These are the accents, soft and low, in which we address the would-be criminal.  And if he will not listen, then cry aloud as with the sound of a trumpet:  Whosoever robs a temple, if he be a slave or foreigner shall be branded in the face and hands, and scourged, and cast naked beyond the border.  And perhaps this may improve him:  for the law aims either at the reformation of the criminal, or the repression of crime.  No punishment is designed to inflict useless injury.  But if the offender be a citizen, he must be incurable, and for him death is the only fitting penalty.  His iniquity, however, shall not be visited on his children, nor shall his property be confiscated.

As to the exaction of penalties, any person who is fined for an offence shall not be liable to pay the fine, unless he have property in excess of his lot.  For the lots must never go uncultivated for lack of means; the guardians of the law are to provide against this.  If a fine is inflicted upon a man which he cannot pay, and for which his friends are unwilling to give security, he shall be imprisoned and otherwise dishonoured.  But no criminal shall go unpunished:—­whether death, or imprisonment, or stripes, or fines, or the stocks, or banishment to a remote temple, be the penalty.  Capital offences shall come under the cognizance of the guardians of the law, and a college of the best of the last year’s magistrates.  The order of suits and similar details we shall leave to the lawgivers of the future, and only determine the mode of voting.  The judges are to sit in order of seniority, and the proceedings shall begin with the speeches of the plaintiff and the defendant; and then the judges, beginning with the eldest, shall ask questions and collect evidence during three days, which, at the end of each day, shall be deposited in writing under their seals on the altar of Hestia; and when they have evidence enough, after a solemn declaration that they will decide justly, they shall vote and end the case.  The votes are to be given openly in the presence of the citizens.

Next to religion, the preservation of the constitution is the first object of the law.  The greatest enemy of the state is he who attempts to set up a tyrant, or breeds plots and conspiracies; not far below him in guilt is a magistrate who either knowingly, or in ignorance, fails to bring the offender to justice.  Any one who is good for anything will give information against traitors.  The mode of proceeding at such trials will be the same as at trials for sacrilege; the penalty, death.  But neither in this case nor in any other is the son to bear the iniquity of the father, unless father, grandfather, great-grandfather, have all of them been capitally convicted, and then the family of the criminal are to be sent off to the country of their ancestor, retaining their property, with the exception of the lot and its fixtures.  And ten are to be selected from the younger sons of the other citizens—­one of whom is to be chosen by the oracle of Delphi to be heir of the lot.