Against the Grain: Children’s Wooden Toys, Social Status and Identity in Ancient Rome

Surviving evidence from the Roman imperial period clearly demonstrates that childhood was viewed as a distinct and important phase within the broader cycle of life. Iconographic sources attest to the value of children in Roman society, and the love many parents felt towards their children, particularly in cases of premature passing, while literary sources provide countless examples of advice for parents as to the best ways to care for, to raise and to educate their children. However, due to the inherent nature of surviving sources, most of the information about childhood in Roman society pertains to ideals that were applied to elite children and their families. Consequently, far less is known about the day-to-day experiences and activities of children, particularly those who belonged to sub-elite groups. In this seminar, wooden toys will be used as a tool to explore key aspects of childhood during the first to fourth centuries CE, including the types of games and play that were appealing to children of different ages. However, more than mere playthings, this seminar will highlight the importance of reading children’s wooden toys as complex socio-cultural artefacts. Using a number of case studies, the seminar will demonstrate the key role toys played in the broader process of socialisation: through play with toys such as wheeled horses, dolls, and miniature swords, Roman boys and girls of various socio-economic classes absorbed important information as to the place they occupied in society, and the roles and behaviours that would be expected of them later in life.  

Image credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.