Note 262 — Chapter II · THE NATURE OF THE MORAL EMOTIONS (continued 2)

Plato, Leges, ix. 854 sqq. Plato makes an exception for those whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have successively undergone the penalty of death: “Such persons the city shall send away with all their possessions to the city and country of their ancestors, retaining only and wholly their appointed lot” (ibid. ix. 856). But this enactment had no doubt a purely utilitarian foundation, the offspring of a thoroughly wicked family being considered a danger to the city.