Spartan authorities practiced eugenics as a matter of state policy, in order to raise strong warriors to maintain Sparta’s military dominance. Officials decided if newborns were healthy enough to rear as Spartan citizens. Those with deformities or otherwise deemed unfit, were disposed of. Or at least that was the accepted narrative for centuries, until modern scholarship cast doubt upon that. Below are twenty five things about that, and other Spartan and ancient Greek fascinating facts.
The Spartan Authorities Reportedly Practiced Eugenics as a Matter of State Policy
Throughout much of history, life was rough – as in orders of magnitude tougher than what we experience today – for the majority of mankind. Things we find shockingly cruel today, such as infanticide of unwanted children, were seen as routine by many. In ancient Greece, for example, unwanted children were often abandoned in the wilderness. There, they perished from exposure to the elements, thirst or hunger, attacks by wild animals, or, if they were lucky, were saved by a passerby. The Spartan government in particular ramped up infanticide into eugenics as a matter of state policy.
According to Plutarch, in his biography of the ancient Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus: “Offspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so‑called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state“.