Editing Women in ancient Rome (section)

==Childhood and education==
[[File:Spielende Mädchen.JPG|thumb|left|Roman girls playing a game]]

Childhood and upbringing in ancient Rome were determined by social status. Roman children played a number of games, and their toys are known from archaeology and literary sources. Animal figures were popular, and some children kept live animals and birds as pets.<ref>Beryl Rawson, ''Children and Childhood in Roman Italy'' (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 129–130.</ref> In [[Roman art]] girls are shown playing many of the same games as boys, such as ball, [[Hoop rolling#History|hoop-rolling]], and [[knucklebones]]. [[Doll]]s are sometimes found in the tombs of those who died before adulthood. The figures are typically {{Convert|15-16|cm|abbr=on}} tall, with jointed limbs, and made of materials such as wood, [[terracotta]], and especially [[Ivory carving|bone and ivory]]. Girls coming of age [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#votum|dedicated]] their dolls to [[Diana (mythology)|Diana]], the goddess most concerned with girlhood, or to [[Venus (mythology)|Venus]] when they were preparing for marriage.<ref>Rawson, ''Children and Childhood in Roman Italy'', p. 128, citing [[Persius]] 2.70 and the related [[scholion]], and p. 48 on Diana. Rome lacked the elaborate puberty rites for girls that were practiced in ancient Greece (p. 145).</ref> Noble girls were known to marry as young as 12 years of age,<ref name="Beryl Rawson 1999 p. 21">Beryl Rawson, "The Roman Family in Italy" (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 21.</ref> whereas females in the lower classes were more likely to marry slightly further into their teenage years. (Boys, however, had to be at least 14.)<ref>[[Judith P. Hallett]], ''Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family'' (Princeton University Press, 1984), 142.</ref><ref name=":0">Lauren, Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity" (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 3–4.</ref> An example of the marriage age of noble females can be seen with [[Cicero]]'s lifelong friend Atticus, who married his daughter [[Caecilia Attica]] to [[Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa]] when she was 14.<ref name=":0" />

[[File:Bronze young girl reading CdM Paris.jpg|thumb|upright|Bronze statuette of the 1st century depicting a girl reading]]
Girls were expected to safeguard their chastity, modesty, and reputation, in preparation for eventual marriage.<ref name="Caldwell p. 16">Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 16.</ref> The light regulation of marriage by the law with regards to minimum age (12) and consent to marriage was designed to leave families, primarily fathers, with much freedom to propel girls into marriage whenever and with whomever they saw fit. Marriage facilitated a partnership between the father and prospective husbands, and enabled the formation of a mutually beneficial alliance with both political and economic incentives at heart.<ref>Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", pp. 106–107.</ref> The girls would leave their own families and join their husbands. The social regime, geared towards early marriage and implemented through children's education and upbringing, was particularly restrictive for girls.<ref name="Caldwell p. 16"/> Some, perhaps many, girls went to a [[ludus (ancient Rome)|public primary school]]; however, there is some evidence to suggest that girls’ education was limited to this elementary school level. It has been inferred that individual school tutoring of girls at home was led by concerns about threats to girls’ modesty in coeducational classrooms.<ref>Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 18.</ref> [[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.<ref>Rawson, ''Children and Childhood in Roman Italy'', pp. 197–198</ref> Alternatively,  [[Epictetus]] and other historians and philosophers suggest that the educational system was preoccupied with the development of masculine virtue, with male teenagers performing school exercises in public speaking about [[Mos maiorum|Roman values]].<ref>Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 17.</ref>

Children of both sexes learned to behave socially by attending dinner parties or other, less elitist events. Both genders participated in [[Roman festivals|religious festivals]]; for example, at the [[Secular Games]] of 17 BC, the ''[[Carmen Saeculare]]'' was sung by a choir of girls and boys.<ref>Rawson, ''Children and Childhood in Roman Italy'', p. 198.</ref> Children were made into virtuous adults through scholastic means, with curriculum, language, literature, and philosophy teaching moral precepts. Children of the elite were taught [[ancient Greek language|Greek]] as well as Latin from an early age.<ref>Janine Assa, ''The Great Roman Ladies'' (New York, 1960), p. 50.</ref> 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.<ref>Beryl Rawson, "The Roman Family," in ''The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives'' (Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 30, 40–41.</ref> Some women became socially prominent, and even relatively independent.<ref>Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", p. 2.</ref> [[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.<ref>[[Plutarch]], ''Life of Pompey'' 55 [[LacusCurtius]] [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pompey*.html#55 edition.]</ref> This degree of learning indicates formal preparation; however, among the lower classes education was limited and strongly geared towards the course of marriage, and performing the tasks of the female within the household.<ref>Sandra R. Joshel, [[Sheila Murnaghan]], "Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture" (Routledge; New edition 2001), p. 86.</ref> Elite families poured money into their daughters' literary and virtue training to equip them with skills that would appeal to prospective husbands. Epictetus suggests that at the age of 14 girls were considered to be on the brink of womanhood and beginning to understand the inevitability of their future role as wives. They learned modesty through explicit instruction and upbringing.<ref>Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", pp. 15–16.</ref>

The lives of boys and girls began to diverge dramatically after they formally came of age,<ref>Rawson, "The Roman Family," p. 40.</ref> and memorials to women recognize their domestic qualities far more often than intellectual achievements.<ref>Rawson, ''Children and Childhood in Roman Italy'', p. 45.</ref> 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.<ref>Rawson, ''Children and Childhood in Roman Italy'', p. 197.</ref> Virginity and sexual purity were culturally valued qualities considered vital for the stability of both family and state. The rape of an unmarried girl posed a threat to her reputation and marriageability, and the penalty of death was sometimes imposed on the unchaste daughter.<ref>Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity", pp. 11, 45–46.</ref> The Emperor Augustus introduced marriage legislation, the [[Lex Papia Poppaea]], which rewarded marriage and childbearing. The legislation also imposed penalties on young persons who failed to marry and on those who committed adultery. Therefore, marriage and childbearing was made law between the ages of twenty-five and sixty for men, and twenty and fifty for women.<ref>Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola, Noel Lenski, Richard J. A. Talbert, "A Brief History of The Romans" (Oxford University Press; 2 edition, 2013), p. 176.</ref>