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 hill[287]; 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 _Theætetus_[289]:
“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
progenitors[290]:
“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 Phœnician Maidens,” he has Jocasta tell the story of the exposure
of Œdipus[293]:
Enter Jocasta.
... and when our babe was born,
Ware of his sin, remembering God’s word,
He gave the bane to herdmen to cast forth
In Hera’s Mead upon Cithæron’s ridge,
His ankles pierced clear through with iron spikes,
Whence Hellas named him Swell-foot—Œdipus.
But Polybus’ horse-tenders found him there,
And bare him home, and in their mistress’ hands
Laid. To my travail’s fruit she gave her breast,
Telling her lord herself had borne the babe.
Now, grown to man with golden-bearded cheeks,
My son, divining, or of someone told,
Journeyed, resolved to find his parents, forth
To Phœbus’ fane. Now Laius my lord,
Seeking assurance of the babe exposed,
If he were dead, fared thither.
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.”