[922b]
All these have their starting-points either in the desire of those at the point of death to devise their property, or in the accidental cases of those who die without making a testament; and it was in view of the complex and difficult nature of these cases, Clinias, that I made use of the word “necessarily.” And it is, indeed, impossible to leave them without regulation; for individuals might set down many wishes both at variance with one another and contrary to the laws as well as to the dispositions of the living, and also to their own former dispositions in the days before they proposed making a will,
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
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