But these examples prove little about the actual conditions, only going to show the facility of the writers of the time, and Glotz suggests that these scenes flattered the Athenians, who liked to think of themselves as a philanthropic people. Apparently, the first impulse when a child was found was to ignore it, for the attitude of Athenian society was probably well expressed by Longus when he said: “Those who seek paternity are many.” In fact, the author of _Daphnis and Chloë_ says that when Daphnis was first seen by the shepherd being suckled by a goat, “Laymonde (the shepherd) resolved to leave it to its fate, and to carry off only the tokens; but feeling afterward ashamed at the reflection, that in doing so he should be inferior in humanity, even to a goat, he waited for the approach of night and then carried home the infant with the tokens.”[309] Old Megacles, the father of Chloë, in the same story seeks to excuse himself for having exposed his daughter, by a number of bad reasons: he did not have the means, it was a moment of weakness, he hoped that the nymphs would take pity on the child: and then, there were so many people who did not have children, etc. The most interesting of his reasons, however, is the statement that he had spent his fortune equipping theatrical choruses! As a rule, when adoption did take place it was not for the benefit of the child. In many instances, those who wished to adopt a son waited and adopted a grown-up one so as not to have the trouble and expense of educating him. As set forth in the plays, it was apparently not infrequent that a courtesan sought to attach a lover, or a wife a husband who was slipping away from her, by adopting a child and passing it off as her own. It was to this subterfuge that Silenium, in the _Cistellaria_ of Plautus, owes her life. Speaking of the incident, the Procuress in the play, says: “But once upon a time, that girl (Silenium) who has gone hence in tears, from a lane I carried her off a little child exposed.... I made a present of her to my friend, this courtesan, who had made mention of it to me that somewhere I must find for her a boy or a girl, just born, that she herself might pass it off as her own. “As soon as ever the opportunity befell me I immediately granted her request in that which she had asked me. After she had received this female child from me, she at once was brought to bed of the same female child which she had received from me.... She said that her lover was a foreigner.”[310] It is hardly likely, however, that many courtesans in real life were willing to be so encumbered, and perhaps, as Demosthenes says, this was only the sort of thing one “sees in tragedies,” like the fatal and convenient malady described by Heine as a sort of “fifth act sickness.”