[Birth control in antiquity].
Challenges of the overpopulation has been handled by two different ways by ancient Greeks: on the level of the individual and on that of the community respectively. Regarding the so-called micro-social strategies various preventive methods (getting married late, contraception, homosexuality, prostitution, zoophily and the one-child system) but also those of correctional methods were used as well: abortion, killing the new-born or selling him or her as a slave. The author, who is a well-known researcher of the polis system, gives an overview of all these methods. He focuses-by the help of contemporary texts-on the problem of putting out the child, single-child system, late marriage, contraception and abortion.
University of Debrecen, Hungary.
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G
Németh
D005193:Family Planning Services / Q000266:history*; D000076145:Greece, Ancient; D049690:History, Ancient