Plat. Rep. l. ii. cap. 8. c. p. 117. Schol. Aristoph. Av. 652. Philostrat. Imag. i. 3. Footnote 529: Phot. Bib. 139. b. 8. Hor. Epist. i. 10. Gyraldi, de Poet. Histor. p. 462. a. sqq. Aristot. Rhet. ii. 20. Footnote 530: Diod. Sic. l. xix. c. 25. “It is said,” observed the Prince, “that once upon a time a lion falling in love with a young maiden came to make proposals of marriage to her father. The old man replied that he was quite ready to bestow on him his daughter upon one condition, namely, that he should pluck out his teeth and his claws, for that he feared his majesty might upon the wedding night forget himself and unwittingly destroy the bride. To these terms the lion consented, and allowed his teeth and claws to be pulled out, upon which the father seeing he had lost the only things which rendered him terrible fell upon him with a club and beat him to death.” The Æsopic fables[531] which Socrates a few days before his death amused himself by turning into verse,[532] are known to us solely by comparatively modern imitations, and of those which were denominated Sybaritic we know nothing[533] beyond the name; for though one scholiast informs us that the Sybaritic fables brought men upon the scene, as the Æsopic did animals, another states the direct contrary. In the earlier and ruder ages of Greece, however, these compositions were in great repute, as they are still among the people of the East. To the infancy of nations as of individuals the wisdom they contain is, in fact, always palatable; for which reason they were highly esteemed by Martin Luther as particularly adapted to the spirit of his times. Footnote 531: Aristoph. Pac. 128. Vesp. 1392, sqq. et Scholia. Footnote 532: Diog. Laert. ii. 5. 22. Doubtless we know too little of how the foundation of the republican character was laid in the ancient commonwealths; but it was laid by woman, and for centuries cannot have been laid amiss, as the glorious superstructure of virtue and patriotism erected upon it fully demonstrates. On this point we must reject the testimony of Plato’s academic dream. The historic fields of Marathon, Platæa, Thermopylæ, and a thousand others confute his fanciful theorising, proving incontestably that the love of glory and independence could, in the very polities which lie least esteemed, achieve triumphs unknown to the subjects of other governments. Footnote 533: Sch. Aristoph. Av. 471. Sch. Vesp. 1251. At seven years[534] old boys were removed from the harem and sent under the care of a governor to a public school, which, from the story of Bedreddin Hassan, we find to have been formerly the practice among the Arabs, even for the sons of distinguished men and Wezeers. “When seven years had passed over him his grandfather, (Shemseddeen, Wezeer of the Sultan of Egypt,) committed him to a schoolmaster, whom he charged to educate him with great care.”[535] Footnote 534: Aristot. Polit. vii. 15. Footnote 535: