THE Greeks who exposed their children hoped, as a rule, they might possibly be saved by others and precautions were frequently taken to this end. The gruesome task of doing away with the infant was generally entrusted to a slave or to a midwife, who were willing, apparently, to undertake many services. The lexicographers and the scholiasts of the time speak of children being left in deserted places. In the “golden days,” they were placed where they could be seen. There is evidence that the most frequented places were the most popular—the hippodromes, the entrances to the temples, and the sacred grottoes, where they would be most in evidence. A watch was kept on the place or it Care was usually taken to wrap the child up carefully. When Laymonde, the shepherd, discovered Daphnis, the child was being suckled by a goat. “Struck with natural astonishment, he advances closer to the spot and discovers a lusty and handsome male child with far richer swathing clothes than suited its fortune in being thus exposed; for its little mantle was of fine purple, and fastened by a golden clasp; and it had a little sword with a hilt of ivory.” The jests of Aristophanes show that more often children were exposed in large copper pots with two handles, called kutrai (??t???). The Athenians had been in the habit of making sacrifices to some of their divinities in these kutrai, and it is likely that when children were first abandoned, they were placed in these receptacles that they might invoke the protection of the immortals. Recent excavations at Gezer and Tell Ta’Andkk show children were sacrificed in a similar way. BLIND BOYS AT DRILL IN “THE LIGHTHOUSE,” NEW YORK CITY Various objects were placed with the child when it was so exposed. Creusa, the daughter of Erectheus, King of Athens, when she exposed Ion, the son whom she had secretly borne to Apollo, “observant of the customs of her great progenitors,” in addition to leaving with him what ornaments she had, also added: A branch of olive then I wreathed around thee, Plucked from that tree which from Minerva’s rock First sprung; if it be there it still retains Its verdure; for the foliage of that olive, Fresh in immortal beauty, never fades. This, and the sacred bandelettes, were always the symbols of inviolability. This final act of maternal affection, characteristic of both the human and the barbaric side of Greek parents, became, in time, a widespread custom. When the child was exposed, there was generally placed alongside of it a small basket or collection of trinkets. The royal daughter of Erechtheus attached to the neck of her son many precious ornaments, including a serpent of massive gold. The shepherd Laymonde found on Daphnis a clasp of gold and a small ivory sword. Among the very poor, hand-made collars, shoulder straps, with various trinkets of little worth, were used to mark the infant. In all this, dramatists saw but a means to establish the identity of the hero and heroine and an assistance to the dÉnouement. The ceremony, with its pathos and its strangeness, was, to tragic as well as to comic writers, but a means to end the fifth act. The pity of it all never seems to have occurred to the Greek mind. It was rare that the father or the child-mother who renounced the infant had any real desire to If, on the other hand, the child should die, the feeling was that these ornaments would assure for it a happy life on the other side of the Styx. For this reason the favoured objects of mothers were amulets; and, as in the case of the serpent placed around the neck of Ion, Creusa hoped to invoke the aid of Minerva, who had guarded her ancestor, Erichthonius, with two dragons; the object being to watch over the child’s existence. These gewgaws were supposed to give the infant exposed all the rights of a suppliant. As to how far these ceremonies of supplication were successful, as to how far they commended the unfortunate infant to the public, is a grave question. From the religious and literary myths one might imagine that the greater number of the infants were saved. We read of Hephaistus, nourished by the Sintians or by Thetis; of Atalanta by a bear; of Zeus and Dionysos, nursed by the nymphs; the shepherds found and received Telephus, Amphion, and Œdipus; Ion, by a priestess, and Sirus, by a beggar. Greek artists frequently show a Satyr holding in his arms a newly-born that he had found on the road. Poets of the new comedy delight to represent their heroes, or, more frequently, their heroines, as Longus, in this way, brings Daphnis and ChloË into the cabin of a goatherd. But these examples prove little about the actual conditions, only going to show the facility of the writers of the time, and Glotz suggests that these scenes flattered the Athenians, who liked to think of themselves as a philanthropic people. Apparently, the first impulse when a child was found was to ignore it, for the attitude of Athenian society was probably well expressed by Longus when he said: “Those who seek paternity are many.” In fact, the author of Daphnis and ChloË says that when Daphnis was first seen by the shepherd being suckled by a goat, “Laymonde (the shepherd) resolved to leave it to its fate, and to carry off only the tokens; but feeling afterward ashamed at the reflection, that in doing so he should be inferior in humanity, even to a goat, he waited for the approach of night and then carried home the infant with the tokens.” Old Megacles, the father of ChloË, in the same As a rule, when adoption did take place it was not for the benefit of the child. In many instances, those who wished to adopt a son waited and adopted a grown-up one so as not to have the trouble and expense of educating him. As set forth in the plays, it was apparently not infrequent that a courtesan sought to attach a lover, or a wife a husband who was slipping away from her, by adopting a child and passing it off as her own. It was to this subterfuge that Silenium, in the Cistellaria of Plautus, owes her life. Speaking of the incident, the Procuress in the play, says: “But once upon a time, that girl (Silenium) who has gone hence in tears, from a lane I carried her off a little child exposed.... I made a present of her to my friend, this courtesan, who had made mention of it to me that somewhere I must find for her a boy or a girl, just born, that she herself might pass it off as her own. “As soon as ever the opportunity befell me I immediately granted her request in that which she It is hardly likely, however, that many courtesans in real life were willing to be so encumbered, and perhaps, as Demosthenes says, this was only the sort of thing one “sees in tragedies,” like the fatal and convenient malady described by Heine as a sort of “fifth act sickness.” That the substitution of foundlings and exposed children was frequent in Greece is evident, however, from the many plays bearing this name. Cratinus the younger was the author of a piece called The Substituted Child [?p????????], and the title was also used by Menander. AthenÆus quotes from a play by Alexis entitled The Suppositious Child In the ThesmophoriazusÆ, Aristophanes depicts the father of Euripides, Mnesilochus, as making a tactless defence of his son-in-law at the festival of Thesmophoria by abusing the very women he would placate. “And I know another woman,” he says “who for ten days said she was in labour, till she purchased a little child while her husband went about purchasing drugs for a quick delivery. But the child an old woman brought in a pot with its mouth stopped with honeycomb that it might not squall. Then, when she that carried it nodded, the wife immediately cried out: ‘Go away, husband, go away, for methinks that I shall be immediately delivered.’ For the child kicked against the bottom of the pot. And he ran off delighted, while she drew out the stoppage from the bottle and it cried out. And then the abominable old woman who brought the child, runs smiling to the husband, and says: ‘A lion has been born to you, a lion; your very image, in all other respects whatever, and its nose is like yours, being crooked like an acorn cup.’” That there was a class of people who looked on children in the light of good or bad bargains we must assume from the certainly serious words of Demosthenes in his oration against Midias. In his attack on his physical assailant, Demosthenes says that the real mother of Midias was a wise woman because she got rid of him as soon as he was born, whereas the woman who adopted him was a foolish woman because she made a bad bargain. “And why?” asks the orator, “because the one sold him as soon as he was born, while the other, Ion, Only in two instances as far as we know did the law of the Greeks reach out to protect the child against the destroying whim of the parent. According to Ælian As to the other instance of the law protecting the child it has been truly said that all that Lycur “If,” says Plutarch, And this was the most “protecting” move of the ancient Greeks. |