- Joined
- Mar 4, 2019
The difference is, he was born into a wealthy family, which would have been less likely to expose "weak" babies, not least because they had the resources available to care for a sickly or weak child until it was strong enough. Your typical plebian or non-citizen wouldn't be in the same position. They couldn't afford sentimental attachment to newborns anyway, given how high infant mortality was in that era. Disposing of a baby that was marred or disfigured, or looked too sickly, was just jumping straight to the inevitable. It was no different than putting down a lame sheep.
It was fairly common, across europe and well into the 19th century, for the lower working class, and especially the rural working class, to eliminate newborns if they looked likely to have untreatable or incurable ailments, or were expected to be a net drain on the family (meaning downs kids and retards would live, but a potential genius with a gamy leg would likely be tossed in a bucket to drown). They also used herbal abortifacients quite liberally, usually after noticing a missed period.
The prevailing belief was that the child didn't "exist" until it "quickened" and a soul entered it, which was defined as anything from a visible belly and detectable movement of the child within the mother, to some nebulous moment after birth. It's only relatively recently that the idea of life at conception took hold in christian circles, but it has no real historical precedent.
