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[1322a]
[1]
and with the
custody of prisoners. This is an irksome office because it involves great
unpopularity, so that where it is not possible to make a great deal of profit
out of it men will not undertake it, or when they have undertaken it are
reluctant to carry out its functions according to the laws; but it is necessary,
because there is no use in trials being held about men's rights when the
verdicts are not put into execution, so that if when no legal trial of disputes
takes place social intercourse is impossible, so also is it when judgements are
not executed. Hence it is better for
this magistracy not to be a single office but to consist of several persons
drawn from different courts, and it is desirable similarly to try to divide up
the functions connected with the posting up of people registered as public
debtors, and further also in some cases for the sentences to be executed by
magistrates, especially by the newly elected ones preferably in suits tried by
the outgoing ones, and in those tried by men actually in office for the
magistrate executing the sentence to be different from the one that passed it,
for instance the City-controllers to execute the judgements passed on from the
Market-controllers and other magistrates those passed on by the
City-controllers. For the less odium involved for those who execute the
judgements, the more adequately the judgements will be carried out; so for the
same magistrates to have imposed the sentence and to execute it involves a
twofold odium, and for the same ones to execute it in all cases makes them the
enemies of everybody. And in many
places also the office of keeping custody of prisoners, for example at
Athens the office of the
magistrates known as the Eleven1,
[20]
is separate
from the magistracy that executes sentences. It is better therefore to keep this
also separate, and to attempt the same device with regard to this as well. For
though it is no less necessary than the office of which I spoke, yet in practice
respectable people avoid it most of all offices, while it is not safe to put it
into the hands of the base, for they themselves need others to guard them
instead of being able to keep guard over others. Hence there must not be one
magistracy specially assigned to the custody of prisoners nor must the same
magistracy perform this duty continuously, but it should be performed by the
young, in places where there is a regiment of cadets2 or guards, and by the magistrates, in successive
sections.These magistracies therefore must be counted first as supremely
necessary, and next to them must be put those that are not less necessary but
are ranked on a higher grade of dignity, because they require much experience
and trustworthiness; in this class would come the magistracies concerned with
guarding the city and those assigned to military requirements. And both in peace
and in war it is equally necessary for there to be magistrates to superintend
the guarding of gates and walls and the inspection and drill of the citizen
troops. In some places therefore
there are more magistracies assigned to all these duties, and in others
fewer—for instance in the small states there is one to deal with all
of them. And the officers of this sort are entitled Generals or War-lords.
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