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§ 9. In the many family suits argued by the Attic orators, we do not (I believe) find a case in which a large family of children is concerned. Four appears a larger number than the average. Marriages between relations as close as uncle and niece, and even half-brothers and sisters, were not uncommon; but the researches of modern science have removed the grounds for believing that this practice would tend to diminish the race. It would certainly increase any pre-existing tendency to hereditary disease; yet we do not hear of infantile diseases any more than we hear of delicate infants. Plagues and epidemics were common enough, but, as already observed, we do not hear of measles, or whooping-cough, or scarlatina, or any of the other constant persecutors of our nurseries.

As the learning of foreign languages was quite beneath the notions of the Greek gentleman, who rather expected all barbarians to learn his language, the habit of employing foreign nurses, so useful and even necessary to good modern education, was well-nigh unknown. It would have been thought a great misfortune to any Hellenic child to be brought up speaking Thracian or Egyptian. Accordingly, foreign slave attendants, with their strange accent and rude manners, were not allowed to take charge of children till they were able to go to school, and had learned their mother tongue perfectly.