An Egyptian Story: exposure
One of the best known instances
of a reference to the use of infanticides in the Roman world comes from an
Egyptian papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. . . . This letter was found at Oxyrhynchus
and was written in 1 BC by Hilarion to his wife Alis (Shelton 1988, 28):
I sent you my warmest greetings.
I want you to know that we are still in Alexandria, And please don’t worry if
all the others come home but I remain in Alexandria. I beg you and entreat you
to take care of the child and, if I receive my pay soon, I will send it up to
you. If you have the baby before I return, if it is a boy, let it live; if it
is a girl, expose it. You sent me a message with Aphrodisias, “Don’t forget me.”
How can I forget you? I beg you then, not to worry.
(Oxyrhynchus Papyri 722 (Selected Papyri 105); translation J-A Shelton).
Exposure was the leaving of a
newborn infant to die from starvation or natural causes. The fact that the
parents did not directly kill the infant but left it out in woods or a private
place where it might be found and rescued suggests that exposure contained some
kind of psychological safety net for the defeated parents. Most inhabitants of
the Roman world would know of the great myth of Romulus and Remus, exposed and
rescued by a shepherd, who went on to found Rome. And note that in the letter Hilarion
is not instructing Alis to kill the infant, but rather to expose it. Was exposure
a way for poor families to put a child up for adoption? (Eleanor Scott, The
Archaeology of Infancy and Infant Death [BAR International Series 819; Oxford:
Bar Publishing, 2016], 71)
