he soul. They are
good, and wealth is intended by nature to be for the sake of them, and
is therefore inferior to them both, and third in order of excellence.
This argument teaches us that he who would be happy ought not to seek to
be rich, or rather he should seek to be rich justly and temperately, and
then there would be no murders in states requiring to be purged away
by other murders. But now, as I said at first, avarice is the chiefest
cause and source of the worst trials for voluntary homicide. A second
cause is ambition: this creates jealousies, which are troublesome
companions, above all to the jealous man himself, and in a less degree
to the chiefs of the state. And a third cause is cowardly and unjust
fear, which has been the occasion of many murders. When a man is doing
or has done something which he desires that no one should know him to be
doing or to have done, he will take the life of those who are likely to
inform of such things, if he have no other means of getting rid of them.
Let this be said as a prelude concerning crimes of violence in general;
and I must not omit to mention a tradition which is firmly believed by
many, and has been received by them from those who are learned in the
mysteries: they say that such deeds will be punished in the world below,
and also that when the perpetrators return to this world they will pay
the natural penalty which is due to the sufferer, and end their lives in
like manner by the hand of another. If he who is about to commit murder
believes this, and is made by the mere prelude to dread such a penalty,
there is no need to proceed with the proclamation of the law. But if
he will not listen, let the following law be declared and registered
against him: Whoever shall wrongfully and of design slay with his own
hand any of his kinsmen, shall in the first place be deprived of legal
privileges; and he shall not pollute the temples, or the agora, or the
harbours, or any other place of meeting, whether he is forbidden of men
or not; for the law, which represents the whole state, forbids him, and
always is and will be in the attitude of forbidding him. And if a cousin
or nearer relative of the deceased, whether on the male or female side,
does not prosecute the homicide when he ought, and have him proclaimed
an outlaw, he shall in the first place be involved in the pollution, and
incur the hatred of the Gods, even as the curse of the law stirs up the
voices of men against him;