על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ב מ״אOn the Special Laws, Book II 41
א׳
1[232] And therefore fathers have the right to upbraid their children and admonish them severely and if they do not submit to threats conveyed in words to beat and degrade them and put them in bonds. And further if in the face of this they continue to rebel, and carried away by their incorrigible depravity refuse the yoke, the law permits the parents to extend the punishment to death, though here it requires more than the father alone or the mother alone. So great a penalty should be the sentence, not only of one of them but of both. For it is not to be expected that both the parents would agree to the execution of their son unless the weight of his offences depressed the scale strongly enough to overcome the affection which nature has firmly established in them.
ב׳
2[233] But parents have not only been given the right of exercising authority over their children, but the power of a master corresponding to the two primary forms under which servants are owned, one when they are home-bred, the other when they are purchased. For parents pay out a sum many times the value of a slave on their children and for them to nurses, tutors and teachers, apart from the cost of their clothes, food and superintendence in sickness and health from their earliest years until they are full grown. “Homebred” too must they be who are not only born in the house but through the masters of the house, who have made the contribution enforced by the statutes of nature in giving them birth.