An Oxford scholar reveals in this superbly-researched work that the ancient Greeks and Romans were aware of the power of eugenics to better their societies-but practiced it in a reactive nature instead of the proactive and humane methodologies developed 2000 years later by Francis Galton and others. This work provides numerous citations from ancient Greek and Latin texts-Aristotle, Plutarch, and others-which describe in detail eugenic methods as understood and practiced by the classical Greeks and Romans. The reactive nature of ancient eugenics was centered around infanticide, which, the author points out, was considered barbaric even then, but regarded as a necessity for a city state immersed in perennial crises and warfare. This work won Oxford University's Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize in 1913.
