Childhood in Ancient Athens: Iconography and Social History by Lesley A. Beaumont

Abstract

200 PHOENIX Childhood in Ancient Athens: Iconography and Social History. By Lesley A. Beaumont. London and New York: Routledge. 2012. Pp. xvi, 303. Lesley Beaumont's book examines “the iconography of childhood from birth through the whole prepubertal phase of life as presented by Athenian two- and three-dimensional figured art produced between the late seventh and the late fourth century b.c.” (207). Learned if not lively, furnished with 120 illustrations and generous references to both ancient literary evidence and modern scholarship, it will immediately become a standard starting-point for discussions of the artistic representation of Athenian children. One strength is the insistence that there were not only many children in classical Athens (as in all pre-industrial communities), there were many childhoods too, varying according to class and gender, change throughout the life course and over time; if—when—our evidence is contradictory, it is not due only to the conventions of different artistic media and genres. In Part I, after a short résumé of scholarship and remarks on methodology (Chapter One), Beaumont (Chapter Two) outlines the stages of childhood which (rather than chronological age) govern the scheme of development reflected in Athenian iconography: birth and infancy, prepubescent childhood, pubescent youth. Beginning in the late sixth century, both later stages are subdivided for boys, the earlier for girls as well; in another hundred years older and younger pubescent girls are also visibly distinguished. These stages are signalled by a varied set of indicators: body shape and size, the location and length of hair, dress, gestures, attributes such as toys and pets, the relations between figures. Crude as they are, these visual cues often mask or deny distinctions, all the more since the gap between the adult male citizen and other groups, including children, was much greater than other discriminations. So both children and slaves are shown small, younger boys on vases may be painted with white like females, youths sometimes mourn like women and sometimes exhibit masculine self-control. In general, however, gender separation becomes starker with age and boys become more manlike as they approach maturity. Biological changes are tracked, not always precisely, by the progression of a ritual and social calendar. Infancy ends with the child’s first active participation in public cult, the Anthesteria; this is the occasion for the gifts of miniature wine-jugs, choes, though the children portrayed on them sometimes still crawl like babies. The cutting of hair at the koureion is a maturation rite for boys which likely lags biological and numerological puberty (at 14) by a couple of years. As for girls, since their own biological maturation guaranteed their readiness for marriage, more care was taken to identify that transition for them (by breasts, longer hair, a special mantle). Beaumont devotes two long chapters in Part II to this “juvenile life course,” from “Birth and Infancy” (45–103) to “The Developing Child” (104–206), before adding a clear and concise conclusion (207–211). Throughout, Beaumont examines individual images and their contexts with scrupulous care and collects countless comparanda in her 681 footnotes. Here are some of Beaumont’s noteworthy suggestions. Breastfeeding, almost absent from Athenian pots, is found on those from Etruria and other western sites and is very common among terracotta figurines (46, 54); also unusually, mortal childbirth turns up only from the late fifth/early fourth century, and then only in commemorative funereal or votive contexts (46–48). Swaddled infants appear in sculpted reliefs and terracotta; vase painters prefer to leave their arms free to gesture (50). On pots, mortal fathers, BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 201 unlike gods, do not interact with their babies, “since affective relationships between men and their young children did not constitute an element in the social construction of the ideal citizen male’s identity” (60). (A gravestone with an adult male and a young child, is viewed as an exceptional vignette of Athenian private life [97]). Beaumont supports many of Sanne Houby-Nielsen’s conclusions about children’s burials and the role of women in providing their grave goods, but does not agree that the relative scarcity of fourth-century evidence testifies to a new lack of interest; it is in...