Supposititious children

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Supposititious children are fraudulent offspring. These arose when an heir was required and so a suitable baby might be procured and passed off as genuine.

This was a common concern in the classical period as there were dealers in supposititious children who would provide them for a fee. Laws were passed to counter this and those found to be illegitimate might be sold into slavery.[1]

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.