Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/300

 294 THE CITY. BOOK 111. late. At Athens the btate could prescribe labor, and at Sparta idleness. It exercised its tyranny even in the smallest things ; at Locri the laws forbade men to drink pure wine ; at Rome, Miletus, and Marseilles wine was forbidden to women.' It was a common thing for the kind of dress to be invariably fixed by each city; the legislation of Sparta regulated the head-dress of women, and that of Athens forbade them to take with them on a journey moie than three dresses.* At Rhodes and Byzantium the law forbade men to shave the beard.' The state was under no obligation to suffer any of its citizens to be deformed. It therefore commanded a father to whom such a son was born, to have him put to death. This law is found in the ancient codes of Sparta and of Rome. We do not know that it existed at Athens ; we know only that Aristotle and Plato in- corporated it into their ideal codes. There is, in the history of Sparta, one trait which Plutarch and Rousseau greatly admired. Sparta had just suffered a defeat at Leuctra, and many of its citi- zens had perished. On the receipt of this news, the relatives of the dead had to show themselves in public with gay countenances. The mother who learned that her son had escaped, and that she should see him again, appeared afflicted and wept. Another, who knew that > Athenaous, X. 33. ^lian, V. H., II. 37. » Fragm. Hist. Grac. Didot, t. II. p. 129, 211. riutarch, Solon, 21. ' Atlicnaeus, XIII. Phitarch, Cleomenes, 9. "The Romans thought that no marriage, or rearing of chil- dren, nay, no feast or drinking bout, ought to be permitted according to every one's appetite or fancy, without being ex- amuied and inquired into." Plutarch, Cato the Elder, 23.