τίτθη τις αὕτη πρεσβυτέρα, γεγονυῖ’ ἐμὴ
θεράπαιν’, ἐλευθέρα δὲ νῦν.[[44]]
“Though emancipated, she yet remained in the service of her former master,” her status being similar to that of the metic.[[45]] We also have inscriptional evidence that women belonging to the metic class were employed as nurses who being free-born must have received wages: Ἀπολλοδώρου ἰσοτέλου θυγάτηρ Μέλιττα τίτθη.[[46]]
Foreign Nurses
Though the Athenians had a natural repugnance to the severity of the Spartan discipline, still the aversion was not so intense but that some of the Lacedemonian customs found ready acceptance in Athens. Aristophanes, Birds, 1281,[[47]] makes it clear that the Athenians were “Spartan-mad.” For this reason, no doubt, Spartan women whose robust health was famed throughout Greece,[[48]] were sought to inaugurate that regimen peculiar to the Spartan nurse. Hence Plutarch: Διὸ καὶ τῶν ἔξωθεν ἔνιοι τοῖς τέκνοις Λακωνικὰς ἐωνοῦντο τιτθάς,[[49]] and he also records that Amycla, the nurse of Alcibiades was a Spartan: Ἀλκιβιάδου δὲ καὶ τίτθην, γένος Λάκαιναν, Ἀμύκλαν ὄνομα.[[50]] The virtue of these Spartan women and the esteem in which they were generally held are attested to by a monument erected by Diogeitus to the nurse of his children. On it we find the following inscription:
Ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχει τίτθην παιδίων Διογείτου ἐκ
Πελοποννήσου τὴν δὲ δικαιοτάτην.
Μαλίχα Κυθηρία.[[51]]
But it was not only from Sparta that the Athenians obtained nurses for their children. We have an inscription from the monument of the Corinthian nurse Φάνιον.[[52]] And there is an epigram of Callimachus on a Phrygian nurse whose master cared for her during her life-time, and when she was dead set up her statue, that posterity might see how the old woman received in full the thanks for her nurture.[[53]] Thrace, too, furnished its share of types of nurses: