Infanticide and Filicide in Ancient Greek Culture

In current world culture, filicide and infanticide are seen as horrific and shocking crimes. In Greek culture, filicide was perceived quite differently. When reading through texts such as The Sayings of Spartan Women, Medea, Life of Lycurgus, and Spartan Society, the difference becomes apparent. Each text hints to the time period’s view of infanticide and filicide, and together, they show us a general view under which filicide fell – that is, if it were to benefit of the community as a whole, filicide was an appropriate action.

Spartan society had a more extreme perception of community than any of the other Greek city-states. Whether what they claimed to do was fact or rhetoric remains to be proven; nevertheless, writings from ancient Sparta give us an idea of what the Spartans at the very least aspired to be. This so-called Spartan Mirage was the Spartan communal way of convincing their citizens, and the rest of the Greek city-states, that Sparta was sui generis. Sparta didn’t want their citizens to merely believe it; they wanted them to follow through with actions based off the propaganda.

In The Sayings of Spartan Women, many of the quotes can be directly attributed to the Spartan Mirage. Regardless, the quotes still show us how the Spartans wanted to be perceived and remembered. Looking at The Sayings through this lens, the Spartans believed that filicide was to be expected of mothers with sons unfit to belong to the Spartan society. In The Sayings, an Unnamed Woman is quoted as saying, “[A] Spartan woman killed her son, who had deserted, as unworthy of his country (Unnamed Spartan Woman 1).” This quote is so extreme it is generally rejected as rhetoric. Still, it shows us that filicide was encouraged in ancient Greece, an...

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...peers. If Xenophon was ashamed, we may view this as his personal feelings; or it may have been the general underlying view of filicide. If this was the general underlying view of filicide, it contradicts what has been stated about Spartan propaganda, and shows us that the Spartan Mirage was just that: a mere mirage. It is also possible that filicide was a regular part of life in all the Greek city-states. It was therefore not considered out of the ordinary enough to document as special.

The view of infanticide and filicide in ancient Greece were worlds apart from the views held today. Due to their general view of community before the individual, ancient Greeks did not hold filicide to the same standard as we would. For the most part, this resulted in a communal society, were everyone upheld the laws and traditions in order to ensure the entire community’s survival.