Project 1
Children and Social Hierarchy in Ancient Rome
Learning Goal: Read critically and analyze closely literary texts and modern scholarship
Literacy: Technology
Children had the power to both change and uphold social structures through the orchestrations of their parents. In some aspects of society, they could be used as a means of social mobility, whereas in others, aspects of their lives served to maintain preexisting social hierarchies. This is evident in material culture like funerary monuments and ancient dolls.
Fragment of a relief showing small girl with her parents. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphili.
"Children were used in various ways to both maintain the set social hierarchies, but also to display an experience of social mobility. In essence, children were a possibility of future upward social mobility for their family and various pieces of material culture make this connection clear. Additionally, group reliefs and dolls demonstrate this conflicting relationship."
This paper was assigned for a class on the fall of Rome, and as such, for this assignment, we were required to choose a topic from Rome that we were interested in and do more research into it. After stumbling upon an article about young girls, dolls, and gender, I decided to write my paper on social hierarchy and children in ancient Rome. I was greatly interested in this topic, and the fact that I was able to write about it made writing it more compelling to me. In this sense, I believe that this piece was successful. I was not only able to learn more about the daily lives of people in ancient Rome but also fulfill the requirements of the assignment and write about a topic I was interested in.
In a larger sense, this topic helped me dive into the Roman side of classical studies. For much of my time at Skidmore, I have been focused on Greek history, language, and literature. While I am more interested in these topics, one of the requirements of a degree in classics is learning about the classical world as a whole, and that includes Rome. Overall, this class and assignment expanded my knowledge base. If I could redo this paper, then I would want to increase the amount of time that I researched. The topic was fascinating to me, and I would have loved to learn more about the intersection of gender, children, social hierarchy, and toys in the ancient world.