He shall take it and depart but should it belong to another third party, not then present, whichever of the two claimants produces a sufficient guarantor shall take it away on behalf of the absent party, in pursuance of his right of removal, to hand it over to him. And the article being thus exhibited, if it be clearly recorded in the records to which of the disputants it belongs, And if one man charges another with possessing any of his goods, be it great or small, and the man so charged allows that he has the article, but denies that it is the other man's,-then, if the article in question has been registered 5 with the magistrates according to law, the plaintiff shall summon the man who possesses it before the magistrate, and he shall produce it in court. Should anyone transgress this rule and disobediently take such things and carry them home, he being a slave and the article of small value, then the man who meets with him, being over thirty years old, shall scourge him with many stripes īut if he be a free man, he shall not only be accounted illiberal and a rebel against the laws, but he shall in addition buy back ten times the value of the article moved to the man who left it behind. If a man, whether willingly or unwillingly, leaves any of his goods behind, he that happens on them shall let them lie, believing that the Goddess of the Wayside 4 guards them, as things dedicated to her divinity by the law. And if the informer be a free man, he shall win a reputation for virtue, but for vice if he fail to inform and if he be a slave, as a reward for informing it will be right that he should be set free, by the State offering his price to his master, whereas he shall be punished by death if he fail to give information.įollowing on this there should come next a similar rule about matters great and small, to reinforce it. And when such declarations are made, the State shall send to Delphi 3 and whatever the god pronounces concerning the goods and him that moved them, that the State shall execute, acting as agent on behalf of the oracles of the god. To the market-stewards and if it occur in the country outside, he shall declare it to the rural stewards and their officers. “Take not up what you laid not down,”-the man who despises these two lawgivers and takes up what he has not laid down himself, it being no small thing but sometimes a vast quantity of treasure,-what penalty should such a man suffer? God knows what, at the hands of gods but the man that first notices an act of this kind shall report it, if it occur in the city, to the city-stewards, or if in a public market, But if any man proves to be both regardless of children and neglectful of the legislator, and, without the consent of the depositor, takes up a treasure which neither he himself nor any of his forefathers has deposited, and thus breaks a law most fair, and that most comprehensive ordinance of the noble man 2 who said, The rule, 1 “Thou shalt not move the immovable,” is rightly applicable to many cases and the case before us is one of them.Īnd men ought also to believe the stories told about these matters,-how that such conduct is injurious to the getting of children. For never should I gain so much pecuniary profit by its removal, as I should win increase in virtue of soul and in justice by not removing it and by preferring to gain justice in my soul rather than money in my purse, I should be winning a greater in place of a lesser gain, and that too in a better part of me. Nor, if I do find it, may I move it, nor may I ever tell of it to the soothsayers (so-called), who are certain to counsel me to take up what is laid down in the ground. As the first of such things let us mention treasure: that which a man has laid by in store for himself and his family (he not being one of my parents), I must never pray to the gods to find, The following will serve for a comprehensive rule:-as far as possible, no one shall touch my goods nor move them in the slightest degree, if he has in no wise at all got my consent and I must act in like manner regarding the goods of all other men, keeping prudent mind. In the next place our business transactions one with another will require proper regulation.
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