survived infancy, another third died by the age of 10. Th is
was true throughout Europe.
European children lived with their extended families;
households oft en included a husband, wife, children, grand-
parents, and aunts, uncles, and cousins. Children wore small-
er versions of the clothes their parents wore, mainly long
tunics and wool cloaks. Th ey lived in houses made of stone
or timber and mud with thatched roofs. Th ey spent their eve-
nings listening to folktales and participated with the adults in
frequent feasts and festivals. Children did not have their own
rooms or even their own beds. Th ey slept on the mud fl oor
wrapped in animal skins, huddled with their parents and sib-
lings for warmth.
Most European societies of the time had no schools or
other institutions for children, so children would have spent
most of their time at home, playing and learning home skills
or assisting their families with work around the house or
farm. Farming families tried to have as many children as
possible, because their labor would be needed for culti-
vation and keeping livestock and because those who did
not survive to adulthood needed to be replaced. Most Eu-
ropeans worked on their farms raising grain, cattle, pigs,
sheep, hens, and geese. Th ese tasks included sowing wheat,
harvesting grain, and preparing fi elds for the next season;
milking cows, goats, and sheep; making milk into butter
and cheese; spinning wool into thread, dyeing it bright col-
ors, and weaving it into cloth; and hunting in the forests.
Girls would have concentrated on homebound tasks that
other women performed, learning to cook, grind grain, bake
bread, and weave. Boys would have helped their fathers and
uncles with their daily work, such as plowing, hunting, and
occasionally building houses. When boys were old enough,
they might learn a craft such as metalwork. Boys also would
have learned how to fi ght with swords and other weapons. If
they were wealthy, they learned to ride horses.
Many noble Celtic families sent their children to live
with other noble families as foster children. Th e most com-
mon arrangement was for a child to live with the family of
his mother’s brother. A child would spend several years living
with his foster family and usually formed very strong bonds
with his foster parents and siblings. Th ese ties were valuable
in a warlike society where allies could mean the diff erence
between victory and defeat in battle.
Childhood was harsh and dangerous for ancient Europe-
an children. Cold, hunger, and illness were constant threats,
and wild animals could snatch them away. A child’s parents
sometimes died—the father in war or the mother in child-
bir t h or bot h of t hem f rom disease. Un less someone else, such
as a relative, took in the child, his fate was uncertain. Th ere
was always the chance that a child’s parents would abandon
her even aft er infancy if times were hard and food supplies
were low; fairy tales of foundlings have their root in ancient
stories of parents leaving children alone in the woods to meet
whatever fate awaited them. Th e ancient Celts and Germans
lived a rough existence and had no resources to waste on the
weak or sickly. Th ey oft en traveled through the wilderness,
wandering from one place to another without a permanent
home, and they could not aff ord to carry useless people with
them. Th e Romans observed that when the Gauls were on
the march, they would kill their old people and anyone who
could not care for himself, which included children.
Ancient European children also faced the risk of kidnap
or capture in war. Slavery was a common practice in ancient
Europe. Saint Patrick of Ireland (386–493 c.e.) spent seven
years of his youth as a shepherd slave aft er being kidnapped
from his wealthy family’s home in Britain around 400 c.e.
Many of the slaves who worked in Greece and Rome came
from central and northern Europe. When Romans defeated
a tribe in battle, they typically sold all the surviving wom-
en and children into slavery; in this way many European
children found themselves in Rome, performing menial
labor for Roman families. For some children this proved
a wonderful opportunity; Roman masters and mistresses
sometimes educated their slaves and treated them as family
members. In other cases slavery was a dreadful existence
of starvation, rape, beatings, and sometimes death at the
hands of a cruel master.GREECE
BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL
Th e Greeks wanted children. Children were legally bound to
take care of parents when the parents grew old; in the absence
of any other provision for old-age care, children were essen-
tial. Many infants did not survive birth, however, and many
women died during or aft er childbirth from bleeding, ex-
haustion, or infection. An infant who survived birth without
a mother was in danger of dying from lack of maternal care
unless another woman took him in and raised him. When
a baby was born, the midwife would announce the sex and
then examine the baby to see if he was healthy. If the parents
decided to keep their child, they celebrated the baby’s birth
on the fi ft h day of life, publicly acknowledging the child as
a family member and naming the baby in a ceremony called
the amphidromia.
Parents did not always choose to raise the children they
produced. Resources were limited, and parents who lacked
food, money, or opportunities could not always aff ord to keep
all their children. If a baby seemed sickly and unlikely to sur-
vive or if the baby was not the desired sex, usually male, the
parents might decide to abandon the infant, leaving it out in
the countryside to die. In most of Greece the father could de-
cide whether to keep the child regardless of what the mother
thought. In Sparta the city’s elders chose which infants would
be raised to adulthood. Historians do not know the percent-
age of Greek babies that were abandoned, but the ones most
susceptible to this practice were girls, illegitimate infants, de-
formed infants, and the babies of slaves. Occasionally strang-
ers would keep and raise foundling children, but usually
the infants died. Greek literature sometimes mentions the194 children: Greece