Note 222 — DESCRIPTION OF THE EAST INDIES AND COUNTRIES ON THE SEABORD OF THE INDIAN OCEAN IN 1514. [3] (continued 3)
Henry Edward John Stanley Stanley translation
The explanation of this ceremony is to be found in Plato:—
"We said, you remember, that the children ought to be the issue of parents who are still in their prime." "True." " And do you agree with me that the prime of life may be reasonably reckoned at a period of twenty years for a woman, and thirty for a man?" "Where do you place these years?" "I should make it the rule for a woman to bear children to the state from her twentieth to her fortieth year: and for a man, after getting over the sharpest burst in the race of life, thenceforward to beget children to the state until he is fifty-five years old." "Doubtless," he said, "in both sexes, this is the period of their prime both of body and mind." "If, then, a man who is either above or under this age shall meddle with the business of begetting children for the commonwealth, we shall declare his act to be an offence against religion and justice; inasmuch as he is raising up a child for the state, who, should detection be avoided, instead of having been begotten under the sanction of those sacrifices and prayers, which are to be offered up at every marriage ceremonial by priests and priestesses, and by the whole city, to the effect that the children to be born may ever be more virtuous and more useful than their virtuous and useful parents, will have been conceived under cover of darkness by aid of dire incontinence." "You are right." "The same law will hold should a man, who is still of an age to be a father, meddle with a woman, who is also of the proper age, without the introduction of a magistrate; for we shall accuse him of raising up to the state an illegitimate, unsponsored, and unhallowed child." "You are perfectly right." "But as soon as the women and the men are past the prescribed age, we shall allow the latter I imagine to associate freely with whomsoever they please, so that it be not a daughter, or mother, or daughter's child, or grandmother; and in like manner we shall permit the women to associate with any man, except a son or a father." Republic, book v, sect. 461. Davis and Vaughan's Translation, p. 190.
"Explicemus jam tandem, quam nam florentem ætatem in utroque sexu existimemus, mulierem porro florenti esse ætate arbitramur, si a vigesimo ætatis suæ anno usque ad quadragesimum generationi incumbat, virum autem a trigesimo usque ad quinquagesimum quintum operam suam in gignendo civitati præbere præcipimus, in hoc enim annorum cursu et robur corporis, et prudentiæ vim sexus utriusque consistere certum est. Si quis igitur vel senior vel junior his generationes eas, quæ ad publicum civitatis commodum ordinatæ sunt, attigerit profanum et illegitimum hoc esse censebimus, quasi civitati fœtum largiatur, qui si latuerit non sacrificiorum vel præcationum fiat inauguratione, quas tamen in singulis nuptiis cum universâ civitate peragent sacerdotes, ut ex bonis meliores et ex utilibus utiliores semper enascantur vota concipientes; sed id fiat sub tenebris ex vehementis cujusdam incontinentiæ libidine, eadem autem lex etiam erit servanda, si quis eorum qui et in ætate sunt apta ad matrimonium contrahendum, non assentiente tamen magistratu ad mulieres ætate nubiles accesserit, hunc enim statuemus edere civitati spurium profanum, et illegitimum partum; ubi vero et mulieres, et viri statutum generationi tempus pertransierint, immunes a lege faciemus ut possint cum quacumque libuerit commisceri; præter quam cum filia et matre et filiis filiarum ac matris ascendentibus; et parem concedemus quoque libertatem mulieribus, ut possint cum quovis conjungi, præter quam cum filio, vel patre, et ascendentibus, vel descendentibus ex his, quæ omnia, ubi mandaverimus curabimus, ne partus ullus omnino ex hujusmodi coitibus ortus in lucem proferatur, quod si proferetur sic expositus sit perinde ac quasi nulla ei adsint alimenta." Plato's Republic, book v. Translation of John Sozomenus, Venice, 1626.