The ancient Roman Empire practiced "infanticide", the killing of newborn babies for any cause deemed appropriate.
Why are mass burial graves of little babies shocking to archeologist when this practice was common in the ancient Roman Empire? Newborns who displayed birth defects were taken by parents, or local authorities to a city dump, placed on top of the trash. Other methods were to leave your unwanted child outside the gates, to become food for birds or wild beast. The lucky children, if we can say that, would end up in the hands of slave traders that picked through the best which might make good prostitutes. Birth defects or another female (a son was valued highly) lot in life was not promising, early church fathers tried their best to take in as many "dumped babies" as they could affford.
Plutarch noted that parents in Carthage, had no problem with infanticide they "offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs of young birds; meanwhile the mothers stood by without a tear or moan." Moralia 2.17.
"How and why the bones of nearly 100 infants were deposited in a late Roman-early Byzantine sewer beneath a bathhouse at Ashkelon, on the southern coast of Israel, continue to baffle scholars. An initial examination of the remains by Patricia Smith and Gila Kahila of the Hebrew University revealed that most of the bones, discovered in 1988, were intact and that all parts of the skeletons were represented, suggesting that the infants had probably been thrown into the drain soon after death. All of the bones and teeth (unerupted) are comparable to those of newborn infants. The absence of neonatal lines--prominent marks in the enamel of deciduous teeth and first permanent molars, which are considered evidence of survival for more than three days--indicates the babies died shortly after birth."
100 baby remains found in a ancient sewer: http://www.archaeology.org/9703/newsbriefs/ashkelon.html
Contrast the Romans with early christians who were accused of being cannibals, atheists, baby blood drinkers, harlots, witches. One example of the irrationality of the mob of Rome, comes from early writer Minucius Felix, a previous prosecutor, who converts to Christ.
"AND NOW I WANT to turn to the person who asserts or believes that we are initiated by the murder and the blood of a little child. Can you think it possible that such a tender, tiny body should be gashed with mortal wounds, that anyone alive would slaughter a little baby hardly come into being, to spill, drain, and drink its innocent blood? Nobody can believe such a thing unless he is capable of doing it himself. But I do see people among you at times expose newly born children to wild beasts and birds you at other times put them to death by strangling or by other horrible means. Some women by taking drugs, thus committing infanticide before they are delivered.
For us it is not permissible even to see or to hear of murder. Yes, we shrink so much from human blood that we do not even use the blood of animals in the food we eat."
Minucius Felix, Octavius 30.1, 2, 6; 31.1, 5.
"Among US you can find uneducated people, artisans, and dear old mothers who would not be able to put into words the usefulness of their teachings, but by their deeds they demonstrate the usefulness of their principles. They do not repeat words learned by heart, but they show good deeds: when hit they do not hit back, when robbed they do not go to court, they give to those who ask, and they love their fellowmen as themselves."
Athenagoras, "A Plea Regarding Christians 11.
The Christian view of infanticide, even babies born from slaves (unwanted slave babies had no rights) lingers to our day.