s not wanting. At Thebes
infanticide was forbidden.[967] Sutherland[968] points out the
effect of infanticide to bring the Greek and Latin races to an
end. They neglected their own females and begot offspring with
foreign and slave women, thus breeding out their own race blood.
The Romans do not appear to have had any population policy until
the time of the empire, when the social corruption and egoism so
restricted reproduction that the policy was directed to the
encouragement of marriage and parenthood. Therefore infanticide
was disapproved by the jurists and moralists. Ovid, Seneca,
Plutarch, Favorinus, and Juvenal speak of abortion as general and
notorious, but as criminal.[969] Tacitus praised the Germans
because, as he erroneously asserted,[970] they did not allow
infanticide, and he knew that the Jews prohibited it.[971] In the
cases of Greece and Rome we have clear instances to prove the
opposite tendencies of the mores, with their attendant
philosophies and ethical principles, on the conjuncture of the
conditions and interests. At Rome children were exposed either on
account of poverty, which was the ancient cause, or on account of
luxury, egoism, and vice. "Pagan and Christian authorities are
united in speaking of infanticide as a crying vice of the
empire."[972] These protests show that the custom was not fully
protected by the mores. Pliny thought it necessary.[973] Seneca
refers to the killing of defective children as a wise and
unquestioned custom which he can use for illustration.[974] For
the masses, until the late days of the empire, infanticide was,
at the worst, a venial crime. "What was demanded on this subject
was not any clearer moral teaching, but rather a stronger
enforcement of the condemnation long since passed upon
infanticide, and an increased protection for exposed infants....
The church labored to deepen the sense of the enormity of the
crime."[975] Evidently infanticide was a tradition with serious
approval from one state of things to another in which it was
harmful and not needed in any view. In 331 A.D. Constantine gave
title to those who rescued exposed children against the parents
of the children.[976] This was in favor of the children, since it
increased the chances that they would be rescued, if we must
assume that it was their interest that their lives should be
spared,