Sometimes when the object was rather to escape shame than to shun the expense of education, rings, jewels, or other valuable tokens were suspended about the child, or put along with it into the chytra.[353] And in the comic writers these usually assist in bringing about a discovery. If they fell into the hands of the poor the costly marks of noble birth, always held in honour by the ignorant and needy, would perhaps tempt them to preserve and cherish the off-cast, as in the case of Shakespeare’s Perdita, or in the event of death, would defray the expenses of their funerals. Sometimes superstition operated on their minds, urging them into a mock show of sharing their possessions with the little wretches they abandoned.[354] Thus Sostrata, wife of Chremes, in the Self-tormentor delivered along with her little daughter to the person who was to expose it, a ring from her own finger to be left with the child, that should it die it might not be wholly deprived of all share of their property. Such also is the behaviour of Creusa in Euripides; for Hermes, whom the poet introduces unfolding the argument of the drama, relates that when the young princess laid her new-born son to perish in the cavern, where he had been conceived, she took off her costly ornaments and with them decked her devoted boy.[355] Footnote 353: Vict. Var. Lect. ii. 3. Aristot. Poet. xvi. Footnote 354: Terent. Heautontim. iv. i. 36 seq. Victor. Var. Lect. ii. 3. Cf. Ter. Hecyr. iii. 3. 31. sqq. Footnote 355: Eurip. Ion, 26. seq. Cf. 15. sqq. From another part of the same play it may be inferred that children were often exposed on the steps of Apollo’s temple at Delphi, and nurtured by the Pythoness.[356] Indeed the priestess, on discovering Ion, who had been brought thither by Hermes from Attica, concludes at once that some unfortunate Delphian girl[357] is his mother, and adopts him under that impression. From the sequel it would appear that such children were the slaves of the temple, and under the immediate protection of the god.[358] Footnote 356: Conf. Hypoth. Ion. Footnote 357: Δελφίδων τλαίη κόρη. κ. τ. λ. Ion, 44. sqq. Footnote 358: Ion, 53. sqq.