ference as touching murder by one's own hand or by contrivance,
except in the matter of sureties; and these, as has been said, shall be
required of the actual murderer only, and he who brings the accusation
shall bind them over at the time. If a slave be convicted of slaying a
freeman voluntarily, either by his own hand or by contrivance, let the
public executioner take him in the direction of the sepulchre, to a
place whence he can see the tomb of the dead man, and inflict upon him
as many stripes as the person who caught him orders, and if he survive,
let him put him to death. And if any one kills a slave who has done no
wrong, because he is afraid that he may inform of some base and evil
deeds of his own, or for any similar reason, in such a case let him pay
the penalty of murder, as he would have done if he had slain a citizen.
There are things about which it is terrible and unpleasant to legislate,
but impossible not to legislate. If, for example, there should be
murders of kinsmen, either perpetrated by the hands of kinsmen, or by
their contrivance, voluntary and purely malicious, which most often
happen in ill-regulated and ill-educated states, and may perhaps occur
even in a country where a man would not expect to find them, we must
repeat once more the tale which we narrated a little while ago, in
the hope that he who hears us will be the more disposed to abstain
voluntarily on these grounds from murders which are utterly abominable.
For the myth, or saying, or whatever we ought to call it, has been
plainly set forth by priests of old; they have pronounced that the
justice which guards and avenges the blood of kindred, follows the
law of retaliation, and ordains that he who has done any murderous act
should of necessity suffer that which he has done. He who has slain a
father shall himself be slain at some time or other by his children--if
a mother, he shall of necessity take a woman's nature, and lose his life
at the hands of his offspring in after ages; for where the blood of a
family has been polluted there is no other purification, nor can the
pollution be washed out until the homicidal soul which did the deed has
given life for life, and has propitiated and laid to sleep the wrath
of the whole family. These are the retributions of Heaven, and by such
punishments men should be deterred. But if they are not deterred, and
any one should be incited by some fatality to deprive his father, or
mother, or brethren,