“If a woman bear a child,” so ran the Cretan laws, “while living apart from her husband (after divorce), she shall carry it to the husband at his house, in the presence of three witnesses; and if he do not receive the child, it shall be in the power of the mother either to bring up or expose it. If a female serf bear a child while living apart, she shall carry it to the master of the man who married her, in the presence of two witnesses. And if he do not receive it, the child shall be in the power of the master of the female serf. But, if she should marry the same man again before the end of the year, the child shall be in the power of the master of the male serf, and the one who carried it and the witnesses shall have preference in taking the oath. If a woman living apart should put away her child before she has presented it as written, she shall pay, for a free child, fifty staters, for a slave, twenty-five, if she be convicted. “But if the man have no house, to which she may carry it, or she do not see him, if she put away her child, there shall be no penalty. If a female serf should conceive and bear without being married, the child shall be in the power of the master of the father.”[292] In prehistoric times, the chief of the _yevos_ exercised his right of domain over his own house, by deciding whether children should be brought up or exposed. The reason back of this practice was undoubtedly economic: “the fact of yesterday is the doctrine of today,” says Junius. The Hellenes in their attitude toward children were as all the Aryan people, and, with few exceptions, as most primitive people where moral ideas had little developed; the right of the male parent to kill his child if he so willed is, with variations, a relic of the Stone Age. Among the Greeks, the practice was well established, for, wherever we find a Greek colony, the traditions of the people show that either a notable human or some mythical god began his history with the story of exposure. At Athens infanticide was especially common. Aristophanes refers to it in a way that shows it was an accepted practice. The first poet of humanity, Euripides, dwells at great length, in the story of Ion, on the exposure of an infant toward the end of the fifth century; and in “The Phœnician Maidens,” he has Jocasta tell the story of the exposure of Œdipus[293]: Enter Jocasta. ... and when our babe was born, Ware of his sin, remembering God’s word, He gave the bane to herdmen to cast forth In Hera’s Mead upon Cithæron’s ridge, His ankles pierced clear through with iron spikes, Whence Hellas named him Swell-foot—Œdipus.