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Childhood and education

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Roman girls playing a game

Childhood and upbringing in ancient Rome was characterized by numerous factors. Social status and gender were two particular distinctions; however many parallels can be drawn to today’s egalitarian societal norms. Roman children played a number of games, and their toys are known from archaeology and literary sources. Animals had a significant influence in Roman childhood. Pets had an increasing presence in the Roman household, and even toys and games often took form as animal figures.[1] Girls are depicted in Roman art as playing many of the same games as boys, such as ball, hoop-rolling, and knucklebones. Dolls are sometimes found in the tombs of those who died before adulthood. The figures are typically 15–16 cm tall (about half the height of a Barbie doll), with jointed limbs, and made of materials such as wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Girls coming of age dedicated their dolls to Diana, the goddess most concerned with girlhood, or to Venus when they were preparing for marriage,[2] which was often as young as 12 for noble girls,[3] and slightly further into their teenage years for girls of the lower classes.[4] To accompany data from the Western part of the Roman Empire, Egyptian census records provided by tombstones from the first and second century suggest that many young girls married for the first time in their late teens. However written literary texts by members of the Roman elite suggest that girls in aristocratic circles married earlier than this mean age- more in their early to mid-teens, for example Cicero's lifelong friend, Atticus, arranged the marriage of his daughter, Caecilia Attica, to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, at the age of 14.[5]

The pressure to marry took high precedence in Roman society. The light regulation of marriage by the law with regards to minimum age (12) and consent to marriage was designed to leave families, primarily fathers, with much freedom to propel girls into marriage whenever and with whomever they saw fit. Marriage facilitated a partnership between the father and prospective husbands, and enabled the formation of a mutually beneficial alliance with both political and economic incentives at heart.[6] The social regime, geared towards early marriage and implemented through the educational system and the upbringing of children, was restrictive, particularly for girls. Girls were taught predominately about the norms of feminine behavior, and how to become a modest, ideal wife.[7] Some, perhaps many, girls went to a public primary school, however there is some evidence to suggest that girls’ education was limited to this elementary school level. It has been inferred that individual school tutoring of girls at home was led by concerns about threats to girls’ modesty in coeducational classrooms.[8] Ovid and Martial imply that boys and girls were educated either together or similarly, and Livy takes it for granted that the daughter of a centurion would be in school.[9] However many other historians and philosophers, such as Epictetus, suggest that the educational system, particularly rhetorical training, was preoccupied with the development of masculine virtue; with male teenagers performing school exercises in public speaking about Roman values.[10]

Bronze statuette of the 1st century depicting a girl reading

However, the quality of education was largely separated by social class distinctions. Children of both genders learned to behave socially by attending dinner parties or other, less elitist events. Both genders participated in religious festivals, and at such festivals, both genders sang formal compositions in choirs, for instance, at the Secular Games in 17 BCE.[11] Children were made into virtuous adults through scholastic means, with curriculum, language, literature, and philosophy teaching moral precepts. The ideal young Roman female took care of her appearance, modesty and decorum which would leave her beauty uncorrupted.[12] Children of the elite were taught Greek as well as Latin from an early age.[13] Among the upper classes, women seem to have been well-educated, some highly so, and were sometimes praised by the male historians for their learning and cultivation.[14] Some women became socially prominent, and even relatively independent.[15] Cornelia Metella, the young wife of Pompey the Great at the time of his death, was distinguished for her musicianship and her knowledge of geometry, literature, and philosophy.[16] This degree of learning indicates formal preparation, however among the lower classes education was limited and strongly geared towards the course of marriage, and performing the tasks of the female within the household.[17] Elite families poured money into their daughters literary and virtue training to equip them with skills that would appeal to prospective husbands. Epictetus suggests that, at the age of 14, girls were considered to be on the brink of womanhood, and beginning to understand the inevitability of their future role as wives. They learned modesty trough explicit instruction and upbringing.[18]

The lives of boys and girls began to diverge dramatically after they formally came of age,[19] and memorials to women recognize their domestic qualities far more often than intellectual achievements.[20] The skills a Roman matron needed to run a household required training, and mothers probably passed on their knowledge to their daughters in a manner appropriate to their station in life, given the emphasis in Roman society on traditionalism.[21] Virginity and sexual purity was a culturally valued quality, and considered vital for the stability of both family and state. The rape of an unmarried girl posed a threat to her reputation and marriageability, and the penalty of death was sometimes imposed on the unchaste daughter.[22] The Emperor Augustus introduced marriage legislation, the Lex Papia Poppaea, which rewarded marriage and childbearing. The legislation also imposed penalties on young persons who failed to marry and on those who committed adultery. Therefore, marriage and childbearing was made law between the ages of twenty-five and sixty for men, and twenty and fifty for women.[23]

  1. ^ Beryl Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 129-130.
  2. ^ Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 128, citing Persius 2.70 and the related scholion, and p. 48 on Diana. Rome lacked the elaborate puberty rites for girls that were practiced in ancient Greece (p. 145).
  3. ^ Beryl Rawson, "The Roman Family in Italy" (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 21.
  4. ^ Judith P. Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton University rgin rgin Press, 1984), 142.
  5. ^ Lauren, Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity" (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 3-4.
  6. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", pp. 106-107.
  7. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 16.
  8. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 18.
  9. ^ Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, pp. 197-198
  10. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 17.
  11. ^ Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 198.
  12. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 17.
  13. ^ Janine Assa, The Great Roman Ladies (New York, 1960), p. 50.
  14. ^ Beryl Rawson, "The Roman Family," in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 30, 40–41.
  15. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 2.
  16. ^ Plutarch, Life of Pompey 55 LacusCurtius edition.
  17. ^ Sandra R. Joshel, Sheila Murnaghan, "Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture" (Routledge; New edition 2001), p. 86.
  18. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", pp. 15-16.
  19. ^ Rawson, "The Roman Family," p. 40.
  20. ^ Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 45.
  21. ^ Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 197.
  22. ^ Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", pp. 11, 45-46.
  23. ^ Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola, Noel Lenski, Richard J. A. Talbert, "A Brief History of The Romans" (Oxford University Press; 2 edition, 2013), p. 176.
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