Perhaps we can best judge the attitude of the Homeric Greeks toward children by the later point of view of the flower of Greek intellect. There is not a line in Plato to indicate that the practices we regard as so reprehensible were at all abhorrent to him. In fact, there are passages that would indicate that he not only regarded infanticide as inevitable, but as unobjectionable; and in any case, the incidental references to the practices of his day show that the matter was one that had given him no concern and had not disturbed his philosophic calm. Thus, Plato has Socrates say in the _Theætetus_[289]: “Then this child, however he may turn out, which you and I have with difficulty brought into the world. And now that he is born, we must run round the hearth with him, and see whether he is worth rearing, or is only a wind-egg and a sham. Is he to be reared in any case, and not exposed? or will you bear to see him rejected, and not get into a passion if I take away your first-born?” And in another place, Socrates emphasizes not the sacredness of the life of the child, but the material advantages that accrued to its progenitors[290]: “Must we not then, first of all, ask whether there is any one of us who has knowledge of that about which we are deliberating? If there is, let us take his advice, though he be one only, and not mind the rest; if there is not, let us seek further counsel. Is this a slight matter about which you and Lysimachus are deliberating? Are you not risking the greatest of your possessions? For children are your riches; and upon their turning out well or ill depends the whole order of their father’s house.” Is it true that, aside from the laws of Gortyna, which were excavated in 1884 on the island of Crete,[291] and the injunctions of Lycurgus, as given to us by Plutarch, we have no positive declaration as to the attitude of the legislator in reference to children; but what is lacking in positive legislation is made up by the plethora of literary allusions, going to show a condition singularly heartless. It is interesting to note that the laws of Gortyna, which represent a period of civilization about 500 years before Christ, are not as humane as the law ascribed to Romulus by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, though the Greek laws are those of a people supposedly more civilized than the tribes then beginning their history on the Capitoline Hill. There was a prohibition in the first law ascribed to Romulus: and the extent of the law, as far as we may presume to judge it, was to urge caution on the people who were about to destroy their offspring. Under the Roman law, all children were to be kept for a short time at least, this limiting the power of the father to kill, whereas the law of Gortyna emphasized the power of the father in the matter of the life and death of the child; in one specific instance, it gives the mother direct permission to do away with the infant.