Let this then be our exhortation concerning marriage, and let us
remember what was said before--that a man should cling to immortality,
and leave behind him children's children to be the servants of God in
his place for ever. All this and much more may be truly said by way of
prelude about the duty of marriage. But if a man will not listen, and
remains unsocial and alien among his fellow-citizens, and is still
unmarried at thirty-five years of age, let him pay a yearly fine;--he
who of the highest class shall pay a fine of a hundred drachmae, and he
who is of the second class a fine of seventy drachmae; the third class
shall pay sixty drachmae, and the fourth thirty drachmae, and let the
money be sacred to Here; he who does not pay the fine annually shall owe
ten times the sum, which the treasurer of the goddess shall exact; and
if he fails in doing so, let him be answerable and give an account of
the money at his audit. He who refuses to marry shall be thus punished
in money, and also be deprived of all honour which the younger show to
the elder; let no young man voluntarily obey him, and, if he attempt to
punish any one, let every one come to the rescue and defend the injured
person, and he who is present and does not come to the rescue, shall be
pronounced by the law to be a coward and a bad citizen. Of the marriage
portion I have already spoken; and again I say for the instruction of
poor men that he who neither gives nor receives a dowry on account of
poverty, has a compensation; for the citizens of our state are provided
with the necessaries of life, and wives will be less likely to be
insolent, and husbands to be mean and subservient to them on account of
property. And he who obeys this law will do a noble action; but he who
will not obey, and gives or receives more than fifty drachmae as the
price of the marriage garments if he be of the lowest, or more than a
mina, or a mina-and-a-half, if he be of the third or second classes,
or two minae if he be of the highest class, shall owe to the public
treasury a similar sum, and that which is given or received shall be
sacred to Here and Zeus; and let the treasurers of these Gods exact the
money, as was said before about the unmarried--that the treasurers of
Here were to exact the money, or pay the fine themselves.