female children not desirable among greeks—precautions for saving exposed children—ornaments as a means of identification—adoption under strange circumstances.
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.304 the time usually chosen was early in the day, inasmuch as the child would perish if it passed the entire night without attracting attention.
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 it200 was revisited, in order to be sure of the fate of the infant.
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.”305
the jests of aristophanes show that more often children were exposed in large copper pots with two handles, called kutrai (κυτρ?ι). 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:
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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.306
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 to202 find it when better days came. the real wish was that the child might be taken up by some stranger before death came and the trinkets were an inducement to befriend the child.
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 ?dipus; 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, as203 people who had gone through the trial of exposure and were raised by either courtesans, shepherds, or innkeepers. it is in this way that menander, among others, shows us silenium growing up in the house of mel?nis to whom she has been given by the evil woman who picked her up307; casina treated as a daughter by the brave cleostrata.308
longus, in this way, brings daphnis and chlo? 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 chlo? 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.”309
old megacles, the father of chlo?, in the same204 story seeks to excuse himself for having exposed his daughter, by a number of bad reasons: he did not have the means, it was a moment of weakness, he hoped that the nymphs would take pity on the child: and then, there were so many people who did not have children, etc. the most interesting of his reasons, however, is the statement that he had spent his fortune equipping theatrical choruses!
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 she205 had asked me. after she had received this female child from me, she at once was brought to bed of the same female child which she had received from me.... she said that her lover was a foreigner.”310
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 [?ποβολιμ?ιο?], and the title was also used by menander. athen?us quotes from a play by alexis entitled the suppositious child311 and from one by epinicus called the suppositious damsels [?ποβολλομεν?ι] and from312 another by crobylus called the pseudo-suppositious child (falsus suppositus).313
in the thesmophoriazus?, 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.
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“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.’”314
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,207 when she might have obtained a better for the same price, bought midias.”
ion,315 when he meets his father for the first time and learns that he had been exposed, congratulates himself on having escaped slavery, indicating that in all probability the majority of children saved after they had been exposed by their parents were saved by the professional slave dealers. the general view, however, was that children were cheap, xenophon,316 declaring that “good slaves when they had children generally become still better disposed, but bad ones increase their power to do mischief.”
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 ?lian317 the thebans were not allowed to expose their children or leave them in a wilderness under the pain of death. if the father were extremely poor, the child, whether male or female, had to be brought to the magistrate in its swaddling clothes, and there delivered to some person who would agree to bring up the child and when it was grown up, take it into service and have the benefit of its labour in return for its education.
as to the other instance of the law protecting the child it has been truly said that all that lycur208gus did was to insist that all “fit” children should be raised.
“if,” says plutarch,318 “they (the spartans) found it puny and ill-shaped, they ordered it to be taken to what was called the apothet?, a sort of chasm under taygetus, as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous.”
and this was the most “protecting” move of the ancient greeks.
