CHILDHOOD IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

CHILDREN; CHILDREN'S accidents; BREASTFEEDING; SOCIAL status; CHILD labor; SOCIAL history

The article considers how children were seen in ancient Rome and looks at some of the harsher aspects of childhood such as sickness, violence and endless work. Children are recorded on funerary monuments of the imperial age as having died in fires, in earthquakes, by drowning, by being run over by a vehicle or killed by a horse, by falling into wells or from windows or from their fathers' shoulders. The age range of recorded accidental deaths is from two to thirteen. One fact that supposedly supports the Romans' indifference to emotional pain with regard to children is the practice of exposure of unwanted newborns. Many Roman women avoided breastfeeding if they could, because it was believed to advance the ageing process and also slowed down a woman's ability to have additional children. The status of children was reflected in the way they were dressed in public. Matters were different for the heirs of the emperors. These tended to leave their childhoods behind at an unusually early age. For the children born or traded into slavery, work was an inevitable part of life.