are peculiar, and in which ancient
jurisprudence differs considerably from modern; some of them are of
great importance...It could not be said at Athens, nor was it ever
contemplated by Plato, that all men, including metics and slaves, should
be equal 'in the eye of the law.' There was some law for the slave, but
not much; no adequate protection was given him against the cruelty of
his master...It was a singular privilege granted, both by the Athenian
and Magnesian law, to a murdered man, that he might, before he died,
pardon his murderer, in which case no legal steps were afterwards to
be taken against him. This law is the remnant of an age in which the
punishment of offences against the person was the concern rather of
the individual and his kinsmen than of the state...Plato's division of
crimes into voluntary and involuntary and those done from passion, only
partially agrees with the distinction which modern law has drawn between
murder and manslaughter; his attempt to analyze them is confused by the
Socratic paradox, that 'All vice is involuntary'...It is singular that
both in the Laws and at Athens theft is commonly punished by a twofold
restitution of the article stolen. The distinction between civil and
criminal courts or suits was not yet recognized...Possession gives a
right of property after a certain time...The religious aspect under
which certain offences were regarded greatly interfered with a just
and natural estimate of their guilt...As among ourselves, the intent to
murder was distinguished by Plato from actual murder...We note that
both in Plato and the laws of Athens, libel in the market-place and
personality in the theatre were forbidden...Both in Plato and Athenian
law, as in modern times, the accomplice of a crime is to be punished as
well as the principal...Plato does not allow a witness in a cause to
act as a judge of it...Oaths are not to be taken by the parties to a
suit...Both at Athens and in Plato's Laws capital punishment for
murder was not to be inflicted, if the offender was willing to go into
exile...Respect for the dead, duty towards parents, are to be enforced
by the law as well as by public opinion...Plato proclaims the noble
sentiment that the object of all punishment is the improvement of the
offender... Finally, he repeats twice over, as with the voice of a
prophet, that the crimes of the fathers are not to be visited upon the
children. In this respect he is nobly distinguished from