Plato in Italy

It happened that such a one gouged out an eye of a man who was already deprived of the other. The law condemned the offender to the loss of only one eye; but the offended man said that for him the lost eye was worth two, and that the culprit would have remained in a better condition than his own. The people understood that the penalty of retaliation was the penalty of a barbaric people.

The changes made so far in the laws of Charondas are few. I would like one to be made, not in the laws, but in the opinion of the people who declare infamous those husbands who, already having children by their first wife, contract new marriages. A maxim of Charondas runs through everyone's mouth: that man who gives his own children a stepmother is unworthy of the consortium of his fellow citizens, as one who has voluntarily attracted a misfortune upon his own affairs. If, by chance, you have obtained a good first wife from fortune, be content with her, and rest in peace. If the opposite has happened to you, it is foolishness, with the memory still fresh of the evils suffered, to attempt the same danger again. He who is deceived twice is deservedly reputed a fool — The comic poet Philemon also used to say: I do not marvel at one who has sailed, but at one who returns to sail. But that, which sits well in the mouth of a comic poet, is unbecoming to a legislator.