Only in two instances as far as we know did the law of the Greeks reach out to protect the child against the destroying whim of the parent. According to Ælian[317] the Thebans were not allowed to expose their children or leave them in a wilderness under the pain of death. If the father were extremely poor, the child, whether male or female, had to be brought to the magistrate in its swaddling clothes, and there delivered to some person who would agree to bring up the child and when it was grown up, take it into service and have the benefit of its labour in return for its education. As to the other instance of the law protecting the child it has been truly said that all that Lycurgus did was to insist that all “fit” children should be raised. “If,” says Plutarch,[318] “they (the Spartans) found it puny and ill-shaped, they ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetæ, a sort of chasm under Taygetus, as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous.” And this was the most “protecting” move of the ancient Greeks. CHAPTER XIV FIRST RECOGNITION OF RIGHTS OF CHILDREN—LAWS OF ROMULUS AND OF NUMA POMPILIUS—THE TWELVE TABLES—ATTITUDE OF PARENTS SHOWN IN TERENCE—PATRIA POTESTAS SPARINGLY USED. It is interesting to think that what might be called the legal movement which fructified in the United States, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, had its beginning in the eighth century B. C. in Rome; it is doubly interesting that legend ascribes to Romulus the first interest in what can conservatively be called the child protection movement. Like all other lawmakers—even legendary ones—especially those who sought to prepare and safeguard their states for and against hostile neighbours, the first concern of the founder of Rome was a strong nation; and a strong nation meant necessarily as many adult males in good health and physical condition as possible. Soldiers were more important than other human beings; in this the supposed founder followed the spirit of his time and the standard of his age of development. According to the legend, Romulus, having made peace with the Sabines and become the king of both people on the death of Tatius, was bent on making the new city impregnable, working out a system of government that, in the mind of the historian, was worthy of “a man of great military accomplishments, personal courage and extremely capable of instituting the most perfect sort of government.”[319]