The betrothal of the parties shall be made by the next of kin, or if there are none, by the guardians. The offerings and ceremonies of marriage shall be determined by the interpreters of sacred rites. Let the wedding party be moderate; five male and five female friends, and a like number of kinsmen, will be enough. The expense should not exceed, for the first class, a mina; and for the second, half a mina; and should be in like proportion for the other classes. Extravagance is to be regarded as vulgarity and ignorance of nuptial proprieties. Much wine is only to be drunk at the festivals of Dionysus, and certainly not on the occasion of a marriage. The bride and bridegroom, who are taking a great step in life, ought to have all their wits about them; they should be especially careful of the night on which God may give them increase, and which this will be none can say. Their bodies and souls should be in the most temperate condition; they should abstain from all that partakes of the nature of disease or vice, which will otherwise become hereditary. There is an original divinity in man which preserves all things, if used with proper respect. He who marries should make one of the two houses on the lot the nest and nursery of his young; he should leave his father and mother, and then his affection for them will be only increased by absence. He will go forth as to a colony, and will there rear up his offspring, handing on the torch of life to another generation. About property in general there is little difficulty, with the exception of property in slaves, which is an institution of a very doubtful character. The slavery of the Helots is approved by some and condemned by others; and there is some doubt even about the slavery of the Mariandynians at Heraclea and of the Thessalian Penestae. This makes us ask, What shall we do about slaves? To which every one would agree in replying,--Let us have the best and most attached whom we can get. All of us have heard stories of slaves who have been better to their masters than sons or brethren. Yet there is an opposite doctrine, that slaves are never to be trusted; as Homer says, 'Slavery takes away half a man's understanding.' And different persons treat them in different ways: there are some who never trust them, and beat them like dogs, until they make them many times more slavish than they were before; and others pursue the opposite plan. Man is a troublesome animal, as has been often shown, Megillus, notably in the revolts of the Messenians; and great mischiefs have arisen in countries where there are large bodies of slaves of one nationality. Two rules may be given for their management: first that they should not, if possible, be of the same country or have a common language; and secondly, that they should be treated by their master with more justice even than equals, out of regard to himself quite as much as to them. For he who is righteous in the treatment of