Youth in the Roman Empire

Abstract

Modern society has a negative view of youth as a period of storm and stress, but at the same time cherishes the idea of eternal youth. How does this compare with ancient Roman society? Did a phase of youth exist there with its own characteristics? How was youth appreciated? This book studies the lives and the image of youngsters (around 15–25 years of age) in the Latin West and the Greek East in the Roman period. Boys and girls of all social classes come to the fore; their lives, public and private, are sketched with the help of a range of textual and documentary sources, while the authors also employ the results of recent neuropsychological research. The result is a highly readable and wide-ranging account of how the crucial transition between childhood and adulthood operated in the Roman world.

Children and Family in Late Antique Egyptian Monasticism

“…Infants typically are three or younger, with childhood ending at twelve for free girls and fourteen for free boys, and "youth" continuing into the late teens or early twenties for men. 15 For free girls, the end of childhood corresponded to the minimum legal age of marriage (twelve) and the expected age of menarche. 16 Yet typically only elite women married at twelve; women from lower classes married later.…”

“…Technically, adulthood for free males involved legal rights; however, such maturity often did not fully begin until seventeen years of age or even twenty or twenty-five (the legal age of majority in the Empire and the typical age at which free, propertied men could hold office). 18 The concept of youth or adolescence applied to free males who had reached puberty but not full adulthood. These classifications reflect late antique understandings of biology as well as legal and social concerns.…”

“…One question, for example, was whether males under twenty-five could be responsible for making wise financial decisions. 19 For free and primarily elite men in the early Western Empire, the transition out of childhood was marked with a ceremonial donning of an adult toga. The ritual seems to have continued even into late antiquity.…”

“…The ritual seems to have continued even into late antiquity. 20 In Egypt, we have some evidence for a festival celebrating "cutting the hair lock" (a traditional boy's hairstyle). 21 Typically, enslaved and free boys and girls began apprenticeships at twelve to fourteen years of age, another indication of the significance of this age as a period of transition.…”

“…21 Typically, enslaved and free boys and girls began apprenticeships at twelve to fourteen years of age, another indication of the significance of this age as a period of transition. 22 In Egypt, boys were considered of age and paid the poll tax beginning at fourteen. 23 Nonetheless, "youth" in adolescence and the early twenties, even for males, did not automatically confer all the privileges of adulthood; a young man could be appointed a curator to make financial and legal decisions for him, rendering boys minors up to the age of twenty-five.…”