The Private Life of the Romans. Harold Whetstone Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ the words cūnae and cūnābula; in Rich under cūnāria is a picture of a nurse giving a baby its bath. The place of the modern baby carriage was taken by a litter (lectīca), and a terra cotta figure has come down to us (Fig. 20) representing a child carried in such a litter by two men.

101 After the Punic wars (§5) it became customary for the well-to-do to select for the child's nurse a Greek slave, that the child might acquire the Greek language as naturally as its own. In Latin literature are many passages that testify to the affection felt for each other by nurse and child, an affection that lasted on into manhood and womanhood. It was a common thing for the young wife to take with her into her new home, as her adviser and confidant, the nurse who had watched over her in infancy. Faithfulness on the part of such slaves was also frequently repaid by manumission.

FIGURE 21. JOINTED DOLL

      102 Playthings.—But little is known of the playthings, pets, and games of Roman children, because as has been said (§93) domestic life was not a favorite theme of Roman writers and no books were then written especially for the young. Still there are scattered references in literature from which we can learn something, and more is known from monumental sources (§10). This evidence shows that playthings were numerous and of very many kinds. The crepundia have been mentioned already (§98), and these miniature tools and implements seem to have been very common. Dolls there were, too, and some of these have come down to us, though we can not always distinguish between statuettes and genuine playthings. Some were made of clay, others of wax, and even jointed arms and legs were not unknown (Fig. 21). Little wagons and carts were also common (Schreiber, LXXXII, 10), and Horace speaks of hitching mice to toys of this sort. There are numerous pictures and descriptions of children spinning tops, making them revolve by blows of a whiplash, as in Europe nowadays. Hoops also were a favorite plaything, driven with a stick and having pieces of metal fastened to them to warn people of their approach. Boys walked on stilts and played with balls (Fig. 22), too, but as men enjoyed this sport as well, it may be deferred until we reach the subject of amusements (§318).

FIGURE 22. CHILDREN PLAYING BALL

FIGURE 23. BOY AND GOOSE

103 Pets and Games.—Pets were even more common then than now, and then as now the dog was easily first in the affections of children (Schreiber, LXXXII, 6). The cat, on the other hand, was hardly known until very late in the history of Greece and Rome. Birds were very commonly made pets, and besides the doves and pigeons which are familiar to us as well, we are told that ducks, crows, and quail were pets of children. So also were geese, odd as this seems to us, and the statue of a child struggling with a goose as large as himself is well known (Fig. 23). Monkeys were known, but could not have been common. Mice have been mentioned already. Games of many kinds were played by children, but we can only guess at the nature of most of them, as we have hardly any formal descriptions. There were games corresponding to our Odd or Even, Blindman's Buff, Hide and Seek, Jackstones (§320), and Seesaw (Schreiber, LXXIX and LXXX). Pebbles and nuts were used in games something like our marbles, and there were board-games also. To these may be added for boys riding, swimming, and wrestling, although these were taken too seriously, perhaps, to be called games and belonged rather to their training for the duties of citizenship.

      104 Home Training.—The training of the children was conducted by the father and mother in person. More stress was laid upon the moral than upon the intellectual development: reverence for the gods, respect for the law, unquestioning and instant obedience to authority, truthfulness, and self-reliance were the most important lessons for the child to learn. Much of this came from the constant association of the children with their parents, which was the characteristic feature of the home training of the Romans as compared with that of other peoples of the time. The children sat at table with their elders or helped to serve the meals. Until the age of seven both boys and girls had their mother for their teacher. From her they learned to speak correctly their native tongue, and Latin rhetoricians tell us that the best Latin was spoken by the noble women of the great houses of Rome. The mother taught them the elements of reading and writing and as much of the simpler operations of arithmetic as children so young could learn.

105 From about the age of seven the boy passed under the care of regular teachers, but the girl remained her mother's constant companion. Her schooling was necessarily cut short, because the Roman girl became a wife so young (§67), and there were things to learn in the meantime that books do not teach. From her mother she learned to spin and weave and sew: even Augustus wore garments woven by his wife. By her mother she was initiated into all the mysteries of household economy and fitted to take her place as the mistress of a household of her own, to be a Roman mātrōna, the most dignified position to which a woman could aspire in the ancient world (§§90, 91).

      106 The boy, except during the hours of school, was equally his father's companion. If the father was a farmer, as all Romans were in earlier times, the boy helped in the fields and learned to plow and plant and reap. If the father was a man of high position and lived in the capital, the boy stood by him in his hall as he received his guests, learned to know their faces, names, and rank, and acquired a practical knowledge of politics and affairs of state. If the father was a senator, the boy, in the earlier days only it is true, accompanied him to the senate house to hear the debates and listen to the great orators of the time; and the son could always go with him to the forum when he was an advocate or concerned in a public trial.

      107 Then as every Roman was bred a soldier the father trained the son in the use of arms and in the various military exercises, as well as in the manly sports of riding, swimming, wrestling, and boxing. In these exercises strength and agility were kept in view, rather than the grace of movement and symmetrical development of form, on which the Greeks laid so much stress. On great occasions, too, when the cabinets in the atrium were opened and the wax busts of their ancestors displayed, the boy and girl of noble family were always present and learned the history of the family of which they were a part, and with it the history of Rome.

      108 Schools.—The actual instruction given to the children by the father would vary with his own education and at best be subject to all sorts of interruptions due to his private business or his public duties. We find that this embarrassment was appreciated in very early times, and that it was customary for a pater familiās who happened to have among his slaves one competent to give the needed instruction, to turn over to him the actual teaching of the children. It must be remembered that slaves taken in war were often much better educated than their Roman masters. Not all households, however, would include a competent teacher, and it would seem only natural for the fortunate owner of such a slave to receive into his house at fixed hours of the day the children of his friends and neighbors to be taught together with his own.

109 For this privilege he might charge a fee for his own benefit, СКАЧАТЬ