by Daisy Dunn
After this there was an interval of four or five days, as I shall bring clear evidence to show. But first, I want to tell you what happened on that last day. There is a man called Sostratus, who was a close friend of mine. I happened to meet him, at sunset, on his way back from the country. I knew that if he arrived at that time, he would find none of his friends at home, so I invited him to dine with me. We returned to my house, went upstairs, and had supper. After he had had a good meal, he left, and I went to bed. Eratosthenes entered the house, gentlemen, and the slave girl woke me at once to say he was inside. I told her to take care of the doors, and going downstairs, I went out silently. I called at the houses of various friends: some I discovered were out, and others were not even in town. I gathered as many as I could find at home and came back. We collected torches from the nearest shop and made our way in; the door was open, because it had been kept ready by the slave girl. We burst open the door of the bedroom, and those of us who were first to enter saw him still lying next to my wife. The others, who came later, saw him standing on the bed naked. I struck him, gentlemen, and knocked him down. I twisted his arms behind him and tied them, and asked why he had committed this outrage against my house by entering it. He admitted his guilt, and begged and entreated me not to kill him but to accept compensation. I replied, “It is not I who will kill you, but the law of the city. You have broken that law and have had less regard for it than for your own pleasure. You have preferred to commit this crime against my wife and my children rather than behaving responsibly and obeying the laws.”
So it was, gentlemen, that this man met the fate which the laws prescribe for those who behave like that. He was not snatched from the street, nor had he taken refuge at the hearth, as my opponents claim. How could he have done so? It was inside the bedroom that he was struck, and he immediately fell down, and I tied his hands. There were so many men in the house that he could not have escaped, and he did not have a knife or a club or any other weapon with which to repel those coming at him. I am sure you realize, gentlemen, that men who commit crimes never admit that their enemies are telling the truth, but instead they themselves tell lies and use tricks to provoke their hearers to anger against the innocent.
So, first of all, please read out the law.
[LAW]
He did not dispute it, gentlemen. He admitted his guilt, he begged and pleaded not to be killed, and he was ready to pay money in compensation. But I did not accept his proposal. I reckoned that the law of the city should have greater authority; and I exacted from him the penalty that you yourselves, believing it to be just, have established for people who behave like that.
Will my witnesses to these facts please come forward.
[WITNESSES]
Read me this law also, the one from the inscribed stone on the Areopagus.2
[LAW]
You hear, gentlemen, how the court of the Areopagus (to which the ancestral right of judging homicide cases belongs, as has been reaffirmed in our own days) has expressly decreed that a man is not to be convicted of homicide if he captures an adulterer in bed with his wife and exacts this penalty from him. Indeed, the lawgiver was so convinced that this is appropriate in the case of married women that he has established the same penalty in the case of concubines, who are less valuable. Clearly if he had had a more severe penalty available in the case of married women, he would have imposed it; but in fact he was unable to find a more powerful sanction than death to use in their case, so he decided the penalty should be the same as in the case of concubines.
Read me this law as well.
[LAW]
You hear, gentlemen: if anybody indecently assaults a free man or boy, he shall pay twice the damages; if he assaults a woman (in those categories where the death sentence is applicable), he shall be liable to the same penalty. Clearly therefore, gentlemen, the lawgiver believed that those who commit rape deserve a lighter penalty than those who seduce: he condemned seducers to death, but for rapists he laid down double damages. He believed that those who act by violence are hated by the people they have assaulted, whereas those who seduce corrupt the minds of their victims in such a way that they make other people’s wives into members of their own families rather than of their husbands’. The victim’s whole household becomes the adulterer’s, and as for the children, it is unclear whose they are, the husband’s or the seducer’s. Because of this the lawgiver laid down the death penalty for them.
In my case, gentlemen, the laws have not only acquitted me of crime but have actually commanded me to exact this penalty. It is for you to decide whether the law is to be powerful or worthless. In my opinion, every city enacts its laws in order that when we are uncertain in a situation, we can go to them to see what to do, and in such cases the law commands the victims to exact this penalty. So I ask you now to reach the same verdict as the law does. If not, you will be giving adulterers such immunity that you will encourage burglars to call themselves adulterers too. They will realize that if they describe adultery as their object and claim that they have entered somebody else’s house for this purpose, nobody will dare touch them. Everyone will know that we must say good-bye to the laws on adultery and take notice only of your verdict—which is the sovereign authority over all the city’s affairs.
1 On the Thesmophoria, a women’s festival, see Story 23.
2 The Areopagus (consisting of former Archons) was the most famous Athenian homicide court.
THE POWER OF LOVE
Symposium
Plato
Translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818
In this philosophical dialogue by Socrates’ most celebrated pupil, Plato (420s–340s BC), Socrates, Alcibiades, Aristophanes and a number of others are invited to a symposium or party at the house of Agathon. The guests eat, pour libations to the gods, and sing hymns. The conversation then turns to love. In this extract, the comedian Aristophanes (author of Story 23) playfully expounds his understanding of human sexuality. While Plato wrote a great many dialogues in the fourth century BC, this speech from his Symposium has to be one of the most entertaining. The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who turned his hand to a number of classical texts in his lifetime, brought out the liveliness of the original in this translation from 1818.
“You ought first to know the nature of man, and the adventures he has gone through; for his nature was anciently far different from that which it is at present. First, then, human beings were formerly not divided into two sexes, male and female; there was also a third, common to both the others, the name of which remains though the sex itself has disappeared. The androgynous sex, both in appearance and in name, was common both to male and female; its name alone remains, which labours under a reproach.
“At the period to which I refer, the form of every human being was round, the back and the sides being circularly joined, and each had four arms and as many legs; two faces fixed upon a round neck, exactly like each other; one head between the two faces; four ears, and everything else as from such proportions it is easy to conjecture. Man walked upright as now, in whatever direction he pleased; but when he wished to go fast he made use of all his eight limbs, and proceeded in a rapid motion by rolling circularly round,—like tumblers, who, with their legs in the air, tumble round and round. We account for the production of three sexes by supposing that, at the beginning, the male was produced from the sun, the female from the earth; and that sex which participated in both sexes, from the moon, by reason of the androgynous nature of the moon. They were round, and their mode of proceeding was round, from the similarity which must needs subsist between them and their parent.
“They were strong also, and had aspiring thoughts. They it was who levied war against the Gods; and what Homer writes concerning Ephialtus and Otus, that they sought to ascend heaven and dethrone the Gods, in reality relates to this primitive people. Jupiter and the other Gods debated what was to be done in this emergency. For neither could they prevail on themselves to destroy them, as they had the giants,
with thunder, so that the race should be abolished; for in that case they would be deprived of the honours of the sacrifices which they were in the custom of receiving from them; nor could they permit a continuance of their insolence and impiety. Jupiter, with some difficulty having desired silence, at length spoke, ‘I think,’ said he, ‘I have contrived a method by which we may, by rendering the human race more feeble, quell the insolence which they exercise, without proceeding to their utter destruction. I will cut each of them in half; and so they will at once be weaker and more useful on account of their numbers. They shall walk upright on two legs. If they show any more insolence, and will not keep quiet, I will cut them up in half again, so they shall go about hopping on one leg.’
“So saying, he cut human beings in half, as people cut eggs before they salt them, or as I have seen eggs cut with hairs. He ordered Apollo to take each one as he cut him, and turn his face and half his neck towards the operation, so that by contemplating it he might become more cautious and humble; and then, to cure him, Apollo turned the face found, and drawing the skin upon what we now call the belly, like a contracted pouch, and leaving one opening, that which is called the navel, tied it in the middle. He then smoothed many other wrinkles, and moulded the breast with much such an instrument as the leather-cutters use to smooth the skins upon the block. He left only a few wrinkles in the belly, near the navel, to serve as a record of its former adventure. Immediately after this division, as each desired to possess the other half of himself, these divided people threw their arms around and embraced each other, seeking to grow together; and from this resolution to do nothing without the other half, they died of hunger and weakness: when one half died and the other was left alive, that which was thus left sought the other and folded it to its bosom; whether that half were an entire woman (for we now call it a woman) or a man; and thus they perished. But Jupiter, pitying them, thought of another contrivance. In this manner is generation now produced, by the union of male and female; so that from the embrace of a man and woman the race is propagated.
“From this period, mutual love has naturally existed between human beings; that reconciler and bond of union of their original nature, which seeks to make two one, and to heal the divided nature of man. Every one of us is thus the half of what may be properly termed a man, and like a [flatfish] cut in two, is the imperfect portion of an entire whole, perpetually necessitated to seek the half belonging to him.
“Such as I have described is ever an affectionate lover and a faithful friend, delighting in that which is in conformity with his own nature. Whatever, therefore, any such as I have described are impetuously struck, through the sentiment of their former union, with love and desire and the want of community, they are unwilling to be divided even for a moment. These are they who devote their whole lives to each other, with a vain and inexpressible longing to obtain from each other something they know not what; for it is not merely the sensual delights of their intercourse for the sake of which they dedicate themselves to each other with such serious affection; but the soul of each manifestly thirsts for, from the other, something which there are no words to describe, and divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its obscure desire. If Vulcan should say to persons thus affected, ‘My good people, what is it that you want with one another?’ And if, while they were hesitating what to answer, he should proceed to ask, ‘Do you not desire the closest union and singleness to exist between you, so that you may never be divided night or day? If so, I will melt you together, and make you grow into one, so that both in life and death ye may be undivided. Consider, is this what you desire? Will it content you if you become that which I propose?’ We all know that no one would refuse such an offer, but would at once feel that this was what he had ever sought; and intimately to mix and melt and to be melted together with his beloved, so that one should be made out of two.
“The cause of this desire is, that according to our original nature, we were once entire. The desire and the pursuit of integrity and union is that which we all love. First, as I said, we were entire, but now we have been dwindled through our own weakness, as the Arcadians by the Lacedaemonians. There is reason to fear, if we are guilty of any additional impiety towards the Gods, that we may be cut in two again, and may go about like those figures painted on the columns, divided through the middle of our nostrils, as thin as lispae. On which account every man ought to be exhorted to pay due reverence to the Gods, that we may escape so severe a punishment, and obtain those things which Love, our general and commander, incites us to desire; against whom let none rebel by exciting the hatred of the Gods. For if we continue on good terms with them, we may discover and possess those lost and concealed objects of our love; a good-fortune which now befalls to few.
“I assert, then, that the happiness of all, both men and women, consists singly in the fulfilment of their love, and in that possession of its objects by which we are in some degree restored to our ancient nature. If this be the completion of felicity, that must necessarily approach nearest to it, in which we obtain the possession and society of those whose natures most intimately accord with our own. And if we would celebrate any God as the author of this benefit, we should justly celebrate Love with hymns of joy; who, in our present condition, brings good assistance in our necessity, and affords great hopes, if we persevere in piety towards the Gods, that he will restore us to our original state, and confer on us the complete happiness alone suited to our nature.”
THE AGEING PROCESS
Republic
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1888
Socrates is the main protagonist in the majority of Plato’s thirty-odd dialogues. In the Republic, he encounters a group of men at the Piraeus, the port of Athens. They later reconvene at the house of Polemarchus, whose elderly father, Cephalus, Socrates engages in conversation. Let the sea of Greek names wash over you as you witness Socrates drawing out intelligent thought from his interlocutor as only he can. The pair talk about the pleasures and pains of growing old. Their words are an entrée to the discussion of justice and the ideal state for which this dialogue is famous. As well as translating Plato’s dialogues, Benjamin Jowett – intellectual titan of Victorian Oxford where he was Regius Professor of Greek for thirty-eight years – also translated works by Aristotle and Thucydides.
Persons of the Dialogue
SOCRATES, who is the narrator.
GLAUCON.
ADEIMANTUS.
POLEMARCHUS.
CEPHALUS.
THRASYMACHUS.
CLEITOPHON.
And others who are mute auditors.
The scene is laid in the house of Cephalus at the Piraeus; and the whole dialogue is narrated by Socrates the day after it actually took place to Timaeus, Hermocrates, Critias, and a nameless person, who are introduced in the Timaeus.
I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess1; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait.
I turned round, and asked him where his master was.
There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait.
Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession.
Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your companion are already on your way to the city.
You are
not far wrong, I said.
But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are?
Of course.
And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are.
May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go?
But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said.
Certainly not, replied Glaucon.
Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.
Adeimantus added: Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening?
With horses! I replied: That is a novelty. Will horse-men carry torches and pass them one to another during the race?
Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will be celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.
Glaucon said: I suppose, since you insist, that we must.
Very good, I replied.
Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, and then he said:—