Women in Ancient Rome - Childhood and Education

Childhood and Education

Roman children played a number of games, and their toys are known from archaeology and literary sources. Girls are depicted in Roman art as playing many of the same games as boys, such as ball, hoop-rolling, and knucklebones. Dolls are sometimes found in the tombs of those who died before adulthood. The figures are typically 15–16 cm tall (about half the height of a Barbie doll), with jointed limbs, and made of materials such as wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Girls coming of age dedicated their dolls to Diana, the goddess most concerned with girlhood, or to Venus when they were preparing for marriage.

Some and perhaps many girls went to a public primary school. Ovid and Martial imply that boys and girls were educated either together or similarly, and Livy takes it for granted that the daughter of a centurion would be in school. Children of the elite were taught Greek as well as Latin from an early age. Children of both genders learned to behave socially by attending dinner parties and other events. Girls as well as boys participated in religious festivals; both girls and boys sang formal compositions in choirs, for instance, at the Secular Games in 17 BC.

Among the upper classes, women seem to have been well-educated, some highly so, and were sometimes praised by the male historians for their learning and cultivation. Cornelia Metella, the young wife of Pompey the Great at the time of his death, was distinguished for her musicianship and her knowledge of geometry, literature, and philosophy. This degree of learning indicates formal preparation. But because women took no official part in public life, the lives of boys and girls began to diverge dramatically after they formally came of age, and memorials to women recognize their domestic qualities far more often than intellectual achievements. The skills a Roman matron needed to run a household required training, and mothers probably passed on their knowledge to their daughters in a manner appropriate to their station in life, given the emphasis in Roman society on traditionalism (mos maiorum).