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of shameful carelessness or folly, have left such places open, by which means some persons have met with destruction. If, therefore, any traveller passing along the road, not knowing beforehand that there is any such pit, shall step on the hole, and fall in, and be killed, any one of the relations of the dead man who chooses may bring an accusation against those who made the pit, and the tribunal shall decide what punishment they ought to suffer, or what penalty they ought to pay.* But if a beast fall in and perish, then they who dug the pit shall pay its value to its owner as if it were still alive, and they shall have the dead body for themselves.
Again, those men also are committing an injury akin to and resembling that which has just been mentioned, who when building houses leave the roof level with the ground though they ought to protect them with a parapet, in order that no one may fall down into the hole made without per- ceiving it. For such men, if one is to tell the plain truth, are committing murder, as far as they themselves are con- cerned, even though no one fall in and perish; accordingly let them be punished equally with those who have the mouths of pits open.
II. The law expressly enjoins that it shall not be lawful to take any ransom frpm murderers who ought to be put to death, for the purpose of lessening their punishment, or substituting banishment for death. For blood must be atoned for by blood, the blood of him who has been treacherously slain by that of him who has slain him. Since men of wicked dispositions are never wearied of offending, but are always committing atrocious actions in the excess of their wickedness, and increasing their iniquities, and extending them beyond all bounds or limits.
Tor the lawgiver would, if it had been in his power, have condemned those men to ten thousand deaths. But since this was not possible, he prescribed another punishment for them, commanding those who had slain a man to be hanged upon a tree. And after having established this ordinance he returned again to his natural humanity, treating with mercy even those who had behaved unmercifully towards others, and he pronounced, " Let not the sun set upon * Exodus xxi. 33.
ON SPECIAL LAWS. 341 persons hanging on a tree;" * but let them be buried under the earth and be concealed from sight before sunset. For it was necessary to raise up on high all those who were enemies to every part of the world, so as to show most evidently to the sun, and to the heaven, and to the air, and to the water, and to the earth, that they had been chastised; and after that it was proper to remove them into the region of the dead, and to bury them, in order to prevent their polluting the things upon the earth.
III. Moreover, there is this further commandment given with great propriety, that the fathers are not to die in behalf of their sons, nor the sons in behalf of their parents, but that every one who has done things worthy of death is to be put to death by himself alone. And this commandment is established because of those persons who set might above right, and also for the sake of those who are too affectionate; for these last, out of their extraordinary and extravagant good will, will be often willing cheerfully to die for others, the innocent thus giving themselves up for the guilty, and thinking it a great gain not to see them punished; or else sons giving themselves up for their fathers in the idea that, if deprived of them they would for the future live a miserable life, more grievous than any kind of death.
But to such persons one must say, "This your good-will is out of season." And all things which are out of season are very properly blamed, just as things that are done seasonably are praised on that account. Moreover, it is right to love those who do actions worthy to attract love. But no wicked man can be really a friend to any one. And wickedness alienates relations, and even those who are the most attached of relations, when men violate all the prin- ciples of justice. For the agreement as to principles of justice and as to the other virtues, is a closer tie than relationship by blood; and if any one violates such an agree- ment, he is set down not only as a stranger and a foreigner, but even as an irreconcilable enemy.
" "Why then do you pervert and misapply the name of good- will which is a most excellent and humane one, and conceal the truth, exhibiting as a veil an effeminate and womanly disposition? For are not those persons womanly in whose * Deuteronomy xxi. 23.
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minds reason is overcome by compassion? And you do this in order to effect a double iniquity, delivering the guilty from punishment, and thinking it fair to punish yourselves, who are blameable in no respect whatever, instead of them."
IV. But these men have this to say in excuse of them- selves, that they are not pursuing any private advantage for themselves, and also that they are influenced by excessive affection for their nearest relations, for the sake of the pre- servation of whom they will cheerfully submit to die. But who, I will not say of moderate men, but even of those who are very inhuman indeed in their dispositions, would not reject such barbarous and actually brutally disposed persons as those who, either by secret contrivance or by open audacity, inflict the greatest calamities on one person as a punishment for the faults of another, putting forward as a pretext the plea of friendship, or of relationship, or of fellow- ship, or something of that kind, as a justification for the destruction of those who have done no wrong? And at times they even do these things without having suffered any injury at all out of mere covetousness and a love of rapine.
Not long ago a certain man who had been appointed a collector of taxes in our country, when some of those who appeared to owe such tribute fled out of poverty, from a fear of intolerable punishment if they remained without pay- ing, carried off their wives, and their children, and their parents, and their whole families by force, beating and insulting them, and heaping every kind of contumely and ill treatment upon them, to make them either give informa- tion as to where the fugitives had concealed themselves, or pay the money instead of them, though they could not do either the one thing or the other; in the first place, because they did not know where they were, and, secondly, because they were in still greater poverty than the men who had fled. But this tax-collector did not let them go till he had tortured their bodies with racks and wheels, so as to kill them with newly invented kinds of death, fastening a basket full of sand to their necks with cords, and suspending it there as a very heavy weight, and then placing them in the open air in the middle of the market place, that some of them, being tortured and being overwhelmed by all these afflictions at once, the wind, and the sun, and the mockery ON SPECIAL LAWS. 343 of the passers by, and the shame, and the heavy burden attached to them, might faint miserably; and that the rest, being spectators, might be grieved and take warning by their punishment, some of whom, having ji more acute sense of such miseries in their minds than that which they could receive through their eyes, since they sympathised with these unfortunates as if they were themselves suffering in the persons of others, put an end to their own lives by swords, or poison, or halters, thinking it a great piece of good luck for persons, liable to such misery, to be able to meet with death without torture.
But those who did not make haste to kill themselves, but who were seized before they could do so, were led away in a row, as in the case of actions for inheritance, according to their nearness of kindred, the nearest relations first, then those next to them in succession, in the second or third place, till they came to the last; and then, when there were no relations left, the cruelty proceeded on to the friends and neighbours of the fugitives; and sometimes it was ex- tended even into the cities and villages, which soon became desolate, being emptied of all their inhabitants, who all quitted their homes, and dispersed to places where they hoped that they might escape detection.
But perhaps it is not wonderful if men, barbarians by nature, utterly ignorant of all gentleness, and under the command of despotic authority, which compelled them to give an account of the yearly revenue, should, in order to enforce the payment of the taxes, extend their severities, not merely to properties but also to the persons, and even to the lives, of those from whom they thought they could exact a vicarious payment. But now, even those persons who are the very standard and rule of justice, the lawgivers themselves, having a regard to appearance rather than to truth, have endured to become, instead, standards of injus- tice, commanding the children of a traitor to be put to death with the traitor himself, and in the case of tyrants the five families most nearly related to them.
Why is this I should say? Eor if indeed they have shared in their wickedness, then let them likewise share in their punishment; but if they have not participated in that, and if they have not been imitators of such actions, and if 344 PHILO JUDiEUS.
344 PHILO JUDiEUS.
they have not been elated by the prosperity ot their kins- men, so as to exult in it, why should they be put to death? Is it for this reason alone, that they are their relations? Are the punishments tfcen inflicted for the relationship, or for the lawless conduct? Perhaps you yourselves, 0 you venerable lawgivers, have had virtuous relations; but sup- pose they had been wicked, then it seems to me that you not only would never yourselves have devised any such com- mandments as this, but would have been furious with any one else who proposed such a law, because* taking care to avoid all liability to terrible calamity, and desiring to live in security, is now in great danger, and is exposed to an equal degree of misfortune.
For the one condition is liable to fear, which, though a person may guard against for himself, he will still not despise the safety of another, but the other state is free from all apprehension, and by it men have often been per- suaded to neglect the safety of innocent men.
Therefore our lawgiver, considering these things and per- ceiving the errors of others, rejects them and hates them as destructive of the most excellent constitution, and consigns to punishment all those who give way to such, whether it be out of indifference, or out of inhumanity and wickedness, and never permits any of their countrymen or friends to be substituted for them, making themselves an addition to the crimes which the others have already committed; on which account he has expressly forbidden sons to be put to death instead of their parents, or parents instead of their sons, thinking it right that they who have committed the crimes should also bear the punishment, whether it be a pecuniary fine, or stripes, and more severe personal chastisement, or even wounds and mutilation, and dishonour, and exile, or any other judicial sentence; for though he only names one kind of punishment, forbidding one person to be put to death for another, he also comprises other kinds, which he does not expressly mention.
* There appears to be an hiatus in the text here. There is clearly a want of connection and coherence in the rest of the sentence as it stands now.
ON SPECIAL LAWS 345 ABOUT WOMEN NOT BEHAVING IMMODESTLY.
I. Market places, and council chambers, and courts of justice, and large companies and assemblies of numerous crowds, and a life in the open air full of arguments and actions relating to war and peace, are suited to men; but taking care of the house and remaining at home are the proper duties of women; the virgins having their apartments in the centre of the house within the innermost doors, and the full-grown women not going beyond the vestibule and outer courts; for there are two kinds of states, the greater and the smaller. And the larger ones are called really cities; but the smaller ones are called houses.
And the superintendence and management of these is allotted to the two sexes separately; the men having the government of the greater, which government is called a polity; and the women that of the smaller, which is called ceconomy. Therefore let no woman busy herself about those things which are beyond the province of ceconomy, but let her cultivate solitude, and not be seen to be going about like a woman who walks the streets in the sight of other men, except when it is necessary for her to go to the temple, it' she has any proper regard for herself; and even then let her not go at noon when the market is full, but after the greater part of the people have returned home; like a well-born woman, a real and true citizen, performing her vows and her sacrifices in tranquillity, so as to avert evils and to receive But when men are abusing one another or fighting, for women to venture to run out under pretence of assisting or defending them, is a blameable action and one of no slight shamelessness, since even, in the times of war and of military expeditions, and of dangers to their whole native land, the law does not choose that they should be enrolled as its de- fenders; looking at what is becoming, which it thinks desira- ble to preserve unchangeable at all times and in all places, thinking that this very thing is of itself better than victory, or than freedom, or than any kind of success and prosperity. Moreover, if any woman, hearing that her husband is being assaulted, being out of her affection for him carried away by love for her husband, should yield to the feelings which over- 346 PHILO JUDiEUS power her and rush forth to aid him, still let her not be so audacious as to behave like a man, outrunning the nature of a woman;* but even while aiding him let her continue a woman.
For it would be a very terrible thing if a woman, being desirous to deliver her husband from an insult, should expose herself to insult, by exhibiting human life as full of shamelessness and liable to great reproaches for her incura- ble boldness; for shall a woman utter abuse in the market- place and give vent to unlawful language? and if another man uses foul language, will not she stop her ears and run away? But as it is now, some women are ad- vanced to such a pitch of shamelessness as not only, though they are women, to give vent to intemperate language and abuse among a crowd of men, but even to strike men and insult them, with hands practised rather in works of the loom and spinning than in blows and assaults, like competi- tors in the pancratium or wrestlers. And other things, indeed, may be tolerable, and what any one might easily bear, but that is a shocking thing if a woman were to proceed to such a degree of boldness as to seize hold of the genitals of one of the men quarrelling.
For let not such a woman be let go on the ground that she appears to have done this action in order to assist her own husband; but let her be impeached and suffer the punish- ment due to her excessive audacity, so that if she should ever be inclined to commit the same offence again she may not have an opportunity of doing so; and other women, also, who might be inclined to be precipitate, may be taught by fear to be moderate and to restrain themselves.
And let the punishment be the cutting off of the hand which has touched what it ought not to have touched.
And it is fitting to praise those who have been the judges and managers of the gymnastic games, who have kept women from the spectacle, in order that they might not be thrown among naked men and so mar the approved coinage of their modesty, neglecting the ordinances of nature, which she has appointed for each section of our race; for neither is it right for men to mix with women when they have laid aside their garments, but each of the sexes ought to avoid the sight of * Deuteronomy xxv. 11.
ON SPECIAL LAWS. 3-47 the other when they are naked, in accordance with the promptings of nature. Well, then, of those things of which we are to abstain from the sight, are not the hands much more to be blamed for the touch? Tor the eyes, being wholly at freedom, are nevertheless often constrained so as to see things which they do not wish to see; but the hands are ranked among those parts which are completely under sub jection, and obey our commands, and are subservient to us.
II. And this is the cause which is often mentioned by many people. But I have heard another also, alleged by persons of high character, who look upon the greater part of the injunctions contained in the law as plain symbols of obscure meanings, and expressed intimations of what may not be expressed. And this other reason alleged is as follows.
There are two kinds of soul, just as there are two sexes among human relations; the one a masculine soul, belonging to men; the other a female soul, as found in women. The masculine soul is that which devotes itself to God alone, as the Father and Creator of the universe and the cause of all things that exist; but the female soul is that which depends upon all the things which are created, and as such are liable to destruction, and which puts forth, as it were, the hand of its power in order that in a blind sort of way it may lay hold of whatever comes across it, clinging to a generation which admits of an innumerable quantity of changes and variations, when it ought rather to cleave to the unchangeable, blessed, and thrice happy divine nature.
Very naturally, therefore, the law commands* that the executioner should cut off the hand of the woman which has laid hold of what it should not, speaking figuratively, and in- timating not that the body shall be mutilated, being deprived of its most important part, but rather that it is proper to extirpate all the ungodly reasonings of the soul, using all things which are created as a stepping-stone; for the things which the woman is forbidden to take hold of are the symbols of procreation and generation. And, moreover, keeping up a consistent regard to nature, I will also say this, that the unit is the image of the first cause, and the number two of the divisible matter that is worked upon. * Deuteronomy xxv. 12.
348 PHILO JUD.EUS.
"Whoever, therefore, receives the number two, honouring it above the unit, must be taught to know that he is, in so doing, approving of the matter more than of G-od. On which account the law has thought fit to cut off this appre- hension of the soul as if it were a hand; for there can be no greater impiety than to ascribe the power of the agent to that which is passive.
III. And any one may here fitly blame those who appoint that punishments, in nowise corresponding to the offences, are to be inflicted on the offenders, imposing pecuniary penalties for assaults, or stigma and infamy for wounds and mutila- tions, or a banishment beyond the borders of the land for in- tentional murders, and everlasting exile or imprisonment for thefts; for irregularity and inequality are enemies to a con- stitution which is eager for th» truth. And our law, being the interpreter and teacher of equality, commands that offenders should undergo a punishment similar to the offence which they have committed; that, for instance, they should suffer punishment in their property if they have injured their neighbour in his property; in their persons, if they have in- jured him in his body, or in his limbs, or the organs of his outward senses; and, if their evil designs have extended to his life, then the law commands that the punishment should affect the life of the malefactor.
For to exact a different and wholly unequal punishment which has no connection with or resemblance to the offence, but which is wholly at variance with it in all its characteris- tics, is the conduct of those who violate the laws rather than of those wrho would establish them. And when we say this, we mean provided no circumstances occur to give a different complexion to the affair; for it is not the same thing to inflict blows on one's father and on a stranger, nor to speak ill of a ruler and of a private person, nor to do anything which is forbidden on common ground or in holy places, or at the time of a festival, or of a solemn assembly, or of a public sacrifice; or, again, on the days on which there is no holiday or sacred observance, or on those which are com- pletely common and profane. And all other things of this kind one must examine with a view to judge of the propriety of increasing or diminishing the punishment.
Again. "If," says the law, "any one strike out the eye ON SPECIAL LAWS. 3-49 of a servant or of a handmaiden, he shall let them depart free."* Because, as nature has assigned the chief position in the body to the head, having bestowed upon it a situation the most suitable to that pre-eminence, as it might give a citadel to a king (for having sent it forth to govern the body it has established it on a height, putting the whole composi- tion of the body from the neck to the feet under it, as a pedestal might be placed under a statue), so also it has given the pre-eminence among the organs of the external senses to the eyes. At all events, it has assigned them a position above all the others, as if they were the chiefs, wish- ing to honour them not only by other things, but also by this most evident and conspicuous of all signs.
IV. Now it would take a long time to enumerate all the necessities which the eyes supply to, and all the services which they perform for, the human race. But one, the most excellent of all, we may mention. It is the heaven which has showered philosophy upon us, it is the human mind which has received and which contains it, but it is sight which has entertained and been its host; for that is the faculty which was the first to see the level roads through the air.
And philosophy is the fountain of all blessings, of all things which are really good. And he who draws from this fountain, so as thus to acquire and make use of virtue is praiseworthy; but he who does it with the object of accom- plishing wicked purposes and of condemning others is blame- able. For the one is like a man at an entertainment, who is delighting both himself and all who are feasting in his company; but the other is like one who is swallowing down strong wine, in order to make himself and his neighbour drunk.
Now in what way it is that the sight may be said to have entertained philosophy as its host we must now proceed to explain. Having looked up to heaven it beheld the sun, and the moon, and the planets, and the fixed stars, the most beautiful host of heaven, the ornament of the world. After that it arrived at a perception of the rising and setting of these bodies, and their harmonious motions, and the fixed seasons of their periodical revolutions, and their meetings, * Exodus xxi. 26.
350 PH1LO JUD^US.
and eclipses, and re-appearances. After that it proceeded onwards to a comprehension of the increase and decrease of the moon; of the motions of the sun along the breadth of heaven, as he comes from the south towards the north, and again recedes from the north towards the south, in order to the generation of the fruits of the year, so that they may all be brought to perfection, and ten thousand other wonderful things besides these. And having looked round and sur- veyed the things in the earth, and in the sea, and in the air, with great diligence displayed all the things in each of these elements to the mind.
But as the mind was unable by itself to comprehend all these things from merely beholding them by the faculty of sight, it did nut stop merely at what was seen by it, but being devoted to learning, and fond of what is honourable and excellent, as it admired what it did see, it adopted this probable opinion, that these things are not moved spon- taneously and at random by any irrational impulse of their own, but that they are set in motion and guided by the will of God, whom it is proper to look upon as the Father and Creator of the world. Moreover, that these things are not unrestrained by any bounds, but that they are limited by the circumference of one world, as they might be by the the walls of a city, the world itself being circumscribed within the outermost sphere of the fixed stars.
Moreover it considered also that the Father who created the world does by the law of nature take care of that which he has created, exerting his providence in behalf of the whole universe and of its parts. In the next place it also considered what was the essence of the visible world, and whether all the things in the world had the same essence, or whether different things had different essences, and also of what substances everything was made, and for what reasons it was made, and by what powers the world was held together, and whether these powers were corporeal or incorporeal. For what can the investigation into these and similar subjects be called but philosophy? And what more fitting name could one give to the man who devoted himself to the investigation of these topics than that of a philoso- pher? For by his examination of the nature of God, and ot the world, and of all the things in it, whether plants or ON SPECIAL LAWS. 351 animals, and of those models which are only appreciable by the intellect, and again of the perfected representations of those models which are visible to the outward senses, and of the virtues and vices which exist in all created things, he shows that his disposition is one truly devoted to learning, and contemplation, and philosophy; and this greatest of blessings to mortal man is bestowed upon him by the faculty of sight.
And this faculty seems to me to deserve this pre-eminence, since it is more nearly related to the soul than any one of the other outward senses, for they all of them have some kind of connection with the intellect; but this one obtains the first and principal rank as the nearest relation does in a private house. And any one may conjecture this from many circumstances, for who is there who does not know that when persons are delighted their eyes betray their pleasure, and sparkle, but that when they are grieved their eyes are full of depression and heaviness; and if any heavy burden of grief oppresses, and crushes, and overwhelms the mind, they weep; and if anger obtains the preponderance, the eyes swell, and become bloodshot and fiery; and again change so as to be gentle and soft when the anger is relaxed. Again, when the man is immersed in deep thought and con- templation, the eyes seem fixed as if they in a manner joined in his gravity; but in the case of those who are of no great wisdom the sight wanders, because of their vacancy of intel- lect, and is restless, and in short the eyes sympathise with the affections of the soul, and are wont to change along with it in innumerable alternations, on account of the closeness of their connection with it; for it seems to me that there is no one visible thing which God has made so complete a representation of that which is invisible as the sight is of the mind.