IV. Now the true magical art, being a science of discern- ment, which contemplates and beholds the books of nature with a more acute and distinct perception than usual, and appearing as such to be a dignified and desirable branch of knowledge, is studied, not merely by private individuals, but even by kings, and the very greatest of kings, and especially by the Persian monarchs, to such a degree, that they say that among that people no one can possibly suc- ceed to the kingdom if he has not previously been initiated into the mysteries of the magi. But there is a certain adul- terated species of this science, which may more properly be called wicked imposture, which quacks, and cheats, and buffoons pursue, and the vilest of women and slaves, pro- fessing to understand all kinds of incantations and purifi- cations, and promising to change the dispositions of those on whom they operate so as to turn those who love to unalterable enmity, and those who hate to the most excessive affection by certain charms and incantations; and thus they deceive and gain influence over men of unsuspicious and innocent dispositions, until they fall into the greatest calamities, by means of which great numbers of friends and relations have wasted away by degrees, and so have been rapidly destroyed without any noise being made. And I imagine that the lawgiver, having a regard to all these circumstances, would on that account not permit the punish- ments due to poisoners to be postponed to any subsequent ON SPECIAL LAWS. 329 occasion, but ordained that the executioners should at once proceed to inflict the due penalty on them; for delay rather excites the guilty to make use of the time that is allowed them to carry out their iniquities, inasmuch as they are already condemned to death, while it fills those who are already suspicious and apprehensive of misfortune with a more urgent fear, as they look upon the life of their enemies to be their own death.
Therefore, as if we only see snakes, and serpents, and any other venomous animals, we at once, without a moment's delay, kill them before they can bite, or wound, or attack us at all, taking care not to expose ourselves to any injury from them by reason of our knowledge of the mischief which is inherent in them; in the same manner it is right promptly to punish those men who, though they have had a gentle nature assigned to them by means of that fountain of reason which is the cause and source of all society, do nevertheless of deliberate purpose change it themselves to the ferocity of untameable beasts, looking upon the doing injury to as many people as they can to be their greatest pleasure and advantage.
V. This may be sufficient to say on the present occasion concerning poisoners and magicians. Moreover, we ought also not to be ignorant of this, that very often unexpected occasions arise, in which a person slays a man without having ever prepared himself for this action, but because he has been suddenly transported with anger, which is an intolera- ble and terrible feeling, and which injures beyond all other feelings both the man who entertains and the man who has excited it; for sometimes a man having come into the market-place on some important business, meeting with some one who is inclined precipitately to accuse him, or who attempts to assault him, or who begins to pick a quarrel with him, and engages him in a conflict, for the sake of separating from him and more speedily escaping him, either strikes his opponent with his fist or takes up a stone and throws it at him and knocks him down.
And if the wound which the man has received is mortal, so that he at once dies, then let the man who has struck him also die, suffering the same fate himself which he inflicted * Exodus xxi. 18.
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on the other. But if the man does not die immediately after receiving the blow, but is afflicted by illness in conse- quence and takes to his bed, and having been properly attended to rises up again, even though he may not be able to walk well without support, but may require some one to support him or a stick to lean upon, in that case the man who struck him shall pay a double penalty, one as an atone- ment for the injury done, and one for the expenses of the cure. And when he has paid this he shall be acquitted as to the punishment of death, even if the man who has received the blow should subsequently die; for perhaps he did not die of the blow, since he got better after that and recovered so far as to walk, but perhaps he died from some other causes, such as often suddenly attack those who are of the most vigorous bodily health, and kill them.
But if any one has a contest with a woman who is preg- nant, and strike her a blow on her belly, and she miscarry, if the child which was conceived within her is still unfashioned and unformed, he shall be punished by a fine, both for the assault which he committed and also because he has pre- vented nature, who was fashioning and preparing that most excellent of all creatures, a human being, from bringing him into existence. But if the child which was conceived had assumed a distinct shape* in all its parts, having received all its proper connective and distinctive qualities, he shall die; for such a creature as that is a man, whom he has slain while still in the workshop of nature, who had not thought it as yet a proper time to produce him to the light, but had kept him like a statue lying in a sculptor's workshop, requiring nothing more than to be released and sent out into the world.
VI. On account of thi3 commandment he also adds another proposition of greater importance, in which the ex- posure of infants is forbidden, which has become a very ordi- nary piece of wickedness among other nations by reason of their natural inhumanity; for if it is proper to provide for that which is not yet brought forth by reason of the definite periods of time requisite for such a process, so that even that may not suffer any injury by being plotted against, how can it be otherwise than more necessary to take similar care * Exodus xxi. 22.
ON SPECIAL LAWS. 331 of the child when brought to perfection and born, and sent forth, as it were, into that colony which has been assigned to the human race, for the purpose of having a share of the bounties of nature which she sends forth from the land, and from the water, and from the air, and from the heaven? bestowing on men the sight of the heavenly bodies, and the power and supreme authority over all the thing3 on earth, and supplying all the external senses with abundant supplies of all things, and presenting to the mind as the great king, by means of those outward senses as its body-guards, all the things which are visible to them, and, without employing their agency, all those things which are appreciable only by reason.
Accordingly, let those parents who deprive their children of all these blessings, giving them no share of any one of them from the moment of their birth, know that they are violating the laws of nature, and accusing themselves of the very greatest enormities, of a devotion to pleasure, and a hatred of their species, and murder, and the very worst kind of murder, infanticide; for those men are devoted to pleasure who are not influenced by the wish of propagating children, and of perpetuating their race, when they have connection with women, but who are only like boars or he-goats seeking the enjoyment that arises from such a connection. Again, who can be greater haters of their species than those who are the implacable and ferocious enemies of their own chil- dren? Unless, indeed, any one is so foolish as to imagine that these men can be humane to strangers who act in a barbarous manner to those who are united to them by ties of blood. And as for their murders and infanticides they are established by the most undeniable proofs, since some of them slay them with their own hands, and stifle the first breath of their children, and smother it altogether, out of a terribly cruel and unfeeling disposition; others throw them into the depths of a river, or of a sea, after they have attached a weight to them, in order that they may sink to the bottom more speedily because of it.
Others, again, carry them out into a desert place to expose them there, as they themselves say, in the hope that they may be saved by some one, but in real truth to load them with still more painful suffering; for there all the 832 PHILO JUD^US.
beasts which devour human flesh, since there is no one to keep them off, attack them and feast on the delicate banquet of the children, while those who were their only guardians, and who were bound above all other people to protect and save them, their own father and mother, have exposed them. And carnivorous birds fly down and lick up the remainder of their bodies, when they are not themselves the first to dis- cover them; for when they discover them themselves they do battle with the beasts of the earth for the whole carcass.
And even suppose that some one passing by on his road is moved by a feeling of gentle compassion to take pity on and show mercy to the exposed infants, so as to take them up and give them food, and to show them other portions of the atten- tion that is requisite, what do we think of such a humane action? Do we not look upon it as an express condemnation of the real parents, when those who are in nowise related to them show the tender foresight of parents, but the parents do not display even the kindness of strangers? Therefore, Moses has utterly prohibited the exposure of children, by a tacit prohibition, when he condemns to death, as I have said before, those who are the causes of a miscarriage to a woman whose child conceived within her is already formed.
And yet those persons who have investigated the secrets of natural philosophy say that those children which are still within the belly, and while they are still contained in the womb, are a part of their mothers; and the most highly esteemed of the physicians who have examined into the formation of man, scrutinising both what is easily seen and what is kept concealed with great care, by means of anatomy, in order that, if there should be any need of their attention to any case, nothing may be disregarded through ignorance and so become the cause of serious mischief, agree with them and say the same thing. But when the children are brought forth and are separated from that which is produced with them, and are set free and placed by themselves, they then become real living creatures, deficient in nothing which can contribute to the perfection of human nature, so that then, beyond all question, he who slays an infant is a homicide, and the law shows its indignation at such an action; not being guided by the age but by the species of the creature in whom its ordinances are violated.
ON SPECIAL LAWS, 333 If, indeed, it seemed reasonable to be at all influenced by the age, then I think that a person might very reasonably be even more indignant at those who slay infants. Tor when full-grown people are killed, there may be ten thousand plausible excuses for assaults upon or quarrels with them; but in the case of mere infants only just launched into human life and shown to the light of day, it is impossible for the greatest liar to invent an accusation against them, as they are wholly void of offence. On which account those ought to be looked upon as the moat inhuman and pitiless of all men who entertain plots for the destructiou of those infants, and justly does the sacred law detest such criminals and pronounce them worthy of death.
VII. The sacred law says that the man, who has been killed without any intention that he should be so on the part of him who killed him, has been given up by Grod into the hands of his slayers;* in this way designing to make an excuse for the man who appears to have slain him as if he had slain a guilty person. For the merciful and forgiving Grod can never be supposed to have given up any innocent person to be put to death; but whoever ingeniously escapes the judgment of a human tribunal by means of his own cunning and wariness, he is convicted when brought before the invisible tribunal of nature, by which alone the uncor- rupted truth is discerned without being kept in the dark by the artifices of sophistical arguments.
For such an investigation does not admit of arguments at all, laying bare all devices and intentions, and bringing the most secret counsels to light; and, in one sense, it does not look upon a man who has slain another as liable to justice, inasmuch as he has only sinned to be the minister of a divine judgment, but still he will have incurred an obscure and slight kind of defilement, which, however, may obtain allow- ance and pardon. For Grod employs those who commit slight and remedial errors against those who have perpe- trated enormous and unpardonable crimes as ministers of punishment; not, indeed, that he approves of them, but that he avails himself of them as suitable instruments of Eunishment, so that no one who is himself pure in his whole fe and descended from virtuous parents may have homicide * Exodus xxi. 13.
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imputed to him, even if he be the greatest man in the world.
Therefore, the law has pronounced the sentence of banish- ment upon him who has slain a man, yet not of banishment any where, nor for ever; for it has assigned six cities,* one fourth portion of what the whole sacred tribe received as its inheritance, for those who were convicted of homicide; which, from the circumstances connected with them, it has named cities of refuge. And it fixed the time of this banishment as the length of the life of the high priest, permitting the exiles to return home after his death.
VIII. And the cause of the first of these injunctions was this. The tribe which has been mentioned received these cities as a reward for a justifiable and holy slaughter, which we must look upon as the most illustrious and important of all the gallant actions that were ever performed. For when the prophet, after having been called up to the loftiest and most sacred of all the mountains in that district, was divinely instructed in the generic outlines of all the special laws,f and was out of sight of his people for many days; those of the people who were not of a peaceable dis- position filled every place with the evils which arise from anarchy, and crowned all their iniquity with open impiety, turning into ridicule all those excellent and beautiful lessons concerning the honour due to the one true and living God, and having made a golden bull, an imitation of the Egyptian Typhos, and brought to it unholy sacrifices, and festivals unhallowed, and instituted profane and impious dances, with songs and hymns instead of lamentations; tnen the tribe aforesaid, being very terribly indignant at their sudden departure from their previous customs, and being enflamed with zeal by reason of their natural disposi- tion which hated iniquity, all became full of rage and of divine enthusiasm, and arming themselves, as at one signal, and with great contempt and one unanimous attack, came upon the people, drank thus with a twofold intoxication of impiety and of wine, beginning with their nearest and dearest friends and relations, thinking those who loved God to be their only relations and friends. And in a very small por- tion of the day, four-and-twenty thousand men were slain; * Numbers xxxv, 1. t Exodus xxxii. 1.
ON SPECIAL LAWS. 335 the calamities of whom were a warning to those who would otherwise have joined themselves to their iniquity, but who now were alarmed lest they should suffer a similar fate.
Since then these men had undertaken this expedition of their own accord and spontaneously, in the cause of piety and holy reverence for the one true and living God, not without great danger to those who had entered in the con- test, the Father of the universe received them with appro- bation, and at once pronounced those who had slain those men to be pure from all curse and pollution, and in requital for their courage he bestowed the priesthood on them.
IX. Therefore the lawgiver enjoins that the man who has committed an unintentional murder should flee to some one of the cities which this tribe has received as its inheritance, in order to comfort him and to teach him not to despair of any sort of safety; but to make him, while safe through the privilege of the place, remember and consider that not only on certain occasions is forgiveness allowed to those who have designedly slain any person, but that even great and pre-eminent honours and excessive happiness is bestowed on them.
And if such honours can ever be allowed to those who have slain a man voluntarily, how much more must there be allowance made for those who have done so not with any dtesign, so that, even if no honour be bestowed on them, they may at least not be condemned to be put to death in retaliation.
By which injunctions the lawgiver intimates that every kind of homicide is not blameable, but only that which is combined with injustice; and that of other kinds some are even praiseworthy which are committed out of a desire and zeal for virtue; and that which is unintentional is not greatly to be blamed.
This, then, may be enough to say about the first cause; and we must now explain the second.
The law thinks fit to preserve the man who, without intend- ing it, has slain another, knowing that in his intention he was not guilty, but that with his hands he has been ministering to that justice which presides over all human affairs. For the nearest relations of the dead man are lying in wait for him in a hostile manner seeking his death, while others, out 336 PHILO JUD.EUS.
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of their excessive compassion and inconsolable grief for the dead, are eager for their revenge; in their unreasoning impetuosity not regarding either the truth or the justice of nature. Therefore, the law directs a man who has commit- ted a homicide under these circumstances not to flee to the temple, inasmuch as he is not yet purified, nor yet into any place which is neglected and obscure, lest, being despised, he should be without resistance given up to his enemies; but to flee to the sacred city, which lies on the borders between the holy and profane ground, being in a manner a second temple; for the cities of those who are consecrated to the priesthood are more entitled to respect than the others, in the same proportion, I think, as the inhabitants are more venerable than the inhabitants of other cities; for the lawgiver's intention is by means of the privilege belong- ing to the city which has received them to give more complete security to the fugitives. Moreover, I said before, he has appointed a time for their return, the death of the high priest, for the following reason.* As the relations of each individual who has been slain treacherously lie in wait to secure themselves revenge and justice upon those who treacherously slew him; in like manner the high priest is the relation and nearest of kin to the whole nation; inasmuch as he presides over and dis- penses justice to all who dispute in accordance with the laws, and offers up prayers and sacrifices every day on behalf of the whole nation, and prays for blessings for the people as for his own brethren, and parents, and children, that every age and every portion of the nation, as if it were one body, may be united into one and the same society and union, devoted to peace and obedience to the law.
Therefore, let every one who has slain a man uninten- tionally fear him, as the champion and espouser of the cause of those who have been slain, and let him keep himself close within the city to which he has fled for refuge, no longer venturing to advance outside of the walls, if he has any regard for his own safety, and for keeping his life out of the reach of danger.
"When, therefore, the law says, let not the fugitive return till the high priest is dead, it says something equivalent to * Numbers xxxv. 25* ON SPECIAL LAWS. 337 this: Until the high priest is dead, who is the common rela- tion of all the people, to whom alone it is committed to decide the affairs of those who are living and those who are dead.
X. Such, then, is the reason which it is fitting should be communicated to the ears of the younger men. Bui* there is another which may be well set before those who are elder and settled in their characters, which is this.
It is granted to private individuals alone to be pure from voluntary offences, or if any one chooses, he may add the other priests also to this list; but it can only be given as an especial honour to the high priest to be pure from both kinds, that is from both voluntary and involuntary offences; for it is altogether unlawful for him to touch any pollution whatever, whether intentionally or out of some unforeseen perversion of soul, in order that he, as being the declarer of the will of God may be adorned in both respects, having a disposition free from reproach, and prosperity of life, and being a man to whom no disgrace ever attaches. Now it will be consistent with the character of such a man to look with suspicion on those who have even unintentionally slain a man, not indeed regarding them as under a curse, but also not as pure and wholly free from offence, even though they may have appeared most completely to obey the inten- tion of nature, who used them as her instruments to avenge herself on those whom they have slain, whom she had privately judged by herself and condemned to death.
XI. This is enough to say concerning free men and citi- zens.
The lawgiver proceeds in due order to establish laws con- cerning slaves who are killed by violence.
Now servants are, indeed, in an inferior condition of life, but still the same nature belongs to them and to their masters. And it is. not the condition of fortune, but the harmony of nature, which, in accordance with the divine law is the rule of justice. JlA On which account it is proper for masters not to use their power over their slaves in an insolent manner, displaying by such conduct their insolence and overbearing disposition and terrible cruelty; for such conduct is not a proof of a peaceful soul, but of one which, out of an inability to regulate itself, covets the irresponsi- TOL. III. z 5338 PHILO JUD^US.
bility of a tyrannical power. For the man who fortifies his own house like a citadel, and does not allow a single person within it to speak freely, but who behaves savagely to every one, by reason of his innate misanthropy and barbarity, which has perhaps even been increased by exercise, is a tyrant in miniature; and by his conduct now it is plainly shown that he will not stop even there if he should acquire greater power.
For then he will at once go forth to attack other cities and countries, and nations, after having previously enslaved his own native land, so as to prove that he is not inclined to behave mercifully to any one who shall ever become subject to him. Let, then, such a man be well assured that he will not always escape punishment for his continual ill-treatment of many persons; for justice, which hates iniquity, will be his enemy, she who is the assistant and champion of those who are treated with injustice, and she will exact of him a strict account of, and reckoning for, those who have fallen into calamity through his means, even if he should say that he had only inflicted blows on them to correct them, not designing to kill them. For he will not at once get off with a cheerful countenance, but he will be brought before the tribunal and examined by accurate investigators of the truth, who will inquire whether he slew him intentionally or unin- tentionally. And if he be found to have plotted against him with a wicked disposition, let him die; not having any excuse made for him on the ground of his being the servants' master, so as to procure his deliverance.
But if the servants who have been beaten do not die at once after receiving the blows, but live one day or two, then the master shall no longer be liable to be accused of murder, having this strong ground of defence that he did not kill them on the spot by beating, nor afterwards when he had them in his house, but that he suffered them to live as long as they could, even though that may not have been very long. Besides that, no one is soClsilly as to attempt to dis- tress another by conduct by whicn he himself also will be a loser. But any one who kills his servant injures himself much more, since he deprives himself of the services which he received from him wnile alive, and, moreover, loses the price which he paid for him which, perhaps, was large. If, ON SPECIAL LAWS. 339 however, the servant turn out to have done any thing worthy of death, let him bring him before the judges and prove his offence, making the laws the arbiters of his punishment and not himself.
CONCERNING THOSE BRUTE BEASTS WHICH ARE THE CAUSES OF A MAN'S DEATH.
If a bull gore a man and kill him, let him be stoned.* For his flesh may not be either offered in sacrifice by the priests, nor eaten by men. Why not? Because it is not consistent with the law of Grod 'that man should take for food or for a seasoning to his food the flesh of an animal which has slain a man. But if the owner of the beast knew that he was a savage and ferocious animal, and did not con- fine him, nor shut him up and take care of him, er if he had heard from others that he was not quiet, and still allowed him to feed at liberty, he shall be liable to a prosecution as guilty of the man's death. And then the animal which gored the man shall die, and his master shall be put to death also, or else shall pay a ransom and a price for his safety, and the court of justice shall devise what punishment he ought to suffer, what penalty he ought to pay.
And if it be a slave who has been killed then he shall pay his full value to his master; but if the bull have gored not a man but another animal, then the owner of the beast which killed him shall take the dead animal and give his master another like him instead of him, because he was aware beforehand of the fierceness of his own beast, and did not guard against it. And if the bull has killed a sheep which belonged to some one else, he shall again restore this man one like it instead of it, and be thankful to him for not exacting a greater penalty of him, since it was he who was the first to do any injury.
CONCERNING PITS.
I. Some persons are accustomed to dig very deep pits, either in order to open springs which may bubble up, or else to receive rain water, and then they widen drains under ground; in which case they ought either to build round the mouths of them, or else to put a cover on them; but still they often, out * Exodus xxi. 28. z 2 340 PHILO JUDiEUS.