View of Thebes, Hugh William Williams (1819)

JONATHAN writes:

Here’s an interesting comment on infanticide from The World of Hesiod: A Study of the Greek Middle Ages, c. 900-700 B.C. by A.R. Burn:

At Thebes suicides were held in the deepest dishonour (a vivid contrast to that strain in Greek thought which led  towards Stoicism) and infanticide — or rather, according to  Greek practice, the exposure of surplus children — was  forbidden. Infants that could not be reared had to be brought to the magistrates, who sold them; and the buyers were bound to bring them up, though they might have them as slaves.

What’s interesting is now abortion is generally seen as distasteful but slavery as morally unacceptable under any conditions by both conservatives and liberals. While The Didache says abortion is forbidden but doesn’t mention slavery:

You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not kill a child by abortion nor commit infanticide…

— Comments —

Kathy G. writes:

I didn’t know this. Thanks for posting.

Interesting that for all the talk of American freedom and liberty, we are actually now less than slaves. There is no security in property, as that can be taxed away/ selectively burned up if our “government” covets it. We have no security in our own persons, as our environments, food, clothing, pharmaceuticals and air are poisoned. We are forced to work for worthless scrip, and pay for those the state anoints as deserving. Anything we manage to save is eaten up by inflation or periodic economic “bubbles” and their subsequent bursting. The insider trading of “our government” millionaire “representatives” and the Gamestop episode revealed the rigging of the stock market. Retirement funds offered at work seldom offer a T-Bill or Money Market Fund, just stock funds.

The Antebellum South didn’t genocide slaves, or make them sick, they sold them.

Laura writes:

We live better than slaves in the South on a material level, but they had a more wholesome existence — and more children.

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