EXPOSURE BY A CIVILIZED PEOPLE—LACK OF HUMANITY AMONG THE GREEKS—THEIR MYTHOLOGY AN EVIDENCE—CHILDREN IN HOMER.

THAT the people of the greatest nation of antiquity, with all their intellect, their subtlety, their productivity in humanity, art, and moral ideas, were wanting in heart, is the statement of one of the greatest scholars of modern times, a scholar who has also earned the right to be classed among the admirers and defenders of the Greeks.

“Their humanity,” says Mahaffy, “was spasmodic and not constant. Their kindness was limited to friends and family, and included no chivalry to foes or to helpless slaves. Antiphon, in speaking of the danger of conviction on insufficient evidence, mentions the case of the murder of his master by a slave boy of twelve,”277 and had not the slave-boy murderer revealed by his actions the fact that he was guilty of the deed, the murdered man’s whole family would have been put to death on the theory that someone in the family was guilty of the murder, as the real culprit was too young, under the law, to be suspected of crime.

The Greek’s kindness did not extend to his new-born children. We shall see later among the Romans that, from the time of Romulus to the passing of the Roman Empire, there was an upward tendency in the attitude of the Romans toward children. In eight centuries, the Romans changed, from a people indifferent to the fate of the newly-born, to a nation over which the humane Antonines ruled, and ruled successfully.

Among the Greeks, from the time of Homeric legend, which is supposed to be about 1000 B. C., up to the time of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a period of over a thousand years, the Greeks changed not at all in callous indifference as to what became of that portion of their population that was daily exposed. Ardent defenders of the Greeks, like Andrew Lang, see in the fact that little mention is made in the Homeric legend of the exposure of female infants, an indication that “Homeric society with its wealth and its tenderness of heart would not be so cruel” as to expose little girl babies.278

Homer says little of children and the only child to appear directly in the action of the Iliad is the infant son of Hector and Andromache. “When Andromache meets Hector as he is hurrying to the field of battle, the nurse accompanying her carries in her arms the merry-hearted child, whom Hector called Scamandrius, but the rest called him Astyanax (Defender of the City), for Hector alone defended Ilium.’”279 It is true that there is no example of exposure in Homer, though Hephaistos says his mother Hera desired to conceal him because he was lame.280

But why one should expect a tenderness contrary to the history of the race is difficult to imagine, especially in view of the picture Achilles offers, as he drags the slain Hector about the walls of Troy to the lamentations of the dead man’s father and mother.

Wherever there was a Greek colony we have a story of the exposure of some god or hero. Greek mythology might also be said to have had, as one of its foundations, the right of the parent to reject its offspring. The Dorians of Crete pictured even mighty Jove as a victim of this practice, and as being suckled by a goat. He was taken as soon as he was born, to Lystus first, the most ancient city of Crete, and then:

“Hid in a deep cave, ’neath the recesses of the divine earth in the dense and wooded Ægean mount.”281

Among the Mantineians it was said that when Rhea brought forth Poseidon she delivered him “in a sheep cote to be brought up among the lambs.”282

Among the Lemnians, Hephaistos was supposed to have been exposed,283 as was the Dionysus of the Etolians and the Thracians.

In Epidaurus it is said that Coronis, when she gave birth to Æsculapius, “exposed the infant on that mountain which at present they call Titthion, but which was before denominated Myrtion; the name of the mountain being changed, because the infant was suckled by one of those goats which fed upon the mountain.”284

In Argos, when Crotopos reigned, a grandson was born to him, but the infant’s mother, fearing the wrath of her father, “exposed the child to perish. In consequence of this, it happened that the infant was torn to pieces by the dogs that guarded the royal cattle.”285

In Arcadia, Auge, when she was delivered of Telephus, “concealed him in the mountain Parthenion, and he was there suckled by a hind.”286

In his disappointment at not having a son born to him, Jasus had the Arcadian Atalanta exposed on the Parthenian hill287; the ancestor of all the Athenians, Ion, and the founders of Thebes, Amphion, and Zethus, were exposed on the same Mount Citharion where Œdipus was exposed. Amphion afterward married Niobe and their twelve children, six boys and six girls, were killed by Apollo.288

Perhaps we can best judge the attitude of the Homeric Greeks toward children by the later point of view of the flower of Greek intellect. There is not a line in Plato to indicate that the practices we regard as so reprehensible were at all abhorrent to him. In fact, there are passages that would indicate that he not only regarded infanticide as inevitable, but as unobjectionable; and in any case, the incidental references to the practices of his day show that the matter was one that had given him no concern and had not disturbed his philosophic calm. Thus, Plato has Socrates say in the TheÆtetus289:

“Then this child, however he may turn out, which you and I have with difficulty brought into the world. And now that he is born, we must run round the hearth with him, and see whether he is worth rearing, or is only a wind-egg and a sham. Is he to be reared in any case, and not exposed? or will you bear to see him rejected, and not get into a passion if I take away your first-born?”

And in another place, Socrates emphasizes not the sacredness of the life of the child, but the material advantages that accrued to its progenitors290:

“Must we not then, first of all, ask whether there is any one of us who has knowledge of that about which we are deliberating? If there is, let us take his advice, though he be one only, and not mind the rest; if there is not, let us seek further counsel. Is this a slight matter about which you and Lysimachus are deliberating? Are you not risking the greatest of your possessions? For children are your riches; and upon their turning out well or ill depends the whole order of their father’s house.”

Is it true that, aside from the laws of Gortyna, which were excavated in 1884 on the island of Crete,291 and the injunctions of Lycurgus, as given to us by Plutarch, we have no positive declaration as to the attitude of the legislator in reference to children; but what is lacking in positive legislation is made up by the plethora of literary allusions, going to show a condition singularly heartless. It is interesting to note that the laws of Gortyna, which represent a period of civilization about 500 years before Christ, are not as humane as the law ascribed to Romulus by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, though the Greek laws are those of a people supposedly more civilized than the tribes then beginning their history on the Capitoline Hill. There was a prohibition in the first law ascribed to Romulus: and the extent of the law, as far as we may presume to judge it, was to urge caution on the people who were about to destroy their offspring. Under the Roman law, all children were to be kept for a short time at least, this limiting the power of the father to kill, whereas the law of Gortyna emphasized the power of the father in the matter of the life and death of the child; in one specific instance, it gives the mother direct permission to do away with the infant.

“If a woman bear a child,” so ran the Cretan laws, “while living apart from her husband (after divorce), she shall carry it to the husband at his house, in the presence of three witnesses; and if he do not receive the child, it shall be in the power of the mother either to bring up or expose it. If a female serf bear a child while living apart, she shall carry it to the master of the man who married her, in the presence of two witnesses. And if he do not receive it, the child shall be in the power of the master of the female serf. But, if she should marry the same man again before the end of the year, the child shall be in the power of the master of the male serf, and the one who carried it and the witnesses shall have preference in taking the oath. If a woman living apart should put away her child before she has presented it as written, she shall pay, for a free child, fifty staters, for a slave, twenty-five, if she be convicted.

“But if the man have no house, to which she may carry it, or she do not see him, if she put away her child, there shall be no penalty. If a female serf should conceive and bear without being married, the child shall be in the power of the master of the father.”292

In prehistoric times, the chief of the yevos exercised his right of domain over his own house, by deciding whether children should be brought up or exposed. The reason back of this practice was undoubtedly economic: “the fact of yesterday is the doctrine of today,” says Junius.

The Hellenes in their attitude toward children were as all the Aryan people, and, with few exceptions, as most primitive people where moral ideas had little developed; the right of the male parent to kill his child if he so willed is, with variations, a relic of the Stone Age.

Among the Greeks, the practice was well established, for, wherever we find a Greek colony, the traditions of the people show that either a notable human or some mythical god began his history with the story of exposure.

At Athens infanticide was especially common. Aristophanes refers to it in a way that shows it was an accepted practice. The first poet of humanity, Euripides, dwells at great length, in the story of Ion, on the exposure of an infant toward the end of the fifth century; and in “The Phoenician Maidens,” he has Jocasta tell the story of the exposure of Œdipus293:

Enter Jocasta.

In the fourth century B. C., the favourite figure in the comedy of the day was the child that had been exposed and saved, and afterwards found by its parents. Terence and Plautus afterward used this theme frequently, and undoubtedly their comedies were all borrowed from the Greek. Strange as it may seem in the cultured and refined city of Athens with its great philosophers and its wonderful art, the object of jest was a starving and dying infant. Glotz, in discussing the motives of this frequent exposure of infants in Athens, ascribed to the shame of young women an initiatory prominence. Viewing the subject more broadly, however, we know that shame really plays a minor part.

More frequently than not, the exposure of the infant was ordered by the male parent. It was a live question, current and customary, that the father was obliged to face every time a child was born: would he raise it or would he expose it? As with all primitive peoples, the child was his absolute property.294 On the fifth day, the Amphidromia took place. If one interprets literally the passage in the TheÆtetus of Plato, one must conclude that this ceremony for receiving an infant into the house was rigorously followed out in all cases, and that before the altar of Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, the father finally decided and proclaimed whether he intended to keep the child and protect it, or to abandon it. On the other hand, a father who did not wish to recognize his child probably needed no preliminary ceremony for such a decision; if it was decided to abandon it, there was probably no Amphidromia.

Doubt as to the paternity of the child, to judge by the history and literature of the times, was of frequent occurrence and this usually led to exposure. Agis, King of Sparta, refused to recognize Leotychides, a son born of his wife.295 In the Hecyra of Terence, the Athenian Pamphile does not wish to serve as father to an infant of another. Perseria, “having viewed at an amorous crisis a statue of Andromeda,” conceals her infant from her husband.296 At Gortyna, the divorced woman had to present her son to her former husband; if that man did not take it, then the woman had her choice between nourishing it or exposing it. In most cases, the disavowal of paternity meant the exposure of the infant.

But the mere fact that the legitimacy of the child was incontestable did not save it; many Greeks were discouraged by the thought of the care and trouble children necessitated. Thousands of these little ones seem to have been resented by the Athenians, with what Glotz calls “singuliÈre vivacitÉ.”297 With the intensive and complete education necessary for those reared, some children had to be sacrificed to so complicated and burdensome an enterprise.

“No,” says a character in Menander, “there is nothing unfortunate in being a father, unless one is the father of many children.”

“Nothing more foolish than to have children,” says a Greek proverb. “To raise children is an uncertain thing,” said the philosopher Democritus; “success is attained only after a life of battle and disquietude. Their loss is followed by a sorrow which remains above all others.”

It was not necessary to have children, reasoned the nimble-minded Athenians; many who wished both tranquillity and posterity adopted a young man whose education was already complete. The greater number of exposures should not be attributed, however, to this excessive love of tranquillity. The principal objection to children was their expense. For the daughter, it was necessary to prepare a dot: for boys, there was the expense of an education prolonged until they were sixteen or eighteen years of age. The latter imposed the opening of an account not easy to close.

“I thought my family now large enough,” says the father of Daphnis in explaining to the new-found son why it was he was exposed.298

“Sons of the very rich,” said Plato, “who commence to frequent schools at a very early age and leave them late”—the rich themselves did not wish to bring up too many sons to such an expensive life. The rich father of Daphnis considered a son and a daughter a large family.

At a pinch, the Athenians would undertake to bring up a first child, but, as a rule, the second was condemned. It was not for themselves, alone, that this was done, they claimed: it was also for their children that the heads of the Greek families dreaded poverty. The direct transmission and equal partition of property among the male children was part of the Greek law, and a fair-sized estate, if broken into many parts, made small provision for many children. Hesiod wished for a single son par famille: “Let there be only one son to tend his father’s house: for so shall wealth increase in the dwelling.”299 And Theognis reproached the citizens for having no other ideal than to bury away treasures for their children. Even in later times, Xenophon speaks of the paternal foresight that led to continual worrying over the care of children yet to be born.

It was Diphilus, or Menander, who found in the reality of the Greek life and communicated it to the author of the Adelphi, this counsel addressed to the father: “Manage, pinch, and save, to leave them (your sons) as much as you can.”300

But it was not only the poor who found exposure expedient, although they had an excuse; they “had not the heart to leave their misery to their progeny like a grave and dolorous malady.”

To a philosopher of the first century after Christ, it appeared as the greatest scandal, however, that a number of fathers “who did not have the excuse of poverty, who were well off and even opulent, should dare to refuse food to the puny infants in order to enrich their elders, should dare to kill their brothers in order that the living might have the greater patrimony.”301

This was indeed the Greek excuse or explanation—some of the children had to be sacrificed that others might be raised. The head of a Greek family, if asked why he had exposed some of his children, would have probably answered in the words of the Scythian Anacharsis, “Because I love the children I have.” This was the principal reason alleged by the Greeks for exposing their progeny on the highways, and the father of Daphnis, when he reclaims him, admits this to the son he had exposed.302

In the religious and social ideas of the ancients, the female child was of little importance—a son alone perpetuating the race. The daughter was hardly a member of the family in which she was born, from the day of her birth until the day she was married. On that day, she passed into the possession of her husband and became his, body and soul. Up to the time she was married, she was in charge of her parents: after that time, she did not even exist for them.

On the contrary, it was a sacred duty to bring up a boy. To raise one, was to provide against all possible trouble; whereas a girl was an expensive luxury, a sacrifice for which there was no compensation, and for this reason, in the legend, the father of Atalanta refused to bring up his daughter.

“Do you remember,” asks Sostrata of her husband in the Heautontimorumenos, “me being pregnant, and yourself declaring to me, most peremptorily, that if I should bring forth a girl, you would not have it brought up?”303 Thus it was that Antiphili, although of good family, was exposed by order of her mother.

One has but to read the fragments of the new comedy to see how the Greeks plainly preferred boys, and under what various artifices they disclosed their dislike to girl children.

Half of the Florilegium of Stobius is composed of extracts under the title—“How much better are male children.” In the first rank, he cites Euripides, and after him the authors of the new comedy, Menander at the head. Posidippus indicated crudely the rule of conduct adopted by most Athenians: “The son is brought up even if one is poor: the daughter is exposed, even if one is rich.”