But under certain circumstances, instead of the joy and gladness by which the noble and the great are greeted on their entrance into the world, the birth of a child was, as in Thrace,[342] an event fraught with sorrow and misery. It announced in fact the approach of an enemy, of one who, if he survived, must snatch from them a portion of what already would scarcely sustain life. Together with the announcement of his birth, therefore, came the awful consciousness that war must be made on him—that he must in short be cast forth, a scape-goat for the sins of society, not for his own—that his parents who should have cherished him, whose best solace he should have been, must steel their hearts and close fast their ears against the voice of nature, and become his executioners. The poor-laws of Greece, or rather their substitutes for poor-laws, were exceedingly imperfect, and foundling hospitals had not been introduced. They got rid of their surplus population, as many nations still do, by murder; for infanticide, under various forms, has more or less prevailed in all civilised countries, if the term civilised can properly be applied to nations among whom crimes so demoralising are habitually perpetrated. No doubt the sullen reluctance of a father to imbrue his hands in the blood of his child produced daily many a heart-rending scene; no doubt the sting of want must have been keenly felt before the habit of slaughter was confirmed;—but the fashion once set, children were thrown into an earthen pot and exposed in mountainous and desert places to perish of cold, or fall a prey to carnivorous birds[343] or wolves, as coolly as they are murdered by their young and frail mothers in our own Christian land. Footnote 342: Sext. Empir. p. 186. Footnote 343: Vict. (Var. Lect. ii. 3) has an useful chapter on the exposing of infants, in which he has collected several valuable testimonies.