Age fixed for marriage. During the first ten years the couple are under obligation to procreate for the city — Restrictions during these ten years.
The age of marriage is fixed at from thirty to thirty-five for males, from sixteen to twenty for females. The first ten years after marriage are considered as appropriated to the production of children for the city, and are subject to the strict supervision above mentioned. If any couple have no offspring for ten years, the marriage shall be dissolved by authority. After ten years the supervision is suspended, and the couple are left to themselves. If either of them shall commit an infidelity with another person still under the decennial restriction, the party so offending is liable to the same penalty as if he were still himself also under it.[218] But if the person with whom infidelity is committed be not under that restriction, no penalty will be incurred beyond a certain general discredit, as compared with others whose conduct is blameless, and who will receive greater honour. However, Plato advises that nothing shall be said in the law respecting the conduct of married couples after the period of decennial restriction has elapsed, unless there be some grave scandal to call attention to the subject.[219]
[218] Plato, Legg. vi. pp. 784-785.
[219] Plato, Legg. vi. p. 785 A. καὶ μετριαζόντων μὲν περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν πλειόνων ἀνομοθέτητα σιγῇ κείσθω, ἀκοσμούντων δὲ νομοθετηθέντα ταύτῃ πραττέσθω, &c.
How infants are to be brought up — Nurses — Perpetual regulated movements — useful for toning down violent emotions.
Plato now proceeds to treat about the children just born. The principle of separate family being admitted in the Treatise De Legibus, he refrains from promulgating any peremptory laws on this subject, because it is impossible for the lawgiver or the magistrate to enter into each private house, and to enforce obedience on such minute and numerous details: while it would be discreditable for him to command what he could not enforce, and it would moreover accustom citizens to disobey the law with impunity. Still, however, Plato[220] thinks it useful to deliver some general advice, which he hopes that fathers and mothers will spontaneously follow. He begins with the infant as soon as born, and even before birth. The mother during pregnancy is admonished to take regular exercise; the infant when born must be carried about constantly in the nurse’s arms. The invigorating effects of such gestation are illustrated by the practice of Athenian cock-fighters, who cause the cocks while under training to be carried about under the arms of attendants in long walks.[221] Besides that the nurses (slaves) must be strong women, there must also be more than one to each infant, in order that he may be sufficiently carried about. He must be kept in swaddling-clothes for the first two years, and must not be allowed to walk until he is three years of age.[222] The perpetual movement and dandling, in the arms of the nurse, produces a good effect not only on the health and bodily force of the infant, but also upon his emotions.[223] The infant ought to be kept (if it were possible) in movement as constant and unceasing as if he were on shipboard. Nurses know this by experience, when they lull to sleep an insomnious child, not by holding him still, but by swinging him about in their arms, and by singing a ditty. So likewise the insane and furious emotions inspired by Dionysus (also by Zeus, by the mother of the Gods, &c.) are appeased by the regulated movement, dance and music, solemnly performed at the ceremonial worship of the God who excited the emotions. These are different varieties of fear and perturbation: they are morbid internal movements, which we overpower and heal by muscular and rhythmical movements impressed from without, with appropriate music and religious solemnities.[224]
[220] Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 788-790 A.
[221] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 789.
[222] Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 789 E, 790 A.
[223] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 790 C-D. λάβωμεν τοίνυν τοῦτο οἷον στοιχεῖον ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα σώματός τε καὶ ψυχῆς τῶν πάνυ νέων, τὴν τιθήνησιν καὶ κίνησιν, γιγνομένην ὅτι μάλιστα διὰ πάσης νυκτός τε καὶ ἡμέρας, ὡς ἔστι ξύμφορος ἅπασι μέν, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ τοῖς ὅ, τι νεωτάτοισι, καὶ οἰκεῖν, εἰ δυνατὸν ἦν, οἷον ἀεὶ πλέοντας· νῦν δ’ ὡς ἐγγύτατα τούτου ποιεῖν δεῖ περὶ τὰ νεογενῆ παίδων θρέμματα.