lamentation, should be given to this same poor man, and that he should be taken among the noble spirits as a man of God that follows Sokaris Osiris, his place being near to the person of Osiris. (But) that great man whom thou didst see, he was taken to the Tei, his evil deeds were weighed against his good deeds, and his evil deeds were found more numerous than his good deeds that he did upon earth. It was commanded that he should be punished in Amenti, and he is that man whom thou didst see, in whose right eye the pivot (?) of the gate of Amenti was fixed, shutting and opening upon it, and whose mouth was open in great lamentation."'1

(iv.) Very interesting is the account that this Tale of Khamuas gives us of the treatment in Amenti of people whose lives have been contemptible and aimless :

'The kind of men on earth who are under the curse of God, and do work day and night for their living, while moreover their women rob them and they find not bread to eat. They came to Amenti; their evil deeds were found to be more numerous than their good deeds; and they found that what happened to them on earth happened to them in Amenti.'2

(v.) According to the Book of the Dead, the deceased person who was adjudged unrighteous was handed over to the Devourer,' 'mmt, or to a demon called Babi, who lives upon the entrails of the great on that day of the Great Reckoning." In the Second Tale of Khamuas, side by side with the view that the unrighteous are tortured exists also the older belief in the Devourer.'

'He of whom it shall be found that his evil deeds are more numerous than his good deeds is delivered (?) to the "Devourer" (m) of the Lord of Amenti; they destroy his soul upon his body, she (the "Devourer ") does not allow him to breathe ever again.'5

The unrighteous, the Book of the Dead likewise informs us, might fall a victim to the swords of the gods forming the judicial council. The same authority speaks of crocodile-gods that are in the water,' who are entitled 'lords of righteousness,' and who wound sinners, and of a god who binds the unrighteous to his slaughter-block, who cuts souls in pieces.' This god is Horus, according to one ancient commentator, who says:

·

'He has two heads, one carrying righteousness, the other iniquity. He gives iniquity to him who does it, righteousness to him who brings it.' 8

This sentiment finds expression, though in a less theological guise, in the already thrice quoted Tale of Khamuas:

Find it at thy heart, my father Setme, that he who is good (mnh) upon earth, they are good to him in Amenti, while he that is evil, they are evil to him.'9

But there were other motives for leading a righteous life than the dread of what might happen at the judgment after death.

(2) Fear of God.-A vague fear of God might in itself be a sufficient incentive to good conduct.

'I did not pilfer the divine endowments on the day of weigh. ing the corn,' says Inēni, . . . 'The fear of God was in my heart.' 10

...

(3) Rewards or punishments during life.-The Egyptian expected to reap a reward for his virtue during his earthly existence, and the good word which issued from the mouth of Re seems to encourage this expectation:

'Speak right, do right, because it is great, it is mighty, it is enduring. The reward (?) thereof shall find thee, it will bring thee to honour.'11

Long life and material prosperity were especially regarded as rewards for righteousness.

'How happy is he who hath done right for the god therein [i.e. the place whence the deceased has come]; he grants old age to him who hath done it for him so that he attains honour.'12

An XVIIIth dynasty magnate thus admonishes visitors to his tomb-chapel: Have regard unto my character and do the like; it shall be profitable unto you. Your life shall be long upon earth, ye being in health; ye shall pass your years in happiness.'1 An official of the Old Kingdom informs us that he 'held forth justice to the righteous for the sake of long life upon earth.' His father's advice to King Meriķerē', 'Do right that thou mayest live long in the land,' has already been quoted in § 4. Long lived is the man whose rule is righteous,' says the sage Ptaḥhotp, who walks according to its (the rule's) way.' As a further inducement to be virtuous, this eminently practical teacher asserts that 'the righteous man is wont to make a will for, as we should express it, make his fortune], whereas there is no house for the covetous.'3 Wrong-doing,' Ptahḥotp tells his hearers, stealeth away riches. Never hath wickedness brought its venture safe to port.'4 The Eloquent Peasant warns Rensi that the reward of unrighteousness and injustice is death. 'Beware lest eternity draw nigh, and prefer to live, according to the saying: The doing of right is breath for the nose.' '5

(ii.) The heir or heirs of the righteous man succeed to his possessions and offices, 15 and his house abides for ever. 16

'Make righteousness to flourish and thy children shall live, says Ptaḥhotp. 17

mouth of men; 18 it is not effaced on earth, and he (iii.) The righteous man's name endures in the is remembered because of the good.' 19

Dhout prays, May the memory of me abide upon earth,'20 and Ineni, who did 'what his city god loves,' tells us that 'he good in the mouth of the living, the remembrance of him... who passes years as a favoured (or praised) one-his name is is for ever'; 21 he also tells us that 'his name will abide because of his character, in accordance with what he has done on earth.'22

(5) The desire to stand well with the Pharaoh.The source of all promotion and honour was the Pharaoh. As representative of the sun-god on earth, he was the 'lord of righteousness.' Men must therefore work righteousness to win his favour.

11 Tdb. ch. clxxxiii. line 38 f.; see also (5) below.
12 Gardiner, Journ. of Egyp. Archæology, i. 34, § 27.
13 Sethe, Urkunden, iv. 66.

14 E.g., C. R. Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Berlin, 1851-59, ii. pl. 98a, e; Egyp. Stela in the Brit. Mus. i. pl. 41, no. 86; cf. also A. H. Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe, Paris, 1916, pp. 65 ff., 173; Griffith, Sist and Der Rifeh, pl. 8, line 2 f.

15 Griffith, Siut and Der Rifeh, pl. 11, line 14 f. - Breasted, Ancient Records, i. 395; Sethe, Urkunden, iv. 66. 16 Sethe, Urkunden, iv. 131, line 16. 17 Pap. Prisse, 18, 11.

18 Sethe, Urkunden, iv. 181, line 17.
19 Vogelsang, B 1, 307 ff., p. 211f.
20 Sethe, Urkunden, iv. 430, line 8.
22 lb. 66.

21 Tb. 62, line 3 f. 23 Ib. 941.

'I did righteousness for the Lord of Righteousness,' says an XVIIIth dynasty official, 'for I knew that he is pleased with it.'1 Another official of that period tells us that he was beloved of his lord (the king) because of his excellence.2 A XIIth dynasty magnate 'did the right that the king loved'; 3 and of a XIIth dynasty court lady it is related that she was of honourable estate with the king because of her righteousness.' 4

One of the results of winning the royal favour was the much coveted 'goodly burial."

Dhout says: 'My heart was excellent for my lord (the king), that I might rest in the high land of the noble ones who are in the Necropolis.'6

(6) The desire to stand well with the community -The Egyptian was intensely anxious, not only to stand well with the king, but also to have the esteem of his fellows. This was another powerful motive for displaying at least outward rectitude. I am one who spake good and who repeated what is loved,'' and similar assertions, occur over and over again in inscriptions of the feudal period.

E.g., I said what the great love and what the commonalty praise.' I am one who was beloved of all the people. I am one who did that which all men praise.'9 I never did what all men hate.'10 'There was not found one who hated me in this city.'11 'I am one beloved of his father, praised of his mother, honoured by his companions, dear to his brethren, whom his servants loved.' 12

One man, after enumerating his virtues, declares that men when speaking of him exclaimed: 'Would that the earth were full of people like him! '13 An official of the Middle Kingdom openly asserts that he was beneficent in a year of scarcity 'in order that my name might be good.' 'I was a shepherd [lit. 'herdsman'] of the serf," he adds, ' in order that my name might be good in the mouth of his [the serf's] city.'14 Khnemerdi says: I gave provision unto him who begged it, herbs to him whom I knew not as to him whom I knew, that my name might be good in the mouth of those who are upon earth.' 15

Public esteem not merely gratified a man's pride while he was yet alive, but it was of practical value to him after death. If his name were good in the mouth of the living and the remembrance of him eternal, because of his virtues, 16 visitors to his burial-place would the more readily present him with those offerings upon which his welfare after death was imagined so largely to depend, or, in lieu of material gifts, would at any rate repeat for his benefit certain prescribed formula. Accordingly we find :

'O ye who live and exist as ye love life and hate death, ye shall offer to me that which is in your hands; if there be nothing in your hands, ye shall speak with your mouths, "A thousand of bread and beer, etc."'17 May my name be good unto men who come in after years,' says Dhout, may they give me praises at the two seasons by the favour of the gods. '18 The desire to secure these advantages was undoubtedly one of the chief reasons for inscribing upon his tombstone, or upon the façade of his tomb-chapel, the enumeration of the deceased's

virtues and the account of the esteem in which he was held by his fellow-men.

(7) Conscience.-On the conscience as a stimulus to virtuous living see art. ETHICS AND MORALITY (Egyptian); see also Breasted, Religion and Thought, pp. 297 f., 354.

10. Justification of the dead.-(1) Osiris the prototype of the justified dead. -The epithet justified' (m;' hrw=lit. 'righteous of voice') is a legal term, 19 and was applied to Osiris when, thanks

1 Sethe, Urkunden, 941; cf. 993, line 9. 2 Ib. 465, line 1. 3 Egyp. Stela in the Brit. Mus. ii. pl. 34.

4 Lange-Schäfer, ii. 199.

to the skilful pleading of Thōth, he had won his case against Seth before the tribunal of gods at Heliopolis. After the VIth dynasty all dead persons were identified with Osiris and from that period onwards had the Osirian epithet 'justified' appended to their names.

(2) Methods of obtaining justification. — All manner of means were adopted by the Egyptians to obtain justification at the posthumous trial, most of them utterly inconsistent, from our standand yet, in view of the prevailing magico-religious point, with the ethical theory of the hereafter, ideas, a natural consequence of that theory having been accepted.

would inevitably have come to be regarded as The deceased, who was identified with Osiris, righteous, though without any special claim of his own to sinlessness-his personality and acts would have tended to become merged in those of the god.

(i.) The pilgrimage to Abydos.-Probably with a view to ensuring this identification after death and securing the benefits resulting therefrom, it was considered advisable to associate oneself with Osiris during life. Hence the pilgrimages to supposed burial-place.3 Abydos and the setting up of memorial tablets at the god's We are definitely informed in one instance that the object of the pilgrimage was the 'fetching of justification.' If the pilgrimage were omitted during life, it might be undertaken after death with the same desirable results. 5

(ii.) The mysteries.-Similar advantages accrued to him who had participated in the Osirian mysteries.6

(iii) Purifications.-People could also be made righteous, and so obtain justification, by means of ceremonial ablutions. special sacred pools, or they could be performed for him after A person could perform them for himself during his life-time in death by divinities, human beings impersonating divinities, or even by himself. According to the Book of Breathings, the deceased, before he enters the Hall of the Two Rights, is Uto and Nekhbet, and receives the name 'Stone of Righteouscleansed from all evil, from every abomination, by the goddesses ness.'9

(iv.) Magical formula, etc. 10-Spells were considered to be The famous ch. cxxv. of the Book of the Dead, as the colophon specially efficacious in obtaining justification for the deceased. and opening words of the 'Introduction' show, was a spell that enabled the deceased to appear blameless in the eyes of Osiris and his assessors.

cipated in the Osirian mysteries,11 to have undergone purificaSimilar spells are the claims of the deceased to have partitory ceremonies, 12 or the assertion that he is this or that god and therefore righteous, 13 Again, he would be justified if, to the accompaniment of the prescribed formula, his head were crowned with the wreath of justification.'14 Cf. also the socalled 'heart-scarab' with the incantation inscribed upon it.15 however untrue they might be, became actualities.16 So powerful were these formula that the things alleged in them,

II. The triumph of evil over good. This aspect of the problem of good and evil is treated in art. ETHICS AND MORALITY (Egyptian), and very fully dealt with by Breasted, Religion and Thought, p.

188 ff.

8 Ib. v. a (c)-(e).

9 P. J. de Horrack, Le Livre des respirations, Paris, 1877, pl.

i. § 2; cf. also Pyr. 921a-c, 1141a-1142b.

10 Formulæ increased the efficacy of the manual acts and would have been pronounced during the performance of all the above-mentioned rites (cf. Pyr., loc. cit.).

11 E.g., Tdb. ch. i. lines 3, 8-10, 13 f.; ch. cv. line 8; ch. cxxv. (Conclusion) line 13 f.; ch. clxxxi. line 13 f.

12 Art. PURIFICATION (Egyptian), V. a (b). 13 E.g., Tdb. ch. clxxxiii. line 41 ff.

14 Davies-Gardiner, p. 111 with note 3; art. ETHICS AND MORALITY (Egyptian), vol. v. p. 478a, note 1.

15 Davies-Gardiner, p. 112 f.; Breasted, Religion and Thought,

p. 92, note 1.

16 For this hoodwinking of the gods by means of magic see art. ETHICS AND MORALITY (Egyptian), § 9; Breasted, Religion and Thought, p. 307 ff. For the magical value of the pictorial representation of the pilgrimage to Abydos see Davies-Gardiner, p. 48; cf. also the models of boats placed in tombs during the Middle Kingdom (ib. p. 116, note 4).

show that one of the reasons why the author of this 'pessimistic' poem desired death was that he looked to have his wrongs righted in the hereafter.1 This point has been passed over by Gardiner in art. ETHICS AND MORALITY (Egyptian).

12. Administration of justice.—(1) During the Old Kingdom. There was no clearly defined class of professional judges, all judicial functions being performed by the administrative officials, who were supposed to be learned in the law. Certain of the Upper Egyptian provincial governors bore the title magnate of the ten of Upper Egypt,' as if they were members of a special council of ten. The officials who acted as judges in the provinces were formed into six courts of justice, the so-called 'six great houses.' At the head of these courts, as indeed of the whole judicial administration, was the vizier in the capacity of the chief justice. Many of the judges bore the predicate 'mouth of Nekhen.' Disputes about the ownership of land seem to have been a frequent cause of litigation." It seems that, even at this early period, all cases had to be submitted to the court in writing. Special cases of a private nature were heard by the chief justice and a ' mouth of Nekhen." the queen of Piopi I. was accused of treason, she was tried by a specially constituted court, consisting of two mouths of Nekhen,' without the chief justice. 10 Under certain circumstances a litigant could appeal directly to the king."

'9 When

(2) During the Middle Kingdom.-As in the previous age, the administrative officials acted as judges, while the vizier still held the position of chief justice. 12 There was probably a court of justice at the capital of every nome, presided over by the local prince. We learn that the 'six great houses,' with the vizier at their head, sat in Ith Tōwe. 14 There existed at this period officials with the sole title of judge.' These possibly exercised their functions within a restricted local jurisdiction.15 There were now more than one 'ten of Upper Egypt,' and 'magnates of the tens of Upper Egypt' were entrusted with various executive and administrative commissions by the king; we do not know with any exactitude what was their connexion with the judicial administration.16

The Story of the Eloquent Peasant shows us how a high official dispensed justice during the feudal age. He was assisted by a council of minor officials, to whose advice, however, the great man paid little heed.17 This council, be it noted, is depicted as being thoroughly in sympathy with the defendant, the thievish Thutnakht, probably because he was a member, though quite a subordinate one, of the 'official' class, 18

(3) Under the New Empire.-As during the Old Kingdom, there was no class of judges with exclusively legal duties, justice was still dispensed by the administrative officials. 19 The vizier was, as before, the chief justice. He held a daily 'sitting' in his audience hall, the great council. 20 The first step in all legal proceedings was for the claimant to lay his case in writing before the vizier

1 Erman, Gespräch eines Lebensmüden mit seiner Seele, pp. 27, 71 ff.; Breasted, Religion and Thought, p. 197.

2 See also artt. LAW (Egyptian) and ETHICS AND MORALITY (Egyptian), § 12.

Breasted, A Hist. of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, London, 1906, p. 80 f. 4 E.g., Sethe, Urkunden, i. 99, line 6.

5 Breasted, History, pp. 79-82.

6 See Gardiner, ZA xlii. [1905] 121 ff.

7 See Sethe, Urkunden, i. 36, line 17,

8 Breasted, History, p. 81 f.

9 Sethe, p. 99.

11 Breasted, History, p. 811.

13 Ib. p. 158.

15 Ib. p. 165.

17 Vogelsang, p. 61 f.

13, line 3.

10 Ib. p. 100.

12 lb. pp. 164, 166. 14 Ib. p. 164. 16 Ib.

18 See Breasted, Religion and Thought, p. 219 ff. 19 Breasted, History, p. 240.

20 Ib. p. 240. Throughout the New Kingdom, from the reign of Thutmose III. onwards, there were usually two viziers, one for Upper, and one for Lower, Egypt. There were then two great courts, that of the Upper Egyptian vizier being situated at Thebes, and that of the Lower Egyptian vizier at Heliopolis (Gardiner, The Inscription of Mes, Leipzig, 1905, p. 33 f.).

in this court,' where also the vizier tried all crimes committed in the capital. The magnates of the tens of Upper Egypt had lost their old importance, and now formed merely an attendant council, retaining, apparently, little or no advisory functions. ancient title chief of the six great houses' being The six great houses' no longer existed, the retained only as a traditional title of the vizier. In addition to the vizier's hall, the great council, of the town-the administrative officials in each there were local courts composed of the 'notables' district. On occasions the great council and the local court investigated a case together. When the great council required detailed information about a case that only a local court could supply, it sent out a commissioner, who, together with the members of the local court, held a joint inquiry, hearing the evidence of both parties. The number the board of judges composing the local court were largely priests, and at Thebes they seem to have of the royal house was concerned the composition varied from day to day. In cases where a member of the board was in the hands of the vizier. In a case of high treason the appointments to it were made by the king himself. There seems at present relation of the local courts to the great council. to be no means of determining what was the exact in the vizier's great council, but obtained satisWe know of a case where a petitioner lost his case faction afterwards at a local court. We probably council at Thebes in a Demotic papyrus of the have the latest existing reference to the great XXVth dynasty.9

of the local courts is uncertain. The members of

about the goddess Meet, her priests, and as to 13. Personification of Meet.-For full particulars whether she possessed an organized cult or not,10 and PERSONIFICATION (Egyptian), §§ 4, 7, 9 (c) (2). see artt. ETHICS AND MORALITY (Egyptian), § II,

LITERATURE. See the works quoted in the footnotes.

A. M. BLACKMAN. Righteousness' is the translation of dikaiosúvŋ in RIGHTEOUSNESS (Greek and Roman).— the NT and in the LXX, where it corresponds to tions that differentiate it from the idea of justice, the Hebrew şedaqah. The word thus gets associawhich is derived from diкalooúvn by way of Greek philosophy and Roman law.

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is sometimes His loving-kindness to the just and The justice or righteousness of God in the Bible of Sikatorun in passages of moral eloquence in Plato's the unjust. 'Righteousness' is an apt rendering Republic and Laws. It is not once used in Welldon's translation of the fifth book of Aristotle's Ethics, 'On Justice.' Aristotle first explicitly distinguished the special meaning of justice as one of the cardinal virtues from its vaguer use as a synonym of all virtue or righteousness. He first established the quasi-legal meaning which until recently has found general acceptance. He conceived justice as the recognition of a definable equality or proportion in respect of rights assumed to be ascertained or ascertainable. It was not the limitation of such rights by equity,' nor their renunciation by generosity, nor their equalization in the interests of a social ideal. Some of these concep

6

1 Gardiner, Inscription of Mes, p. 36.

2 Breasted, History, p. 240.

3 Ib. p. 239 f.

4 Ib. p. 240.

5 Gardiner, Inscription of Mes, p. 37; Breasted, History, P. 241.

6 See art. PRIEST, PRIESTHOOD (Egyptian), § XVIII.
7 Breasted, History, p. 241.
8 Ib.

9 See Griffith, Catalogue of the Demotic Papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 1909, iii. 16.

10 In this connexion it might be pointed out that Ns-p?-hr-'n, whose Funerary Papyrus in the Bodleian Library will be published shortly in Journ. of Egyp. Archæology, bears among other titles that of 'god's father of Me'et, daughter of Re' (see also J. Lieblein, Hieroglyph. Namenwörterbuch, Leipzig, 187172, p. 997, 69).

tions are latent in the Stoic and Christian xpnoTorns, and recently philosophy has used them to transcend or confound the Aristotelian distinctions. This is only in appearance a return to the broader and more spiritual treatment of justice' in Plato's Republic. Platonic justice, it is true, is not confined to Aristotelian or legal formulas, and it is in a sense 'social.' But Plato does not lose himself in generalities with modernist humanitarianism. He recognizes in anticipation the legal and Aristotelian rules of justice, and tests his own broader definition by them. But for edification and the portrayal of his ideal he prefers to define justice in terms of 'Be this' rather than 'Do this.' Objectively his justice is social. But he emphasizes equality of service in the voluntary acceptance of natural inequalities, not the equalization of rights and rewards.

With these clues we shall not lose our way in the labyrinth of the historical evolution, which for sober students begins with Homer. Homer does not use the abstract dikaιoσúvη. But we cannot infer that he lacks the idea. For he has the abstract evdikia,' and in Æschylus and Sophocles also the metrically more convenient din stands for dikatoσún, which does not occur in Greek tragedy. Homer uses din both of the administration of justice and of ethical justice. In Od. ix. 215 it is bracketed with éμores, 'dooms,' in the concrete sense of judgments. In Il. xxiii. 542 the entire context of its use suggests the 'later' meaning of strict right as opposed to the promptings of pity or generosity in the judge. The word also means way,' 'manner,' 'custom '-this is the way of the gods, the way of mortals, the way of kings. The survival of this sense in fixed prepositional phrases -'dog-wise,' etc.-leads plausibly to the assumption that it was the earlier meaning, and that for Homeric or pre-Homeric man the just way was the customary way known to the elders." The systematic exaggeration of this by the followers of Henry Maine provokes rival systems. Rudolf Hirzel maintains that the legal meaning is the earlier, and that din is by etymology the casting down or stretching out of the judge's staff to part the contestants and proclaim his decision. His collections are helpful, but his interpretations of the texts will not bear scrutiny. Jane E. Harrison is equally confident that dikn is the way of the whole world of nature' and that in Euripides' Medea, 411, it is 'the circular course of the whole cosmos. Dismissing these fancies, we find in Homer díky and the derivatives δικάζω and δικασπόλος already used of a simple primitive administration of justice by a king or a council of elders. The adjective dikatos occurs fifteen times or more as a broad term of ethical approval. We might try to elicit a definition by noting its synonyms or associates 'sensible,' 'reasonable, etc. and its antonyms'insolent,' 'savage,' 'harsh.' But this would be an uncritical pressing of the texts. Just' and 'god-fearing' are comprehensive categories of all virtue or righteousness for the Homeric Odysseus, 10 as they are for the writer of Ac 1035 He that feareth him, and worketh righteousness (dikatoσúvn), is accepted with him.'

In Hesiod's Theogony, 901 f., Dike appears with the Seasons, Peace, and Eunomia (good order') as daughter of Zeus and Themis."1

This seems conscious allegory. And later Greek poets freely 1 Cf. Rep. 442 E, 443 A, with Leslie Stephen, The Science of Ethics, London, 1882, pp. 155, 163, 376, 285.

2 With R. Hirzel, Themis, Aikŋ, und Verwandtes, Leipzig,

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7

adapt to their purposes the parentage, the kin, and the functions of Dike. The frequency of the word in the first 300 lines of the Works and Days arises from the constant reference to the crooked decision of the bribe-devouring judges in the lawsuit between Hesiod and his brothers, which is the text of the poet's moralizing and admonitions about justice in general. As in Homer, Dike is the antithesis of Hybris and Violence, and the poet repeats the Homeric blessing on the land whose kings give just judgments. Dike occurs in the later sense of punishment. The negative adɩkos, unjust,' is found, and the neuter plural rà dikaia. The opposition of justice and violence is expressed in the interesting compound xeipodikal. And there are hints of other ideas developed by later Greek reflexion. Birds and beasts may devour one another, for there is no din among them. Here is the germ of the myth in Plato's Protagoras, that Zeus established civilization by sending aldus and din to mankind. 10 Hesiod also anticipates "1 the complaint of Job, Theognis, 12 the Sophist Thrasymachus, Sophocles, 13 the speaker in Plato's Republic, and Euripides,15 that the righteous man is not visibly rewarded. It is commonly said that the personification of Alkŋ begins with the description of her banishment by wicked men. But no absolute line can be drawn between this and the phrasing of Homer in Il. xvi. 388.

14

16

The word is fairly frequent in the fragments of Greek poetry between Hesiod and the drama, but only a few passages are significant. In a fable of Archilochus 17 there is an appeal to Zeus who regards both the Hybris and the Dike of beasts. This may be little more than the literary tone of Kipling's law of the pack' and Aristophanes' 'laws of the birds.' Pindar 18 echoes Hesiod with the compound beasts 'unwitting-of-justice.' Mimnermus 19 says that the truth (between_man and man) is the most just of all things. Later Greek ethical feeling generally made truth-telling a

form of justice rather than an absolute and independent virtue.20 In LXX 'truth' in a list of virtues is often merely a periphrasis for the reality or sincerity of those virtues.

The idea of justice is especially prominent in Solon, the earliest Attic poet. He speaks in almost Eschylean metaphor of those who regard not the august foundation of Dike. 21 He associates the doctrine of the late punishment of the wicked with the omniscience of silent Dike, who sees and knows all things, and surely overtakes the evil-doer at the last.22 He prays for wealth-but not unjustly gained (a Greek commonplace). 23 He boasts that he has harmonized might and right,24 and amuses Plutarch by the archaic naïveté of his saying that the sea is the most 'just' of things when the winds do not vex it. 25 In such transferences of the moral

1 In Eurip. frag. 223 (Nauck) she is the daughter of Time-a

transparent allegory; cf. frags. 305, 559; see also Bacchyl. xiv. 54.

2 212-218, with triumph of justice in the end'; cf. Plato, Rep. 613 C. 3 225 ff.; Homer, Od. xix. 109 ff., Il. xvi. 386; cf. Lv 26, Dt 28. 4 239, 249. 5 334. 6.280. 7189; cf. German Faustrecht, and A. C. Pearson, on Soph. frag. 977. 9 322 C.

8 277.

10 For the connexion of aides and díkŋ see Hirzel, p. 57, n. 4. 11 270. 12 377, 743; cf. Hom. Il. xiii. 631. 13 Frag. 107. 14 358 C, 364 B. 15 Frag. 288. 16 Works and Days, 255 ff. and possibly 220. 17 Frag. 84 (6). 18 Nem. i. 63.

19 Frag. 8.

20 See commentators on Plato, Rep. 889 B, and the uncritically used collections of Hirzel, p. 110 ff.

21 Frag. 2 (13), l. 14. For similar images cf. Pindar, Ol. xiii. 6; Esch. Ag. 383, Eumen. 539, 564, Choeph. 646; Soph. Antig. 854; Eurip. Hippol. 1172.

22 Frag. 2 (13), 1. 15; cf. frag. 12 (4), 1. 8. 23 Frag. 12 (4), 1. 7. 24 Frag. 32 (25), 1. 15; cf. the noble lines of Eschylus, frag. 381. 25 Frag. 11 (17). Hirzel (p. 172, n. 2) also misapprehends this; cf. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. iii. 1. 38f.: 'But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage the gentle Thetis.'

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order to inanimate objects it requires the nicest discrimination to distinguish between 'survivals,' naïveté, and the conscious spiritual allegory of Sophocles, of Platonism, and of Wordsworth's 'Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong.' 'The rivers flow into the sea, but the sea doesn't overflow, for it isn't just that it should,' says the speaker in Aristophanes, Clouds, 1292. All things that are born must die,' said Anaximander, paying the penalty to one another for the injustice (of individual existence?). All things are just in the sight of God,' said Heraclitus, but men conceive some things to be unjust and some just.' And again: The sun will not pass his bounds, else will the Erinyes, the helpers of Aixn, find him out.' 'Wise men tell us,' says Socrates, that it is love and order and sobriety and justice (dikatorηra) that hold together gods and men and the whole world, which is therefore a cosmos-an order, not a licentious disorder.' And the kindly earth in Virgil is justissima tellus, perhaps because, like the just man in Plato, she returns a deposit. These are suggestive passages. But until literary and linguistic psychology has defined their precise intentions in their context, they cannot be combined in the support of pseudo-scientific theories about the origin of the idea of justice. The abstract dikaιoσúvη seems to occur for the first time in a line of Phocylides, In justice is comprehended all virtue,' which Theognis repeats with the added pentameter, Every man is good who is just.' 10 A theme of endless comment was Theognis' distich, 'The most beautiful thing is justice, the best is health, the most delightful, to win what one loves.'" The conception of the beauty of justice was developed out of the ambiguity of the Greek kaλóv. Its culminating expression is Aristotle's Neither the evening star nor the morning star is so admirable.' 12

Pindar, the student of Hesiod and conservative, associates Dike with Eunomia and Eirene, conservators of States, and benign Tranquillity, her daughter.13 The prepositional phrase, év diką, occurs in his vision of judgment to come,14 though not in the legal and Eschylean sense at compt.'s Pindar emphasizes the idea of justice in his praise of commercial cities-Corinth and his beloved Ægina, that deals fairly with the stranger. Ruskin's 'Tortoise of Ægina' brings this out fantastically, but beautifully.16 Later writers find texts for the justice of the 'superman' in Nem. ix. 15, 'The stronger man puts down the former right,'" and frag. 169 (151), 'Custom (law) lord of all things makes just the most violent deed.'

18

We can only glance at other writers before Plato. In Eschylus Dike, the daughter of Zeus, 19 the embodiment and the accomplishment of the moral law, is frequently personified with bold metaphor.20 The Prometheus raises the theological problem of the justice of Zeus who keeps justice in his own hands. 21 The locus classicus for the old

1 Ajax, 669 ff.; cf. Eurip. Phon. 535 ff. 2 H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Berlin, 1903, i. 9.

3 Frag. 102 (Diels). Plato, Gorgias, 508 A.

7 Rep. i. 331 E.

9 Frag. 15.

4 Frag. 94.
6 Georg. ii. 460.

8 Cf. Hirzel, p. 186, n. 1. 10 147.

11 255; cf. L. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, Berlin, 1882, i. 291, 338.

12 Eth. Nic. 1129b 28, repeated by Plotinus, i. 6. 4; for the justice of visiting the sins of the fathers on the children and other details see art. THEOGNIS.

13 Ol. xiii. 6, Pyth. viii. 1.

14 Ol. ii. 16. 15 Choeph. 987. 16 See Ol. viii. 22, where the use of Béμis shows the reader that Pindar was not acquainted with Hirzel's and Miss Harrison's rigid distinctions between θέμις and δίκη.

17 Misused by Hirzel, p. 83, n. 2.

18 See commentators on Plato, Protag. 337 D, Gorgias, 484 B, Laws, 690 B, 890 A.

19 Sept. 662, Choeph. 949.

20 Sept. 646, Ag. 774, Choeph. 311, 646.

21 187; cf. Suppl. 167-169.

superstition that God confounds the righteous with the guilty is Sept. 598 ff. The Agamemnon trilogy emphasizes the awfulness of sin, the certainty of retribution, the irremediability of spilt blood, the law that the doer must suffer. The Furies, the ministers of the older law, claim to be strictly and straightly just (ev@vdíkalo). But already in the Agamemnon we hear of another law, that wisdom comes through suffering; and in the final symbolism of the Eumenides the Furies become the gracious goddesses, and the letter of the old law of an eye for an eye is superseded by a law of grace and atonement.

In Sophocles Dike is the avenger," the ally of the right," the assessor of the throne of Zeus by laws eterne. Her eye is as the all-seeing eye of God; her high throne is a stumbling-block to the bold transgressor. Antigone, in a famous passage, 10 appeals to the unwritten law and the Justice who dwells with the gods below against Creon's unrighteous decree. This cannot be pressed, with Hirzel and Miss Harrison, to prove any special connexion of Dike with the lower world.11 The interpretation that Dike equals 'custom' in frag. 247 is a characteristic error of modern ethnological philology.

Neither Eschylus nor Sophocles was apparently affected by the Sophistic enlightenment.' The Sophists presumably discussed the origin, nature, and validity of the idea of justice, as of other ideas. There is no evidence that any of them worked out a serious scientific theory of ethics and justice, as is sometimes affirmed by modern critics hostile to Plato. 12 But the unsettlement of traditional moral faith, in conjunction with the cynical and Machiavellian politics of the Peloponnesian War, presented to Plato his main problem-the finding of a reasoned 'sanction' for ethics, for justice and righteous. ness. From this point of view Thucydides and Euripides are an indispensable introduction to the study of Plato. In addition to his dramatic or personal exposition of this ethical nihilism, or the superman philosophy of justice, Euripides' scattered sententiæ about justice could be quoted in illustration of nearly every edifying or cynical Greek commonplace, and in anticipation of many points made by Aristotle and the Stoics.15

13

Plato.-We have already touched on the Platonic conception of justice and referred to other articles in this work. A more detailed exposition would involve the Platonic philosophy as a whole, 16 and its first prerequisite would be the removal of the misconception that Plato commits fallacies in elementary logic, and is presumably unaware of any Aristotelian distinction which it does not suit his immediate literary purpose to labour with painful explicitness. The artistic design of the Republic required him to regard justice in its subjective aspect as entire righteousness, the harmony, unity, and right functioning in division of labour of all the parts' or 'faculties' of the soul. But he did this consciously and with due recognition of other popular or possible meanings of the word. And there are few valuable or 1 Cf. Shorey on Horace, Odes, m. ii. 29. 3 Eumen. 312. 4 175-181.

2 Choeph. 310-314.

5 Pearson, on frag. 107.9; cf. Electra, 475, 528, Trach, 807. 6 Ed. Tyr. 274. 7 Ed. Col. 1382. 8 Frag. 12. 10 450 ff.

9 Antig. 854; cf. above, on Solon.

11 See Jebb's sensible note.

12 Cf. F. Dümmler, Akademika, Giessen, 1889, p. 247 ff.; A. W. Benn, The Philosophy of Greece, London, 1898, p. 143, and P. Shorey's review of it in the New York Nation, 20th July 1899, p. 35.

13 See artt. PHILOSOPHY (Greek) and SUMMUM BONUM.

14 Cf. Phon. 524 f. with Cicero's comment, de Offic. iii. 21; Eurip. frag. 288 (Nauck).

15 Cf. in particular frags. 508 and 257, on immanent justice, and frag, 1030, on justice as opposed to lax equity. 16 See also art. PLATO.

17 H. Höffding, Problems of Philosophy, Eng. tr., New York, 1905, p. 169, still prefers this method.