Greco-Roman Eugenics

Forbidden History

As a people, a family, a clan, a tribe, or even a nation, the health of the group depends on individual choices, both in who the individuals choose to procreate with and who the individuals choose to bar from procreation, or in the extreme, kill entirely. These choices that lead to either a replication of healthy genes or the improvement of the overall genetics of a people are called eugenics. Ultimately what the law permits and what the society encourages is what will decide the outcome of the health of their own people.

To understand eugenics, one must ground themselves in the understanding of its etymology. Eugenics can be broken down into two roots, eu, meaning good, and genics meaning origin or birth. So quite literally it means “good origin” or “good birth”. Eugenics involves every decision around the promotion of procreation of healthy members of the society, and the demotion of procreation of the unhealthy members of the society. How these eugenic practices are carried out has changed over time, and from civilization to civilization, but the outcome is fundementally the same.

If eugenics thus means of good origin, what does the term euthanasia mean? Euthanasia can also be broken down into two roots, eu, which again means good, and thanatos, or death. So euthanasia means good death, but what does a good death mean? What did it mean to the Greeks and the Romans? To the Greco-Romans a good death would have been considered something along the lines of a dignified death, one without whimpering and cowardice. Today, euthanasia means something along the lines of an easy death, one without pain or suffering. The meaning has slightly shifted, and this is a reflection of the societies that keep their meaning alive.

A different view of Euthanasia could be that the death was for the good of the health of the society, but how could a death be good? One could view a people as a living organism, and each person as an individual cell. When a healthy body has sick cells, it sends its antibodies to kill the sickly cells for the good of the healthy cells. Another analogy could be a gardner, represented by the hand of the society. When a gardner recognizes a sickly leaf infected with parasites, fungus, or a disease, he will choose to shear off the infected leaf, or forsake the plant entirely to otherwise save his garden.

Euthanasia cannot be done by the hand of doctors however, or at least it should not be, for it goes against the Hippocratic oath which every doctor must take. Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician from Kos, a small island off the coast of Asia minor. He created an oath, which is a promise and formal declaration made to another person, made in the watchful eye of God. The consequences of breaking an oath has always meant death, usually inflicted by God. Within the Hippocratic oath, there is a small section

“οὐ δώσω δὲ οὐδὲ φάρμακον οὐδενὶ αἰτηθεὶς θανάσιμον, οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι συμβουλίην τοιήνδε.”

This section can be translated as follows.

”I will do no harm or injustice to them. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so.”

There is much to be said about the Hippocratic oath, but that deserves attention all its own. For now, it is sufficient that you should know that doctors take an oath against intentionally harming or killing their patients, even when asking for a swift death. This shows that Greek doctors of the ancient world would not administer poisons to their patients to assist in killing them sooner.

Greeks however did understand the burden placed upon a society by the sick. Now while a temporary illness was viewed with pity and care, the burden of unfortunate lifelong disease and deformaties was viewed in a different way, for they affect a society quite differently. In the wilderness, the permanently afflicted persons would typically die on their own, however, a civilization provides the necessary protection and care for these ill-born to live an unnaturally long life. The Greeks and Romans recognized this as a burden.

The pater familias has been spoken about before, but will be explained again, it is the title which means father of the family, and also leader of the family. However, not every father was the leader of the family. For every male slave within the household was subject to the pater familias, and therefore not the leader. This is a wide spread Indo-European concept that stretches beyond the Greeks and Romans, and I hope to revive awareness of the role of the father among his wife, progeny, and society within my lifetime.

The role of the pater familias within Greco-Roman society was not a light one, and the burden of choice which he must have bore was not easy, but necessary. The pater familias was responsible for deciding whether his children lived or died immediately after birth, and it was a heavy burden to bear. The pater familias had to decide if his child was fit to live, and if the child was unfit, it was exposed to the elements and left to die, or killed by the hand of the pater familias himself, whether the child was his own or born by his slaves.

Among the Greeks, Aristotle wrote in his book politics

“As to exposing or rearing the children born, let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared;  but on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the procreation of offspring, and if any people have a child as a result of intercourse in contravention of these regulations, abortion must be practiced on it (the child).” - Aristotle, Politics, Part XVI

Exposing a child deserves explanation. There are many ways in which a person could die, but exposure was a very prolonged and indirect method of death. In Indo-European cultures, it was taboo for a father to kill his son, or a family member to kill any other family member for that matter. However, exposure was seen as the will of the Gods. Exposure gave the child a chance at life. If the child was left alone, it would die in the elements or killed by a wild beast. If the child however was found by those who took pity upon it, it was said that the Gods took pity upon the child themselves, and they were saved. Often these children were picked up by barren women or those who ran religious orphanages.

Supported by the much later Greek writer Plutarch, this quote shows the brutal nature of ancient life.

“Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as he saw fit (as was his right in most heathen societies). He was obliged to carry (the newborn) child before certain men at a place called Lesche; these men were some of the elders of the tribe to which the child belonged; their business was to carefully view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae (“depository”), a (large cave) under Mt. Taygetus (in the Peloponnese); as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear to be healthy and vigorous.” - Plutarch, Lives, Lycurgus 16 about Sparta:

Heavy was the weight of choice for the father to decide to kill his own children or the children of his slaves for the good of the public interest, according to the strength of his people. Yet it has always been a heavy crown to bear.

Sculpture of a Roman infant left to die to exposure.

The Romans were no less brutal in the way they shaped society. During the early era of the Roman Republic, the many laws and customs of the people were codified into stone for all to see in 449 BC in what was called Lex XII Tabularum, or as we know them, the twelve tables.

In the laws which deals with paternal powers, it was codified as follows.

“A notably deformed child shall be killed immediately.” - Table four of the Twelve tables of Roman Law

This connection between Roman laws and Greek laws makes sense if one understands that Greeks had a deep influence on the Romans, as much of the Southern Italian peninsula was colonized by the Greeks and trade between the two was frequent.

Seneca the Roman statesman wrote in his book on anger a passage about what a father would do to kill his child if he was stricken with grief and anger, instead of allowing the will of the Gods to decide if a child lived or died.

“…mad dogs we knock on the head…unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children at birth who are weakly and abnormal.” - Seneca, On Anger, Book 1 paragraph 15.

This is clearly different from the method of allowing a child to die to the elements, but as I said earlier, the method of eugenics may differ but the outcome is ultimately the same, the health of the society is protected.

Ultimately Valentinian outlawed the exposure of children in 374 AD in the Roman Empire, but those who continued the practice of eugenics were rarely if ever prosecuted for such acts, however, the practice did eventually die out shortly thereafter.

It is a brutal yet necessary topic to discuss the topic of eugenics, but it would not be forbidden knowledge if it did not dismay some readers from diving into the topic. We live in a society protected by civilization. Modern medicine can remedy many ailments in today’s living, but a remedy is not a cure, and many diseases cannot be cured nor deformities fixed. Since the dangers of the wild no longer cull the sick and the deformed, to protect the genetic health of a people some decision must be taken for the good for the people.

In modern times death is not the only means of preventing bad genetics from being passed down, and not all deformities and diseases can be prevented once and for all by mere eradication. I’d refer to the killing of those with poor genetics or incurable diseases as hard eugenics. An easier and more manageable system of eugenics would be to encourage, educate, and incentivize those who are stricken by ill-birth to not procreate. The methods of eugenics are divergent, but the outcome is the same. Be the practices heavy handed or soft handed, the overall problem of the accumulation of dysgenic genes within a modern civilization must be addressed. As always brothers, I am here with you in the Abyss.