Well known is that infanticide and the exposure of children are admitted to practice in Greece and Rome either for religious reasons (disability as a punishment or consequence of the anger of the gods) or for reasons of political and cultural tradition.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n\tThe Greek polis<\/em> and ancient societies need strong men to frequent exercise of warfare. The community excludes the invalid, the not-valid.<\/p>\n \n\tOn the other hand the Greek cities always tried to avoid the excessive overgrowth of citizens for not sharing the land and maintain the relationship between wealth of the city and number of citizens. Plato<\/em> in his Laws, V, 737e<\/em> considered as ideal the quantity of 5.040 citizens in his ideal city.<\/p>\n \n\tIn Greek thought and culture is very important also the beauty and physical perfection.<\/p>\n \n\tThis explains why the legislators themselves as Lycurgus<\/em>, Plato<\/em> and Aristotle <\/em>dictate and theorize about the size of cities and punished in their laws or in their proposed constitutions eugenic practices or search of genetic health of future generations.<\/p>\n \n\tIn this context, children born with some physical malformation were simply eliminated.<\/p>\n \n\tThus Plutarch <\/em>tells us in his Lycurgus, XVI , 1-2<\/em>:<\/p>\n \n\tOffspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so-called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state<\/strong><\/em>. (Plutarch, Lycurgus : Bernadotte Perrin, Ed.)<\/p>\n \n\t“Τ\u1f78 δ\u1f72 γεννηθ\u1f72ν ο\u1f50κ \u1f26ν κ\u1f7bριος \u1f41 γενν\u1f75σας τρ\u1f73φειν, \u1f00λλ´ \u1f14φερε λαβ\u1f7cν ε\u1f30ς τ\u1f79πον τιν\u1f70 λ\u1f73σχην καλο\u1f7bμενον, \u1f10ν \u1fa7 καθ\u1f75μενοι τ\u1ff6ν φυλετ\u1ff6ν ο\u1f31 πρεσβ\u1f7bτατοι καταμαθ\u1f79ντες τ\u1f78 παιδ\u1f71ριον, ε\u1f30 μ\u1f72ν ε\u1f50παγ\u1f72ς ε\u1f34η κα\u1f76 \u1fe5ωμαλ\u1f73ον, τρ\u1f73φειν \u1f10κ\u1f73λευον, κλ\u1fc6ρον α\u1f50τ\u1ff7 τ\u1ff6ν \u1f10νακισχιλ\u1f77ων προσνε\u1f77μαντες\u0387 (2) ε\u1f30 δ´ \u1f00γενν\u1f72ς κα\u1f76 \u1f04μορφον, \u1f00π\u1f73πεμπον ε\u1f30ς τ\u1f70ς λεγομ\u1f73νας \u1f08ποθ\u1f73τας, παρ\u1f70 Τα\u1fe3γετον βαραθρ\u1f7dδη τ\u1f79πον, \u1f61ς ο\u1f54τε α\u1f50τ\u1ff7 ζ\u1fc6ν \u1f04μεινον \u1f42ν ο\u1f54τε τ\u1fc7 π\u1f79λει τ\u1f78 μ\u1f74 καλ\u1ff6ς ε\u1f50θ\u1f7aς \u1f10ξ \u1f00ρχ\u1fc6ς πρ\u1f78ς ε\u1f50εξ\u1f77αν κα\u1f76 \u1fe5\u1f7dμην πεφυκ\u1f79ς.”<\/p>\n \n\tPlato<\/em> in his Republic, V, 460b and c<\/em>, is inspired in Sparta’s way of life to recommend the infanticide.<\/p>\n \n\tAristotle<\/em> in his Politics, Book VII, 1335b (16.15) <\/em>says:<\/p>\n \n\t“About the exposure and parenting, there should be a law prohibiting the nurture of any defective person<\/strong><\/em>”.<\/p>\n \n\tΠερ\u1f76 δ\u1f72 \u1f00ποθ\u1f73σεως κα\u1f76 [20] τροφ\u1fc6ς τ\u1ff6ν γιγνομ\u1f73νων \u1f14στω ν\u1f79μος μηδ\u1f72ν πεπηρωμ\u1f73νον τρ\u1f73φειν,<\/p>\n \n\tand recommends abortion as the best measure.<\/p>\n \n\tIn Rome the law and custom guarantee to the paterfamiias the right of life and death over their children, who can recognize them or not at birth, so that the fate of those born with a physical defect is not better than in Greece. Children with congenital deformity are thrown into the Tiber or exposed at the “Lactaria” column.<\/p>\n \n\tAristotle<\/em> in his History of Animals, Book IV,9,15-16 (537a)<\/em> refers to the phenomenon of the voice:<\/p>\n \n\tViviparous quadrupeds utter vocal sounds of different kinds, but they have no power of converse. In fact, this power, or language, is peculiar to man. For while the capability of talking implies the capability of uttering vocal sounds, the converse does not hold good Men that are born deaf are in all cases also dumb; that is, they can make vocal sounds, but they cannot speak.<\/strong><\/em> (trans. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson)<\/p>\n \n\tHippocrates<\/em> considered that a malformation is the result of a disease, but this opinion in no way altered the cruel custom of eliminating the disabled persons.<\/p>\n \n\tLucretius<\/em> in his De Rerum Natura, L. V, 1052-1055<\/em> says:<\/p>\n \n\tA task not easy is in any wise to teach and to persuade the deaf concerning what \n\tNec ratione docere ulla suadereque surdis, quid sit opus facto, facilest:<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tIn view of these testimonies is easy to assume the social rejection that a handicap occurred in the ancient world. It's no wonder that a text of Pliny the Elder<\/em> was certainly striking already in antiquity itself. <\/p>\n \n\tPliny tells about the education of a deaf boy as a painter. It is the first case of education of a disabled boy about what we have historical record and the first deaf person whose name we know:Quintus Pedius<\/em>. He was the son of Roman senator and orator Quintus Pedius Publicola, His paternal grandfather was the consul Quintus Pedius; his paternal grandmother was Valeria, , relative, perhaps sister, also of the senator and orator Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus. His grandfather and Emperor Augustus were cousins on his mother. So this boy was from a good family.<\/p>\n \n\tMessala advised and Augustus authorized the education as a painter, but unfortunately he died young. This is what Pliny<\/em> says in his Natural History 35, 7, 21:<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tI must not omit, too, to mention a celebrated consultation upon the subject of painting, which was held by some persons of the highest rank. Q. Pedius, who had been honoured with the consulship and a triumph, and who had been named by the Dictator Cæsar as co-heir with Augustus, had a grandson, who being dumb from his birth, the orator Messala, to whose family his grandmother belonged, recommended that he should be brought up as a painter, a proposal which was also approved of by the late Emperor Augustus. He died, however, in his youth, after having made great progress in the art.<\/strong><\/em> (John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.)<\/p>\n \n\t“… et principum virorum non omittendum de pictura celebre consilium, cum Q. Pedius, nepos Q. Pedii consularis triumphalisque et a Caesare dictatore coheredis Augusto dati, natura mutus esset. in eo Messala orator, ex cuius familia pueri avia fuerat, picturam docendum censuit, idque etiam divus Augustus comprobavit; puer magni profectus in ea arte obiit<\/em>”.<\/p>\n \n\tThen it took many centuries to the social acceptance of the measures of reintegration of people with disabilities. In the history of education and deaf education has played an important role Spain, considered the cradle of deaf education through the work of the Benedictine Pedro Ponce de León<\/em> (1513? -1584) Born in Sahagún (León), which was based on the proposals of Girolamo Cardano<\/em> (born in 1501) who thought that the hand signs could help the deaf to communicate. The language and numbering signs were known from antiquity, but they were not applied to the communication of the deaf. Well known is that infanticide and the exposure of children are admitted to practice in Greece and Rome either for religious reasons (disability as a punishment or consequence of the anger of the gods) or for reasons of political and cultural tradition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-habits","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiquitatem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\tis needful for to do<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\n\tUnfortunately there are still many places in the world where it is still very insufficient attention to these people and the reasons or injustices come to be the same as in Antiquity.
\n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"