The frequent mention of the nurse in connection with the child and the family and the numerous descriptions of her in Greek art have suggested the investigation of Greek classical literature and the inscriptions with the purpose of ascertaining and presenting the position and characteristics of the nurse as a contribution to the private life of the Greeks. The subject here dealt with is viewed solely from the social standpoint, though the writer recognizes its value from the literary and psychol

Of the various terms employed in the literature to designate the nurse we shall speak only of four: τροφός , τιθήνη , μαῖα , and τίτθη . The first three are found in Homer [1] and the Hymns [2] with no apparent difference of meaning. τίτθη is of later origin and is used of a wet-nurse by Plato, [3] Demosthenes, [4] Aristotle, [5] Antiphanes, [6] Plutarch, [7] Soranus. [8] The ancient lexicographers generally bear out this meaning of the word. While Herodianus (I, 456, l. 2, Lentz), Hesychius and

The Homeric poems deal wholly with the life of the upper classes. Hence we do not get from them a complete picture of how all classes lived. Even for the aristocrat therein described, the habits of life were simple. Mothers nursed their own children: thus Hecuba speaks to her son, Hector: Still, there is one instance which points to a different practice. Odysseus in addressing his old nurse Eurycleia says: The expression ἐπὶ μαζῷ here employed is used in another place of the relation between mot

The nurses of Tragedy are old women who have spent years in the service of their masters ( παλαιὸν οἴκων κτῆμα ). [32] Even after the child they had nursed had grown up, they were still retained in the household. [33] There can be no doubt that like the nurses of Homer they were slaves. [34] Medea’s nurse is addressed as κτῆμα δεσποίνης [35] and when speaking to the παιδαγωγός , she calls herself σύνδουλος . [36] Then, too, the fall of the mistress involved that of the nurse, a calamity hinted a

But it was not only captives and slaves who nursed children. In the fourth century we find at Athens free women performing the office of nurse. Euxitelos in pleading against Eubolides answers the reproach they attach to his mother of having been a nurse. He says that his father had gone to the war, leaving his mother with two small children to support. Hence she was obliged to take Cleinias to nurse: αὐτὴ δ’ οὖ σ’ ἐν ἀπορίαις, ἠναγκάσθη τὸν Κλεινίαν τὸν τοῦ Κλειδίκου τιτθεῦσαι . [40] He admits t

Though the Athenians had a natural repugnance to the severity of the Spartan discipline, still the aversion was not so intense but that some of the Lacedemonian customs found ready acceptance in Athens. Aristophanes, Birds, 1281, [47] makes it clear that the Athenians were “Spartan-mad.” For this reason, no doubt, Spartan women whose robust health was famed throughout Greece, [48] were sought to inaugurate that regimen peculiar to the Spartan nurse. Hence Plutarch: Διὸ καὶ τῶν ἔξωθεν ἔνιοι τοῖς

Among the principal duties incumbent on the nurse of an infant was the giving of the bath. That it was given immediately after birth, we infer from Lycophron’s Alexandra, 309, where a child dies πρὶν ἐκ λοχείας γυῖα χυτλῶσαι δρόσῳ , and also from Plautus, Amphitryo, 1103: “ Postquam peperit pueros lavere iussit nos. ” The heroine nymphs of Libya, acting as nurses, bathed Athena when she leaped in gleaming armor from the head of Zeus. [58] Some nurses preferred pure water; [59] others, like the S

Allied to the nursery tales are the lullabies of the nurses “aussi vieux que le monde et qui dureront autant que lui,” [277] which Athenaeus calls καταβαυκαλήσεις : αἱ δὲ τῶν τιτθενουσῶν ᾠδαὶ καταβαυκαλήσεις ὀνομάζονται . [278] They are also called βαυκαλήματα [279] from βαυκαλάω “to lull to sleep” onomatopoetically formed from the nurse’s song. Plato refers to them in the Laws where he says that when mothers and nurses are desirous to put their children to sleep, they do not bring them to a sta

The relations between nurse and master were of that sacred character which cease not with death. Her sincere and tender affection was not only repaid during life by the master’s solicitude for her well-being; but after death her memory was frequently perpetuated by the erection of monuments. The unearthing of many of these has proved a fertile source of information concerning the nurse. Her name, sometimes her parentage, and even details of her life and virtues find expression in the sepulchral

The writer of this dissertation, Sister Mary Rosaria Gorman, was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, June 21, 1880. She received her early education in the Public Schools of that Province, and was graduated from St. Patrick’s Girls’ High School, Halifax, N. S., in 1897. In 1912 she obtained a Head Master’s License to teach in the Nova Scotia schools. From 1902 to 1910, she was Assistant Teacher in St. Patrick’s Girls’ High School, Halifax. In 1907, she matriculated at the University of London. From