Coming of age in ancient times
Childhood was, until recently, considered a rather new concept. In his groundbreaking 1962 book Centuries of Childhood, the sociologist Philippe Aries argued that kids were generally treated as tiny adults until the Victorians introduced the idea of childhood innocence and of shielding little ones from the struggles and unpleasantness of the grownup world.
But a new exhibit "definitely helps disprove" that theory, says Jenifer Neils, classics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and cocurator of Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood From the Classical Past, which opened last week at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York. The exhibition explores what it was like to be a child between 500 B.C. and A.D. 1.
Indeed, Greek youngsters played with clay baby dolls and baby rattles in the shape of pigs. Parents commissioned tombstones and works of pottery lovingly commemorating dead children playing with their favorite pets.
The exhibition touts itself as the first to examine the lives of children and the attitudes about childhood in ancient Greece. People may be surprised how naturalistically the Greeks represented their little ones--complete with big heads and pudgy bodies, says Neils. "You can see them making baby gestures, reaching for their mothers," she adds. One of her favorite pieces is a cup showing a baby with arms outstretched in a highchair, which likely doubled as a potty. "It's almost like a little peephole, a view into a secluded home life," says Neils. "It shows what a mother treasures--her relationship with her baby."
At play. Games, too, were a big part of life in ancient Greece. Kids particularly loved knucklebones, made from the ankles of sheep and goats. They would roll these bone bits like dice and carry them around everywhere in pouches. "They're all over the place," says John H. Oakley, the exhibit's cocurator and chair of the classics department at the College of William and Mary. There are also images of children pretending to play chariot, using little carts propelled by goats rather than horses. "Instead of the go-cart, it was the goat-cart," says Neils. Girls were encouraged to learn how to juggle, to hone their dexterity.
Certainly, childhood wasn't all fun and games. One piece of pottery depicts a slave girl laboring to lift a heavy load, while her mistress guzzles a glass of wine. Another shows a naked girl being taught to dance for male drinking parties, with her teacher tapping time on a staff (also used to swat those who hadn't practiced their steps).
There were celebrated rites of passage, too. At the age of 3, children received a tiny ceremonial jug, from which they sipped their first taste of wine. Older adolescents carried their toys to the local temple and consecrated them to the gods, signifying the official end of their childhood. Not all youngsters, however, lived long enough to participate in that particular ceremony. Indeed, some of the most tender tributes, says Oakley, are found on the gravestones, where parents commemorate their lost children. The gravestone of a girl named Melisto shows a youngster clutching her doll in one hand and her pet bird in the other. Melisto's parents want to "remember her as a happy, cheerful person, just as we would want to remember a child we lost. I sort of feel that connection across centuries," Oakley says. "There's obvious delight in her eyes. When you look at that, how can you have any doubt that [ancient Greeks] loved and understood their children?" Now a new generation will be able to understand them as well.
This story appears in the February 2, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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