De la nourrice à la dame de compagnie: le cas de latrophosen Grèce antique

Abstract

The nurse already appears in the Odyssey as a key character in Greek family life, showing all the characteristics that will remain hers throughout Greek Antiquity: she is a slave and has been working in her master's house before the child's birth; she has been chosen specially for the task of nursing and rearing the newborn, as she attends the delivery and is the first one to take the baby in her arms; later on, she takes care of the general education of the child and follows her "protégé" in his/her adult life; sometimes, she carries out the same tasks for her protégé's children. While recent research has often focused on her servile status, basing its arguments mostly on literature, this paper is based on iconography. The Greek nurse has the peculiarity of being very often represented as an old woman, even in the company of small children. The analysis of the context of representations of the trophos and of their chronological evolution allows us to reach a conclusion about this peculiar feature that goes beyond a realistic interpretation or a simple "caricature". The old age shown by the Greek trophos, and the Greek paidagogos also, is a means to express the ideal of personal renunciation that is expected of them: it seems that the Greek trophos was not so much attached to her functions of nursing and educating as to the child itself, acting as a kind of protective daimon for it.