Sleep, happy in your baby dreams, and wake
With joy to greet the morning's dawning light."[167]
Infanticide.
Infanticide was practiced in Athens, but not by the state. This was wholly in the hands of the fathers. The fathers at Athens were more cruel than the state at Sparta, for not only weak and deformed children were cast aside by the Athenian fathers, but this might be true of other children, as poverty and other causes might be a motive. This was done by placing the infant in a basket or earthenware vessel and leaving it in a temple, or some other public place, so that some one might take it. This was called "potting" the child. The mother usually placed a token as a trinket or an amulet with the child so that possibly afterward the child might be recognized. The party who might take such a child had full power over it and might rear it as a slave or do with it as he might wish. The father was sometimes brutal enough to take the baby to the mountains and leave it to die from exposure or wild beasts.
"From this barbarous custom the Thebans formed an honorable exemption. They rendered the murder of infants a capital offense. Those who were born of parents unable to provide for their maintenance were brought up at the public charge, but in return, when grown up, the public had a right to their services until they were adequately compensated for what had been expended in bringing them up."[168]
Duties of Children.
Adoption and Inheritance.
Toys and Playthings.
"He is a lad of parts, and from a child
Took wondrously to dabbling in the mud,