Leaving the common tables, we may therefore proceed to the means of providing food.  Now, in cities the means of life are gained in many ways and from divers sources, and in general from two sources, whereas our city has only one.  For most of the Hellenes obtain their food from sea and land, but our citizens from land only.  And this makes the task of the legislator less difficult—­half as many laws will be enough, and much less than half; and they will be of a kind better suited to free men.  For he has nothing to do with laws about shipowners and merchants and retailers and inn-keepers and tax collectors and mines and moneylending and compound interest and innumerable other things—­bidding good-bye to these, he gives laws to husbandmen and shepherds and bee-keepers, and to the guardians and superintendents of their implements; and he has already legislated for greater matters, as for example, respecting marriage and the procreation and nurture of children, and for education, and the establishment of offices—­and now he must direct his laws to those who provide food and labour in preparing it.

Let us first of all, then, have a class of laws which shall be called the laws of husbandmen.  And let the first of them be the law of Zeus, the God of boundaries.  Let no one shift the boundary line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or, if he dwells at the extremity of the land, of any stranger who is conterminous with him, considering that this is truly ‘to move the immovable,’ and every one should be more willing to move the largest rock which is not a landmark, than the least stone which is the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours; for Zeus, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and Zeus, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused, terrible are the wars which they stir up.  He who obeys the law will never know the fatal consequences of disobedience, but he who despises the law shall be liable to a double penalty, the first coming from the Gods, and the second from the law.  For let no one wilfully remove the boundaries of his neighbour’s land, and if any one does, let him who will inform the landowners, and let them bring him into court, and if he be convicted of re-dividing the land by stealth or by force, let the court determine what he ought to suffer or pay.  In the next place, many small injuries done by neighbours to one another, through their multiplication, may cause a weight of enmity, and make neighbourhood a very disagreeable and bitter thing.  Wherefore a man ought to be very careful of committing any offence against his neighbour, and especially of encroaching on his neighbour’s land; for any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.  He who encroaches on his neighbour’s land, and transgresses his boundaries, shall make good the damage, and, to cure him of his impudence and also of his meanness, he shall pay a double penalty to the injured party.