7. Ancient Greek Infanticide
Throughout history and in many societies, infanticide was commonly used to dispose of unwanted children. Infant exposure was often practiced in Ancient Greece. It was the preferred method to get rid of unwanted children because, to the ancient Greeks, it was not as immoral as the outright murder of a baby. The way they saw it, an exposed infant’s fate was in the hand of the gods. They might directly intervene to rescue the child, or a kind-hearted passerby might do so.
Hardships in difficult times made an extra mouth to feed problematic, and it was in that context that most infanticide occurred. Some, however, took infant exposure from cruel necessity to eugenics. The philosopher Aristotle, for example, advocated that deformed infants be exposed. As he put it: “As to the exposure of children, let there be a law that not deformed child shall live“. The decision to keep or expose an infant was usually the father’s, except in Sparta, where a group of elders made that choice. As seen below, however, recent scholarship has cast doubt on whether infant exposure was as common in Sparta as has long been believed.
