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A baby was officially 'acknowledged' when it was seven days old. A special ceremony took place, in which the father carried the baby around the hearth of the house, and on the tenth day it was given a name. At the first festival of the Apatouria after the child's sixteenth birthday, it was enrolled in the father's phratria (brotherhood) at one of the brotherhood gatherings. After Pericles passed his citizenship law in 451 B.C., one of the things the father had to do at the gathering was to solemnly swear that his wife was Athenian-born and that his son was the lawful issue of a valid marriage. The members of the brotherhood now voted. If the child was 'acknowledged', they proceeded to enter its name on the register. When a boy reached his eighteenth birthday, he was enrolled in the deme; his father again swore a solemn oath; and the demesmen voted. After the young man had been 'acknowledged', his name was recorded on the deme register (metroon). This was how the Athenians made sure that males was legitimate, and without this procedure it was impossible to obtain citizen status. |
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If no male heir was born, adoption was an option. People preferred - though no legal obligation was involved - to adopt one of their own kinsfolk, normally a male who had already come of age. This gave them the option of direct transfer of the family property. Even when such an adoption was made, the same procedure of presenting the adoptee to the brotherhood of his adoptive father and enrolling him on the deme register had to be followed.
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It was a different matter if the child was illegitimate. Illegitimate children - the issue of an invalid marriage - had no rights, either in the oikos (as regards inheritance claims or participation in religious ceremonies) or in the polis. Classical Athens was not a city which concerned itself with raising children - that was exclusively the family's business. Until the age of about seven, the mother (or, in a wealthy family, the nurse) handled the children's upbringing. Some idea of the kinds of toys children played with can be got from archaeological finds: there were dolls, rattles, and various other devices. Our written sources also give us information about the stories they were told - for example, tales of heroes and Aesop's Fables. |
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Boys and girls began to be treated differently at the age of seven. A boy would go to school: he would be walked there by his paidagogos, a trusty slave. Education was private; the parents paid the teacher. Reading, writing and arithmetic were taught by the grammatistes. There was also a kithara-player to teach the boy music, and a paidotribes, responsible for his physical exercise. The young man could later continue his education by becoming the pupil of one of the Sophists: however their fees were so enormous that only the sons of the very rich had any chance of attending their courses. An ephebe (a young men of eighteen to twenty) served two years in the army. It was the most important stage in his life: the bridge between childhood and adulthood, which gave him the civic grounding with which to launch himself into the polis. |
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