, that his suit is not admissible.

And the laws grant the filing of pleas to bar action also in case of charges brought before magistrates who have not due competency.

You hear the law, men of Athens, expressly stating that in cases where anyone has given a release and discharge, there shall be no further action.

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.

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

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.

I beseech and implore you all, men of the jury, to come to my aid and to punish those who thus without scruple have given false testimony, for your own sakes, for mine, for the sake of justice and the laws.

Callippus indeed does not appear to me to be a man of such slight importance as to be treated with contempt—a man of such influence that last year, after he had instituted this action against me, and had challenged me to refer the matter to Lysitheides for arbitration (and I, although scorned by him, yet took wise counsel in this at any rate—I made the reference in due legal form, and carried the …

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;

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;

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.

I desire now to have read to you the law also regarding those appointed to succeed others in the trierarchy, that you may know how severe the penalties are when a man fails to take over a ship from his predecessor within the appointed time, and how Polycles scoffed, not at me only, but at you and at the laws.

Of these I was the first to pay my taxes in advance, nor did I seek to get myself excused either on the ground that I was serving as trierarch and could not defray the costs of two public services at once, or that the laws did not permit such a thing.

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.

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.

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.

and they ought, furthermore, to appreciate the fact that while any number of men both among the Hellenes and among the barbarians have been able to lay down laws, there are not many who can discourse upon questions of public welfare in a spirit worthy both of Athens and of Hellas.

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.

for it is not by legislation, but by morals, that states are well directed, since men who are badly reared will venture to transgress even laws which are drawn up with minute exactness, whereas those who are well brought up will be willing to respect even a simple code.

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

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.

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.

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

but, because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear to each other whatever we desire, not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts;

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

Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law.

To determine whether this proposition be correct, we must look at the general signification of the term law.

The true and general meaning of it, is that natural, permanent, unalterable principle, which governs any particular thing or class of things.

"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.