Exposure (infant)

In ancient times, exposition (from the Latin expositus, "exposed") was a method of infanticide or child abandonment in which infants were left in a wild place either to die due to hypothermia, starvation, animal attack[1][2] or to be collected by slavers or by those unable to produce children.

[9] In Sparta, according to Plutarch, in his The Life of Lycurgus: Offspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so‑called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state.

[citation needed] Exposure was extremely widespread and deemed morally acceptable in ancient Rome, especially regarding female children, and according to Jack Lindsay, "more than one daughter was practically never reared" even in large families.

[13] Later, starting with Constantine the Great, Christian emperors began to implement reforms which eventually led to the end of the practice of infant exposure.

[14] During the Early Middle Ages in Europe, the History of European Morals (1869) by Irish historian William Lecky mentions that infant exposure was not punishable by law and was practiced on a large scale and was considered a pardonable offense.