ring as his own.

And again, it was allowable for a respectable man, if he felt any
admiration for a virtuous mother of children, married to some one else,
to induce her husband to permit him to have access to her, that he might
as it were sow seed in a fertile field, and obtain a fine son from a
healthy stock. Lykurgus did not view children as belonging to their
parents, but above all to the state; and therefore he wished his
citizens to be born of the best possible parents; besides the
inconsistency and folly which he noticed in the customs of the rest of
mankind, who are willing to pay money, or use their influence with the
owners of well-bred stock, to obtain a good breed of horses or dogs,
while they lock up their women in seclusion and permit them to have
children by none but themselves, even though they be mad, decrepit, or
diseased; just as if the good or bad qualities of children did not
depend entirely upon their parents, and did not affect their parents
more than any one else.

But although men lent their wives in order to produce healthy and useful
citizens, yet this was so far from the licence which was said to prevail
in later times with respect to women, that adultery was regarded amongst
them as an impossible crime. A story is told of one Geradas, a very old
Spartan, who, when asked by a stranger what was done to adulterers among
them, answered, "Stranger, there are no adulterers with us." "And if
there were one?" asked the stranger. "Then," said Geradas, "he would
have to pay as compensation a bull big enough to stand on Mount Taeygetus
and drink from the river Eurotas." The stranger, astonished, asked
"Where can you find so big a bull?" "Where can you find an adulterer in
Sparta?" answered Geradas. This is what is said about their marriage
ceremonies.

XV. A father had not the right of bringing up his offspring, but had to
carry it to a certain place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribe
sat in judgment upon the child. If they thought it well-built and
strong, they ordered the father to bring it up, and assigned one of the
nine thousand plots of land to it; but if it was mean-looking or
misshapen, they sent it away to the place called the Exposure, a glen
upon the side of Mount Taeygetus; for they considered that if a child did
not start in possession of health and strength, it was better both for
itself and for the state that he should not live at all. Wherefore the
women used to wash their