Infanticide was very common in ancient Greece

Posted on: January 31, 2019 at 12:21:05 CT

Circa 350 BC, men had the right to kill their offspring after they were born. It lead to a very distorted ratio of males to females. Most men would accept one daughter at most.

My vague recollection is at one time the ratio of surviving children was something like 1 female to every 6 males.

Of course they treated their women like property that had very few rights.

It should be noted that the status of women varied from time to time. After all, we are talking about hundreds of years of history.

Human slavery was also very prevalent. It wasn't race based. One city state would attack another and rape all the women and enslave the residents.

The ratio of slaves to free people in many periods in ancient Greece was also very high.

We have made some progress since then.

What is interesting is to see how many of the religious marketing tools used by the ancients for their pagan reliations were incorporated into Christianity. Virgin births and resurrections were a staple of those old time religions. As were an ever vigilant "surveillance god" who rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked in the after life. And of course you had your temples and religious festivals just like today.


On of the ancient Greeks wrote a manual on religion that was titled the "Holy Scriptures" in the Greek language. Of course it didn't have anything to do with the Jewish or Christian religions.

Edited by Knucklehead at 12:28:13 on 01/31/19