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Document Details : Title: The Spartan Practice of Selective Infanticide and its Parallels in Ancient Utopian Tradition Author(s): HUYS, M. Journal: Ancient Society Volume: 27 Date: 1996 Pages: 47-74 DOI: 10.2143/AS.27.0.632397 Abstract : Talking with non–classicists, who have some notion of ancient culture and the Spartan state model, usually from what they were taught in high school, I have often experienced that the killing of defective infants was one of the shocking features they remembered. Also, the Spartan practice of selective infanticide features prominently in modern studies, especially in general and popularizing books on ancient Greece, in which it is sometimes described with horrible details that are lacking in the ancient sources. As a matter of fact, only one ancient text refers to the Spartan practice of the selection of newborns, viz. a passage from Plutarch’s Life of Lykourgos (16.1-2). The present paper intends to screen the interpretation and reliability of this late testimony and to confront it with some comparable texts, which set the same practice in other ‘ideal’ societies, whether they are considered historical or belong manifestly to the realm of utopian imagination. |
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