This perpetual motion used by the nurse is referred to in the Timaeus,[112] and Aristotle thinks “it is of advantage to have all the movements made (of the bodies of infants) that it is possible to have made in the case of creatures so young.”[113] Plato lays down regulations for the nurses to carry the children into the fields, to the temples, and on visits to their acquaintances until they are able to stand alone. He would have them carried until the end of the third year, lest their limbs should be distorted by standing on them too soon: καὶ δὴ καὶ τὰς τροφοὺς ἀναγκάζωμεν νόμῳ ζημιοῦντες τὰ παιδία ἢ πρὸς ἀγροὺς ἢ πρὸς ἱερὰ ἢ πρὸς ὀικείους ἀεί πῃ φέρειν, μέχριπερ ἂν ἱκανῶς ἵστασθαι δυνατὰ γίγνηται, καὶ τότε διευλαβουμένας, ἔτι νέων ὄντων μή πῃ βίᾳ ἐπερειδομένων στρέφηται τὰ κῶλα ἐπιπονεῖν φερούσας, ἕως ἂν τριέτες ἀποτελεσθῇ τὸ γενόμενον;[114] This is doubtless the reason why there is no mention made of a contrivance to keep the children’s limbs straight like the “serperastra”[115] in use among the Romans.[116] The Greeks were careful to develop the body and to have it well-shapen. In the Pseudo-Plutarchian Essay, De Liberis Educandis, the writer thinks it necessary for the members of children to be shapen aright as soon as they are born: ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ μέλη τοῦ σώματος εὐθὺς ἀπὸ γενέσεως πλάττειν τῶν τέκνων ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι.[117] In the De Virtute, the author tells us that this is the work of the nurses: αἱ τίτθαι ταῖς χερσὶ τὸ σῶμα πλάττουσι.[118] Plato, speaking of the influence of stories on the minds of children, says that we must persuade the nurses and the mothers to form the souls of their children by these stories πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ σώματα ταῖς χερσὶν.[119] This practice continued down to the days of Galen as is shown from the following: τὰ κῶλα διαπλάττουσι αἱ τροφοὶ τῶν βρεφῶν ὥσπερ κήρινα.[120] _Cradles_ The nurse had various contrivances in which to place the children after they were lulled to sleep. We read that Alcmena cradled her children in a shield: χάλκειον κατέθηκεν ἐπ’ ἀσπίδα.[121] The scholiast on Callimachus, Jove, 48, alluding to this passage of Theocritus, says that military men were accustomed to place their children in shields after birth that they might become vigorous and strong. A specimen of a Greek cradle, that of the infant Hermes, a little two-handled basket shaped like a shoe, is seen on a vase.[122] The σκάφη, another kind of cradle, is mentioned as being instrumental in the ἀναγνώρισις of children: καὶ οἶνον ἐν τῇ Τυροῖ διὰ τῆς σκάφης.[123] Children were also exposed in a σκάφη: ἐνθέμενος οὖν εἰς σκάφην τὰ βρέφη.[124] Adrasteia, the nurse of Zeus, lulled him to sleep in a golden winnowing-fan: Λίκνῳ ἐνὶ χρυσέῳ.[125]