All regard to appearances was abandoned. With a couple of small cocks[621] in their hands, and an old one under either arm, they sallied forth, like vagabonds who had been robbing a henroost, to give their favourite animals air and gentle exercise, and thus laden often strolled several miles into the country. Footnote 618: Cf. Plato, de Rep. t. vi. p. 139, seq. Footnote 619: Herod. i. 155. Cf. Polyæn. vii. 6. 4. Justin, i. 6. Footnote 620: De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 3. cf. p. 11. Footnote 621: Plato, de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 3. seq.—On the practice of quail-fighting, see Poll. vii. 16. Comm. p. 237. Büd. Com. Ling. Græc. p. 615. Paris. Iungermann ad Poll. vii. 136. p. 427, observes that it was customary to exhibit public quail-fights at Athens. But Lucian who states this (Anach. § 37), confounds the quail with the cock-fighting.—Ælian. V. H. ii. 28. Cf. Ludovic. Nonn. de Re Cib. ii. 22. p. 228. Poliarchos, an Athenian, buried his dogs and cocks magnificently.—viii. 4. In the same spirit, a French lady erected a mausoleum to her cat with this epitaph: “Ci-gît une chatte jolie, Sa maîtresse qui n’aima rien L’aima jusques à la folie. Pourquoi le dire? On le voit bien.” The dog who detected the robber of Asclepios’s temple, received while he lived the marks of public gratitude, and was maintained like a hero at the people’s expense.—Ælian. V. H. vii. 14. To such a people the gymnasium opened up a source of peculiar delight, and in the end became a passion prejudicial to the cultivation of the understanding. But within the bounds of moderation it was prescribed by philosophers in lieu of physic, and as an antidote against those pale faces and emaciated frames, too common where intellectual studies are ardently pursued.[622] It was a law of Solon, that every Athenian[623] should be able to read and to swim; and the whole spirit of Attic legislation, leaving the poor to the exercise of industrious and hardy occupations, tended to create among the opulent and the noble a taste for field-sports, horsemanship, and every martial and manly exercise.[624] The difficulty, of course, was to render them subordinate to mental cultivation, and to blend both so cunningly together as to produce a beautiful and harmonious system of discipline, well fitted to ripen and bring to greatest perfection every power and faculty of body and mind. Footnote 622: Aristoph. Nub. 185. Plat. Repub. t. vi. p. 146. Footnote 623: Petit. de Legg. Att. l. ii. tit. iv. p. 162. Æsch. cont. Tim. § 2–4. Footnote 624: Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. 17. seq.