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Stobaeus has a quotation (Eclogues 75):  “The poor man raises his sons, but the daughters, if one is poor, we expose.”  The weak or deformed child had every chance of being thrown out.  Seneca (On Anger, 1.15.2) writes:  “Mad dogs we knock on the head; the fierce and savage ox we slay; sickly sheep we put to the knife to keep them from infecting the flock; unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown our children who at birth are weakly and abnormal.  It is not anger but reason that separates the harmful from the sound.  Tacitus notes it as unusual that neither the German tribes nor the Jews expose their children (Germania 19; Historiae 5.5).

The Ten Commandments for Today, William Barclay, page 63