4.1
Further, the practice of the two peoples in the matter of giving their young maids in marriage conforms to their education of them in general. Lycurgus made them brides only when they were fully ripe and eager for it, in order that intercourse with a husband, coming at a time when nature craved it, might produce a kindly love, instead of the timorous hate that follows unnatural compulsion; also that their bodies might be vigorous enough to endure the strain of conception and child-birth, convinced as he was that marriage had no other end than the production of children. The Romans, on the other hand, gave their maidens in marriage when they were twelve years old, or even younger. In this way more than any other, it was thought, both their bodies and their dispositions would be pure and undefiled when their husbands took control of them.
4.2
It is clear, therefore, that one practice regarded nature more, with children in view; the other regarded more the formation of character, with married life in view.
4.2
But surely, by his careful attention to boys, by their collection into companies, their discipline and constant association, and by his painstaking arrangements for their meals and bodily exercise and sports, Lycurgus proves that Numa was no more than an ordinary lawgiver. For Numa left the bringing up of youths to the wishes or necessities of their fathers.
4.3
A father might, if he wished, make his son a tiller of the soil, or a shipwright, or might teach him to be a smith or a flute-player, as if it were not important that all of them should be trained with one and the same end in view from the outset, and have their dispositions formed alike; but rather as if they were like passengers on a ship, each coming with a different object and purpose, and each therefore uniting with the rest for the common good only in times of peril, through fear of private loss, but otherwise consulting only his own interests.
