EXPOSING of Children, a barbarous custom practised by most of the ancients excepting the Thebans, who had an express law to the contrary, whereby it was made capital to expose children; ordaining at the same time, that such as were not in a condition to educate them should bring them to the magistrates, in order to be brought up at the public expense. Among the other Greeks, when a child was born, it was laid on the ground; and if the father designed to educate his child, he immediately took it up; but if he forbore to do this, the child was carried away and exposed. The Lacedemonians indeed had a different custom: for with them all new-born children were brought before certain triers, who were some of the gravest men in their own tribe, by whom the infants were carefully viewed; and if they were found lusty and well-favoured, they gave orders for their education, and allotted a certain proportion of land for their maintenance; but if weakly or deformed, they ordered them to be cast into a deep cavern in the earth, near the mountain Taygetus, as thinking it neither for the good of the children themselves nor for the public interest, that defective children should be brought up. Many persons exposed their children only because they were not in a condition to educate them, having no intention that they should perish. It was the unhappy fate of daughters especially to be thus treated, as requiring more charges to educate and settle them in the world than sons.

The parents frequently tied jewels and rings to the children they exposed, or any other thing whereby they might afterwards discover them, if Providence took care for their safety. Another design in adorning these infants was either to encourage such as found them to nourish and educate them, if alive; or to give them human burial if dead. The places where it was usual to expose children were such as people frequented most. This was done in order that they might be found, and taken up by compassionate persons who were in circumstances to be at the expense of their education. With this intention the Egyptians and Romans Romans chose the banks of rivers, and the Greeks the highways.