Fertility control in ancient Rome

Abstract

This paper surveys and evaluates the range of methods recommended mostly to promote but also to prevent pregnancy in ancient Rome, and then discusses the practices of adult adoption and infant exposure in more detail in order to interrogate the notion of ‘fertility control’ from an ancient historical perspective. Is this formulation sufficiently flexible to encompass Roman procreative projects and the resources they were able to bring to bear on them? Were the methods deployed sufficiently effective to qualify as ‘control’, and was it ‘fertility’ that was being acted on through adoption and exposure? This essay answers these questions positively and argues that the Roman case has plenty to offer wider debates about the history of reproduction as it includes the desires to have and not to have children, to limit and increase offspring, to shape families in different ways.