Plato, Laws

[917a] and such an one is he who without regard of the gods swears oaths falsely, and also who lies in the presence of his superiors. Now the better are the superiors of the worse, and the older in general of the younger; wherefore also parents are superior to their offspring, men to women and children, rulers to ruled.¹ And it will be proper for all to revere all these classes of superiors, whether they be in other positions of authority or in offices of State above all; and to enforce this is just the purpose of our present discourse. For everyone [917b] who adulterates any market commodity, lies and deceives and, calling Heaven to witness, takes an oath in front of the laws and cautions of the market-stewards, neither regarding men nor revering gods. Certainly it is a good practice to refrain from sullying lightly divine names, and to behave with such purity and holiness as most of us generally exhibit in matters of religion; if however this rule is disobeyed, the law runs thus:—He that sells any article in the market shall never name two prices for what he is selling; [917c] he shall name one price only, and if he fails to get this, he will be entitled to take the article away; but he shall not put any other price, greater or less, upon it on that day; and there shall be no puffing or taking of oaths about anything put up for sale. If any man disobeys these rules, any townsman who is present, not being under thirty years of age, shall punish with a beating the seller who swears, and he shall do so with impunity; but if he is disobedient and neglects to do so, he shall be liable to reprobation for betraying the laws. And if a man is selling an adulterated article, [917d] and is incapable of obeying our present rules, any person who is present and aware of the fact and able to expose him shall take for himself the adulterated article, if he expose him before a magistrate, he being himself a slave or a metic,—but if he be a citizen, he shall be declared to be wicked, as a robber of the gods, if he fail to expose the guilty man; while if he does expose him, he shall offer the article to the gods who preside over the market. He that is found out in selling any such article, in addition to being deprived of the adulterated article, shall be beaten in the market-place with stripes—one stripe for every drachma in the price he asks for the article— [917e] after that the herald has first proclaimed the crimes for which the seller is to be beaten. Touching acts of fraud and wrongful acts done by sellers, the market-stewards and the Law-wardens, after making enquiry from experts in each trade, shall write out rules as to what the seller ought to do or avoid doing, and shall post them up on a pillar in front of the stewards office, to serve as written laws and clear instructors