Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Beard reappears

BBC News - The 'pushy parent' syndrome in ancient Rome

Mary Beard, the Professor of Classics whose blog at The Times used to be good value (I assume it is behind the paywall now) makes a welcome appearance at the BBC, talking about Roman families.  This bit about the useless nature of ancient doctors caught my attention:

There was no such thing in the ancient world as reliable family planning.

 Roman doctors recommended having sex in the middle of the woman's menstrual cycle if you wanted to avoid pregnancy (as we now know, precisely the time when you are most likely to get pregnant). Not to mention the range of almost completely useless contraceptive creams and potions they peddled.

The fact is there must have been vast numbers of unwanted babies. Many of them would have been literally thrown away - left out on a rubbish dump to be "rescued" maybe by a passer-by and turned into a slave.

Calculating your family size was made even more complicated by the terrifying rates of child mortality before modern medicine. In ancient Rome roughly half the kids born would have been dead by the time they were 10.

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