The Paterfamilias's Power over Children under the Twelve Tables

The Paterfamilias's Power over Children under the Twelve Tables is the book’s example of how ancient law could authorize a father’s disposal of a child. The account identifies the rule as an explicit grant of authority when a child was born with defects, and situates it in a society where infanticide was not only commonplace but, until Christianity arrived, protected by law.

The Rule and Its Scope

The book describes the Twelve Tables as stating that the paterfamilias could rid himself of offspring born with defects. This is the specific power attributed to the rule; the surrounding account places it within a broader pattern of infant killing, rather than establishing that every reason for killing a child was written into this provision. The narrative says that until the Fourth century, infanticide was common when a family could not support a newborn, did not want to raise one, or had a daughter. These circumstances widen the historical frame around the rule: children’s survival could depend on family resources and preference, while the law’s explicit reference to birth defects makes paternal authority over vulnerable offspring especially stark.

Law, Custom, and Paternal Authority

In the account of Ancient Rome, infanticide is described as more than an unspoken or merely tolerated practice. The claim that it was protected by law underscores the position of the paterfamilias: the power to reject a child is presented as part of the recognized authority of the household head. The rule therefore appears not as an isolated legal curiosity, but as evidence of a social order in which a newborn’s claim to protection could yield to paternal decision. The book also places this history among other explanations for infanticide, including poverty and the rejection of female children. It distinguishes those wider conditions from the narrower rule attributed to the Twelve Tables, while showing how legal permission and social practice could reinforce one another.

Later Legal Contrasts

A later example in the book concerns Spain, where infanticide was treated as a distinct offense from homicide from 1822 to 1995. The provision described there concerned a mother who killed a newborn to conceal her dishonor, and it also covered maternal grandparents acting to conceal that dishonor. The contrast is not presented as a direct legal continuation of the Roman rule: it shows a different allocation of authority and a different legal rationale, centered on the mother’s circumstances rather than the father’s power over a child born with defects. Together, these examples place the Twelve Tables rule within the book’s broader examination of how legal systems have defined responsibility for killing children. The Roman example foregrounds paternal power; the later Spanish provision foregrounds the mother’s shame and the circumstances of childbirth. Their juxtaposition makes clear that infanticide has been shaped not only by the fact of a child’s death, but by whose act the law recognizes and what social conditions it chooses to treat as relevant.