Legal (and Customary?) Approaches to the Disabled in Ancient Greece

Abstract

Written law ('nomos') as opposed to customary law hardly acknowledged the existence of the disabled and their physical disabilities in ancient Greece. As always, the exception was Athens, where one particular law of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE made provision for physically disabled citizens, who were incapable of work, to be paid a small daily allowance. Overall, it was customary, unwritten law which largely defined the status and treatment of the disabled in the ancient Greek world. Mentally disabled individuals were by custom kept inside, and Plato in his ideal state would have a law that these were definitely to be kept inside by their relatives, and not allowed to wander the streets. At Sparta, new-born babies who were deformed and had physical disabilities would be exposed in a pit-like place near Mount Taygetos, and this had the force of law, for all infants had to be inspected by the eldest of the fellow-tribesmen of its father; it was they not he who made their decision on whether an infant was to live or die. Once again, this was reflected by Plato, who formulated a law that physically disabled infants were to be quietly disposed of. Yet apart from Athens, laws did not deal with those who had disabilities, except in religion: decrees concerning the sale of priesthoods on Kos, in particular, do not specifically address those who were disabled or disfigured, but rather emphasized that those who were the ritual agents of the gods, as priests and priestesses, had to be physically 'whole'. Epigraphically, studies of the Greek disabled are extremely disappointing - the inscribed law codes tend not to focus on physical disabilities, but rather the emphasis is on legal standing with respect to the status of people, not on their appearance. But the Gortyn law code specifically allowed for the killing of children, without reference to whether they were disabled or not, and general Greek practice permitted exposure: it is apparent that to dispose of a disabled infant was not only possible, but not even socially reprehensible.