Substitution of Children 205 had asked me. After she had received this female child from me, she at once was brought to bed of the same female child which she had received from me. . . . She said that her lover was a foreigner.' I It is hardly likely, however, that many courtesans in real life were willing to be so encumbered, and perhaps, as Demosthenes says, this was only the sort of thing one "sees in tragedies," like the fatal and convenient malady described by Heine as a sort of "fifth act sickness.' That the substitution of foundlings and exposed children was frequent in Greece is evident, however, from the many plays bearing this name. Cratinus the younger was the author of a piece called The Substituted Child [roßoλuãtos], and the title was also used by Menander. Athenæus quotes from a play by Alexis entitled The Suppositious Child and from one by Epinicus called the Suppositious Damsels [iñoßoλλoμevõt] and from 3 another by Crobylus called the Pseudo-Suppositious Child (Falsus suppositus). 4 In the Thesmophoriazusæ, Aristophanes depicts the father of Euripides, Mnesilochus, as making a tactless defence of his son-in-law at the festival of Thesmophoria by abusing the very women he would placate. 2 * Plautus, Cistellaria, act i., scene i. Poetarum Comicorum Græcorum Fragmenta. Ed. Didot, p. 57; Athenæus, Trans. C. D. Yonge, vol. ii., p. 804. 3 Poet. Comic. Græc. Frag., p. 687; Athenæus, vol. ii., p. 794. 4 ♦ Ibid, p. 710; Ibid., p. 575. "And I know another woman,' he says "who for ten days said she was in labour, till she purchased a little child while her husband went about purchasing drugs for a quick delivery. But the child an old woman brought in a pot with its mouth stopped with honeycomb that it might not squall. Then, when she that carried it nodded, the wife immediately cried out: 'Go away, husband, go away, for methinks that I shall be immediately delivered.' For the child kicked against the bottom of the pot. And he ran off delighted, while she drew out the stoppage from the bottle and it cried out. And then the abominable old woman who brought the child, runs smiling to the husband, and says: 'A lion has been born to you, a lion; your very image, in all other respects whatever, and its nose is like yours, being crooked like an acorn cup."" That there was a class of people who looked on children in the light of good or bad bargains we must assume from the certainly serious words of Demosthenes in his oration against Midias. In his attack on his physical assailant, Demosthenes says that the real mother of Midias was a wise woman because she got rid of him as soon as he was born, whereas the woman who adopted him was a foolish woman because she made a bad bargain. "And why?" asks the orator, "because the one sold him as soon as he was born, while the other, 1 Thesmophoriazusæ, 502, 516. Children as "Bad Bargains" 207 when she might have obtained a better for the same price, bought Midias." Ion,' when he meets his father for the first time and learns that he had been exposed, congratulates himself on having escaped slavery, indicating that in all probability the majority of children saved after they had been exposed by their parents were saved by the professional slave dealers. The general view, however, was that children were cheap, Xenophon, declaring that "good slaves when they had children generally become still better disposed, but bad ones increase their power to do mischief." 2 Only in two instances as far as we know did the law of the Greeks reach out to protect the child against the destroying whim of the parent. According to Ælian3 the Thebans were not allowed to expose their children or leave them in a wilderness under the pain of death. If the father were extremely poor, the child, whether male or female, had to be brought to the magistrate in its swaddling clothes, and there delivered to some person who would agree to bring up the child and when it was grown up, take it into service and have the benefit of its labour in return for its education. As to the other instance of the law protecting the child it has been truly said that all that Lycur I Euripides, Ion, line 144. Xenophon, Economicus, chapter iv., par. 5. 3 Elian, liber ii., caput vii. gus did was to insist that all "fit" children should be raised. I "If," says Plutarch, "they (the Spartans) found it puny and ill-shaped, they ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetæ, a sort of chasm under Taygetus, as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous." And this was the most "protecting" move of the ancient Greeks. * Plutarch, Lycurgus (Dryden trans.), vol. i., p. 82. CHAPTER XIV FIRST RECOGNITION OF RIGHTS OF CHILDREN-LAWS OF TABLES-ATTITUDE OF PARENTS SHOWN IN TER- I T is interesting to think that what might be called the legal movement which fructified in the United States, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, had its beginning in the eighth century B.C. in Rome; it is doubly interesting that legend ascribes to Romulus the first interest in what can conservatively be called the child protection movement. Like all other lawmakers-even legendary ones -especially those who sought to prepare and safeguard their states for and against hostile neighbours, the first concern of the founder of Rome was a strong nation; and a strong nation meant necessarily as many adult males in good health and physical condition as possible. Soldiers were more important than other human beings; in this the supposed founder followed the spirit of his time and the standard of his age of development. According to the legend, Romulus, having made |