Killing Newborns In Ancient Greece And Rome

wordinternetbiblecollege ^

[Morgana]

They try to justify murder

Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 warn us: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” In his “Life of Lycurgus”, the Greek historian Plutarch (48-122 A.D.) records that in Sparta in ancient Greece, the Spartan elders examined all newborn babies and ordered that any who were not well-built and sturdy were to be killed by leaving them in the bush at the foot of Mount Taygetus:

[Morgana]

I found this by accident. A history of abortion and infanticide. Very informative and shows it's nothing new.

[Carriage Hill]

I seem to remember a line in “300 Spartans” dealing with what they did with infirm/deformed babies, prior to young boys starting their military training.

[goodwithagun]

Yet today those who advocate infanticide consider themselves “progressive.” They proclaim we’re going back into the Dark Ages because of what we’re denying women. How can one progress while advocating ancient practices?

[Terry L Smith]

Sparta was a warrior,slash,citizen society, as ancient
history has recorded.
Should you have been born, other than as their
society demanded, i.e., survival of the fittest,
you could not have the strength to defend
your home.
Sounds brutal in today’s mushy no backbone era,
but look at their heroic legacy.
“A few stood against many.”
The Spartans proved it could be done.

[jespasinthru]

According to the Bible, wasn’t Moses abandoned as an infant and left to die? You know how that turned out. And according to Greek Mythology Oedipus (he of the bound feet) was abandoned as an infant and left to die, only to grow up and become king of Thebes and marry his own mother without realizing it. And how about Romulus and Remus? Twin baby boys abandoned and left to die, suckled and raised by a she-wolf, and they grew up to become the founders of the Roman Empire. So history proves that throwing babies away sometimes has unintended consequences.

[jmacusa]

Yeah, they tossed them off the side of a cliff.

[Jemian]

Actually, Moses, being put into a basket strengthened for watertightness, was put into the Nile in order to SAVE his life at a time when all Hebrew boys were being summarily executed. His mother expresses her faith in God’s sovereignty in her instructions to Miriam, Moses’s older sister.

[Morgana]

“According to the Bible, wasn’t Moses abandoned as an infant and left to die? “

As I recall he was abandoned and left for the Egyptian Princess to find. It was kinda strategic on the part of his Jewish mother. She knew when the Egyptian Princess came down with her handmaids to bathe in the river. So she set Moses in the basket/boat at that precise point. The Princess found the infant and her maternal instincts just took over. The Pharaoh would not kill the baby his daughter “adopted”. Considering how much I have studied of Egyptology I wonder if he knew she even adopted Moses because the Pharaoh had his “main wife” then many many “minor wives”. So you can imagine how many kids this produced. It’s more like “Oh hey little Nefer-hotep, you had another baby? Oh how sweet!” Next child. All of this is just my conjecture mind you but it could have happened.

[Carriage Hill]

God Bless & Rest their innocent little souls. Infanticide sure didn’t begin with Roe v Wade.

[Dogbert41]

Gee, maybe if our new Death Panels do the same thing, we could develop a really powerful army for the STATE? Good idea!

[Verginius Rufus]

What was different about Sparta was that the Spartan elders made the decision--in keeping with other features of the Spartan way of life which downplayed the role of the family. In other places in Greece, the father would make the decision if the newborn should be raised or exposed, with girl babies being more likely to be exposed. Exactly how often that actually occurred is hard to say. Men wanted to have sons...but they must have realized that if no one raised daughters, their sons would have no wives.

Cabeza de Vaca reports on some Indians in 16th-century Texas who killed all their girl babies and acquired wives from other tribes. The tribe in question seems to have died out later.

[jespasinthru]

Extinction and self-genocide is easy to come by when you kill off all the female infants. Just ask the people in China. That “One Child Policy” really worked out great for them, didn’t it? That entire race is facing extinction, and they are just now starting to realize it. They have very few young women left to propagate their race.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

but look at their heroic legacy.

Their heroic legacy was that they managed to kill themselves off by continuing to narrow their standards until very few could meet their criteria for survival. In the end I believe they were down to under a thousand. That was when Athens moved in for the kill. When they were though the Spartans were no more.

[Cronos]

You know, I like slashing leftists by wading in the muck that is HuffPo. To REALLY get them riled, I don't use any of their newspeak -- I refuse to call them liberals or tolerant as they are not tolerant of those who disagree with them

I also do not call them "progressive" -- in fact I argue that WE, people who love life and don't want to kill babies, WE ARE progressive. Those who kill babies are regressing to 300 BC.

Ditto for not using the terms "gay" or "homophobe" (they are not gay i.e. happy, rather the homosexuals are sad, confused people and we do not have a fear i.e. phobia about homosexuals)

And, of course, the opposite of pro-life is pro-death, or more to the point, pro-baby-killing or pro-killing-choice.

fight back using their own tools against them

[GeronL]

bump

Only a leftist crazy person could see a barbaric practice from two thousand years ago and say “Wow, they were so enlightened”.

[Cronos]

well, they also opposed the democracy of Athens and they subjugated Hellas to their rule post the Peloponnese war.

[Cronos]

The interesting part is that the name Moses is not Semitic in origin, and is akin to the great New Kingdom ruler names like Thutmose I, II and III

[Terry L Smith]

Dogbert41 wrote:
“Gee, maybe if our new Death Panels do the same thing, we could develop a really powerful army for the STATE? Good idea!”

I’m here to tell ya, ol’ Dogb, they already have that army. It’s called school grades 1 through 12.

[Terry L Smith]

Dear Harmless Teddy Bear,

From the way you diligently researched your information, and THEN rushed forward with your prematurely developed answer, I must inform you.

To many a military veteran, the Spartans, militarily, have been a near and dear admiration, for many generations, including myself.

However, the evidence that you gave, shows that you were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and have no idea, about defending home, hearth, family, and nation.

[Terry L Smith]

Cronos wrote:
“well, they also opposed the democracy of Athens and they subjugated Hellas to their rule post the Peloponnese war.”

First, you spelled “Chronos” wrong, but in this idiotic text cellphone shorthand world, I’ll give you that one.

Second, please be advised: “Never, never start a rebuttal with the word ‘well’. It demonstrates your attempt at mentally reaching for straws, (while possibly stuttering - as is the fashion these days), to create a well-informed response, when, in effect, you are just attempting to throw a stone, as your last effort.”

Sparta was a ‘kingdom’, was it not? Just as America under the Kenyan usurper, is becoming a ‘kingdom’.

Haven’t you heard the idiom, “To the victors, go the spoils”? “Welcome to the kingdom!”