Integrating social and cultural history with archaeological evidence and material culture, this first comprehensive study of infancy and earliest childhood encompasses the whole Roman Empire and explores the particular historical circumstances into which children were born and the role and significance of the youngest within the family and society.
Despite the developing emphasis in current scholarship on children in Roman culture, there has been relatively little research to date on the role and significance of the youngest children within the family and in society. This volume singles out this youngest age group, the under one-year-olds, in the first comprehensive study of infancy and earliest childhood to encompass the Roman Empire as a whole: integrating social and cultural history with archaeological evidence, funerary remains, material culture, and the iconography of infancy, it explores how the very particular historical circumstances into which Roman children were born affected their lives as well as prevailing attitudes towards them. Examination of these varied strands of evidence, drawn from throughout the Roman world from the fourth century BC to the third century AD, allows the rhetoric about earliest childhood in Roman texts to be more broadly contextualized and reveals the socio-cultural developments that took place in parent-child relationships over this period. Presenting a fresh perspective on archaeological and historical debates, the volume refutes the notion that high infant mortality conditioned Roman parents not to engage in the early life of their children or to view them, or their deaths, with indifference, and concludes that even within the first weeks and months of life Roman children were invested with social and gendered identities and were perceived as having both personhood and value within society.
A Mother's Mission When her baby is stolen out of her arms, noblewoman Annia will do anything to find her--even brave the treacherous back alleys of Rome to search for her. Desperate to be reunited with her daughter, Annia finds herself up against a fierce Roman soldier who insists her baby is safe. Dare she trust him? Rugged war hero Marcus Sergius rescues abandoned babies for his mother's villa orphanage. When he witnesses Annia's courageous fight for her child, he remembers that some things are worth fighting for. Helping Annia means giving up his future...unless love is truly possible for a battle-hardened Roman legionary.
The past thirty years have seen an explosion of interest in Greek and Roman social history, particularly studies of women and the family. Until recently these studies did not focus especially on children and childhood, but considered children in the larger context of family continuity and inter-family relationships, or legal issues like legitimacy, adoption and inheritance. Recent publications have examined a variety of aspects related to childhood in ancient Greece and Rome, but until now nothing has attempted to comprehensively survey the state of ancient childhood studies. This handbook does just that, showcasing the work of both established and rising scholars and demonstrating the variety of approaches to the study of childhood in the classical world. In thirty chapters, with a detailed introduction and envoi, The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World presents current research in a wide range of topics on ancient childhood, including sub-disciplines of Classics that rarely appear in collections on the family or childhood such as archaeology and ancient medicine. Contributors include some of the foremost experts in the field as well as younger, up-and-coming scholars. Unlike most edited volumes on childhood or the family in antiquity, this collection also gives attention to the late antique period and whether (or how) conceptions of childhood and the life of children changed with Christianity. The chronological spread runs from archaic Greece to the later Roman Empire (fifth century C.E.). Geographical areas covered include not only classical Greece and Roman Italy, but also the eastern Mediterranean. The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World engages with perennially valuable questions about family and education in the ancient world while providing a much-needed touchstone for research in the field.
This collection employs a multi-disciplinary approach treating ancient childhood in a holistic manner according to diachronic, regional and thematic perspectives. This multi-disciplinary approach encompasses classical studies, Egyptology, ancient history and the broad spectrum of archaeology, including iconography and bioarchaeology. With a chronological range of the Bronze Age to Byzantium and regional coverage of Egypt, Greece, and Italy this is the largest survey of childhood yet undertaken for the ancient world. Within this chronological and regional framework both the social construction of childhood and the child’s life experience are explored through the key topics of the definition of childhood, daily life, religion and ritual, death, and the information provided by bioarchaeology. No other volume to date provides such a comprehensive, systematic and cross-cultural study of childhood in the ancient Mediterranean world. In particular, its focus on the identification of society-specific definitions of childhood and the incorporation of the bioarchaeological perspective makes this work a unique and innovative study. Children in Antiquity provides an invaluable and unrivalled resource for anyone working on all aspects of the lives and deaths of children in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World explores what it meant to be a child in the Roman world - what were children’s concerns, interests and beliefs - and whether we can find traces of children’s own cultures. By combining different theoretical approaches and source materials, the contributors explore the environments in which children lived, their experience of everyday life, and what the limits were for their agency. The volume brings together scholars of archaeology and material culture, classicists, ancient historians, theologians, and scholars of early Christianity and Judaism, all of whom have long been involved in the study of the social and cultural history of children. The topics discussed include children's living environments; clothing; childhood care; social relations; leisure and play; health and disability; upbringing and schooling; and children's experiences of death. While the main focus of the volume is on Late Antiquity its coverage begins with the early Roman Empire, and extends to the early ninth century CE. The result is the first book-length scrutiny of the agency and experience of pre-modern children.
A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds draws from both established and current scholarship to offer a broad overview of the field, engage in contemporary debates, and pose stimulating questions about future development in the study of families. Provides up-to-date research on family structure from archaeology, art, social, cultural, and economic history Includes contributions from established and rising international scholars Features illustrations of families, children, slaves, and ritual life, along with maps and diagrams of sites and dwellings Honorable Mention for 2011 Single Volume Reference/Humanities & Social Sciences PROSE award granted by the Association of American Publishers
Inquiring into childhood is one of the most appropriate ways to address the perennial and essential question of what it is that makes human beings – each of us – human. In Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Aasgaard, Horn, and Cojocaru bring together the groundbreaking work of nineteen leading scholars in order to advance interdisciplinary historical research into ideas about children and childhood in the premodern history of European civilization. The volume gathers rich insights from fields as varied as pedagogy and medicine, and literature and history. Drawing on a range of sources in genres that extend from philosophical, theological, and educational treatises to law, art, and poetry, from hagiography and autobiography to school lessons and sagas, these studies aim to bring together these diverse fields and source materials, and to allow the development of new conversations. This book will have fulfilled its unifying and explicit goal if it provides an impetus to further research in social and intellectual history, and if it prompts both researchers and the interested wider public to ask new questions about the experiences of children, and to listen to their voices.
Throughout history, every culture has had its own ideas on what growing up and growing old means, with variations between chronological, biological and social ageing, and with different emphases on the critical stages and transitions from birth to death. This volume is the first to highlight the role of age in determining behaviour, and expectations of behaviour, across the life span of an inhabitant of ancient Rome. Drawing on developments in the social sciences, as well as ancient evidence, the authors focus on the period c.200BC - AD200, looking at childhood, the transition to adulthood, maturity, and old age. They explore how both the individual and society were involved in, and reacted to, these different stages, in terms of gender, wealth and status, and personal choice and empowerment.
