The ancient Greeks had the erroneous belief that young storks cared for their elderly parents by providing them with food and shelter. There was legislation in classical Athens to ensure that children would maintain their parents in their old age. Solon, the famous Athenian lawmaker, stated that any offspring who did not take care of their parents would be deprived of their citizen rights. Any third party had the right to charge someone of maltreatment of parents, grandparents or great-grandparents. The belief in the filial piety of the storks survived to a very recent period, with folks tales about young storks covering their parents with feathers when the elderly birds lost their own.