[Birth control in antiquity].

Abstract

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.