Would the ancient Greeks have agreed that children are born evil?

The ‘social mobility tsar’ Katharine Birbalsingh has suggested that children, born evil, ‘need to be taught right from wrong and then habituated into choosing good over evil’. The Twitter mob is equally certain that all children are born ‘good’, and it is their environment that spoils them. Ancient Greeks, ignorant of St Augustine, did not think that this was a simple either/or question but that moral capacity was determined in many different ways, depending on e.g. age, sex, status, intelligence, chance, fate (etc.) — and nature.

Greeks thought the gods had little to say about the question, since myth did not suggest they were our moral superiors, though that did not stop gods intervening in a man’s life if they so chose. Best therefore to acknowledge them with offerings. What Greeks did find fascinating was that man-made laws and customs must have originated at some time in the past and wondering how customs/laws/usages/conventions (nomos) related to the all-powerful world of nature (phusis).