Children and Exposure

[caldrail]

Perhaps "infanticide" was too strong a word. Upon re-reading Suetonius, I see that Claudius merely ordered the child (after he had begun to raise her) "to be cast out naked at her mother's door and disowned."

 

-- Nephele

 

It depends how you look at it. Exposing a child was certain to kill it except for the practice of taking these children left abandoned. A ready source of slaves for one thing, or imagine the joy as a traveller returns home to find his loyal wife has given birth to a child in his absence....

Edited May 6, 2007 by caldrail

[Nephele]

Perhaps "infanticide" was too strong a word. Upon re-reading Suetonius, I see that Claudius merely ordered the child (after he had begun to raise her) "to be cast out naked at her mother's door and disowned."

 

-- Nephele

 

It depends how you look at it. Exposing a child was certain to kill it except for the practice of taking these children left abandoned. A ready source of slaves for one thing, or imagine the joy as a traveller returns home to find his loyal wife has given birth to a child in his absence....

 

Oh, I absolutely agree with you that exposing a child was certain to kill it unless someone happened along to retrieve the child. Although, more often than not, a child thus "saved" could wind up worse than dead. It was not uncommon for certain unconscionable people to deliberately mutilate and cripple such children, in order to make them more pathetic beggars for winning the sympathy of those who would toss them a few coppers (to be taken by their slavemaster).

 

While I can't imagine many mothers doing this to their own infants (although I don't doubt that there were some who did, just as we find "dumpster babies" today), men who exposed their wives' infants (either on suspicion that the child wasn't theirs or simply because the child was an unwanted daughter) could always assuage their guilt in the belief that they weren't really killing an infant, but instead were leaving it to "the gods" to decide its fate.

 

The reason why I decided that "infanticide" was too strong a word for what Claudius did, was because Claudius didn't exactly leave the child to "the gods" to decide its fate. He very deliberately left the child on the doorstep of his former wife, knowing that Urgulanilla would take the child safely in.

 

Actually, I now think that Claudius had done Urgulanilla a kindness. Rather than expose the child because it was deemed a bastard birth, or continue to raise the child as his own so as to "show" everyone that he believed the child was truly his and that he hadn't been cuckolded, Claudius instead found a way to return the child to its rightful mother (who had possibly been grieving for the loss of her child after Claudius divorced her and took the child, as was customary). In comparison, I pity poor Scribonia, divorced by Augustus on the very day that she gave birth to their legitimate daughter, and then having had her infant daughter taken away from her to be raised by a stepmother.

 

-- Nephele

[Augustus Caesar]

Weren't children in those days though not considered as "to be loved and nurtured offspring" like today? They were more of a commodity and were very easily cast aside with little feeling or any remorse!! I'm not saying all parents were like that but it is often said in documentaries on this subject that most would not blink an eye at casting their offspring to one side and exposing them. Children were more a 'property' to be owned and sold at will.

 

Just what the scale of this was though is open to conjecture as always. A recent program (well, recent enough) showed a site where lots of these children were to be found after their parents exposed them. Perhaps one of you may remember the program or the site. They both escape me at the moment.

[The Augusta]

Weren't children in those days though not considered as "to be loved and nurtured offspring" like today? They were more of a commodity and were very easily cast aside with little feeling or any remorse!! I'm not saying all parents were like that but it is often said in documentaries on this subject that most would not blink an eye at casting their offspring to one side and exposing them. Children were more a 'property' to be owned and sold at will.

 

I think in any age where infant mortality was high there may well have been less attachment to the child in any case - at least until it passed its second birthday or something of the sort. However, there were clearly exceptions. Livia is said to have kept a portrait head in her bedroom of a son of Germanicus who had died in infancy.

 

Getting back to Claudius' 'infanticide' - Suetonius maintains that Augustus ordered the exposure of one of Julia the Younger's children, born in exile.

[caldrail]

Children were valuable. They assured your family succession and fortune, not to mention assisting you in your old age, though I guess for wealthier families this was a lesser consideration given the presence of slave labour. Parents often doted on their children, and allowed them to be extraordinarily cheeky, which apparently amused roman sensibilities. Notice also how they grieve at the loss of their young ones.

 

However - without the social care and income patterns of the modern world, the romans had to raise their kids with the consideration of the enviroment they lived in. An unwanted child is a financial burden even back then. Better to expose it, and romans who did that knew full well the child might be taken in by slavers or childless couples. In fact, a woman whose child is unrecognised by the father as his might well offer the child to a friend in the hope that it will have a happier life elsewhere. The father has the right to refuse his offspring as his, and indeed, has the right of life or death over it according to roman custom.

 

Its an interesting point that in the sewers of Ephesus we find skeletal remains of babies, disposed of by prostitutes more often than not.

 

Children are sent to school - which might actually be a tutor teaching on the street to save renting a premises, and oh boy does that teaching get tough. Vine staffs are wielded mercilessly. The schooling didn't molly-coddle them like today. Roman children educated this way learn a sense of discipline and inner strength I think, and we see this in the confident young men who compete for public office and military command.

 

Roman society has a hard edge. Although they 'love and nurture' with parental indulgence they can be very hard hearted too, usually for necessity. I do agree though, as we find today, there will always be parents who have no regard for their offspring and given roman cruelty their life must have been horrible.

Edited May 7, 2007 by caldrail

[Nephele]

Interestingly, H. Bennett of Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, maintained in a 1923 article for The Classical Journal (

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

A passage from "The Private Life of the Romans" by Harold Whetstone Johnston

 

94. Legal Status. The legal position of the children in the familia has been already explained . It has been shown that in the eyes of the law they were little better than the chattels of the Head of the House. It rested with him to grant them the right to live; all that they earned was his; they married at his bidding, and either remained under his potestās or passed under another no less severe. It has also been suggested that custom and pietās had made this condition less rigorous than it seems to us.

 

95. Susceptiō. The power of the pater familiās was displayed immediately after the birth of the child. By invariable custom it was laid upon the ground at his feet. If he raised (tollere, suscipere) it in his arms, he acknowledged it as his own by the act (susceptiō) and admitted it to all the rights and privileges that membership in a Roman family implied. If he should refuse to do so, the child would become an outcast, without family, without the protection of the spirits of the dead, utterly friendless and forsaken. The disposal of the child did not call for any act of downright murder, such as was contemplated in the case of Romulus and Remus and was afterwards forbidden by Romulus the King. The child was simply

[Nephele]

It is improbable, however, that the Roman father was inclined to make actual use of this, his theoretical right. While exposure and

[caldrail]

Interestingly, H. Bennett of Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, maintained in a 1923 article for The Classical Journal (

[Nephele]

Now that is interesting. I always thought it was a traditional thing hence done since the days of romulus, which to me seems more likely given the tougher tribal subsistence of those days.

 

Perhaps because the Regal and Republican era Romans were made of such stern stuff, they chose not to take the easy way out of their economic difficulties by disposing of superfluous children?

 

It is recorded that some parents exposed their children at the gates of the palace to protest against Nero's murders.

 

Yes, that would be in keeping with the apparent consensus of opinion among classicists that it is after the period of the Republic that evidence can be found of the practice of child exposure.

 

-- Nephele

[caldrail]

It doesn't fit. I'm getting a bit suspicious about that quote concerning republican infant exposure. I wonder if there's a whitewash going on here to portray the republic as morally superior? Especially since the republic was notably more austere and subject to hard times than the succesful empire.

[Maty]

I don't think that the Romans were very comfortable with exposure. However, at times the choice was between killing one child or the whole family starving. (I still remember meeting an old Zulu in South Africa whose mother had named him 'Sofazonke' -Now we are all going to die - in rather the same spirit.)

 

If exposure is rather shameful, and taken for granted, then it is not going to get a lot of mention in the sources - which are a lot more plentiful for the empire than the republic. After all, lack of evidence for something is not the same as saying that something did not happen, especially if there is not a lot of evidence to go around. We know that exposure was practiced by ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese. I'm not going to go as far as to say it was the norm in the ancient world, but given the condition of ancient medicine, by far the safest way of disposing of an unwanted child was after the birth. And sadly, then as now, not all children were wanted.

 

Therefore, the onus would be on those who would argue that exposure was not practiced. For example any cases of infanticide in the republic where parents were prosecuted for killing their babies by exposing them.

[M. Porcius Cato]

It doesn't fit. I'm getting a bit suspicious about that quote concerning republican infant exposure. I wonder if there's a whitewash going on here to portray the republic as morally superior? Especially since the republic was notably more austere and subject to hard times than the succesful empire.

 

Well, the republic was morally superior. That said, I can think of at least one infant that they should have exposed...

 

Seriously, if there's no evidence of any kind that they exposed infants during the republican period, isn't it possible that the practice was some sort of foreign import?

[caldrail]

No I don't. I've thought about this. Perhaps the harder republic meant that children were more valuable than in more successful times later? The practice of exposure is something primitive societies develop and I find it difficult to imagine why a sophisticated cosmopolitan society, however cruel, would suddenly decide it was fashionable. However, I do accept that the influx of foreigners throughout later times would indeed import foreign customs. The flip side to that is the 'When in Rome, do as the romans' culture that roman citizenry much preferred. We know that roman people did this rather than simply just the foreigners in their midst, so I think the practice is much older and truly roman in character. So why is it not commented on? I think the scale of exposure increased later as people even used it to make political statements, whereas in earlier less populated times an exposure was a more personal heartfelt event and not something to dwell upon publicly.

[Nephele]

I don't think that the Romans were very comfortable with exposure. However, at times the choice was between killing one child or the whole family starving. (I still remember meeting an old Zulu in South Africa whose mother had named him 'Sofazonke' -Now we are all going to die - in rather the same spirit.)

 

If exposure is rather shameful, and taken for granted, then it is not going to get a lot of mention in the sources - which are a lot more plentiful for the empire than the republic. After all, lack of evidence for something is not the same as saying that something did not happen, especially if there is not a lot of evidence to go around. We know that exposure was practiced by ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese. I'm not going to go as far as to say it was the norm in the ancient world, but given the condition of ancient medicine, by far the safest way of disposing of an unwanted child was after the birth. And sadly, then as now, not all children were wanted.

 

Therefore, the onus would be on those who would argue that exposure was not practiced. For example any cases of infanticide in the republic where parents were prosecuted for killing their babies by exposing them.

 

Welcome to UNRV, Maty! And many thanks for accepting my invitation for you to join this discussion!

 

In addition to this topic, you might also want to check out this one, too, as I referenced your book there.

 

Looking forward to your insights and comments on other topics here!

 

-- Nephele