230 Of the Checks to Population Bk. i. 



certain festivals appointed by the laws, the young 

 men and women who are betrothed are to be 

 assembled, and joined together with solemn cere- 

 monies. But the number of marriages is to be 

 determined by the magistrates ; that, taking into 

 consideration the drains from wars, diseases and 

 other causes, they may preserve, as nearly as pos- 

 sible, such a proportion of citizens, as will be nei- 

 ther too numerous nor too few, according to the 

 resources and demands of the state. The children, 

 who are thus born from the most excellent of the 

 citizens, are to be carried to certain nurses des- 

 tined to this office, inhabiting a separate part of 

 the city ; but those which are born from the infe- 

 rior citizens, and any from the others which are 

 imperfect in their limbs, are to be buried in some 

 obscure and unknown place. 



He next proceeds to consider the proper age 

 for marriage, and determines it to be twenty for 

 the women, and thirty for the men. Beginning 

 at twenty, the woman is to bear children for the 

 state till she is forty, and the man is to fulfil his 

 duty in this respect from thirty to fifty-five. If 

 a man produce a child into public either before 

 or after this period, the action is to be considered 

 in the same criminal and profane light as if he had 

 produced one without the nuptial ceremonies, and 

 instigated solely by incontinence. The same rule 

 should hold, if a man who is of the proper age 

 for procreation be connected with a woman who 

 is also of the proper age, but without the cere- 

 mony of marriage by the magistrate ; he is to be 



