rtue of soul,
if I abstain; and this will be a better possession to me than the other
in a better part of myself; for the possession of justice in the soul
is preferable to the possession of wealth. And of many things it is
well said--'Move not the immovables,' and this may be regarded as one of
them. And we shall do well to believe the common tradition which says,
that such deeds prevent a man from having a family. Now as to him who is
careless about having children and regardless of the legislator, taking
up that which neither he deposited, nor any ancestor of his, without
the consent of the depositor, violating the simplest and noblest of laws
which was the enactment of no mean man: 'Take not up that which was not
laid down by thee'--of him, I say, who despises these two legislators,
and takes up, not some small matter which he has not deposited, but
perhaps a great heap of treasure, what he ought to suffer at the hands
of the Gods, God only knows; but I would have the first person who sees
him go and tell the wardens of the city, if the occurrence has taken
place in the city, or if the occurrence has taken place in the agora he
shall tell the wardens of the agora, or if in the country he shall tell
the wardens of the country and their commanders. When information has
been received the city shall send to Delphi, and, whatever the God
answers about the money and the remover of the money, that the city
shall do in obedience to the oracle; the informer, if he be a freeman,
shall have the honour of doing rightly, and he who informs not, the
dishonour of doing wrongly; and if he be a slave who gives information,
let him be freed, as he ought to be, by the state, which shall give his
master the price of him; but if he do not inform he shall be punished
with death. Next in order shall follow a similar law, which shall apply
equally to matters great and small: If a man happens to leave behind him
some part of his property, whether intentionally or unintentionally, let
him who may come upon the left property suffer it to remain, reflecting
that such things are under the protection of the Goddess of ways, and
are dedicated to her by the law. But if any one defies the law, and
takes the property home with him, let him, if the thing is of little
worth, and the man who takes it a slave, be beaten with many stripes by
him who meets him, being a person of not less than thirty years of age.
Or if he be a freeman, in addition to being