CLA219H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Pater Familias, Kyrios, Oral Contract
Document Summary
Lecture #6 daily life & legal status. Life expectancy for women 35: average obviously some people died earlier and later. In greece, 30 - 40% of children died in their first year: half of all children would die before age ten, to ensure that they still had living children, a family would have on average 5-6 children. In rome, 25% of children would die before 1: 50% would die before 10. It was not illegal to kill children by exposure if you thought you would not be able to support the child or the child would not live anyways. Exposure was more likely to occur with female offspring: the male children were heirs females were useless to their parents. Aristotle says that there should be a law against raising disabled children waste of resources. More female children died then male children perhaps due to an unfair division of resources. Women were most fertile between the ages of 15-29.
