On the other hand, the troubles of infancy were then as now very great. We do not, indeed, hear of croup or teething or measles or whooping-cough. But these are occasional matters, and count as nothing beside the inexorable tyranny of a sleepless baby. For then as now mothers and nurses had a strong prejudice in favor of carrying about restless children, and so soothing them to sleep. The unpractical Plato requires that in his fabulous Republic two or three stout nurses shall be in readiness to carry about each child, because children, like game-cocks, gain spirit and endurance by this treatment! What they really gain is a gigantic power of torturing their mothers. Most children can readily be taught to sleep in a bed, or even in an arm-chair; but an infant once accustomed to being carried about will insist upon it; and so it came that Greek husbands were obliged to relegate their wives to another sleeping-room, where the nightly squalling of the furious infant might not disturb the master as well as the mistress of the house. But the Greek gentleman was able to make good his damaged rest by a mid-day siesta, and so required but little sleep at night. The modern father in Northern Europe, with his whole day’s work and waking, is therefore in a more disadvantageous position. Of course, very fashionable people kept nurses, and it was the highest tone at Athens to have a Spartan nurse for the infant, just as an English nurse is sought out among foreign noblesse. We are told that these women made the child hardier, that they used less swathing and bandaging, and allowed free play for the limbs; and this, like all the Spartan physical training, was approved of and admired by the rest of the Greek public, though its imitation was never suggested save in the unpractical speculations of Plato.