In my recent article on Orphans (What About Orphans, Then?) I mentioned the following:

Contrary to lore, the ancients did not just chuck unwanted infants into the wilderness to starve. While “exposure” as this was called was legal until Christians got sterner about it (though even then Christians waffled a lot on whether or how severely to even enforce such laws), it wasn’t that commonly practiced in fact, and was always morally condemned. Indeed, almost all the pagan texts we have telling us about the practice are attacking or criticizing it, not endorsing it. It was no different under Medieval Christianity, where plenty of babies surely got abandoned or smothered, for want of food or means to raise them, all while moral authorities went on condemning this from the pulpit, and futilely trying to police it with paltry legal resources or even will. What a society’s morality was does not always describe that society’s behavior. And that disconnect was no doubt the same before as after Christianity took the reigns.

It’s worth pointing out with some examples what I mean by “almost all” texts “telling us about the practice are attacking or criticizing it,” particularly as by “it” I meant what I said: “just chuck[ing] unwanted infants into the wilderness to starve.” As I go on there to explain, more typically if infants were abandoned at all, they were more usually (and intentionally) abandoned where they could be captured and raised as slaves, not “to starve.” And if they were killed at all, it was more humanely than exposure—most typically, for example, by drowning, evincing a moral concern to make an infant’s death as quick and painless as was then available to accomplish. Most importantly, none of this was acceptable merely for the “unwanted.” Though (as I go on to note) it happened, probably as often in pagan antiquity as in the Christian Middle Ages, it wasn’t regarded as the right thing to do. The only exception was for nonviable children—the monstrously deformed who had no prospect of survival anyway. That was morally expected; but that is more like ethical euthanasia than brute infanticide. Modern anti-abortionists do love to pretend that distinction doesn’t exist; but alas, it does. And in antiquity there was no way to discern before birth that this would be necessary; ergo, nonviable infants had to be euthanized post hoc.

I found a decent article on all this: H. Bennett, “The Exposure of Infants in Ancient Rome,” The Classical Journal 18.6 (March 1923), pp. 341–51. It’s very old and in many respects outdated, so you’d still have to double-check any claim it makes before relying on it. For example, his doubts about Musonian authorship of a passage preserved by Stobaeus I’ll mention shortly have since been assuaged by finding the original essay it quotes. And my bibliography to my orphans essay contains a ton of corrective information that has been accumulated since, textual and archaeological. So you really should rely on that more recent work here. But the utility of Bennett’s essay is that it explains how to read certain commonly cited texts on this point, particularly in respect to observing what they don’t say and what they assume or do not assume is the case. For example, Bennet deftly explains the source-specific difference between euthanasia and exposure, and between doing or requesting a thing (e.g. myths of infant exposure), and how one’s peers would morally view that act or request (those mythical exposures are actually depicted as immoral, a selfish deviation from proper practice).

For example, the myth of Romulus and Remus depicts the babes being chucked; but in no way is that represented as normal or acceptable. It is, rather, depicted as an unusual criminal act (even more explicitly than for Moses). And, more in line with reality, they are rescued and fostered instead. Which is mythically represented as the right thing. It is also key to notice that, despite the criminal king’s order, no one even considers simply killing the babes. Leaving them on a riverbank is itself evidence of moral shame, and an unwillingness to actually do the deed. Which reflects a known phenomenon in moral psychology illustrated by studies of how people respond to trolley problems: “If I don’t do it by my own hand, if I leave it to the gods, I’m not really guilty, am I?” is self-justifying reasoning that entails you (and hence everyone whose opinion matters to you) would indeed consider you guilty if you did do the deed. The story therefore evinces a moral disapprobation of infanticide, not an endorsement of it.

We have many examples like this, and even more explicit ones than this. The scholarly works I cite in the bibliography at the end of my article on orphans mention several of them. I am personally unaware of any exception (where mere elective infanticide, by any device, was specifically endorsed as morally okay), but even if we could find some, this would not confound the conclusion that “almost all” sources represent the opposite tack, as the modern scholars I cite indeed found. I won’t endeavor a comprehensive survey here. But I will go through four examples that most commonly come up in the literature—and that you might find Christian apologists spinning.

Otherwise, the evidence ends up more like what we see in Paul McKechnie’s “An Errant Husband and a Rare Idiom (P.Oxy. 744),” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 127 (1999), pp. 157–61, where a single extant papyrus has a father (?) request a mother abandon her baby if it is a girl. The word he uses, “throw it out,” actually is a bit vague, in Greek meaning anything from literally chucking the baby into the wild, to abandoning it where infants were known to be collected by slavers, or even to just handing it over to another family. But whatever she understood it to mean, there is no mention of this being regarded as a moral request; it’s simply what he wants. And even more notably, this is the only instance on record of any such request being made so explicitly. It was therefore quite aberrant.

By contrast, another papyrus mentions a woman being contractually allowed to “give up” a child, but the word used (ἐκτίθεσθαι), though it can mean exposure, more usually meant to sell or offer them to someone else’s custody (modern translations can conceal this fact from lay readers). And again, this is rare in the record. Usually documents more clearly state the fate of unclaimed children as adoption or slavery, not death, indicating that as actually the usual outcome (which may indicate these rare two abbreviated documents are referring to the same thing). Because the norm appears to have been a thriving business of surreptitious child exchange rather than death, as so-called “exposed” infants were actually just left conspicuously for slavers or foster parents to collect, producing a thriving industry in “wet nurses” to feed them: see, for example, Maryline Parca, “The Wet Nurses of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt,” Illinois Classical Studies 42.1 (Spring 2017), pp. 203–26.

Ancient Christian apologists would polemicize against this inconsistently, treating exposure as murder in one place, then admitting it meant slavery or fostering in another (refuting the prior assumption): see Yifat Monnickendam’s rather thorough analysis of the rhetoric in “The Exposed Child: Transplanting Roman Law into Late Antique Jewish and Christian Legal Discourse,” American Journal of Legal History 59.1 (March 2019), pp. 1–30. Their arguments against “exposure” also tended to be ridiculous (more like “you might accidentally have sex with your sister,” rather than “slavery is evil”), kind of like anti-abortionists today. So they can’t actually be trusted to tell us the truth even of what pagans did, much less what they thought about it. Christian (and Jewish) polemical hyperbole cannot be taken at face value: see Catherine Hezser, “The Exposure and Sale of Infants in Rabbinic and Roman Law,” Jewish Studies Between the Disciplines (ed. Klaus Herrmannet al.; Brill, 2003; see also the discussion and bibliography in a recent article by Candida Moss). Because as I covered in my article on orphans, reality under Christendom does not appear to have been substantially different. Infanticide, exposure, fostering, adoption, leaving babies in known places to be scooped up for actual or quasi-slavery, all continued more or less as abundantly as ever.

We will get a better picture if we just ask pagans what they did and what they thought about it. Because even if they lie or conceal, that alone tells us what they were ashamed of and thus what their values were. But the fact is, when they discuss their values at all, they seem pretty honest about it. And it is more rational and measured than any Judeo-Christian polemics describe. For this I have isolated four commonly mentioned texts, and here I will put them in context and discuss the underlying language when needed: Julius Paulus’s Views 2 (Latin, 2nd-3rd century A.D.), Seneca’s On Anger 1.15 (Latin, 1st century A.D.); Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s Roman Antiquities 2.15 (Greek, 1st century B.C.); and Musonius Rufus’s essay “Should Every Child That Is Born Be Raised?” also known as Discourses 15 (Greek, but by a revered Roman citizen, 1st century A.D.).

Julius Paulus

Julius Paulus was a famed legal writer from ancient Rome, many of whose Views became widespread precedents in the Roman legal system for almost a thousand years—indeed, most of that period being under Christendom. Paulus mentioned infanticide and exposure together as naturally condemnable:

It is not just a person who smothers a child who is held to kill it but also the person who abandons it, denies it food, or puts it on show in public places to excite pity which he himself does not have.

We do not have the context, unfortunately. This is the only quote we have, from the medieval Digest of Justinian, where ancient Roman jurists like Paul are extensively quoted as a collection of legal precedents for interpreting the law. It is included in the section there on recognizing the legitimacy of children, where it is the only reference to killing or exposing babies. And it is decisively critical. It equates even “humane” exposure (leaving babies where they will be collected and raised by slavers or foster parents) to killing (even though they are literally not equivalent), and attributes every example to a want of pity, and thus a lack of moral fibre. It is something you can condemn someone for (they are “held” to be a killer). And it assumes the general public would have the pity they lack and thus take steps to prevent the child’s death. The morality is thus clear: Paulus assumes everyone agrees infanticide and exposure is despicable, indicative of a lack of character or even humanity. He definitely isn’t endorsing it, or even treating it with indifference. And the compilers of the Digest understood it that way; hence they considered the remark sufficient to condemn it in their laws regarding recognizing children—which means Paul’s original context must have presented it that way.

Seneca the Younger

In his treatise on anger, the revered philosopher Seneca the Younger demarcates killing out of rational consideration rather than anger or rage—the latter being morally suspect, and only the former capable of moral justification. Here he gives a list of examples, in which infanticide appears:

Does a man hate his own limbs when he cuts them off? That is not an act of anger, but a lamentable method of healing. We knock mad dogs on the head, we slaughter fierce and savage bulls, and we doom scabby sheep to the knife, lest they should infect our flocks: we destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally formed. To separate what is useless from what is sound is an act, not of anger, but of reason. 

This will be cited as evidence Romans just killed any babies with blemishes or disabilities, but that is not what Seneca is describing. More importantly, he does not say “unwanted” babies or mention poverty or any other reason to electively kill an infant—he says (in this translation) only “monstrous births” and those “born weakly or unnaturally formed” can rationally be killed, in the same way that animals can be, or our own limbs. But every example he gives is of a terminal condition, not mere dislike or blemish or even disability. Limbs that must be cut off lest we die. Animals with rabies or a fatal disease that have to be killed. Hence when we look at the Latin, it is more telling: portentosos fetus extinguimus, liberos quoque, si debiles monstrosique editi sunt, mergimus, literally “we extinguish unnaturally born fetuses, even drown children, so long as they are born debilitated and monstrous.”

Note the translation above mistakenly renders the key phrase as weak “or” unnatural; but Seneca very specifically said “and.” This is an example of how lay readers can be misled by a careless or tendentious translation. The coordinating conjunction (-que) with the conditional (si, “if,” “so long as”) is intentional: merely being weak or deformed isn’t enough. To justify drowning a newborn, it has to be both—meaning, unviable, doomed. Seneca also distinguishes fetuses (fetus) from newborns (liberos…editi sunt), signaling two different cases: on the one hand, those born prematurely (portentosos in this context thus meaning before their natural time; this is also what Paul is describing himself as, figuratively, in 1 Cor. 15:8), which the ancients had no way of saving; and, on the other hand, those whose death is not expected immediately but with some inevitability. He also specifically says in that case drown: he is not endorsing exposure at all. He is endorsing euthanasia, in as humanely a way then available, and in only the extremest of cases. His entire argument is that this is justified only when it is rational, and with his examples he makes plain it is only rational when there is no hope of another outcome (doomed animals, doomed limbs). It is also an exceptional case (as exceptional as plagued sheep or rabid dogs or rampaging bulls).

This is not the Christian caricature of exposure, as just tossing kids outside when they aren’t convenient. To the contrary, by limiting infanticide so extremely, Seneca is actually rejecting exposure or elective infanticide as neither moral nor rational. He lives in a world where he knows those things happen a lot. Yet he makes no excuse for it. He thus knowingly excludes it from rational and moral action. Infanticide is an extreme case for Seneca, not a common one (“only if” certain medically severe conditions obtain), and rational (and thus acceptable) only when there is no other outcome to expect; hence it must be as humane as possible (otherwise, he would recommend just leaving a doomed child to die). Finally, Seneca speaks as if he is describing the common sentiment of Romans generally (“we” behave as he describes). He is thus attesting Roman morality on the matter of infanticide: it’s okay only when medically necessary.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Seneca’s statement matches the famed “twelve tables,” the closest thing the Roman Empire had to a “ten commandments” or a constitutional law, which Cicero attests said cito necatus tamquam ex XII tabulis insignis ad deformitatem puer, “just as from the twelve tablets: quickly kill an exceptionally deformed child.” Exposure is here condemned (“quickly” kill). And killing at all requires medically extreme circumstances (insignis ad deformitatem). No other exceptions given. We learn more from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who, though an outsider, was an avid student of all things Roman. In recounting their morals and customs, he has occasion to mention this:

[Romulus] obliged the inhabitants [of Rome] to bring up all their male children and the first-born of the females, and forbade them to destroy any children under three years of age unless they were maimed or monstrous from their very birth. These he did not forbid their parents to expose, provided they first showed them to their five nearest neighbors and these also approved. Against those who disobeyed this law he fixed various penalties, including the confiscation of half their property.

This is mythical, but the point of the myth is to explain why Roman society is the way it is in Dionysius’s day (and he refers to this principle as a continuing thing hard to imagine being violated in Rom. Ant. 9.22.2). So here he is crediting the Roman position just attested by Seneca to their ancient founder Romulus. Which means this was the Roman position generally.

Notably, Dionysius follows the rearing exception for later-born daughters with a separate prohibition on killing “all children” (ἀποκτιννύναι δὲ μηδὲν, “and by no means put to death”), which would include later-born daughters. Which means the daughter exception was for raising, not exposing; in other words, later-born daughters could be sold or given away. As we’ll see below, archaeology does not support any widespread notion of killing daughters, and there is no mention of this being a norm anywhere else (even that one ambiguous papyrus would entail it was only rarely practiced, and that’s only if we assume this is what it is referring to, which all the other evidence suggests it is not).

However, the second exception sounds similar to Seneca’s: it is only ever right to kill a child when ἀνάπηρον ἢ τέρας εὐθὺς ἀπὸ γονῆς, “they are mutilated or monstrous immediately upon birth.” So it’s the “necessary euthanasia” exception again; and here we have mention of a need for extensive witnesses to those grounds to justify the deed. Roman contract law also required five witnesses, for example, so that was a trope within their legal system; whether any such law regarding infanticide was on the books is doubtful, but the moral understanding behind this myth clearly existed. Which again demonstrates killing children for any other reason was severely disapproved, even as that disapproved practice was acknowledged as occuring (requiring witnesses to police it).

Gaius Musonius Rufus

As our last example, famed philosopher Musonius Rufus composed an entire essay on the matter (probably, in fact, a speech intended for public declamation), known today as “Should Every Child That Is Born Be Raised?” although the document itself is untitled. There, he condemns people who abandon (or sell or give away) children on a mere excuse of poverty by citing what appears to be the original proverb that birds do not sow or reap yet feed their young. The Gospel Jesus seems to garble it; Musonius gets it right, even quoting its inspiration in ancient poetry (Musonius said a lot of things the same or better than Jesus: see On Musonius Rufus: A Brief Essay).

This material is important because Rufus was widely and famously regarded as the greatest moral philosopher since Socrates (literally the “second” or the “Roman” Socrates: see On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 447–51). So his moral views were generally admired rather than rejected or scoffed at, even if (like the morals of Jesus) they were idealized or given more lip service than obedience. But the passage of most interest to us is when Musonius says this:

But what seems to me most monstrous of all, some who do not even have poverty as an excuse, and in spite of prosperity and even riches are so inhuman as not to rear later-born offspring in order that those earlier born may inherit greater wealth—by such a deed of wickedness planning prosperity for their surviving children.

Here he declares, as if his audience would agree (he clearly imagined he needed to make no argument for it, nor imagined any argument against it), that anyone who does away with babies (in any fashion at all) is monstrous (in context lit. “frightful, terrible, horrible,” δεινότατον) and “inhuman” (lit. “having the audacity to” do such a thing, τολμῶσιν); they are someone doing “a wicked deed” (lit. “engaging a machination out of unholy [thought],” hence “unholy machination” or “unholy scheming,” ἐξ ἀνοσίου μηχανώμενοι). Combined with his defense of the fact that poverty is no excuse, either, what we see here is a condemnation of the practice, not an endorsement or indifference to it. And it is presented in such a way as to play upon sentiments already in the audience (to shame anyone who would disagree), which entails this was the common sentiment, not an unusual one.

Conclusion

Importantly, this is all corroborated in physical evidence. Contrary to many claims, the archaeology actually does not support there having been any preferential infanticide of girls and the disabled. We have isolated examples (like that one papyrus mentioned earlier). But aggregated statistically, infant skeletons appear no more commonly to be girls, or to show skeletal deformities. We also, of course, cannot actually distinguish in infant skeletons between natural and unnatural deaths (and the expected natural death rate for infants back then was already close to fifty percent). But any widespread practice should be visible. And it is not. The textual evidence suggests this is an accurate picture. See Eleanor Scott’s “Unpicking a Myth: The Infanticide of Female and Disabled Infants in Antiquity,” Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal (2000), pp. 143-51; and LiveScience’s interview with Simon Mays.

So it does not appear that the Romans killed merely deformed children. Which means authors (like Seneca) who mention allowance only for killing the severely malformed are referring not to “mere” blemishes or deformities, but indeed, nonviability. They are talking about euthanizing the doomed, not electively abandoning the merely inconvenient. And the fact that they do indeed only offer that allowance demonstrates they did not regard elective infanticide to be moral (e.g. Seneca). Hence when they mention that at all, it tends to be with moral abhorrence, not indifference (e.g. Musonius Rufus). The moral attitude appears instead to have been against even exposure (which was widely known not to be fatal, owing to a thriving fostering and slave market, as I explained before), much less infanticide (outright killing a baby, or even situating it for an inevitable death).

Both behaviors continued apace, but that’s because peoples always do immoral things with statistical regularity (crimes never cease). If all we judged by were behaviors, Medieval Christians come out no differently in this than ancient pagans. But when we judge by their stated morals, the pagans had a reasonably humane outlook on the matter; while Christians were obsessed with absurdities (like selling children causing incest, or abortion angering their storm god). With them it’s an exaggerated moral panic similar to Christian tirades against abortion and homosexuality today. When we step back and look at the actual evidence of the societal morals they are trying to condemn, we get a very different picture. Indeed, so, too, of the Christians and Jews making this fuss: the physical and documentary evidence demonstrates they were doing all the things they condemn as often as anyone else.