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We know nothing about the condition of little girls of the same age, except that they specially indulged in ball-playing. Like our own children, the girls probably joined, to a lesser degree, in the boys’ games, and only so far as they could be carried on within-doors, in the court of the house. There are graceful representations of their swinging and practising our seesaw. Dolls they had in plenty, and doll-making (of clay) was quite a special trade at Athens. In more than one instance we have found in children’s graves their favorite dolls, which sorrowing parents laid with them as a sort of keepsake in the tomb.

§ 12. Most unfortunately, there is hardly a word left of the nursery rhymes and of the folk-lore, which are very much more interesting than the physical amusements of children. Yet we know that such popular songs existed in plenty; we know, too, from the early fame of Æsop’s fables, from the myths so readily invented and exquisitely told by Plato, that here we have lost a real fund of beautiful and stimulating children’s stories.ssss1 And of course here, too, the general character of such stories throughout the human race was preserved.