CHILDREN

When a child was born, it was placed on the floor in front of the father. If it was a male and he wanted to acknowledge it as his son, he picked it up. This action meant that he agreed to accept it as his own son and to raise it. If it was a girl, he did not pick it up; he just instructed one of the women, either his wife or a slave, to feed it. If, for whatever reason, he did not want it, he would leave it on the floor and the child would be taken outside and abandoned.

Romans thought that in order to produce strong children and soldiers, it was important not to be too nice to babies. Thus they were always bathed in cold water, and all throughout childhood they were forbidden to take warm baths for fear that it would make them soft. For the first several months of life, the baby was tightly wrapped in cloth so it could not move, with its arms and legs tied to sticks so they could not be bent. Eventually parents freed the right arm but not the left in an attempt to make sure the baby grew up right-handed since left-handedness was regarded as unlucky. The only time infants were released was for their cold bath, at which time the nurse would also knead the baby's head to try to form it into a pleasant round shape.

A Roman boy was known as a puer, and the symbol of his childhood was his clothing, the toga praetexta, a toga with a purple stripe along the edge. Roman boys were usually given a little leather bag filled with magical amulets called the bulla, which was worn at all times around his neck. The Romans believed that children were vulnerable to evil influences, and wearing this bulla was intended to protect the child while he passed through this vulnerable state. As a further effort to toughen them up, boys were forbidden to eat lying down, which was a mark of an adult. They were also not allowed to get much sleep since it was believed that too much sleep decreased intelligence and stunted growth. Until the age of six or seven, the child was raised in the family.

All children, both free and slave, grew up together and played together. This resulted in the common phenomenon that, when grown up, personal slaves would be loyal to and fond of their masters since they were, after all, old childhood playmates. Often a man would instruct his wife to breast-feed not only her own children but the slave children as well, with the idea that when the master and the slaves grew up, the slaves would be unusually loyal since they had all been raised on the same milk.