Historical Development (older English) in: Europe – Greek
BOOK III
Athenian Stranger. ENOUGH of this. And what, then, is to be regarded as the origin of government? Will not a man be able to judge of it best from a point of view in which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to good or evil?
Cleinias. What do you mean?
Ath. I mean that he might watch them from the point of view of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite ages.
Cle. How so?
Ath. Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?
Cle. Hardly.
Ath. But you are sure that it must be vast and incalculable?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And have not thousands and thousands of cities come into being during this period and many perished? And has not each of them had every form of government many times over, now growing larger, now smaller, and again improving or declining?
Cle. To be sure.
Ath. Let us endeavor to ascertain the cause of these changes; for that will probably explain the first origin and development of forms of government.
Cle. Very good. You shall endeavor to impart your thoughts to us, and we will make an effort to understand you.
Ath. Do you believe that there is any truth in ancient traditions?
Cle. What traditions?
Ath. The traditions about the many destructions of mankind which have been occasioned by deluges and pestilences, and in many other ways, and of the survival of a remnant?
Cle. Everyone is disposed to believe them.
Ath. Let us consider one of them, that which was caused by the famous deluge.
Cle. What are we to observe about it?
Ath. I mean to say that those who then escaped would only be hill shepherds,—small sparks of the human race preserved on the tops of mountains.
Cle. Clearly.
Ath. Such survivors would necessarily be unacquainted with the arts and the various devices which are suggested to the dwellers in cities by interest or ambition, and with all the wrongs which they contrive against one another.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. Let us suppose, then, that the cities in the plain and the sea-coasts were utterly destroyed at that time.
Cle. Very good.
Ath. Would not all implements have then perished and every other excellent invention of political or any other sort of wisdom have utterly disappeared?
Cle. Why, yes, my friend; and if things had always continued as they are at present ordered, how could any discovery have ever been made even in the least particular way? For it is evident that the arts were unknown during ten thousand times ten thousand years. And no more than a thousand or two thousand years have elapsed since the discoveries of Daedalus, Orpheus and Palamedes,—since Marsyas and Olympus invented music, and Amphion the lyre,—not to speak of numberless other inventions which are but of yesterday.
Ath. Have you forgotten, Cleinias, the name of a friend who is really from yesterday?
Cle. I suppose that you mean Epimenides.
Ath. The same, my friend; he does indeed far overleap the heads of all mankind by his invention for he carried out in practice, as you declare, what of old Hesiod only preached.
Cle. Yes, according to our tradition.
Ath. After the great destruction, may we not suppose that the state of man was something of this sort:—In the beginning of things there was a fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land; a herd or two of oxen would be the only survivors of the animal world; and there might be a few goats, these too hardly enough to maintain the shepherds who tended them?
Cle. True.
Ath. And of cities or governments or legislation, about which we are now talking, do you suppose that they could have any recollection at all?
Cle. None whatsoever.
Ath. And out of this state of things has there not sprung all that we now are and have: cities and governments, and arts and laws, and a great deal of vice and a great deal of virtue?
Cle. What do you mean?
Ath. Why, my good friend, how can we possibly suppose that those who knew nothing of all the good and evil of cities could have attained their full development, whether of virtue or of vice?
Cle. I understand your meaning, and you are quite right.
Ath. But, as time advanced and the race multiplied, the world came to be what the world is.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. Doubtless the change was not made all in a moment, but little, during a very long period of time.
Cle. A highly probable supposition.
Ath. At first, they would have a natural fear ringing in their ears which would prevent their descending from the heights into the plain.
Cle. Of course.
Ath. The fewness of the survivors at that time would have made them all the more desirous of seeing one another; but then the means of traveling either by land or sea had been almost entirely lost, as I may say, with the loss of the arts, and there was great difficulty in getting at one another; for iron and brass and all metals were jumbled together and had disappeared in the chaos; nor was there any possibility of extracting ore from them; and they had scarcely any means of felling timber. Even if you suppose that some implements might have been preserved in the mountains, they must quickly have worn out and vanished, and there would be no more them until the art of metallurgy had again revived.
Cle. There could not have been.
Ath. In how many generations would this be attained?
Cle. Clearly, not for many generations.
Ath. During this period, and for some time afterwards, all the arts which require iron and brass and the like would disappear.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Faction and war would also have died out in those days, and for many reasons.
Cle. How would that be?
Ath. In the first place, the desolation of these primitive men would create in them a feeling of affection and goodwill towards one another; and, secondly, they would have no occasion to quarrel about their subsistence, for they would have pasture in abundance, except just at first, and in some particular cases; and from their pasture-land they would obtain the greater part of their food in a primitive age, having plenty of milk and flesh; moreover they would procure other food by the chase, not to be despised either in quantity or quality. They would also have abundance of clothing, and bedding, and dwellings, and utensils either capable of standing on the fire or not; for the plastic and weaving arts do not require any use of iron; and God has given these two arts to man in order to provide him with all such things, that, when reduced to the last extremity, the human race may still grow and increase. Hence in those days mankind were not very poor; nor was poverty a cause of difference among them; and rich they could not have been, having neither gold nor silver:—such at that time was their condition. And the community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles; in it there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envyings. And therefore they were good, and also because they were what is called simple-minded; and when they were told about good and evil, they in their simplicity believed what they heard to be very truth and practiced it. No one had the wit to suspect another of a falsehood, as men do now; but what they heard about Gods and men they believed to be true, and lived accordingly; and therefore they were in all respects such as we have described them.
Cle. That quite accords with my views, and with those of my friend here.
Ath. Would not many generations living on in a simple manner, although ruder, perhaps, and more ignorant of the arts generally, and in particular of those of land or naval warfare, and likewise of other arts, termed in cities legal practices and party conflicts, and including all conceivable ways of hurting one another in word and deed;—although inferior to those who lived before the deluge, or to the men of our day in these respects, would they nor, I say, be simpler and more manly, and also more temperate and altogether more just? The reason has already been explained.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. I should wish you to understand that what has preceded and what is about to follow, has been, and will be said, with the intention of explaining what need the men of that time had of laws, and who was their lawgiver.
Cle. And thus far what you have said has been very well said.
Ath. They could hardly have wanted lawgivers as yet; nothing of that sort was likely to have existed in their days, for they had no letters at this early period; they lived by habit and the customs of their ancestors, as they are called.
Cle. Probably
Ath. But there was already existing a form of government which, if I am not mistaken, is generally termed a lordship, and this still remains in many places, both among Hellenes and barbarians, and is the government which is declared by Homer to have prevailed among the Cyclopes:—
‘They have neither councils nor judgments, but they dwell in hollow caves on the tops of high mountains, and every one gives law to his wife and children, and they do not care about one another.’
Cle. That seems to be a charming poet of yours; I have read some other verses of his, which are very clever; but I do not know much of him, for foreign poets are very little read among the Cretans.
Meg. But they are in Lacedaemon, and he appears to be the prince of them all; the manner of life, however, which he describes is not Spartan, but rather Ionian, and he seems quite to confirm what you are saying, when he traces up the ancient state of mankind by the help of tradition to barbarism.
Ath. Yes, he does confirm it; and we may accept his witness to the fact that such forms of government sometimes arise.
Cle. We may.
Ath. And were not such states composed of men who had been dispersed in single habitations and families by the poverty which attended the devastations; and did not the eldest then rule among them, because with them government originated in the authority of a father and a mother, whom, like a flock of birds, they followed, forming one troop under the patriarchal rule and sovereignty of their parents, which of all sovereignty is the most just?
Cle. Very true.
Ath. After this they came together in greater numbers, and increased the size of their cities, and betook themselves to husbandry, first of all at the foot of the mountains, and made enclosures of loose walls and works of defense, in order to keep off wild beasts; thus creating a single large and common habitation.
Cle. Yes; at least we may suppose so.
Ath. There is another thing which would probably happen.
Cle. What?
Ath. When these larger habitations grew up out of the lesser original ones, each of the lesser ones would survive in the larger; every family would be under the rule of the eldest, and, owing to their separation from one another, would have peculiar customs in things divine and human, which they would have received from their several parents who had educated them; and these customs would incline them to order, when the parents had the element of order in their nature, and to courage, when they had the element of courage. And they would naturally stamp upon their children, and upon their children’s, their own likings; and, as we are saying, they would find their way into the larger society, having already their own peculiar laws.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And every man surely likes his own laws best, and the laws of others are not so good.
Cle. True.
Ath. Then now we seem to have stumbled upon the beginnings of legislation.
Cle. Exactly.
Ath. The next step will be that these persons who have met together, will select some arbiters, who will review the laws of all of them, and will publicly present such as they approve to the chiefs who lead the tribes, and who are in a manner their kings, allowing them to choose those which they think best. These persons will themselves be called legislators, and will appoint the magistrates, framing some sort of aristocracy, or perhaps monarchy, out of the dynasties or lordships, and in this altered state of the government they will live.
Cle. Yes, that would be the natural order of things.
Ath. Then, now let us speak of a third form of government, in which all other forms and conditions of polities and cities concur.
Cle. What is that?
Ath. The form which in fact Homer indicates as following the second. This third form arose when, as he says, Dardanus founded Dardania:—
‘For not as yet had the holy Ilium been built on the plain to be a city of speaking men; but they were still dwelling at the foot of many-fountained Ida.’
For indeed, in these verses, and in what he said of the Cyclopes, he speaks the words of God and natures; for poets are a divine race, and often in their strains, by the aid of the Muses and the Graces, they attain truth.
Cle. Yes.
Ath. Then now let us proceed with the rest of our tale, which will probably be found to illustrate in some degree our proposed design:—Shall we do so?
Cle. By all means.
Ath. Ilium was built, when they had descended from the mountain, in a large and fair plain, on a sort of low hill, waters by many rivers descending from Ida.
Cle. Such is the tradition.
Ath. And we must suppose this event to have taken place many ages after the deluge?
Cle. Yes; many ages must have elapsed.
Ath. A marvelous forgetfulness of the former destruction would appear to have come over them, when they placed their town right under numerous streams flowing from the heights, trusting for their security to not very high hills, either.
Cle. There must have been a long interval, clearly.
Ath. And, as population increased, many other cities would being to be inhabited.
Cle. Doubtless.
Ath. Those cities made war against Troy—by sea as well as land—for at that time men were ceasing to be afraid of the sea.
Cle. Clearly.
Ath. The Achaeans remained ten years, and overthrew Troy.
Cle. True.
Ath. And during the ten years in which the Achaeans were besieging Ilium, the homes of the besiegers were falling into an evil plight. Their youth revolted; and when the soldiers returned to their own cities and families, they did not receive them properly, and as they ought to have done, and numerous deaths, murders, exiles, were the consequence. The exiles came again, under a new name, no longer Achaeans, but Dorians,—a name which they derived from Dorieus; for it was he who gathered them together. The rest of the story is told by you Lacerdaemonians as part of the history of Sparta.
Meg. To be sure.
Ath. Thus, after digressing from the original subject of laws into music and drinking bouts, the argument has, providentially, come back to the same point, and presents to us another handle. For we have reached the settlement of Lacedaemon; with, as you truly say, is in laws and in institutions the sister of Crete. And we are all the better for the digression, because we have gone through various governments and settlements, and have been present at the foundation of a first, second, and third state, succeeding one another in infinite time. And now there appears on the horizon a fourth state or nation which was once in process of settlement and has continued to settle to this day. If, out of all this, we are able to discern what is well or ill settled, and what laws are the salvation and what are the destruction of cities, and what changes would make a state happy, O Megillus and Cleinias, we may now begin again, unless we have some fault to find with the previous discussion.
(…)
Athenian. And that was our reason for considering the settlement of the Dorian army, and of the city built by Dardanus at the foot of the mountains, and the removal of cities to the seashore, and of our mention of the first men, who were the survivors of the deluge. And all that was previously said about music and drinking, and what preceded,
(c.c.i) Greek — (c.c.ii) Schofield & Griffith (2016) — (c.c.iii) Assher & Widger (2008) — (c.c.iv) Saunders (1997) — (c.c.v) Pangle (1980) — (c.c.vi) Bury (1926) — (c.c.vii) Jowett (1892) — (c.c.viii) Molegraaf (2012) (Dutch) — (c.c.ix) Secondary sources
– Jowett, Benjamin, The Dialogues of Plato (3rd edition), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892), pp. 55-63, 84.
Flood Stories 