The heroes treated their own families no less harshly than the plebs. The education of children was stern, rough and cruel. The Spartans, in order that their sons might not fear pain and death, beat them within an inch of their lives in the temple of Diana, so that they often fell dead in agonies of pain beneath their father's blows. In Greece as in Rome it was lawful to kill innocent new-born children, a custom the reverse of the modern, by which the delights which surround little children shape the softer side of human nature. Wives were bought by the dowries of the heroic period, a survival of which was the practice solemnly observed in Rome of marriage _"coemptione et farre"_ (a similar custom is ascribed by Tacitus to the ancient Germans and must be considered universal among barbarous peoples), and were maintained simply as a necessity of nature for the procreation of children and in other respects treated like slaves; as can still be seen in many parts of the old world and almost everywhere in the new. The acquisition of children and the thrift of the wife were simply reckoned as so much profit to the father and husband. The counterpart of this political and domestic system is found in the ordinary life of the period, which was innocent of all luxury, refinement and ease. Pastimes were arduous, such as wrestling and hunting, to harden body and mind, or else dangerous, like jousting or hunting big game, to accustom men to think lightly of wounds and death. Wars were carried on under a religious aspect and were always therefore extremely bitter. From such wars resulted the system of heroic slavery, by which the conquered were held to be men without God, so that they lost civil and natural liberty at once. Foreigners were considered enemies: the earliest nations were intensely inhospitable. Brigandage and piracy were recognised; and Plutarch says that the heroes considered it a great honour and prize of valour to be called "robbers."