Humankind has grappled with the ethics of eugenics for millennia. The practice can be traced, famously, back to ancient Sparta, which was revered for its military prowess and position as one of the most powerful city-states in all of Greece. The philosophy of selective breeding was promoted by the philosopher Plato, who suggested in The Republic that human reproduction should be overseen and controlled by the state, which would institute a system that would pair “high-numbered” people (or people with conventionally desired or advantageous characteristics) with other high-numbered people. He believed this would lead to the improvement of the human race. The Spartans, who valued human strength required for their militias, embraced this notion. In Sparta the city elders would inspect newborn babies, deciding whether they were worthy of life or death. Often, the babies who were deemed unfit for life would be the disabled or “weaker” children who were typically left out to die, exposed to the elements. (Plutarch wrote that these infants were left at the foot of the Taygetus mountain range, whose peak was dedicated to Zeus. Other civilizations (most notably the Roman Republic) also followed a similar system, but the Spartans are the most well-known for it. Adolf Hitler considered Sparta the first “Völkisch state” and praised it for the practice of infanticide.