cast forth the guilty thing beyond the border, as has been said
about the animals.
If a man is found dead, and his murderer be unknown, and after a
diligent search cannot be detected, there shall be the same proclamation
as in the previous cases, and the same interdict on the murderer; and
having proceeded against him, they shall proclaim in the agora by a
herald, that he who has slain such and such a person, and has been
convicted of murder, shall not set his foot in the temples, nor at all
in the country of the murdered man, and if he appears and is discovered,
he shall die, and be cast forth unburied beyond the border. Let this one
law then be laid down by us about murder; and let cases of this sort be
so regarded.
And now let us say in what cases and under what circumstances the
murderer is rightly free from guilt: If a man catch a thief coming into
his house by night to steal, and he take and kill him, or if he slay
a footpad in self-defence, he shall be guiltless. And any one who does
violence to a free woman or a youth, shall be slain with impunity by the
injured person, or by his or her father or brothers or sons. If a man
find his wife suffering violence, he may kill the violator, and be
guiltless in the eye of the law; or if a person kill another in warding
off death from his father or mother or children or brethren or wife who
are doing no wrong, he shall assuredly be guiltless.
Thus much as to the nurture and education of the living soul of man,
having which, he can, and without which, if he unfortunately be without
them, he cannot live; and also concerning the punishments which are
to be inflicted for violent deaths, let thus much be enacted. Of the
nurture and education of the body we have spoken before, and next in
order we have to speak of deeds of violence, voluntary and involuntary,
which men do to one another; these we will now distinguish, as far as we
are able, according to their nature and number, and determine what will
be the suitable penalties of each, and so assign to them their proper
place in the series of our enactments. The poorest legislator will have
no difficulty in determining that wounds and mutilations arising out of
wounds should follow next in order after deaths. Let wounds be divided
as homicides were divided--into those which are involuntary, and which
are given in passion or from fear, and those inflicted voluntarily
and with premeditation. Concerning all this, we must make
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