they should have been thus swaddled for the first two years of their life, as a passage in Plato seems to indicate, for this would not only have been extraordinary, but also injurious to the health. It can only be a question of maintaining a covering suitable to the age for these two years, instead of the children’s dress afterwards worn. A physician of the age of the Empire recommends the end of the fourth month as the time for gradually leaving off the swaddling; and probably this was also the Greek custom. Antiquity does not seem to have been acquainted with our soft cushions, but the little Athenians also had their cradles, though these did not stand on the ground on rockers like ours, for such cradles are not mentioned till the Roman period, and seem to have been unknown in the classic age; but they resembled a basket of woven osier, suspended from ropes like a hammock, and thus made to rock. The cradle in which Hermes, who seems already to have attained the age of boyhood, is depicted on a vase painting represented in Fig. 59, is of a peculiar shape, quite like that of a shoe; the handles at the side, through which ropes were probably passed, show that this was also made to rock. Fig. 60 shows a different kind of cradle. It is a bed on rockers, which may have been used in the same way as the babies’ cots common among us. [Illustration: FIG. 59.] The young mother now for the first time gives the new-born baby the breast (compare Fig. 61, taken from a Greek terra-cotta), and rejoices that she is able to perform this duty herself. However, in case she should not have been able to do it, a poor peasant woman from the neighbourhood had been brought to the house and paid for her services. Meantime, the husband sits down by the bed and discusses with his wife the steps which must next be taken. A question that sometimes causes a good deal of difficulty presents none on this occasion--viz., the legitimation of the child. And as the boy is strong and healthy, there cannot be a question of the barbarous custom [Illustration: FIG. 60.]