Having thus honoured and dignified the married state, he destroyed the vain womanish passion of jealousy, for, while carefully avoiding any disorder or licentiousness, he nevertheless permitted men to associate worthy persons with them in the task of begetting children, and taught them to ridicule those who insisted on the exclusive possession of their wives, and who were ready to fight and kill people to maintain their right.  It was permitted to an elderly husband, with a young wife, to associate with himself any well-born youth whom he might fancy, and to adopt the offspring 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