# Roman contraceptives **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [October 13, 2006, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338 "2006-10-13T18:24:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2006, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/1 "2006-10-13T18:24:52Z")
[QUOTE=Cecil] Demographic studies suggest that the Roman world should have had a population explosion due to a low disease rate, plentiful food, and relatively few civilian war deaths. [/QUOTE] I think those must have been some very bad demographers. Or ones swayed too much by the 80s hype regarding population explosions. Because it is quite clear at this point that having a low disease rate, plentiful food, and prosperity in general LOWERS birth rates. Also, you don’t need an herb or condoms to accomplish this if one is determined. Just learn to pull out when your gf’s in the dangerous part of her cycle. Anyway, I like this column. Just not this line of argument. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2006, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/2 "2006-10-13T19:48:03Z")
[QUOTE=Alex\_Dubinsky] Because it is quite clear at this point that having a low disease rate, plentiful food, and prosperity in general LOWERS birth rates. [/QUOTE] That’s the case _now_, with birth control abundant and economic prosperity no longer as closely tied to labor intensive endeavors like pre-modern agriculture. It was not necessarily the case in earlier times. Qing China for example went through an enormous population boom in the late 17th and 18th centuries owing to the overall peace and prosperity of that period compared to the disruption of the late Ming ( also a number of other dovetailing effects like the culmination of centuries of agricultural refinement ). Even if prosperity correlated with a slight drop in birthrates, which as I alluded would not necessarily be the case with the bulk of the peasant population, the increased survival rates of what children were born in those times of plenty, in a time when medical care was not a major determinant in childhood survival, would make up the difference and then some. - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2006, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/3 "2006-10-13T22:26:11Z")
A link to the column is appreciated. The one in question is this one: [Did the ancient Romans use a natural herb for birth control?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061013.html) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2006, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/4 "2006-10-14T01:17:15Z")
Isn’t the pullingout of your gf method notorioulsy unreliable? ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2006, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/5 "2006-10-14T02:17:24Z")
[QUOTE=Dr. Rieux] Isn’t the pullingout of your gf method notorioulsy unreliable? [/QUOTE] I think they have a word for couples that practice pulling it out as contraception. It is parents. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/6 "2006-10-14T03:45:43Z")
> [@](#): > > A long list of herbs must be avoided during pregnancy because they’re abortifacients, causing contractions or damage to the lining of the uterus. \*\*If taken as ancient writers claimed, silphium might have worked as a monthly morning-after pill. \*\* I think that this is at best poorly phrased, and at worst shows an inaccurate view of how the current Morning After Pill (Plan B) works. **The morning after pill is _not_ an abortifacient. It prevents ovulation, it does not interfere with an existing pregnancy.** The MAP works by 1) Preventing ovulation 2) Making the egg’s cell walls less permeable, lessening the chance of conception and 3) should an egg be fertilized, preventing the egg from implanting in the uterine lining. Medically, a pregnancy occurs when the fertilized egg (blastocyst) implants in the uterine lining. Until there is implantation, \*\*there is no pregnancy \*\* to be aborted. Once the blastocyst implants and a pregnancy results, the MAP does nothing. If you’re already pregnant, the pregnancy will not be disrupted or aborted. The article is talking about early abortifaecients, which are an entirely different kettle of fish. I realize that the difference may seem minor, but it is the incorrect perception of Plan B as an abortifaecient that has caused so many problems for it. Link: FDA Q&A on Plan B: ```auto http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/planB/planBQandA.htm ``` ---
**Author:** ![pendgwen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3da27b/32.png) [@pendgwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pendgwen)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2006, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/7 "2006-10-14T03:50:27Z")
[QUOTE=Alex\_Dubinsky] Also, you don’t need an herb or condoms to accomplish this if one is determined. Just learn to pull out when your gf’s in the dangerous part of her cycle. [/QUOTE] And how were ancient Roman’s supposed to know when that was? Run down to the corner drugstore and pick up an ovulation kit? Besides, as others have pointed out, that’s not what I’d call a reliable method of contraception. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2006, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/8 "2006-10-14T04:38:54Z")
[QUOTE=pendgwen] And how were ancient Roman’s supposed to know when that was? Run down to the corner drugstore and pick up an ovulation kit? Besides, as others have pointed out, that’s not what I’d call a reliable method of contraception. [/QUOTE] Pulling out is a lousy form of contraception, but for most women it’s not hard to tell when you’re fertile, if you just learn how to notice. Your cervix will be down lower than normal, open and soft to the touch. You’ll be excreting stretchy, almost rubber cementy cervical fluid you notice when you wipe after urinating, and your waking temperature will be noticably different. This last one might not have been a useful fertility sign for women before digital thermometers, but the other signs are, and are a good start for knowing when to avoid intercourse for those few days. Sorry for the hijack, but I think it’s appalling that girls aren’t taught this along with how to use a condom and where to buy tampons. It’s just the easiest and most obvious thing everyone should learn about how her body works. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/9 "2006-10-14T17:25:34Z")
I think in the short term, you’d certainly get a bump in birth rates from plentiful food. In the long term, however, I believe human behaviour and attitudes change. It is programmed in by evolution to succumb to game theory and breed like rabbits when food must be fought for, but to calm down and not screw over the next generation when you have a succession of sustaining years. If you grow too fast but then prosperity comes down to ordinary levels, you’ll overshoot carrying capacity and get a downward bounce in population that’ll bring the numbers lower than when the whole thing started. Of course you may ask “how does that fit in the picture of the individual’s goal of passing on his genes?” It doesn’t. But neither does altruism to strangers, guilt, and that preposterous self-imposed handicap on lying. Or nervousness. Self-sacraficial body language. Virtually ever single one of our, and of any animal’s, social instincts. Evolution doesn’t just work on the level of the a guy passing on his genes. It works on larger scales, since the social group and tribe is the real survival/progenator unit. This way it creates instincts which sacrafice the needs and interests of the individual for the sake of the group, and also sacrafices the whims of a single generation to bolster the long-term survivability of the tribe. Perhaps pulling out doesn’t work. I don’t practice that technique and can’t speak for the amount of will it takes to comit to it (however, it does come down to will and there’s no such thing of, “oops i didn’t realize that was gonna happen”). However, there ARE things that people can do to reduce birthrates. The instincts of which I speak will weave their way into people’s minds subtly. They’ll affect the sense of duty and obligation you feel to abstain/pull out during fertility (same as they affect the sense of obligation you feel to wear a condom), and they _might_ reduce the frequency of intercourse or the age at which it happens. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/10 "2006-10-14T17:45:37Z")
[QUOTE=Oni no Maggi] Medically, a pregnancy occurs when the fertilized egg (blastocyst) implants in the uterine lining. Until there is implantation, there is no pregnancy to be aborted. [Therefore, the morning after pill does not cause abortions.] [/QUOTE] God, do arguments from definitions piss me off. Do you know how utterly ridiculous you’re being? You are allowed to argue For your definition. You are not allowed to assume it to be true, or expect that from everyong else. Definitions are always arbirtrary lines drawn on paper. Especially this one. Anyway, this isn’t about abortions. But damn is that a dumb argument. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2006, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/11 "2006-10-16T02:34:49Z")
[QUOTE=Alex\_Dubinsky] God, do arguments from definitions piss me off. Do you know how utterly ridiculous you’re being? You are allowed to argue For your definition. You are not allowed to assume it to be true, or expect that from everyong else. Definitions are always arbirtrary lines drawn on paper. Especially this one. Anyway, this isn’t about abortions. But damn is that a dumb argument. [/QUOTE] Or, to phrase it more artfully, that line of reasoning doesn’t negate the assertion that life begins at conception, therefore ending the viability of a mated egg and sperm, whether they have caused “pregnancy” or not, may be an immoral act, depending upon your viewpoint regarding “life” and conception. ---
**Author:** ![drasaid1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71e660/32.png) [@drasaid1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drasaid1)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2006, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/12 "2006-10-20T02:39:09Z")
The ancient Romans practiced an interesting if unethical form of population control; infanticide. If a child was unwanted for whatever reason (especially by the Pater Familas) it could be exposed. It might luck out and get rescued by slavers (!) or if it was very lucky by adoptive parents. The ancient Greeks did this as well. The Carthagians sacrificed spare babies to Baal and Tanit. This is practiced in Asia today (especially on baby girls.) Yes, it is awful, but I think that was the most prevelent form of population control (not, of course, birth control.) ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2006, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/13 "2006-10-20T04:24:28Z")
Any cite foir either of these assertions? ---
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2006, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/14 "2006-10-20T10:15:00Z")
[Here](http://forerunner.com/champion/nothing_new.html) is a site which describes child sacrifice as practised by the Carthaginians. In passing, it also mentions the Romans, as do plenty of other sites. Note that such sacrifices were made to appease Molech and Ashteroth rather than Baal and Tanit: > [@](#): > > As Carthaginians succumbed deeper into this form of worship their self-abasement grew, along with the population, and thus, babies were plentiful. One could surmise that the gods rewarded their worship. This worship, however, gradually turned to child sacrificing, especially when times were tough, in order to appease the gods Molech and Ashteroth, the darker and more sinister gods - who demanded human sacrifice in order to grant the community “health and well being.” It started with sacrificing the firstborn, but it appears that the gods grew greedier and greedier. Eventually, and as times got tougher, i.e. during famines and disasters, they practiced massive annual sacrifices of thousands of babies and children, in order to invoke greater blessings and prosperity. It is believed that this civilization became quite sophisticated, under the caste system, and the noble class sometimes practiced substitution for their firstborns through the “ladies of the sanctuary,” or temple prostitution in order to fulfill their mandatory quotas of children for the gods. > > When a mother, willingly or not, released her infant onto the down-stretched arms of Moloch’s bronze statue, the baby consequently rolled off the arms and fell headlong onto a fire-y brazier pit. Burial monuments found in Carthage and other places were inscribed with the Tanit symbol, in honor of the Phoenician goddess. > > The Carthaginians were hated, and perhaps envied by other contemporary cultures for their practice of child sacrifice, and respectively their riches. Chief among their enemy was the Romans. Ironically, Rome conquered Carthage, yet the Romans later practiced infanticide themselves as well as other tortures for sport, like killing Christians. [Here](http://www.historywiz.com/didyouknow/spartanfamily.htm) is a piece which briefly describes the fate of some Spartan children: > [@](#): > > When a Spartan baby was born, soldiers came to the house and examined it carefully to determine its strength.The baby was bathed in wine rather than water, to see its reaction. If a baby was weak, the Spartans exposed it on the hillside or took it away to become a slave (helot). Infanticide was common in ancient cultures, but the Spartans were particularly picky about their children. [Other Greek city-states](http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html) also practised the disposal of children: > [@](#): > > In many cultures, government permitted, if not encouraged, the killing of handicapped or female infants or otherwise unwanted children. In the Greece of 200 B.C., for example, the murder of female infants was so common that among 6,000 families living in Delphi no more than 1 percent had two daughters. Among 79 families, nearly as many had one child as two. Among all there were only 28 daughters to 118 sons. The same piece continues: > [@](#): > > In eighty-four societies spanning the Renaissance to our time, “defective” children have been killed in one-third of them. In India, for example, because of Hindu beliefs and the rigid caste system, young girls were murdered as a matter of course. When demographic statistics were first collected in the nineteenth century, it was discovered that in “some villages, no girl babies were found at all; in a total of thirty others, there were 343 boys to 54 girls. … \*n Bombay, the number of girls alive in 1834 was 603.” It further comments that: > [@](#): > > As John-Thor Dahlburg points out, “in rural India, the centuries-old practice of female infanticide can still be considered a wise course of action.” (Dahlburg, “Where killing baby girls ‘is no big sin’,” The Los Angeles Times [in The Toronto Star, February 28, 1994.]) According to census statistics, “From 972 females for every 1,000 males in 1901 … the gender imbalance has tilted to 929 females per 1,000 males. … In the nearly 300 poor hamlets of the Usilampatti area of Tamil Nadu [state], as many as 196 girls died under suspicious circumstances [in 1993] … Some were fed dry, unhulled rice that punctured their windpipes, or were made to swallow poisonous powdered fertilizer. Others were smothered with a wet towel, strangled or allowed to starve to death.” ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2006, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/15 "2006-10-20T12:48:11Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] Pulling out is a lousy form of contraception… [/QUOTE] I assumed this was true also, until I did a little research and found [this study](http://www.contraceptivetechnology.com/table.html), that shows that withdrawal, assuming it is practiced perfectly (always with drawing), is more effective (5% failure rate) than a diaphragm (6% failure rate), and considerably more effective than no birth control (85% failure rate) ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2006, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/16 "2006-10-20T18:19:16Z")
Wow… I wonder what kind of implications all that infanticide would have for evolution. On the one hand you have selection at the point of birth (which may not be that effective since babies are hard to judge), on the other you have selection at the point of marriage (much more effective). ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-contraceptives/376338/17 "2006-10-23T21:08:16Z")
[QUOTE=Fear Itself] [this study](http://www.contraceptivetechnology.com/table.html), that shows that withdrawal, assuming it is practiced perfectly (always with drawing), is more effective … [/QUOTE] Which drawing should I use? Page 37 from _The Joy of Sex_ ? 😉