To a certain extent, and in a mitigated form, the same practice prevailed at Athens. Here, however, it was more a matter of custom than of law, and in this respect differed materially[348] from the practice of Sparta, that it was left entirely to the father to determine the fate of his children. Accordingly, the more cold-blooded had recourse to murder, while the less atrocious exposed them in jars in desert places to perish, or in the thronged and crowded quarters of the city in the hope that they might excite in others that compassion, which he, their father, denied them.[349] And humane individuals were often found who, like our Squire Allworthy, would sympathise with these deserted creatures.[350] Numerous examples occur in the comic poets. In these cases poverty was no doubt the motive, particularly when boys were exposed; but even wealthy persons, reasoning like the Rajpoots of northern India, would prefer exposing their daughters, to the care and expense of educating them to an uncertain destiny. On these occasions the child was dressed and swaddled more or less carefully, placed in a large earthen vessel called a chytra,[351]—the same in which soup was made, and which ought, therefore, to have awakened humane associations,—and laid at the mouth of some cave without the walls, or in such situations as I have above described. To this custom allusion is made in the anecdote of a foundling, who amusing himself by rolling a chytra before him with his foot, “What! exclaimed some one desirous of reminding him of his origin, have you the impiety to kick your mother in the belly?”[352] Footnote 348: Petit is of the contrary opinion, but his authorities by no means bear him out.—Legg. Att. lib. ii. tit. 4. p. 144. Footnote 349: Paulus, ap. Petit. ubi sup. Footnote 350: On the ceremony of adoption, see Potter ii. 335. Compare Lady Montague’s Works, iii. 12. Footnote 351: Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 289, or sometimes ὄστρακον, Ran. 1221. Footnote 352: Sch. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 509.