There would be a want of delicacy in prescribing that there should or should not be mourning for the dead.
But, at any rate, such mourning is to be confined to the house; there must be no processions in the streets, and the dead body shall be taken out of the city before daybreak.

Regulations about other forms of burial and about the non-burial of parricides and other sacrilegious persons have already been laid down.

The work of legislation is therefore nearly completed; its end will be finally accomplished when we have provided for the continuance of the state.
Do you remember the names of the Fates?
Lachesis, the giver of the lots, is the first of them; Clotho, the spinster, the second; Atropos, the unchanging one, is the third and last, who makes the threads of the web irreversible.

And we too want to make our laws irreversible, for the unchangeable quality in them will be the salvation of the state, and the source of health and order in the bodies and souls of our citizens.

'But can such a quality be implanted ?' I think that it may; and at any rate we must try; for, after all our labour, to have been piling up a fabric which has no foundation would be too ridiculous.