From Book II of Aelian’s Varia Historia, a remarkable and unusual custom of the Thebans:
This is a Theban Law most just and humane; That no Theban might expose his Child or leave it in a Wilderness, upon pain of death. But if the Father were extremely poor, whether it were male or female, the Law requires that as soon as it is born it be brought in the swadling-clouts to the Magistrate, who receiving it, delivers it to some other for some small reward, conditioning with him that he shall bring up the Child, and when it is grown up take it into his service, man or maid, and have the benefit of its labour in requital for its education.
Obviously it is not worth recording unless Thebes is the only place Aelian can recall that has such a law. Instead of killing their unwanted children, the Thebans make slaves of them, which is far more just and humane than most other people are willing to be.
Aelian lived around the year 200, when the illegal Christian cult was growing rapidly. His remarks on this unusual Theban custom illustrate Rodney Stark’s hypothesis that the Christians’ rejection of infanticide was one of the reasons the cult grew so steadily: not only did Christians not kill their own children, but they took in children “exposed” by their neighbors.