THE FATE OF ABANDONED CHILDREN IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD

Abstract

The article is analyzing the phenomenon of children abandonment, which was everday reality of Greco-Roman world. Although opposed by some voices, the situation didn’t change for a long time, being accepted by the ancient society as ‘inevitable evil’. The research in the field of children abandonment has gained actuality nowadays, as the interest increases towards Greco-Roman family and woman, nevertheless, the discussion was kept during several centuries. Among the sources the most complete and most important are the Roman laws, as well as literature evidence, where one must take into the consideration the specialty of genre. The famous ancient physician Soranus of Ephesos in his survived work ‘Gynekology’ one of the chapters is called ‘How to recognize the newborn that is worth rearing’. The abandonment was a certain alternative to infanticide, which existed in many groups of people in the ancient times. However, death was
the fate of most abandoned children. One of the reason for accepting abandonment by the society was the fact that it was a source of free slave workforce. Free-born children, that were abandoned and brought up as slave, could regain their status by proving it. Christianity changed drastically the perception of the Roman state towards the abandoned children. It is noticeable, that the growing influence of Christianity and its becoming the state religion in the 4th century coincided with the trend of frowning upon the children abandonment in Roman society, considering both the aspects of morality and demographic policy of the emperors. It resulted in the complete change in Roman law regarding abandoning children in less than 3 centuries: from a neutral one to the death penalty.