The Greeks were an exceptionally healthy and long-lived
race; their great men for the most part lived to ages which have no
parallel until the nineteenth century. The infant death-rate from
natural causes may have been rather high, as it is in modern Greece, but
it was augmented by systematic infanticide. The Greek father had an
absolute right to decide whether a new-comer was to be admitted to the
family. In Ephesus alone of Greek cities a parent was compelled to prove
that he was too poor to rear a child before he was allowed to get rid of
it.[10] Even Hesiod, centuries earlier, advises a father not to bring up
more than one son, and daughters were sacrificed more frequently than
sons. The usual practice was to expose the infant in a jar; anyone who
thought it worth while might rescue the baby and bring it up as a slave.
But this was not often done. At Gela, in Sicily, there are 233 'potted'
burials in an excavated graveyard, out of a total of 570.[11] The
proportion of female infants exposed must have been very large. The
evidence of literature is supported by such letters as this from a
husband at Oxyrhynchus: 'When--good luck to you--your child is born, if
it is a male, let it live; if a female, expose it.'[12] Besides
infanticide, abortion was freely practised, and without blame.[13] The
Greek citizen married rather late; but as his bride was usually in her
'teens this would not affect the birth-rate. Nor need we attach much
importance, as a factor in checking population, to the characteristic
Greek vice, nor to prostitution, which throughout antiquity was
incredibly cheap and visited by no physical penalty. As for slaves,
Xenophon recommends that they should be allowed to have children as a
reward for good conduct.[14]

A rapid decline in population set in under the successors of Alexander.
Polybius ascribes it to selfishness and a high standard of comfort,
which is doubtless true of the upper and middle classes;[15] but the
depopulation of rural Greece can hardly be so accounted for. Perhaps
the forests were cut down, and the rainfall diminished. It was the
general impression that the soil was far less productive than formerly.
The decay of the Hellenic race was accelerated after the Roman conquest,
until the old stock became almost extinct. This disappearance of the
most gifted race that ever inhabited our planet is one of the strangest
catastrophes of history, and is full of warnings for the modern
sociologist