Our readers, we trust, will not be reluctant to enter a Greek nursery,[419] where the mother, whatever might be the number of her assistants, generally suckled her own children. Their cradles were of various forms, some of which like our own required rocking,[420] while others were suspended like sailors’ hammocks from the ceiling, and swung gently to and fro when they desired to pacify the child or lull it to sleep:[421] as Tithonos is represented in the mythology to have been suspended in his old age.[422] Other cradles there were in the shape of little portable baskets wherein they were carried from one part of the harem to another.[423] It is probable, too, that as in the East the children of the opulent were rocked in their cradles wrapped in coverlets of Milesian wool. Footnote 419: See in Winkelmann, vignette to l. iv. ch. 3. a view of an ancient nursery, where the mother, the pædagogue, the nurse, &c. are engaged in the work of education, t. i. p. 414. Cf. Max. Tyr. Diss. iv. p. 49. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 713. Footnote 420: Pignor. de. Serv. p. 186. Footnote 421: Schweigh. Animadv. in Athen. vi. 74. Footnote 422: Eudoc. ap. Villois. Anecdot. Græc. t. i. p. 396. Tzetz. ad Lyc. v. 16. Footnote 423: Mus. Real. Borbon. t. i. pl. 3. Occasionally in Hellas,[424] as everywhere else, the nurse’s milk would fail, or be scanty, when they had recourse to a very original contrivance to still the infant’s cries; they dipped a piece of sponge in honey which was given it to suck.[425] It was probably under similar circumstances that children were indulged in figs; the Greeks entertaining an opinion that this fruit greatly contributed to render them plump and healthy. They had further a superstition that by rubbing fresh figs upon the eyes of children they would be preserved from ophthalmia.[426] Footnote 424: It was even then remarked that sucking children teethe much better than such as are dry nursed.—Aristot. de Gen. Anim. v. 8. Hist. Anim. vii. 10. Footnote 425: Sch. Arist. Acharn. 439. Footnote 426: Athen. iii. 15. The Persians attributed the same preventive power to the petals of the new-blown rose.[427] When a child was wholly or partly dry-nursed, the girl who had charge of it would under pretence of cooling its pap, commonly made of fine flour of spelt,[428] put the spoon into her own mouth, swallow the best part of the nourishment, and give the refuse to the infant, a practice attributed by Aristophanes to Cleon, who swallowed, he says, the best of the good things of the state himself, and left the residue to the people.[429] Footnote 427: Geopon. xi. 18. Footnote 428: Dioscor. ii. 114. Footnote 429: Equit. 712. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 326.