When the exposure of children in civilised states began to be condemned as unlawful, it was however suffered to pass unpunished, even under the first Christian emperors. Legislators only endeavoured by regulations of every kind to render it less common, and to provide for the maintenance of children; until at last, through horror at the cruelty of it, but without thinking of the causes or attempting to remove them, they conceived the unfortunate idea, in order to guard against this crime, of declaring it to be murder, and punishing it as such. It became then much safer for parents to bury children, or to throw them into the sea, than to run the chance of exposing themselves to the utmost shame and punishment, when they were searched out and discovered. In Greece, but not at Thebes in Bœotia[1063], the exposure of children was permitted and common, and therefore many of the Greek historians mention the contrary as a foreign but meritorious custom. Strabo[1064], on this account, praises the Egyptians, and Ælian[1065] extols the laws of the Thebans against the killing and exposing of children. This cruel practice was equally common at Rome. Romulus however, who was himself a foundling, endeavoured to restrain it, and his order was confirmed in the twelve tables; but as population, luxury, scarcity, and dissipation increased, it became customary for those who had more children than they wished, to expose some of them. Many deposited with them rings and other costly ornaments; and those who were poorer, trinkets of little value, partly to entice people to receive the children, and partly that, by describing these appendages, when the children were grown up, or their own circumstances had become better, they might be able to recover them.
Even at present, in many places, the children carried to foundling hospitals are accompanied by tokens, which are carefully preserved, as is the case in the Spedale degl’ Innocenti at Florence, where a piece of lead imprinted with a number is hung round the neck of each babe, in such a manner that it cannot be easily removed, and occasions no inconvenience in the wearing. By these means one can obtain information there, even at a late period, in regard to each child[1066].
It is mentioned by Tacitus[1067], as a circumstance deviating from the Roman manners, that the old Germans considered child-murder as a crime; and where he speaks of the peculiarities of the Jews, he does not fail to relate the same thing of them[1068]. Dionysius of Halicarnassus bestows the like praise on the Aborigines[1069].
When the morals of mankind began to be improved under the influence of Christianity, its followers endeavoured by every means in their power to banish from among them this cruelty, on account of which they so bitterly reproached the Romans[1070]. The first Christian emperors, however, did not venture to forbid it as a crime; though Constantine called exposure a kind of murder, and wisely exerted himself to remove the causes of it. By an order issued in the year 331, he endeavoured to deter parents from it, as he there deprived them of all hope of being able to claim or recover exposed children, even if they should make good the expenses incurred by those who had maintained them[1071]. This cruel practice was nevertheless continued for a long time after. Lactantius[1072], who lived under the reign of Constantine, describes it as a still prevailing remnant of barbarity; and Julius Firmicus, who wrote about the year 336, considered it worth his while to give particular instructions for casting the nativity of foundlings[1073]. The exposure of children was not completely prohibited till the time of Valentinian, Valens and Gratian, in the last half of the fourth century[1074].
One cannot, without reluctance, believe that this barbarous practice was so long permitted, or remained unpunished, in civilised states; but it must be mentioned, to the honour of antiquity, that in many countries the care of government was directed at an early period to exposed children. Not only were means pursued in Greece and Rome to encourage the reception and educating of foundlings, by assigning them as property to those who took them under their protection; but it was also made a law, that foundlings who were not received by private persons should be educated at the public expense. At Thebes, where, as already observed, child-murder and the exposure of children were forbidden, parents in needy circumstances were desired to carry their new-born children to the government, and the latter committed them into the hands of those who engaged to take the best care of them for the least money. In the like manner, at present, foundlings are placed with nurses to be maintained at the cheapest rate; but with this difference, that at Thebes the children became slaves for life to those by whom they were educated, whereas in our times, when they grow up they are free people and learn to gain a livelihood for themselves.
The humane decrees of the emperor Constantine the Great, both for Italy and Africa, the first in the year 315, and the second in 322, deserve here to be mentioned. The governments in those countries were enjoined to prevent the murder, sale, giving in pawn, or the exposure of children, by taking care that parents who were too poor to educate their offspring, should receive from the public treasury or magazines, or from the emperor’s privy purse, as we say at present, food, clothing and other necessaries; and as new-born children required immediate attention, that this should be done without any delay[1075].
The conjecture of Gothofredus, that the emperor was induced to adopt these measures by the urgent representation of Lactantius, appears to me highly probable. This writer, from the year 317, had been tutor to prince Crispus, and had before dedicated or transmitted to the emperor his book, wherein he painted, in glowing colours, the detestable practice of parents then prevalent, which gave rise to the greatest disorders; and on that account he offered them the specious advice not to beget more children than they were able to maintain. I am inclined to think that this advice did not much please the emperor, who was obliged to keep on foot a numerous army; and as it could not be very agreeable to many married persons, he comprehended this recommendation of prudence or moderation among those calamities from which he was desirous to preserve parents by the above decrees.
After these imperial orders, children remained with their parents, and were educated by them; but it appears that the cities of Athens and Rome had, at an early period, public orphan-houses, in which children were educated at the public expense. What has been already said of the gymnasium called cynosarges may serve as a proof; and Festus and Victor make it still more certain that there was an institution of this kind at the columna lactaria. At any rate there can be no doubt that, in the sixth century, there were houses at Rome for the reception of deserted children.
The emperor Justinian, who by a particular law, in the year 529, declared foundlings to be free, and forbade those by whom they were received and educated to treat them and detain them as slaves[1076], often introduces these establishments, under the appellation of brephotrophium, in his laws respecting donations to churches and other beneficent institutions[1077]. This word, composed of the Greek term brephos a child, and trepho to educate, seems to show that houses of this kind were established at an earlier period in the cities of Greece, and were only imitated at Rome; though of this I have as yet found no proof. Du Cange and Stephen have both introduced the word in their Greek dictionaries, but refer only to the Justinian code. Gesner, in Stephen’s lexicon, makes a distinction between brephotrophium and curotrophium; the latter, it is said, means a house in which grown-up and not new-born children are educated, and the same thing is repeated in the same words in Calvini Lexicon Juridicum. Both assert that this word, formed from κοῦρος or κόρος, puer, is used by Justinian, but does not occur in the book of laws, nor is used by Brisson. It is not to be found in the dictionary of Basle nor in Stephen’s Greek Lexicon, but both these have the word κουροτρόφος, which indeed occurs in Homer and in Hesiod. As Calvin and Gesner refer to Hottoman, I am inclined to think that the word was coined by him, especially as Gesner in the Thesaurus of Faber says, “Curotrophium potest dici domus alendis parvulis destinata.”
It is rather astonishing that no mention of the oldest institutions of this kind, or of their establishment, is to be found in the works of the ancients. There is reason however to conjecture, that as long as the sale of children and the slavery of foundlings were permitted, the number of those maintained at the public expense could not be very great. But respecting the brephotrophia, even under the later Christian emperors, nothing is said to be found that can give us any idea of the manner in which they were regulated; nothing in regard to the place from which the nurses were procured, or how food and clothing were provided for the children, and as little in regard to the number of children reared in these benevolent institutions who lived to become old.