BMCR 2008.12.21, Christian Laes, Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk

Christian Laes, Johan Strubbe, Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk: Jonge jaren,
wilde haren?.  Leuven:  Davidsfonds, 2008.  Pp. 238.  ISBN
978058265272.  EUR 24.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Beert C. Verstraete, Acadia University
([email protected])
Word count:  2650 words
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To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
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To comment on this review, see
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As noted by the publisher on the back cover, this Dutch-language book
is the third in a "drieluik" (triptych) covering the life-course of
Roman men and women. The first was Amor-Roma: Liefde in Rome,
co-authored by Eymiel Eyben, Christian Laes, and Toon van Houdt, which
I reviewed in BMCR 2004.06.55; and the second, Kinderen bij de
Romeinen: Zes Eeuwen Dagelijks Leven ("Children Among the Romans: Six
Centuries of Daily Life"), of which Professor Laes was the sole author
and which was based on his doctoral dissertation at the University of
Leiden; this I reviewed in BMCR 2006.08.28.

The literal translation of the title of the book under review is,
"Youth in the Roman Empire: Young Years, Wild Hair?"  In Dutch, the
subtitle has a proverbial resonance--one will note the rhyme of "jaren"
en "haren."  It does not work this way in English, of course, and one
would want a different idiom: perhaps, "years of storm and
stress?"--using the English rendering of "Sturm und Drang" (in fact,
even the original German expression has enjoyed for a long time a
secure place in English cultural idiom).  Throughout this review, I'll
simply provide my translation of the Dutch wherever I deem it to be
helpful.

The first chapter, "Focus on Youth," is introductory and discusses the
conceptual and methodological problematics that inevitably arise in any
study of youth as a distinct phase in the lives of males and females in
a given society and culture. The fundamental question, most simply put,
is: "Did past societies recognize a conduct which was typical of young
people?" (16) In the West of today and even in many non-Western
societies, the years of youth are demarcated as a distinct
developmental stage in human life which possesses its own unique
phenomenal and cultural markers. But it has not always been like this.
Laes and Strubbe (henceforth L. & S.) offer a judicious overview of
how, from Rousseau's radical ideas in the eighteenth century onwards,
psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians (such as
Mead, Ariès, Shorter, and Stone, to name a few of those
discussed by L. & S.) have grappled with the question of young people
and their place in society. L. & S.'s discussion makes it clear that
this question is directly predicated on how childhood is viewed and
conceptualized. Laes's earlier book on Roman childhood, therefore, is
an essential prequel to the present one.

In the Roman context of this book, L. & S. draw a sharp contrast
between the views of two Dutch classicists E. Eyben (praised in the
"Preface" as the "inspirer," 12, of Laes' doctoral dissertation) and H.
W. Pleket.  "The central thesis of Eyben is that youth was very much a
reality with the Romans." (26)  "Impetuosity" ("ontstuimigheid," 26)
was the hallmark of everything a Roman young man did or felt. (The
discussion here is clearly focused here on the male sex.)  "The
approach of Eyben is essentially that of a classical philologist who
also has an eye for the voluminous sociological and psychological
literature pertaining to the youth of the sixties." (25) "Eyben
foregrounds to a very large degree the megalopolis of Rome," with "the
many hundreds of cities in the east and the west of the Roman Empire
unavoidably remaining somewhat on the periphery." (25 ) By contrast,
H.W. Pleket (followed by Marc Kleijwegt), employing a more
comparative-historical approach and drawing on his expertise in Greek
epigraphy, draws a very different picture, concluding that "the world
of adults accepted Roman and urban youth at an early stage and that,
therefore, there could not be any question of a crisis of adolescence
among Roman people." (27) Very importantly, "with respect to
terminology, Pleket observed that the Romans did not at all divide any
further the period from fifteen to twelve-five/ thirty years." (27)

In the closing paragraphs of the first chapter, L. & S. rightly
underline the research challenge posed by their subject, which is a
multifaceted one and covers an "immense domain." (29)  A central
question to be asked is whether the biological facts of growth and
development starting with the onset of puberty and adolescence "are
linked with the assumption of social responsibilities or whether the
latter are postponed for a while." (30) L. & S. note in this connection
that "marriage, whether or not accompanied by financial independence,
is often marked as the termination of youth." (30) Thus, early
marriage, which was the rule for girls, cut off the possibility of a
protracted youth. L. & S. caution that, given the sources and data
available, the Roman social historian is unable to complete the
"puzzle" (29); nevertheless, the challenge is not to be shirked.  Their
study covers the period of life which the Romans designated as
adulescentia or iuventus, "which seems to correspond roughly with the
years of the late teens and early twenties." (30)

The first chapter is followed by eleven more, with a "Conclusion"
coming at the end.  The full table of contents of chapters 2-12, which
I'll give here in translation, will provide the reader an excellent
idea of the range of topics covered by L. & S. and the depth and detail
with which these are pursued. Then this review will offer, very
briefly, my own comments on some points.


Chapter 2
Ages of Majority and Ages of Minority: Youth, the Periodization of
Human Life, and Roman Law
The position of youth in the periodization of human life
Roman law
Age in actual life


Chapter 3
Terminology and Characteristics [of Youth]
Terminology
Characteristics of young people and adolescents


Chapter 4
Rites of Transition
In the Greek world
In Rome and the Roman world


Chapter 5
Youth according to Ancient Medicine
Medical observations on adolescents: similarities and differences
Sick teenagers: some actual cases
Excursus: Aristotle on puberty


Chapter 6
Youth and Education: the Rhetor and the 'University'
The system of education in the Roman Empire
Higher education in the cities of the Greek East: the local level
The organization of higher education
The education provided by the rhetor
Student life at the 'universities'
The education of girls
Excursus: Ovid's education


Chapter 7
Societies and Associations of the Young
Greek ephebes
Excursus: the decree honoring Menas of Sestus
Roman iuvenes
Concluding remarks


Chapter 8
The Conduct of the Young
Impetuous' behavior
Conflicts
Excursus: A letter from Marcus Cicero


Chapter 9
Youths in Public Office
Youths in the central government: senators and equestrians
Youths in municipal functions
Concluding remarks


Chapter 10
Occupational Training
Physicians and jurists in the East and the West
Other occupations
Excursus: the education of the physician Galen


Chapter 11
Marriage
Roman marriage as an institution
When to marry?
Marriage ceremonies following Roman tradition
Marriage ceremonies following Greek tradition
The actual dynamics of entering upon marriage
Marriage as the end of the period of youth for boys
Girls and marriage: a history of oppression?


Chapter 12
Youth and Christianity: Change or Continuity?
The earliest Christians: a young church?
Young office-bearers in the church
Youth and sexuality
Christian youth in actual life: the Vita Severi

In the main heading of chapter 2, I have used the plurals "ages of
minority" and "ages of majority" to translate the Dutch
"minderjarigheid" and ""meerjarigheid" in order to convey that, as is
made quite clear by L. & S, there was no single age when a young
person--especially youthful male--was certain to reach the age of
unqualified adulthood according the laws and expectations of Roman
society. Thus, when a Roman boy assumed the toga virilis at the age of
14 or 15, or sometimes a bit later, he was indeed legally an adult, and
thus could marry. However, he might very well still be under patria
potestas, or if his father was no longer alive, under cura until the
age of 25. It is not much different in contemporary American and
Canadian society, where the age of sexual consent is usually 16, the
right to hold a driver's licence is 16, the right to marry varies from
16 to 18 years, the legal voting age is 18, and the legal drinking age
varies from 18 to 21 (21 everywhere in the U.S.), this whole state of
affairs being greatly complicated by the fact that in the jurisdictions
of many U.S. states a minor can be tried in an adult court for serious
criminal offenses.

On p. 253 of his book on Roman childhood, Laes had highlighted the
importance of the information we have concerning alimenta (the
subsidies provided by both the state and private individuals during the
imperial period to the poor to feed their children), in giving us some
concrete figures as to how the Romans understood, in practice, the
upper age limit for childhood: 14 to 16 years for boys, and 13 to 14
for girls. This information might have been reprised in Chapter 2, for
it gives us a good idea of when the members of the poorest sectors of
society were expected to stand on their own feet, so to speak, i.e.
support themselves and, if necessary, a spouse and children, and thus,
by the standards of any society, whether modern or preindustrial, to
attain to at least de facto adulthood: Roman girls were by their early
teens deemed ready for marriage (the minimum legal age of marriage for
them being only 12), and Roman boys usually donned the toga virilis,
which bestowed adulthood on them, in their mid-teens, with all the
practical implications this had for a Roman boy without any substantial
family means.

Our ancient sources reflect almost exclusively the views of older adult
men of the higher socioeconomic classes, and thus it is not surprising
that, in the final paragraphs of chapter 3, L. & S. conclude that Roman
thinking about youth and young people tended towards the negative. At
the same time, they emphasize, contra Eyben, that the Romans did not
particularly single out the years of youth as a "period of crisis."
(50).  I would add that Roman depreciation of youth for its
"impetuosity" and its general instability of character was not
insignificantly offset by the valorization of the physical beauty and
emotional spontaneity of youth which is present in Roman art and
iconography, both private and public, and, of course, as L. & S. also
recognize, in literature as well. Such idealization--representing a
major assimilation of Hellenic culture, of course --did not necessarily
exclude the gravitas and other excellences of maturity; think, for
instance, of the portraiture of the ever-young Octavian-Augustus.

The excursus, "Ovid's education" in Chapter 6, draws on the fact, as
noted by L. & S., that Ovid is one of the very few Romans who speaks in
his writings about the years of his youth and his education--an
education which normally would have prepared the young, equestrian
status Ovid for a career in rhetoric and government, like his
prematurely deceased brother, but against which he stubbornly rebelled
in favor of his self-chosen vocation as a poet.  There is no reason to
question the essential veracity of Ovid's account in Tristia
4.10.15-40, but it also has an element of literary aemulatio in that it
was probably inspired at least in part by a similar autobiographical
story of a love-elegist's vocation discovered and a potential career in
the Roman establishment abandoned as related by Ovid's older
contemporary, Propertius (4.1. 119-134). A final note under this
heading: the idea that Augustus exiled Ovid because "[p]ossibly the
emperor was furious that the poet had a relationship with his
granddaughter Julia" (97) is, I have good reason to believe, no longer
seriously entertained by scholars.

In Chapter 11, L. & S. adhere to what has become, since Richard
Saller's and Brent Shaw's interpretation of the epigraphical data in
the 1980s, the most widely accepted position regarding the average age
of first marriage for men and women in the Roman Empire, especially in
the Latin-speaking West, namely that, while males and females of the
upper (i.e. senatorial and equestrian) classes married at a very early
age (late teens, sometimes even mid-teens, as did Julius Caesar, to the
early 20's for the former, and early teens for the latter), with our
literary sources leading us to this conclusion, for the lower classes
the average age was higher: late teens for females and late 20s to
early 30's for males (L. & S. put the latter in the 25-30 years range).
It is worthy of note, though, that the two epitaphic texts cited by
L.& S, in each of which a husband commemorates his deceased wife, give
thirteen as the age of marriage of the woman. True, the texts are Greek
and come from Greek-speaking communities, where the customary practices
governing the age of first marriage might be expected to be different.
The first funeral inscription is from first or second century A.D.
Tomis (the Black Sea town in the province of Moesia to which Ovid was
exiled), which was founded as a Greek colony and had a predominantly
Greek-speaking population. The second, however, is from first or second
century A.D. cosmopolitan Rome with its huge, preponderantly
Latin-speaking population, where it is unlikely a Greek-speaking
minority could have maintained for very long its own distinctly Greek
norms and expectations with respect to the age of first marriage if
these diverged sharply from the dominant ones.

Chapter 12, which looks at the impact of Christianity and the Christian
Church of the first four centuries on society's perception of youth and
the socialization of young people, is a welcome one. L. & S. show that
there were opportunities for young people in the very early Church to
exercise real leadership, but that over the centuries the Church
developed its own cursus honorum (190)--this development was pretty
well complete by the middle of the fourth century.  As for sexuality
and Christian youth, L. & S. rightly conclude that the Church's
teaching with its promotion of self-denial inevitably exacerbated the
storm and stress experienced by young people, especially males, who
were coming to know their sexuality, and this to a degree that
pre-Christian ethics and medicine never did or could have done.  Even
so, "in Late Antiquity there was not much immediate change in the
practice of married life." (194)

Not surprisingly, in the "Conclusion," L. & S. align themselves
basically with Pleket's and Kleijwigt's position as summarized in the
third paragraph of this review. As they put it, "[i]t cannot be denied
that the society of the Roman Empire did not evince a special
appreciation for a period of storm and stress in the life of the young.
What was important above all was a person's growth to adulthood, where
seriousness would prevail." (197)  However, they qualify this
generalization at the very end with two nods in the direction of Eyben:
the first, a consideration of social class, namely that " [n]o
historian will dispute that the problem of youth is primarily one of
the top stratum of a society" (199); and the second, of even more
universal application: "Did the years of youth signify for the Roman
also the proverbial storm and stress? In a certain sense, yes, for in
the teen years powerful biological stirrings began to make themselves
felt." (199)

L.'s & S.'s book comes with an explanatory register of words, a list of
abbreviations, 16 pages of end-notes, a bibliography, an alphabetical
index, an index locorum, and a tabulation of references to
inscriptions, papyri, and legal texts. All of these make it most useful
to scholars, while at the same time its clear, uncluttered writing
providing excellent translations of many cited texts will also make it
accessible to the layperson. Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk is more compact
than Laes's earlier book on Roman children (238 versus 343 pages),
which is its essential praeparatio, as I already hinted at the
beginning; but it has the same excellences, and my recommendation for a
speedy translation into English is thus also the same.