Christianity and Morals by Edward Westermarck

WHILE the early Fathers utterly failed to put a stop to war, they succeeded in their endeavour to bring about a change of ideas with regard to another practice involving the destruction of human life, to wit, the practice of exposing new-born infants, which was very common in the Pagan Empire.

The exposure of deformed or sickly infants was an ancient custom in Greece; in Sparta, at least, it was enjoined by law. It was also approved of by the most enlightened among the Greek philosophers. Plato condemns all those children who are imperfect in limbs, as also those who are born from depraved citizens, to be buried in some obscure and unknown place; he maintains, moreover, that when both sexes have passed the age assigned for presenting children to the State, no child is to be brought to light, and that any infant who is by accident born alive shall be done away with. Aristotle not only lays down the law with respect to the exposing or bringing up of children, that "nothing imperfect or maimed shall be brought up, " but proposes that the number of children allowed to each marriage shall be regulated by the State, and that, if any woman be pregnant after she has produced the prescribed number, an abortion shall be procured before the fetus has life. These views were in perfect harmony with the general tendency of the Greeks to subordinate the feelings of the individual to the interest of the State. Confined as they were to a very limited territory, they were naturally afraid of being burdened with the maintenance of persons whose life could be of no use. It is necessary, says Aristotle, to take care that the increase of the people shall not exceed a certain number, in order to avoid poverty and its concomitants, sedition and other evils. It has been said that the exposure of healthy infants, which was frequently practised in Greece, was hardly approved of by public opinion, although tolerated, except at Thebes, where it was, according to Ælian, a crime punishable by death. But recent researches have revealed the extraordinary prevalence of infanticide in ancient Greece. According to Mr. Zimmern, it remained a universal custom, so far as we know at least down to the fourth century, that it was within the discretion of the father whether a new-born child should be allowed to live. On the fifth day after birth, at the earliest, the infant was solemnly presented to the household and admitted to its membership. Up to the time of this ceremony the father had a complete power of selection, and it appears that this was quite frequently exercised, particularly in the case of female infants. The provision of a dowry for his daughters weighed heavily on a Greek father's mind, and what was easier than to evade it by pleading inability at the outset? When it was decided that the infant was not to be "nourished," it would be packed in a cradle or a pot, and exposed in a public place. The Athenian "had a traditional abhorrence of violence, and interfered when he could on behalf of the helpless. If he consented to exercise his immemorial right over his own offspring, he did so with regret, for the sake of the city and his other children, because it was more merciful in the long run." Dr. Inge has found from the speeches of Isæus, who lived in the fourth century before Christ, that in the pedigrees of eleven typical Athenian families, belonging to the middle class, the names of 97 males are mentioned, and of only 37 females. Mr. Tarn writes that the prevalence of infanticide in Greece has been strenuously asserted from the literary texts, and as strenuously denied, but that for the late third and the second centuries the inscriptions are conclusive. "Of some thousand families from Greece who received Milesian citizenship _c._ 228-220, details of 79, with their children, remain; these brought 118 sons and 28 daughters, many being minors; no natural causes can account for those proportions. More than one daughter was practically never reared, bearing out Poseidippus' statement that 'even a rich man always exposes a daughter.' Of 600 families from Delphic inscriptions, second century, just one per cent. reared two daughters." Polybius says that the Greeks in the middle of the second century refused to rear more than one or, at most, two children; and, according to Tarn, there is plenty of evidence to bear him out.