INFANTICIDE.
Kindermord, . . GER. 1 Infanticidio, . . IT., Se.
Down to comparatively recent historic times, the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Arammans, Syrians, Babylonians. and even Israelites, and their neigh bours on both sides of the Jordan, sacrificed their children with the hoped-for object of averting any great and serious misfortune. There is a Phoenician legend of El, the strong, offering up his son Yedud or Yedid,.the beloved. El being the Kronos (Bunsen iii. 286), Malekh Bel was the same as the Tyrian Hercules, or Moloch, or Bal Moloch, to whom, as also to Hecate and Melekhet Artemis, dogs were sacrificed. The principal sacrifices offered to Hercules Usu, as well as to his mythical companion, were human beings, which, in Laodicea of Phoenicia, might be ransomed by a doe. At Carthage; the practice of sacrificing their favourite children, and those of the highest rank, in honour of Hercules, con tinued down to their latest wars. The legend of the Grecian Hercules is, that he became insane, burned his own children, as well as those of his twin - brother Iphicles, and murdered his guest Iphitus (Bunsen iv. 212, 213). The Greeks ex posed their children on the highways to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by beasts of prey, and that barbarous practice was sanctioned by some of their most celebrated lawgivers. Among the Romans, the custom of infanticide also pre vailed. It is probable, says Malthus, that when Solon permitted the exposing of children, he only gave the sanction of law to a custom already prevalent. Of all the states of Greece, the Thebans are mentioned by lElian as the , only exception to the general practice of exposing infants at the will of their parents. By the other states of Greece, infanticide was sanctioned and regulated by law, under legal provisions for the regulation of this practice. Malthus (vol. i. p. 291) in a note says : How completely the laws relating to the encouragement of marriage and of children were despised, appears from a speech of Minucius Felix, in Octavio (cap. 30) : Vos enim video procreator filios nunc feris et avibus expon ere, nunc adstrangulatus misero mortis genere elidere : Sunt gum in ipsis visceribus medicanini bus epotis origmem futuri hominis extinguant et parricidium faciant ante quam pariant.' This crime, he adds, had grown so much into a custom in Rome, that even Pliny attempts to excuse it : Quoniam aliquarum fecunditas plena liheris tali venia indiget (iv. xxix. cap. iv.).
Among the Canaanites, the Phmnicians, and the Carthaginians, the sacrifice of children was pre scribed as a propitiation to their sanguinary deities Moloch and Kronos.
Moses forbade, under penalties of death, the ceremony of passing children through the fire to Moloch ; but down to the time of Manasseh it was nevertheless practised among the Jews, and the king sacrificed his own son. Jephthah consecrated
a victory by burning his daughter. Tho Greek fleet was detained at Mills till 1phigenia had been murdered. And when Tacitus tells us of the German children being embarked in a shield on the face of the river, lie is probably referring to the same act. Female infanticide was common over all Arabia in the time of Mahomed, and is frequently reprobated in the Koran. It was Mahomed who put a stop to the inhuman custom, which had been long practised by pagan Arabs, of burying their daughters alive, lest they should be reduced to poverty, or else to avoid the dis pleasure and disgrace which would follow if they should happen to be made captives, or to become scandalous by their behaviour ; the birth of a daughter being for these reasons reckoned a great misfortune, and the death of one as great a happiness. The manner of their doing this is differently related ; some say that when an Arab had a daughter born, if he intended to bring her up, he sent her clothed in a garment of wool or hair, to keep camels or sheep in the desert ; but if he designed to put her to death, he let her live till she became six years old, and then said to her mother, Perfume her and adorn her, that I may carry her to her mothers ; which being done, the father led her to a well, or a pit dug for that purpose, and having bid her look down into it, pushed her in headlong as he stood behind ; and then filling up the pit, levelled it with the rest of the ground. But others say that when the woman was ready to fall in labour, they dug a pit, on the brink whereof she was to be delivered, and if the child happened to be a daughter, they threw it into the pit, but if a son, they saved it alive. This custom, though not observed by all the Arabs in general, was yet very common among several of their tribes, and particularly those of Koreith and Kendeli, the former using to bury their daughters alive in Mount Abu Dalama, near Mecca. In the time of ignorance, while they used this method to get rid of their daughters, Sasaa, grandfather -to the celebrated poet Al Farazdak, frequently re deemed female children from death, giving for every one two she-camels big with young, and a he camel ; and hereto Al Farazdak alluded when vaunting himself before one of the khalifs of the family of Meya, he said, I am the son of the giver of life to the dead ; for which expression being censured, he excused himself by alleging the following words of the Koran:—' He who saved a soul alive shall be as if he had saved the lives of all mankind.' Europeans, at their settlement in America, found female infanticide still practised among some of the tribes; and the Abb6 Dubois mentions that it was customary to expose or put to death children born under stars supposed to possess a particularly rnalignant influence.