[The statement that Solon by law permitted the exposure of infants is made by Malthus, who gives no authority, but is followed by Lecky. The law in question is not mentioned by Plutarch, and I do not find it noticed by any of the historians. It is stated, however, by Sextus Empiricus (_Hypotyp_. iii, 24) that Solon made a law by which a parent could put his child to death; and this passage, which is cited by Hume in his _Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations_, is doubtless Malthus's authority. Nothing nearer to the purpose is cited by Meursius in his monograph on Solon; but this could very well stand as a permission of infanticide, especially seeing that the practice is presumptively prehistoric. Petit writes: "Quemadmodum liberos tollere in patris erat positum potestate, ita etiam necare et exponere, idque, meo judicio, non tam moribus quam lege receptum fuit Athenis" (_Leges Atticæ_, fol. 219, ed. Wesseling, 1742). Grote (ii, 470, _note_) pronounces that the statement of Sextus "cannot be true, and must be copied from some untrustworthy authority," seeing that Dionysius the Halicarnassian (ii, 26) contrasts the large scope of the _patria potestas_ among the Romans with the restrictions which all the Greek legislators, Solon included, either found or introduced. Dr. Mahaffy (_Social Life in Greece_, 3rd ed. p. 165) believes "the notion of exposing infants from _economical_ motives not to have prevailed till later times" than the seventh century B.C., but he gives no reason for fixing any date. We may take it as certain that while the laws of Lycurgus, like the Roman Twelve Tables, enjoined or permitted the destruction of sickly or deformed infants, the general Greek usage allowed exposure. The express prohibition of it at Thebes (Ælian, _Var. Hist._ ii, 7) implies its previous normality there and elsewhere (cp. however, Aristotle, _Pol._ vii, 16); and the _sale_ of children by their (free) parents was further permitted, except in Attica (Ingram, _History of Slavery_, p. 16); while even there a freeman's children by a slave concubine were slaves.]