In the modern world to take the life of an infant is a capital offence, yet we see with how little fear or ceremony the law is set at nought. It will, therefore, readily be supposed that in those countries of antiquity where neither law nor public opinion opposed the practice, but in some cases winked at, in others enjoined it, the number of child-murders must have been enormous. Sparta very naturally took the lead in this guilty course.[346] Here it was not permitted to private individuals to make away with their offspring stealthily, and with those marks of shame and compunction inseparable from individual guilt. The state monopolized the right to Herodise, and by sharing the criminality among great numbers appeared to silence the objections of conscience. Fathers were compelled by law to bring their new-born infants to certain officers, old, grave men,[347] who held their sittings in the Lesche of their tribe, and after due deliberation determined on the claim of each child to live or die. By what rules they decided, rude and ignorant of physiology as they were, it would now be impossible positively to affirm. Little skill no doubt had they in detecting the latent seeds of robustness and physical energy, still less those of splendid mental endowments lurking in the crimson countenance of helpless infancy. They who might have proved the wise and good of their generation no doubt often went instead of the mere animal. However, giving orders that the strong and apparently healthy should be nursed, the weakly and delicate, often the noblest men, and the bravest soldiers, as witness Lucius Sulla, were condemned to be cast like so many puppy dogs into the Apothetæ, a deep cavern at the foot of Mount Taygetos. This den of death relieved the Spartans from the necessity of erecting workhouses or enacting poor-laws. The surplus population went into that pit. Footnote 346: Compare the coolness of Hase. p. 190. Müller. ii. 313. with Lamb. Bos. p. 212. seq. and the humane remarks of Ubbo Emmius iii. 83. Potter, too (ii. 326. sqq.), seems to disapprove of the practice. Footnote 347: Plut. Lycurg. 16.