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‘I distinguish therefore two kinds of law, the special and the universal; and by special, I mean that which is determined in each people or nation (separately or individually) by themselves, (lit. that which has for each class of people or nation its definition directed or referred to themselves,) by their own peculiar habits, customs, feelings, opinions, form of government, and this either unwritten or written’ (see in explanation of this, Introd. Appendix E p. 242—244); ‘and by universal law, the “law of Nature”.’ For there is, as all are instinctively convinced, a natural and universal notion of right and wrong, quite independent of any mutual communication (association, intercourse), or compact, such as Sophocles' Antigone evidently alludes to, when she says that it is just, (right), though forbidden, (by the positive law of Creon's enactment) to bury Polynices, implying (ὡς, on the supposition that) that this is naturally right.

Not of today nor yet of yesterday Is this, but everlasting is its life, And none doth know what time it came to light.

And, as Empedocles says about killing living animals; for this is not right for some and not right for others, ‘but this same law for all (this universal law) spreads without break or flaw’ (ἠνεκέως, usually διηνεκῶς, ‘continuously’) ‘over the wide ruling sky and again over the boundless earth’.

Law universal of no human birth Pervades the sovereign sky and boundless earth.

On the distinction of the κοινός and ἴδιος νόμος here taken, compare Eth. N. V 10 (Eth. Eud. IV 10) 1134 b 18 seq. quoted in Introduction, p. 241. The same distinction is found supra I 10. 3. On ‘natural law’ see Whewell, Elements of Morality, § 380 seq. Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, Definitions of Law, c. 2.

μαντεύονται] of a presentiment or foreboding, or as here an instinctive conviction, a sort of divination; see note on I 9. 40, καταμαντεύεσθαι.

Ἀντιγόνη...λέγουσα] Soph. Antig. 456.

Ἐμπεδοκλῆς λέγει] Empedocles, Fragm. lines 404—5. Karsten ad loc. p. 281 says, ‘Scaliger ad vocabulum αὐγῆς in margine annotavit lect. αὖ γῆς. Codices variant (the best including A^{c} appear to give αὐγῆς); hoc perperam recepit Bekkerus, quem plures sunt secuti, qui loci sensum parum habuerunt perspectum.’ Spengel follows Bekker in reading αὖ γῆς. In illustration of the doctrine alluded to in the lines quoted, Karsten cites Diogenes Laertius, de Pythag. VIII 13, qui dicit, eum vetare ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ζῴων, κοινὸν δίκαιον ἡμῖν ἐχόντων τῆς ψυχῆς; and Sextus Empiricus adv. Math. IX 127, who says that the entire school of Pythagoras and Empedocles, and all the Italians, assert that we have intercourse not only with the Gods and one another, but that this extends also to irrational animals; ἓν γὰρ ὑπάρχειν πνεῦμα τὸ διὰ παντὸς τοῦ κόσμου διῆκον ψυχῆς τρόπον, τὸ καὶ ἑνοῦν ἡμᾶς πρὸς ἐκεῖνα: διόπερ καὶ κτείνοντες αὐτὰ... ἀσεβοῦμεν. On the interpretation of αὐγῆς Karsten has this note. ‘Ergo commune illud ius pertinet διά τ᾽ αἰθέρος i. e. per aerem (cf. annot. ad v. 105) quo omnes animantes vescuntur, διά τ᾽ αὐγῆς per lucidum caelum (ut vs. 127) in quo Dii degunt’. The verse cited by Karsten in support of his interpretation of αὐγῆς seems insufficient for its purpose; the word there seems to have no other meaning than its ordinary one, ‘sunbeam or sunlight’; I doubt if αὐγή could stand for ‘heaven’; and perhaps it may be better to accept Bekker's reading.

On Alcidamas, see the article on the Sophistical Rhetoric, in the Cambridge Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Vol. III. No. 9, p. 263 seq. and on the Μεσσηνιακὸς λόγος, ib. p. 257. It is quoted again, II 23. 1. Vater, and Spengel (Artium Scriptores p. 175), cite the anonymous Scholiast, who supplies the missing quotation thus; ἐλευθέρους ἀφῆκε πάντας Θεός, οὐδένα δοῦλον φύσις πεποίηκεν. It seems to be totally inapplicable to the topic which it professes to illustrate, and if it comes from the speech at all is at all events quite out of place here. Spengel (Praef. ad Rhet. Gr. I vi) says of it, fictum non verum: but being as it is so utterly inappropriate, it can hardly have been ‘manufactured’ for an occasion to which it is not suitable.

Of the ‘Messeniac declamation’ the Schol. says that it was a μελετὴ ὑπὲρ Μεσσηνίων ἀποστησάντων Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ μὴ πειθομένων δουλεύειν. Conf. Sauppe, ad Alcid. Fragm. 1, Oratores Attici III 154. [Vahlen, der Rhetor Alkidamas, (Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Academie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 1863, pp. 491—528, esp. p. 505). S.]

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