Repub. i. 315. Stallb.—On the harshness and severity of nurses, Teles remarks in that curious picture of human life, which he has drawn quite in the spirit of the melancholy Jaques. Stob. Floril. Tit. 98. 72. Footnote 413: Cf. Cramer de Educ. Puer. ap. Athen. 9. Odyss. β. 361. seq. Terpstra, Antiq. Homer. 122. seq. Footnote 414: Plut. Alcib. § 1. Footnote 415: Or if not, the Spartan legislator had recourse to other expedients for extirpating these superstitious terrors in after years. It being customary among the Laconians to drink moderately in the syssitia, says Plutarch, they went home without a torch, it not being lawful to make use of a light on these or any other occasions, in order that they might be accustomed to walk by night and in darkness boldly, and without fear. Instit. Lacon. § 3. Footnote 416: Plut. Lycurg. § 16. Plato, however, while framing at will an imaginary system, and though inclined upon the whole to laconise, adheres, in some respects, to the customs of his country, and ordains that infants be confined by swaddling bands till two years old. From the mention of this age, it may be inferred that children commonly did not walk much earlier at Athens, which is the case in the East, as we may learn from the story of Ala-ed-deen Abushamet. Plato would also have nurses to be vigorous and robust women, much inclined to frequent the temples, in order, probably, to introduce into the minds of their charges early impressions of religion, and to stroll about the fields and public gardens until the children could run alone; and even then, and until they were three years old, he urged the necessity of their being frequently carried, to prevent crooked legs and malformed ankles. But because all this might press hard on one nurse, several were employed, as among ourselves,[417] and a kind of Nursery Governess overlooked the whole. The Gerula or under-nurse was, in later times, the person upon whom fell the principal labour of bearing the infant about; but in remoter ages the Greeks, more particularly their royal and noble families, employed in this capacity a Baioulos[418] or nurse-father, who, as in the case of Phœnix, was sometimes himself of illustrious birth. Cheiron, too, the Pelasgian mountain prince, performed this sacred office for the son of his friend Peleus. Footnote 417: Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 5. Pignor. de Serv. p. 185. Footnote 418: Pignor. de Serv. p. 186. seq.