EXPOSING of Children, a barbarous custom practised by most of the ancient nations, excepting the Thebans, who had an express law by which it was made capital to expose children, and at the same time ordained that such as were not in a condition to educate their offspring should bring them to the magistrates, that they might be brought up at the public expense. Amongst the other Greeks, when a child was born, it was laid on the ground; and if the father designed to educate it, he immediately took it up, but if he forbore to do so, the child was carried away and exposed. The Lacedemonians indeed had a different custom: with them all new-born children were brought before certain persons, who were among the gravest in their own tribes, by whom the infants were carefully examined; and if the latter were found lusty and well favoured, orders were given for their education, and a certain proportion of land allotted for their maintenance; but if weakly or deformed, they were ordered to be cast into a deep cavern in the earth, near the mountain Taygetus, as it was thought neither for the good of the infants 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; and it was the unhappy fate of daughters especially to be thus treated, as it required more to educate and settle them in the world than sons.

The parents frequently tied jewels and rings to the children whom they exposed, or any other thing by which they might afterwards discover them, if Providence provided for their safety; or perhaps the design 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 defray the expense of their education. With this intention the Egyptians and Romans chose the banks of rivers, and the Greeks the highways and thoroughfares.