“If she bears offspring, and it is a male let it be; if a female, expose it.” (a private letter from Egypt - P.Oxy.4.744) If by chance your child should prove to be a girl… let her be killed” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.679) “Some of them do the deed with their own hands; with monstrous cruelty and barbarity they stifle and throttle the first breath which the infants draw or throw them into a river or into depths of the sea, after attaching some heavy substance to make them sink more quickly under its weight. Others take them to be exposed in some desert place, hoping, they themselves say, that they may be saved, but leaving them in actual truth to suffer the most distressing fate. For all the beasts that feed on human flesh visit the spot and feast unhindered on the infants; a fine banquet.” (Philo Special Laws )

“Do not abort a foetus or kill a child that is born… For they love what is vain and pursue a reward, showing no mercy to the poor nor toiling for the oppressed nor knowing the one who made them; murderers of children and corruptors of what God has fashioned. (Didache 2,2; 5.2; Ep. Barnabus 19.5; 20.2 – 2 nd century)

Universal Law in Sibylline Oracles: The Immortal in starry heaven will put into effect a common law for the people: Avoid unlawful cults; worship the Living One. Beware of adultery and homosexual intercourse Raise your offspring and do not kill it. For the Immortal will be furious at anyone who commits these sins. (Sib. Or. III: translated by Buitenwerf)

The Apostolic Decree Keep away from:● Idol offerings ● Sexual immorality ● Strangled things ● Blood

The Apostolic Decree Keep away from:● Idol offerings ● Sexual immorality ● Strangled things ● Blood

The Apostolic Decree Keep away from:● Idol offerings ● Sexual immorality ● Strangled things ● Blood Three Jewish 'mortal' sins Do not commit● Idolatry ● Sexual immorality ● Bloodshed

The Apostolic Decree Keep away from:● Idol offerings ● Sexual immorality ● Strangled things ● Blood Three Jewish 'mortal' sins Do not commit● Idolatry ● Sexual immorality ● Bloodshed and especially ● [a fourth sin]

Steam Engine and self-emptying siphon invented in 1st C BC by by Heron of Alexandria

Smothered meats, in Greek literature: “Baked in another mansion of its mother, Which holds within its net the tender milk-fed offspring of new-born flocks untimely smothered” “And chief of all, not to be missed, a lightly boiled young smothered kid was served up.” “Some tender limbs of smothered goats, set round with herbs, a young and tender meat.”

The Apostolic Decree Keep away from:● Idol offerings ● Sexual immorality ● [eating or shedding] Blood and especially● Smothering [ie suckling pig] or ● Smothering [ie killing babies]