Plato, Laws 676a–680e: Book III: The origin of government: the floods and the survivors on the hills

Ath. So much for that, then! Now, what are we to say about the origin of government? Would not the best and easiest way of discerning it be from this standpoint?

Clin. What standpoint?

Ath. That from which one should always observe the progress of States as they move towards either goodness or badness.

Clin. What point is that?

Ath. The observation, as I suppose, of an infinitely long period of time and of the variations therein occurring.

Clin. Explain your meaning.

Ath. Tell me now: do you think you could ever ascertain the space of time that has passed since cities came into existence and men lived under civic rule?

Clin. Certainly it would be no easy task.

Ath. But you can easily see that it is vast and immeasurable?

Clin. That I most certainly can do.

Ath. During this time, have not thousands upon thousands of States come into existence, and, on a similar computation, just as many perished? And have they not in each case exhibited all kinds of constitutions over and over again? And have they not changed at one time from small to great, at another from great to small, and changed also from good to bad and from bad to good?

Clin. Necessarily.

Ath. Of this process of change let us discover, if we can, the cause; for this, perhaps, would show us what is the primary origin of constitutions, as well as their transformation.

Clin. You are right; and we must all exert ourselves,—you to expound your view about them, and we to keep pace with you.

Ath. Do you consider that there is any truth in the ancient tales?

Clin. What tales?

Ath. That the world of men has often been destroyed by floods, plagues, and many other things, in such a way that only a small portion of the human race has survived.

Clin. Everyone would regard such accounts as perfectly credible.

Ath. Come now, let us picture to ourselves one of the many catastrophes,—namely, that which occurred once upon a time through the Deluge.

Clin. And what are we to imagine about it?

Ath. That the men who then escaped destruction must have been mostly herdsmen of the hills, scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops.

Clin. Evidently.

Ath. Moreover, men of this kind must necessarily have been unskilled in the arts generally, and especially in such contrivances as men use against one another in cities for purposes of greed and rivalry and all the other villainies which they devise one against another.

Clin. It is certainly probable.

Ath. Shall we assume that the cities situated in the plains and near the sea were totally destroyed at the time?

Clin. Let us assume it.

Ath. And shall we say that all implements were lost, and that everything in the way of important arts or inventions that they may have had,—whether concerned with politics or other sciences,— perished at that time? For, supposing that things had remained all that time ordered just as they are now, how, my good sir, could anything new have ever been invented?

Clin. Do you mean that these things were unknown to the men of those days for thousands upon thousands of years, and that one or two thousand years ago some of them were revealed to Daedalus, some to Orpheus, some to Palamedes, musical arts to Marsyas and Olympus, lyric to Amphion, and, in short, a vast number of others to other persons—all dating, so to say, from yesterday or the day before?

Ath. Are you aware, Clinias, that you have left out your friend who was literally a man of yesterday?

Clin. Is it Epimenides you mean?

Ath. Yes, I mean him. For he far outstripped everybody you had, my friend, by that invention of his of which he was the actual producer, as you Cretans say, although Hesiod had divined it and spoken of it long before.

Clin. We do say so.

Ath. Shall we, then, state that, at the time when the destruction took place, human affairs were in this position: there was fearful and widespread desolation over a vast tract of land; most of the animals were destroyed, and the few herds of oxen and flocks of goats that happened to survive afforded at the first but scanty sustenance to their herdsmen?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. And as to the matters with which our present discourse is concerned—States and statecraft and legislation,—do we think they could have retained any memory whatsoever, broadly speaking, of such matters?

Clin. By no means.

Ath. So from those men, in that situation, there has sprung the whole of our present order—States and constitutions, arts and laws, with a great amount both of evil and of good?

Clin. How do you mean?

Ath. Do we imagine, my good Sir, that the men of that age, who were unversed in the ways of city life—many of them noble, many ignoble,—were perfect either in virtue or in vice?

Clin. Well said! We grasp your meaning.

Ath. As time went on and our race multiplied, all things advanced—did they not?—to the condition which now exists.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. But, in all probability, they advanced, not all at once, but by small degrees, during an immense space of time.

Clin. Yes, that is most likely.

Ath. For they all, I fancy, felt as it were still ringing in their ears a dread of going down from the highlands to the plains.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And because there were so few of them round about in those days, were they not delighted to see one another, but for the fact that means of transport, whereby they might visit one another by sea or land, had practically all perished along with the arts? Hence intercourse, I imagine, was not very easy. For iron and bronze and all the metals in the mines had been flooded and had disappeared; so that it was extremely difficult to extract fresh metal; and there was a dearth, in consequence, of felled timber. For even if there happened to be some few tools still left somewhere on the mountains, these were soon worn out, and they could not be replaced by others until men had rediscovered the art of metal-working.

Clin. They could not.

Ath. Now, how many generations, do we suppose, had passed before this took place?

Clin. A great many, evidently.

Ath. And during all this period, or even longer, all the arts that require iron and bronze and all such metals must have remained in abeyance?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Moreover, civil strife and war also disappeared during that time, and that for many reasons.

Clin. How so?

Ath. In the first place, owing to their desolate state, they were kindly disposed and friendly towards one another; and secondly, they had no need to quarrel about food. For they had no lack of flocks and herds (except perhaps some of them at the outset), and in that age these were what men mostly lived on: thus they were well supplied with milk and meat, and they procured further supplies of food, both excellent and plentiful, by hunting. They were also well furnished with clothing and coverlets and houses, and with vessels for cooking and other kinds; for no iron is required for the arts of moulding and weaving, which two arts God gave to men to furnish them with all these necessaries, in order that the human race might have means of sprouting and increase whenever it should fall into such a state of distress. Consequently, they were not excessively poor, nor were they constrained by stress of poverty to quarrel one with another; and, on the other hand, since they were without gold and silver, they could never have become rich. Now a community which has no communion with either poverty or wealth is generally the one in which the noblest characters will be formed; for in it there is no place for the growth of insolence and injustice, of rivalries and jealousies. So these men were good, both for these reasons and because of their simple-mindedness, as it is called; for, being simple-minded, when they heard things called bad or good, they took what was said for gospel-truth and believed it. For none of them had the shrewdness of the modern man to suspect a falsehood; but they accepted as true the statements made about gods and men, and ordered their lives by them. Thus they were entirely of the character we have just described.

Clin. Certainly Megillus and I quite agree with what you say.

Ath. And shall we not say that people living in this fashion for many generations were bound to be unskilled, as compared with either the antediluvians or the men of today, and ignorant of arts in general and especially of the arts of war as now practised by land and sea, including those warlike arts which, disguised under the names of law-suits and factions, are peculiar to cities, contrived as they are with every device of word and deed to inflict mutual hurt and injury; and that they were also more simple and brave and temperate, and in all ways more righteous? And the cause of this state of things we have already explained.

Clin. Quite true.

Ath. We must bear in mind that the whole purpose of what we have said and of what we are going to say next is this,—that we may understand what possible need of laws the men of that time had, and who their lawgiver was.

Clin. Excellent.

Ath. Shall we suppose that those men had no need of lawgivers, and that in those days it was not as yet usual to have such a thing? For those born in that age of the world’s history did not as yet possess the art of writing, but lived by following custom and what is called patriarchal law.

Clin. That is certainly probable.

Ath. But this already amounts to a kind of government.

Clin. What kind?

Ath. Everybody, I believe, gives the name of “headship” to the government which then existed,—and it still continues to exist to-day among both Greeks and barbarians in many quarters. And, of course, Homer mentions its existence in connection with the household system of the Cyclopes, where he says— No halls of council and no laws are theirs, / But within hollow caves on mountain heights / Aloft they dwell, each making his own law. / For wife and child; of others reck they naught. /

Clin. This poet of yours seems to have been a man of genius. We have also read other verses of his, and they were extremely fine; though in truth we have not read much of him, since we Cretans do not indulge much in foreign poetry.

Meg. But we Spartans do, and we regard Homer as the best of them; all the same, the mode of life he describes is always Ionian rather than Laconian. And now he appears to be confirming your statement admirably, when in his legendary account he ascribes the primitive habits of the Cyclopes to their savagery.

Ath. Yes, his testimony supports us; so let us take him as evidence that polities of this sort do sometimes come into existence.

Clin. Quite right.

Ath. Did they not originate with those people who lived scattered in separate clans or in single households, owing to the distress which followed after the catastrophes; for amongst these the eldest holds rule, owing to the fact that the rule proceeds from the parents, by following whom they form a single flock, like a covey of birds, and live under a patriarchal government and a kingship which is of all kingships the most just?

Clin. Most certainly.