Added to all these occupations was the education of the children. The Athenian lady had nurses for them, Spartan slave-women, if they were to be had, for their discipline was sterner than that of other Greeks, and the Spartan nurses had the {216} reputation of being able to keep their young charges in particularly good order. All kinds of toys were provided for the children, hoops and balls, spinning-tops and go-carts, dolls and toy animals. The Athenian mother learnt to be a good story-teller, for it was in these early days that the children wanted stories told them, and many a tale would she relate of the gods and heroes of old, of the nymphs and spirits of the forests and mountains, of the sea and of the air. And when night came and the children must go to bed, then she would sing them to sleep with a slumber song: Sleep children mine, a light luxurious sleep, Brother with brother: sleep, my boys, my life: Blest in your slumber, in your waking blest.[4] The girls had to be trained to all the duties of an Athenian wife, and there was much to learn in the short years of their girlhood. It was a domestic training that they were given; of other things they learned as much or as little as their mother knew herself and was able to teach them, probably not more than a little reading and writing. A girl was not encouraged to take up any kind of intellectual pursuits, and during her life before her marriage she was generally "most carefully trained to see and hear as little as possible, and to ask the fewest questions."[5] {217} But it was not all work for the maiden, and many a time did she sit in the swing in the courtyard and idle away a warm afternoon gently swinging to and fro, and many a merry game of ball did she have with her companions. It was she who made the fresh garlands and wreaths for the altars or the house, and who, when the moon was full, laid offerings on the tomb of her grandparents, and, most glorious of all her girlhood privileges, it was she who helped to weave the robe taken to the temple of Athena at the time of the great Panathenaic festival and who bore baskets of offerings to the goddess in the great procession. When the Athenian maiden married, all this life came to an end, and she took upon her young shoulders the training of her own household, even as she had seen her mother do. Her marriage had usually been arranged for her, and she often knew but little of her future husband. Before the marriage day, she offered all her girlhood treasures to Artemis, the goddess who had watched over her childhood. Her tambourines and pretty ball, and the net that confined her hair, and her dolls and dolls' dresses, Timareta dedicates before her marriage to Artemis, a maiden to a maiden as is fit; do thou, daughter of Leto, laying thine hand over the girl Timareta, preserve her purely in her purity.[6]