15.8
For in the first place, Lycurgus did not regard sons as the peculiar property of their fathers, but rather as the common property of the state, and therefore would not have his citizens spring from random parentage, but from the best there was. In the second place, he saw much folly and vanity in what other peoples enacted for the regulation of these matters; in the breeding of dogs and horses they insist on having the best sires which money or favour can secure, but they keep their wives under lock and key, demanding that they have children by none but themselves, even though they be foolish, or infirm, or diseased;
15.9
as though children of bad stock did not show their badness to those first who possessed and reared them, and children of good stock, contrariwise, their goodness. The freedom which thus prevailed at that time in marriage relations was aimed at physical and political well-being, and was far removed from the licentiousness which was afterwards attributed to their women, so much so that adultery was wholly unknown among them.
15.10
And a saying is reported of one Geradas,The name is Geradatas in Morals, p. 228 c (Apophtheg. Lacon, 20). a Spartan of very ancient type, who, on being asked by a stranger what the punishment for adulterers was among them, answered: Stranger, there is no adulterer among us. Suppose, then, replied the stranger, there should be one. A bull, said Geradas, would be his forfeit, a bull so large that it could stretch over Mount Taÿgetus and drink from the river Eurotas. Then the stranger was astonished and said: But how could there be a bull so large? To which Geradas replied, with a smile: But how could there be an adulterer in Sparta? Such, then, are the accounts we find of their marriages.
