The Laws of Daily Life

There is to be one temple for the one God — for like is always dear to like — common to all, since he is the God common to all. The priests will serve him continually, and at their head will always be the one who is first by descent. He, with his fellow priests, will offer sacrifice to God, guard the laws, judge disputes and punish those convicted of wrongdoing. Whoever disobeys him will pay the penalty as though he had committed impiety against God himself. [a]

We offer our sacrifices not to make ourselves drunk — for that is against God’s will — but to keep ourselves sober and self-controlled. At the sacrifices we must pray first for the common welfare of all, and only after that for ourselves; for we were made for fellowship with one another, and whoever puts that fellowship ahead of his own private interest is especially pleasing to God. Let our petition to God be, not that he would give us good things — for he has already given them of his own accord and set them out before all in common — but that we may be able to receive them, and having received them, keep them. At the sacrifices the law has also prescribed purifications: after a funeral, after childbirth, after intercourse with one’s wife, and after many other things, which it would take too long to write out. This, then, is our teaching about God and his worship, and it is at the same time our law.

What, then, are our laws about marriage? The law recognizes no intercourse except the natural union with a wife, and that only if it is for the sake of children. Intercourse of males with males it abhors, and death is the penalty for anyone who attempts it. It commands us, when we marry, not to look to the dowry, not to carry a woman off by force, and not to win her by trickery and deceit, but to ask for her in marriage from the one who has the right to give her away and is fit to do so by nearness of kin. “A woman,” it says, “is inferior to a man in all things.” So let her obey — not that she may be humiliated, but that she may be directed; for God has given authority to the man. The husband must be with his wife alone; to make an attempt on another man’s wife is an unholy thing. If anyone does it, there is no escaping death — whether he forces a virgin betrothed to another man, or seduces a married woman. The law commands us to bring up all our children, and it forbids women to cause the abortion of what has been conceived or to destroy it afterward. A woman found to have done so would be the killer of her child, for she destroys a soul and diminishes the race. So, too, anyone who has had a part in such destruction at childbirth cannot then be counted clean. And after the lawful intercourse of husband and wife, the law requires them to wash. For the lawgiver held that this act involves a parting of the soul, as though into another place; for the soul suffers when it is implanted in bodies, and suffers again when it is separated from them by death. That is why he prescribed purifications for all such cases. [d]

Nor does the law allow us to hold feasts at the births of our children and so make excuses for drunkenness. It requires that their upbringing be sober from the very beginning. It commands that they be taught to read, and that they learn the laws and know the deeds of their forefathers: the deeds so that they may imitate them, and the laws so that, growing up with them, they may neither break them nor have the excuse of not knowing them. [g]

The law has also provided for the reverence owed to the dead, though not by costly burials or the building of splendid monuments. The nearest relatives are to carry out the funeral rites, and everyone who passes by while a burial is under way is to join the mourners and share in the lament. It also orders that the house and those who live in it be purified after a funeral, so that anyone who has committed murder may be as far as possible from imagining himself pure.

The law ranks honor to parents second only to honor toward God. A son who does not repay the kindness he has received from them, but falls short in any respect, it hands over to be stoned. It also says that the young must show respect to every elder, since God is the eldest of all. It does not allow us to hide anything from our friends, for a friendship that does not entrust everything is no friendship; and if enmity arises between them, it forbids revealing their secrets. If a judge takes bribes, the penalty is death. Whoever ignores a suppliant when he is able to help him is held guilty. No one is to take up what he did not himself put down; no one is to touch anything that belongs to another; no one who lends is to charge interest. These, and many more like them, are the rules that hold our fellowship with one another together. [h]

It is also worth seeing how considerate our lawgiver wished us to be toward foreigners. It will be clear that he took the best possible care both that we should not corrupt our own way of life and that we should not begrudge it to those who choose to share it with us. All who wish to come and live under the same laws as ours he welcomes warmly, holding that kinship lies not in birth alone but also in the way of life a person chooses. But those who come to us only in passing he did not want mixing in our common life. [i]

There are other things the lawgiver laid down beforehand that we are bound to share with everyone: to give fire, water and food to all who need them, to show travelers the way, and not to leave anyone unburied. He also wants us to be considerate even toward those we have judged to be enemies. He does not allow us to burn their land or to cut down their cultivated trees, and he even forbids stripping those who have fallen in battle. He has taken thought for prisoners of war as well, that no outrage may be done to them, and above all to the women. So thoroughly has he taught us gentleness and humanity that he did not neglect even the animals without reason. He permitted only the lawful use of them and forbade every other. Animals that take refuge in our houses as though they were suppliants he forbade us to kill. He did not allow us to take the parent birds together with their young, and he commanded us, even in an enemy’s country, to spare the animals that work for us and not to kill them. In this way he looked to consideration from every side. He used the laws I have described to teach us, and at the same time he set other laws to punish those who break them, with no excuse allowed. [j]

For most offenses the penalty is death: if anyone commits adultery, if anyone forces a girl, if anyone dares to make an attempt on a male, or if the one approached submits to it. With slaves, too, the law is just as inexorable. Again, if anyone cheats in measures or weights, or makes an unjust and fraudulent sale, or steals what belongs to another, or takes up what he did not deposit, there are punishments for all of these — not like those among other peoples, but more severe. As for wrongdoing toward parents or impiety toward God, a man is put to death at once, even if he has only intended it. For those who live by the laws, however, the prize is not silver or gold, nor a crown of wild olive or of wild celery, nor any public proclamation of that kind. Each has his own conscience as his witness, and he is confident — because the lawgiver foretold it and God has given firm assurance — that to those who keep the laws, and who die for them willingly if they must, God has granted to come into being again and, at the turning of the ages, to receive a better life. I would hesitate to write this, were it not plain to everyone from what has actually happened that many of our people, many times over, have nobly chosen to suffer anything rather than speak a single word against the law. [k]

Suppose our nation were not known to all mankind, and our willing obedience to our laws were not out in the open for all to see. Suppose instead that someone had read these laws out to the Greeks as a work of his own, or claimed he had met people beyond the bounds of the known world who held so reverent a view of God and had kept firmly to such laws for long ages. I think everyone would marvel at it, given the constant changes among themselves. Indeed, those who have tried to write anything of the kind about a constitution and laws are accused of composing fantasies, and are said to have set themselves impossible premises. I pass over the other philosophers who have treated anything like this in their writings. But Plato is admired among the Greeks as a man who excelled in the dignity of his life and the power of his words and surpassed all philosophers in persuasion; yet he is all but mocked and lampooned without end by those who claim to be experts in politics. And yet anyone who examines his writings closely will find them rather mild, and close to the customs of ordinary people. Plato himself admitted that it was not safe to bring the true view of God before the ignorance of the crowd. Even so, some think Plato’s discourses are empty words, written up with great license of style. Of the lawgivers they admire Lycurgus most, and everyone sings the praises of Sparta for having held to his laws for so long. Let it be agreed, then, that obeying laws is a proof of virtue. But let those who admire the Spartans set the length of their time beside the more than two thousand years of our constitution. Let them also reckon that the Spartans seemed to keep their laws exactly only so long as they kept their freedom; when changes of fortune came upon them, they forgot almost all their laws. We, on the other hand, have passed through countless fortunes because of the changes among the kings who ruled Asia, and yet we have never betrayed our laws, even in the extremes of danger. Nor have we kept them for the sake of ease or luxury. If anyone will look into it, the trials and labors laid on us have been far greater than the endurance the Spartans are thought to have had imposed on them. For they neither worked the land nor labored at crafts. Free of all work, they spent their time in their city, sleek and training their bodies for beauty, using others as servants for every need of life and receiving their food ready from their hands. And for one purpose only — that fine and humane work! — they would endure to do and to suffer anything: to conquer every people they march against. I need not add that they did not succeed even in this. Not single men only, but many of them, often all at once, have neglected the commands of their law and surrendered themselves, arms and all, to the enemy. [l]