Raising and killing children: two roman myths

TLDR: Two intertwined historical myths are the problem as discussed by the authors, and the hope of eradicating them by this brief exposition is not very great, since both are deeply rooted in modern scholarship and in popular consciousness.

Abstract: Often the purpose of historical research is to create by explanation and description; occasionally, however, it is destruction that is required. In the present case, two intertwined historical myths are the problem. One is easier to dispel than the other, but both are so deeply rooted in modern scholarship and in popular consciousness that the hope of eradicating them by this brief exposition is not very great. The Ž rst myth is the claim that the Roman father, especially as delineated in the legal model of the paterfamilias, maintained in his hands a formal power, the so-called ius vitae necisque—the ‘right of life and death’—by which he could legally kill his children.) The emphasis must be on ‘legally’ since no sensible historian of antiquity has ever sought to deny the pervasive reality of infanticide or, more commonly, the exposure or setting out of unwanted newborns. Closely related is the second myth: the widespread acceptance, again by both scholars and the informed laity, of a liminal ritual by which the father formally accepted the newborn child into his possessions and power, which is to say into his familia. The ritual, we are told, consisted of the father ceremonially lifting the newborn up from the ground after it had been placed at his feet, and then raising the infant in his arms for all to see. The scene is dramatic and worthy of a DeMille or a Mankiewicz, but not, alas, of mundane history despite constant allusion, description, and detailed analysis by reputable historians. The ritual, so it is claimed, was designated by the technical phrase tollere liberum, or sometimes by its equivalent suscipere liberum. Recent standard treatments of the Roman family have