Wherever there was a Greek colony we have a story of the exposure of some god or hero. Greek mythology might also be said to have had, as one of its foundations, the right of the parent to reject its offspring. The Dorians of Crete pictured even mighty Jove as a victim of this practice, and as being suckled by a goat. He was taken as soon as he was born, to Lystus first, the most ancient city of Crete, and then:
“Hid in a deep cave, ’neath the recesses of the divine earth in the dense and wooded Ægean mount.”[281]
Among the Mantineians it was said that when Rhea brought forth Poseidon she delivered him “in a sheep cote to be brought up among the lambs.”[282]
Among the Lemnians, Hephaistos was supposed to have been exposed,[283] as was the Dionysus of the Etolians and the Thracians.
In Epidaurus it is said that Coronis, when she gave birth to Æsculapius, “exposed the infant on that mountain which at present they call Titthion, but which was before denominated Myrtion; the name of the mountain being changed, because the infant was suckled by one of those goats which fed upon the mountain.”[284]
In Argos, when Crotopos reigned, a grandson was born to him, but the infant’s mother, fearing the wrath of her father, “exposed the child to perish. In consequence of this, it happened that the infant was torn to pieces by the dogs that guarded the royal cattle.”[285]
In Arcadia, Auge, when she was delivered of Telephus, “concealed him in the mountain Parthenion, and he was there suckled by a hind.”[286]
In his disappointment at not having a son born to him, Jasus had the Arcadian Atalanta exposed on the Parthenian hill[287]; the ancestor of all the Athenians, Ion, and the founders of Thebes, Amphion, and Zethus, were exposed on the same Mount Citharion where Œdipus was exposed. Amphion afterward married Niobe and their twelve children, six boys and six girls, were killed by Apollo.[288]
Perhaps we can best judge the attitude of the Homeric Greeks toward children by the later point of view of the flower of Greek intellect. There is not a line in Plato to indicate that the practices we regard as so reprehensible were at all abhorrent to him. In fact, there are passages that would indicate that he not only regarded infanticide as inevitable, but as unobjectionable; and in any case, the incidental references to the practices of his day show that the matter was one that had given him no concern and had not disturbed his philosophic calm. Thus, Plato has Socrates say in the Theætetus[289]: