The generals and other superior officers of the army shall form the court which tries this class of offences.
Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not be hindered from crime.

The uttermost penalty will fall upon those who lay violent hands upon a parent, having no fear of the Gods above, or of the punishments which will pursue them in the world below.

They are too wise in their own conceits to believe in such things: wherefore the tortures which await them in another life must be anticipated in this.
Let the law be as follows:-- If a man, being in his right mind, dare to smite his father and mother, or his grandfather and grandmother, let the passer-by come to the rescue; and if he be a metic or stranger who comes to the rescue, he shall have the first place at the games; or if he do not come to the rescue, he shall be a perpetual exile.

Let the citizen in the like case be praised or blamed, and the slave receive freedom or a hundred stripes.

The wardens of the agora, the city, or the country, as the case may be, shall see to the execution of the law.