Carthaginian child mistreatment claims rest on biased Roman sources.
Evidence
It means that the apparent confidence with which standard ancient-history textbooks describe Carthaginian child-sacrifice as the most extreme form of pre-classical child mistreatment is built on sources that are systematically biased. It means that we cannot, in any rigorous sense, know whether Carthaginian household culture was more or less corporally severe than Roman household culture. It means that the silence is itself part of the historical record, and we have an obligation, as careful readers, to acknowledge the silence rather than to fill it with conjecture. — , The Rod and the Child, 1197
Categorization
- SEED: Essay angle on how textbook confidence in historical atrocities can be epistemically unwarranted when the sources are the conquerors.
- XREF: connects to: Surviving records bias our picture of ancient child-rearing toward literate cultures. — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 1212