regulations tending to secure a healthy offspring, and consequently
beneficial to the state, were so far from encouraging that
licentiousness of the women which prevailed afterwards, that adultery
was not known amongst them. A saying, upon this subject of Geradas, an
ancient Spartan, is thus related. A stranger had asked him, "What
punishment their law appointed for adulterers?" He answered, "My friend,
there are no adulterers in our country." The other replied, "But what if
there should be one?" "Why then," says Geradas, "he must forfeit a bull
so large that he might drink of the Eurotas from the top of Mount
Taygetus." When the stranger expressed his surprise at this, and said,
"How can such a bull be found?" Geradas answered with a smile, "How can
an adulterer be found in Sparta?" This is the account we have of their
marriages.

It was not left to the father to rear what children he pleased, but he
was obliged to carry the child to a place called Lesche, to be examined
by the most ancient men of the tribe, who were assembled there. If it
was strong and well-proportioned, they gave orders for its education,
and assigned it one of the nine thousand shares of land; but if it was
weakly and deformed, they ordered it to be thrown into the place called
Apothetae, which is a deep cavern near the mountain Taygetus; concluding
that its life could be no advantage either to itself or to the public,
since nature had not given it at first any strength or goodness of
constitution. For the same reason the women did not wash their new-born
infants with water, but with wine, thus making some trial of their habit
of body; imagining that sickly and epileptic children sink and die under
the experiment, while healthy became more vigorous and hardy. Great care
and art was also exerted by the nurses; for, as they never swathed the
infants, their limbs had a freer turn, and their countenances a more
liberal air; besides, they used them to any sort of meat, to have no
terrors in the dark, nor to be afraid of being alone, and to leave all
ill humour and unmanly crying. Hence people of other countries purchased
Lacedaemonian nurses for their children; and Alcibiades the Athenian is
said to have been nursed by Amicla, a Spartan. But if he was fortunate
in a nurse, he was not so in a preceptor: for Zopyrus, appointed to that
office by Pericles, was, as Plato tells us, no better qualified than a
common slave. The Spartan children were not in that