4 – They Thought Little of Those with Disabilities
The ancient Greeks (and Romans) admired physical perfection and believed that any marks of deformity (or indeed racial differences) marked a person out as being ‘inferior’. Even the philosopher Aristotle, deemed to be one of the most forward thinkers in ancient Greece, believed that parents should get rid of imperfect children. He said: “Let there be a law that no deformed child should live.” According to Greek law, a newborn baby was not classified as a ‘child’ until it was one week old so parents could dispose of a deformed child without having to feel guilty.
In Sparta, the state ruled on whether weak children should be reared or left to die because kids belonged to the state rather than to their parents. Parents had a legal obligation to abandon disabled children and community elders were responsible for inspecting every single Spartan child straight after birth. The newborn was brought before a council of elders (the Gerousia) who decided if the child should live or die. A child that was deemed healthy was allowed to survive but an ill-formed child had to be disposed of by its father. Children sentenced to die in this fashion were usually thrown into a chasm in the Taygetas mountain range.
However, it is a mistake to suggest that the ‘disposal’ of children with disabilities was automatic. Plutarch wrote that the Spartan King Agesilaus II was crippled but fails to outline why he was not murdered like other disabled Spartan babies. There was also an Athenian council called the Boule which gave economic assistance to disabled citizens in financial need.
If you thought faking disability to gain benefits was a modern phenomenon, think again! There is at least one report of a Greek lawyer being called to defend a client accused of faking his disability in order to receive money from the Boule. The disabled craftsman claimed that he needed the money or else he would be “in the most dreadful position.” In other words, while the ancient Greeks did have a bad attitude towards disability when compared to modern civilizations, they did not ostracize or murder every single disabled person as some texts might have you believe.