Mention is made by ancient writers of several rude and hardy tribes, whose women, like those of Hindùstân at the present day, stood in very little need of the midwife’s aid. Thus Varro,[332] speaking of the rough shepherdesses of Italy, observes that among the countrywomen of Illyria, bringing forth children was regarded as a slight matter; for that, stepping aside from their work in the fields, they would return presently with an infant in their arms, having first bathed it in some fountain or running stream, appearing rather to have found, than given birth to, a child. Nor are the manners of these uncultivated people at all altered in modern times, as appears from an anecdote related to Pietro Vittore,[333] by Francesco Sardonati, professor of Latin at Ragusa, who said that he saw a woman go out empty-handed to a forest for wood, and return shortly afterwards with a bundle on her head and a new-born infant in her arms. At Athens, however, where the women were peculiarly tender and delicate, the young mother remained within doors full six weeks,[334] when the festival of the fortieth day was celebrated, after which she went forth, as our ladies do to be churched, to offer up sacrifices and return thanks in the temple of Artemis or some other divinity. Footnote 332: De Re Rust. ii. 10. Footnote 333: Var. Lect. xxxiv. 2. Footnote 334: Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 260. sqq. Censor. de Die Natali. c. 11. New-born infants, when designed to be reared, were at Athens and in the rest of Greece bathed in cold water: at Sparta in wine, with the view of producing convulsions and death should the child be feeble, whereas, were its constitution strong and vigorous, it would thus they imagined, “acquire a greater degree of firmness, and get a temper in proportion, as Potter[335] expresses it, like steel in the quenching.” Swaddling-bands[336] also, in use throughout the rest of Greece, were banished from Sparta, which led the way therefore to that improved system of infant management advocated by Rousseau, Lacépède and others,[337] and now generally adopted in this country, though but partially in France. The ceremonies and customs of the Greeks were a kind of symbolical language, many times containing important meaning, and always perhaps indicative of the character and familiar feelings of the race. Much stress was laid on the thing wherein the infant was placed upon its entrance into the world. This, among the Athenians, consisted of a wrapper adorned with an embroidered figure of the Gorgon’s head, the device represented on the shield of Athena, tutelar divinity of the state. From the beginning every citizen seemed thus to be placed under the immediate shelter of that goddess’s ægis which should be extended over him in peace and in war. In other parts of Greece the child’s first bed, and too frequently his last, was a shield.[338] In accordance with this custom we find Alcmena cradling her