Coming of Age in Ancient Greece Images of Childhood from the Classical Past Jenifer Neils, John H. Oakley

What was childhood like in ancient Greece? What activities and games did Greek children embrace? How were they schooled and what religious and ceremonial rites of passage were key to their development? These questions and many more are answered in this study, which features and discusses imagery and artefacts relating to childhood in ancient Greece. "Coming of Age in Ancient Greece" shows that the Greeks were the first culture to represent children and their activities naturalistically in their art. Here we learn about depictions of children in myth as well as life, from infancy to adolescence. This illustrated book features such archaeological artefacts as toys and gaming pieces alongside images of them in use by children on ancient vases, coins, terracotta figurines, bronze and stone sculpture, and marble grave monuments. Essays by eminent scholars in the fields of Greek social history, literature, archaeology, anthropology and art history discuss a wide range of topics, including: the burgeoning role of childhood studies in interdisciplinary studies; the status of children in Greek culture; the evolution of attitudes toward children from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period as documented by literature and art; the relationships of fathers and sons and mothers and daughters; and the roles of cult practice and death in a child's existence.

Jenifer Neils is Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University. John H. Oakley is chair of the department of classical studies, Chancellor Professor, and Forrest D. Murden Jr. Professor at the College of William and Mary. Published in association with the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College

'For the mammoth task of gathering all this and more material together, and for its immaculate presentation and careful exposition, the editors and contributors should be applauded to the rafters' - Times Literary Supplement