8. You Might Have Had it Rough, But You Probably Never Had it as Rough as Spartan Babies
Life was tough throughout much of history – as in orders of magnitude tougher than what we experience today – for most of humanity. Things we consider shockingly cruel today, such as infanticide of unwanted children, were routinely done by many. For example, ancient Greeks often abandoned unwanted children in the wilderness. There, they perished from attacks by wild animals, exposure to the elements, thirst or hunger, or, if they were fortunate lucky, were rescued by a passerby. Ancient Sparta in particular ramped up infanticide into eugenics as a matter of state policy.
Per Plutarch, in his biography of the ancient Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus: “Offspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so‑called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state“.
