The Great Flood
Table of Contents
What is the origin of government?
A man might watch the states of good and evil through time, and observe the changes during infinite ages.
The time elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens is vast and incalculable
Thousands and thousands of cities come into being during this period and as many perished.
Each of them had every form of government many times over.
What is the cause of these changes?
That will explain the first origin and development of forms of government.
The ancient traditions write about the many destructions of mankind by deluges and pestilences.
Those who escaped the Deluge would only be hill shepherds on the tops of mountains.
Such survivors would be unacquainted with the arts and devices of the city dwellers.
The cities in the plain and on the sea-coast were utterly destroyed at that time.
Yes. The arts were unknown 100m years ago. The following are 1,000-2,000 years old:
- the discoveries of Daedalus, Orpheus and Palamedes
- the invention of music by Marsyas and Olympus
- the invention of Amphion of the lyre
There are numberless other inventions from yesterday.
Epimenides far overleaps the heads of all mankind by his invention. He carried out in practice what of old Hesiod (Works and Days) only preached.
After the Flood, the world was a fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land. A herd of oxen would be the only survivors of the animal world and there might be a few goats, these too hardly enough to maintain the shepherds who tended them.
Out of this state of things has there not sprung all that we now are and have: cities and governments, and arts and laws, and a great deal of vice and a great deal of virtue.
Those who knew nothing of all the good and evil of cities attained their full development.
As time advanced and the race multiplied, the world came to be what the world is.
The change was not made all in a moment, but little by little, during a very long period of time.
The fewness of the survivors at that time would have made them all the more desirous of seeing one another; but then the means of travelling either by land or sea had been almost entirely lost, as I may say, with the loss of the arts, and there was great difficulty in getting at one another; for iron and brass and all metals were jumbled together and had disappeared in the chaos; nor was there any possibility of extracting ore from them; and they had scarcely any means of felling timber.
Even if you suppose that some implements might have been preserved in the mountains, they must quickly have worn out and vanished, and there would be no more of them until the art of metallurgy had again revived.
During this period, and for some time afterwards, all the arts which require iron and brass and the like would disappear.
Faction and war would also have died out in those days, and for many reasons.
- The desolation of these primitive men would create in them a feeling of affection and goodwill towards one another
- They would have no occasion to quarrel about their subsistence, for they would have pasture in abundance, except just at first, and in some particular cases
From their pasture-land they would obtain the greater part of their food in a primitive age, having plenty of milk and flesh; moreover they would procure other food by the chase, not to be despised either in quantity or quality. They would also have abundance of clothing, and bedding, and dwellings, and utensils either capable of standing on the fire or not; for the plastic and weaving arts do not require any use of iron: and God has given these two arts to man in order to provide him with all such things, that, when reduced to the last extremity, the human race may still grow and increase. Hence in those days mankind were not very poor; nor was poverty a cause of difference among them; and rich they could not have been, having neither gold nor silver:—such at that time was their condition. And the community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles; in it there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envyings. And therefore they were good, and also because they were what is called simple-minded; and when they were told about good and evil, they in their simplicity believed what they heard to be very truth and practised it. No one had the wit to suspect another of a falsehood, as men do now; but what they heard about Gods and men they believed to be true, and lived accordingly; and therefore they were in all respects such as we have described them.
Would not many generations living on in a simple manner, although ruder, perhaps, and more ignorant of the arts generally, and in particular of those of land or naval warfare, and likewise of other arts, termed in cities legal practices and party conflicts, and including all conceivable ways of hurting one another in word and deed;—although inferior to those who lived before the deluge, or to the men of our day in these respects, would they not, I say, be simpler and more manly, and also more temperate and altogether more just? The reason has been already explained.
They could hardly have wanted lawgivers as yet; nothing of that sort was likely to have existed in their days, for they had no letters at this early period; they lived by habit and the customs of their ancestors, as they are called.
But there was already existing a form of government which, if I am not mistaken, is generally termed a lordship, and this still remains in many places, both among Hellenes and barbarians (compare Arist. Pol.), and is the government which is declared by Homer to have prevailed among the Cyclopes:—
‘They have neither councils nor judgments, but they dwell in hollow caves on the tops of high mountains, and every one gives law to his wife and children, and they do not busy themselves about one another.’ (Odyss.)
CLEINIAS: That seems to be a charming poet of yours; I have read some other verses of his, which are very clever; but I do not know much of him, for foreign poets are very little read among the Cretans.
MEGILLUS: But they are in Lacedaemon, and he appears to be the prince of them all; the manner of life, however, which he describes is not Spartan, but rather Ionian, and he seems quite to confirm what you are saying, when he traces up the ancient state of mankind by the help of tradition to barbarism.
ATHENIAN: And were not such states composed of men who had been dispersed in single habitations and families by the poverty which attended the devastations; and did not the eldest then rule among them, because with them government originated in the authority of a father and a mother, whom, like a flock of birds, they followed, forming one troop under the patriarchal rule and sovereignty of their parents, which of all sovereignties is the most just
After this they came together in greater numbers, and increased the size of their cities, and betook themselves to husbandry, first of all at the foot of the mountains, and made enclosures of loose walls and works of defence, in order to keep off wild beasts; thus creating a single large and common habitation.
When these larger habitations grew up out of the lesser original ones, each of the lesser ones would survive in the larger; every family would be under the rule of the eldest, and, owing to their separation from one another, would have peculiar customs in things divine and human, which they would have received from their several parents who had educated them; and these customs would incline them to order, when the parents had the element of order in their nature, and to courage, when they had the element of courage. And they would naturally stamp upon their children, and upon their children’s children, their own likings; and, as we are saying, they would find their way into the larger society, having already their own peculiar laws.
The next step will be that these persons who have met together, will select some arbiters, who will review the laws of all of them, and will publicly present such as they approve to the chiefs who lead the tribes, and who are in a manner their kings, allowing them to choose those which they think best. These persons will themselves be called legislators, and will appoint the magistrates, framing some sort of aristocracy, or perhaps monarchy, out of the dynasties or lordships, and in this altered state of the government they will live.