"
Aristotle, who believed that the state should fix the number of
children each married pair should have, has this to say in _Politics_,
Book VII, Chapter V:
"With respect to the exposing and nurturing of children, let it be a
law that nothing mutilated shall be nurtured. And in order to avoid
having too great a number of children, if it be not permitted by the
laws of the country to expose them, it is then requisite to define how
many a man may have; and if any have more than the prescribed number,
some means must be adopted that the fruit be destroyed in the womb of
the mother before sense and life are generated in it."
Aristotle was a conscious advocate of family limitation even if
attained by violent means. "It is necessary," he says, "to take care
that the increase of the people should not exceed a certain number in
order to avoid poverty and its concomitants, sedition and other
evils."
In Athens, while the citizen wives were unable to throw off the
restrictions of the laws which kept them at home, the great number of
_hetera_, or stranger women, were the glory of the "Golden Age." The
homes of these women who were free from the burden of too many
children became the gathering places of philosophers, poets, sculptors
and statesmen.
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