Ancient Eugenics

  • Allen G. Roper

$22.95

Hardcover book. 76 pages
Stock Number: 0140

In this concise, well-researched work, an Oxford scholar shows that the ancient Greeks and Romans were very aware of the importance of heredity for societal well-being. The author provides numerous citations from ancient Greek and Latin texts — including writings of Aristotle, Plutarch, and others — to show how people in the classical world dealt with issues of marriage, education, heredity, socialization, and upbringing.

The author, Allen G. Roper, was honored for this work when it earned Oxford University’s Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize in 1913. This handsome cloth-bound hardcover book is a facsimile reprint of the original edition.

As the author explains, ancient eugenics meant, above all, the killing of deformed or defective infants shortly after birth. Even then, the author points out, this was considered a harsh practice. But for the city-state societies that regularly faced existential threats, it was regarded as socially beneficial or even necessary.

Eugenic infanticide was part of the “Twelve Tables” of ancient Rome (451- 449 B.C.), the code of legislation that was the foundation of Roman law. “A notably deformed child shall be killed immediately,” it said. Seneca, the Roman stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist, justified the practice. “We drown the weaklings and the monstrosity,” he wrote. “It is not passion but reason to separate the useless from the fit.”

Eugenic practices were gradually abandoned, Roper explains, as society became more urban and heterogeneous, and the prevailing outlook became more individualistic and “cosmopolitan.” An outlook similar to that which prevails today in the US and western Europe took hold.

“The breakdown of the city states brought a cosmopolitanism which, instead of widening the ideal of humanity, centered itself on the interest of the individual,” Roper writes. “Neither the future nor the past matters, but only the present. Individualism and belief in inevitable decadence were the two influences which effectually thwarted the growth of Ancient Eugenics.”

During the first decades of the twentieth century, when Roper wrote this, support was growing for “positive” eugenics — with backing from some of the most prominent thinkers and political figures of the age. The author compares the “negative, reactive” eugenics of the ancient world with the “positive, proactive” and more “humane” eugenics of his own era, which meant, above all, sterilization of the mentally and physically defective.

Raising public awareness of the importance of heredity for the future of a society, Roper also notes, is a pre-condition for enacting eugenic policies and measures. “Modern Eugenists have recognized that, if there is to be Eugenics by Act of Parliament, “ he writes, “the Eugenic ideal must first be absorbed into the conscience of the nation.”

About the author: Allen George Roper (1888-1957) was born in Croydon, Surrey, England. He earned a BA at Keble College, Oxford. He became a schoolmaster in Knaresborough, Harrogate, at the age of 23, and pursued an academic career for the rest of his life. He also wrote crime fiction under the pen name of John Glyder.

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