Читать книгу The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks - Hugo Blumner - Страница 9

Fig. 60.

of exposing it, which, though rarely resorted to at Athens, was still quite common at Sparta. Even had the child been a second daughter, the kindly-disposed master of the house would not have resorted to this cruel step; although, had he done so, his fellow-citizens would not have blamed him for it. But the parents have to settle on which day the family festival shall take place, to welcome and dedicate with religious rites the newborn child (Amphidromia) and what name they shall give it. They decide upon the tenth day after the birth for the festival. Many parents, it is true, celebrate this as early as the fifth day, and then on the tenth hold a second festival with an elaborate banquet and sacrifices, and but few rich people content themselves with a single celebration. But though in this case there is no lack of means, yet, as the young mother wishes to take part herself in the Amphidromia, they decide to be content with one celebration, which is to take place in ten days. According to old family custom, the boy receives the name of his paternal grandfather.

Fig. 61.

When the appointed day has come, and the house is festively decked with garlands, messengers begin to arrive early in the morning from relations and friends, bringing all manner of presents for the mother and child. For the former they bring many dishes which will be useful at the banquet in the evening, especially fresh fish, polypi, and cuttle-fish. The baby receives various gifts, especially amulets to protect him against the evil eye. For, according to widespread superstition, these innocent little creatures are specially exposed to the influence of evil magic. Therefore the old slave, to whom the parents have confided the care of the child, chooses from among the various presents a necklace which seems to her especially suitable as an antidote to magic, on which are hung all manner of delicately-worked charms in gold and silver: such as a crescent, a pair of hands, a little sword, a little pig, and anything else which popular superstition may include in the ranks of amulets; and hangs this round the child’s neck.

The festival begins with a sacrifice, and is followed by the solemnity in which mother and child, who, according to ancient notions, are regarded as unclean by the act of birth, are purified or cleansed, along with all who have come in contact with the mother. This part of the ceremony is the real “Amphidromia” (literally “running round”). The nurse takes the child on her arm, and, followed by the mother and all who have come in contact with her, runs several times round the family hearth, which, according to ancient tradition, represents the sacred centre of the dwelling. Probably this was accompanied by sprinkling with holy water. At the banquet the relations and friends of the family appear in great numbers. In their presence the father announces the name which he has chosen for the child. After this all take their places at the banquet, even the women, who, as a rule, do not take part in the meals of the men. The standing dishes on this occasion are toasted cheese and radishes with oil; but there is no lack of excellent meat dishes such as breast of lamb, thrushes, pigeons, and other dainties, as well as the popular cuttle-fish. A good deal of wine is drunk, mixed with less water than is generally the custom. Music and dancing accompany the banquet, which extends far into the night.

The first years of his life were spent by the little boy in the nursery, in which things went on in much the same way as with us. During this period boys and girls alike were under the supervision of mother and nurse. If the baby had bad nights and could not sleep, the Athenian mother took him in her arms just as a modern one would do, and carried him up and down the room, rocking him, and singing some cradle song like that which Alcmene sings to her children in Theocritus:—

“Sleep, children mine, a light luxurious sleep.

Brother with brother: sleep, my boys, my life:

Blest in your slumber, in your waking blest.”1

At night a little lamp burnt in the nursery. Although, as a rule, in small houses the apartments for the men were below and those for the women and children in the upper storeys, yet it was customary for the women to move into the lower rooms for a time after the birth of a child, partly in order that they might be near the bath-room, which was necessary both for mother and child. During the first years of their life the children had a tepid bath every day; later on, every three or four days; many mothers even went so far as to give them three baths a day. When the child had to be weaned, they first of all gave it broth sweetened with honey, which, in olden time, took the place of our sugar, and then gradually more solid food, which the nurse seems to have chewed for the child before it had teeth enough to do this itself. Aristophanes gives us further details about Greek nurseries, and even quotes the sounds first uttered by Athenian children to make known their various wants.

Fig. 62.

They do not seem to have had any special mechanical contrivances for learning to walk. In the time of the Empire baskets furnished with wheels are mentioned. Apparently they were in no great hurry about this. For the first year or two the nurses carried the children out into the fields, or took them to visit their relations, or brought them to some temple; then they let them crawl merrily on the ground, and on numerous vase pictures we see children crawling on all fours to some table covered with eatables, or to their toys. (Compare the Stele, represented in Fig. 62, on which a child has crawled to its mother and is trying to raise itself.) When the child made its first attempt at walking, prudent nurses took care that it should not at first exert its feeble legs too much, and so make them crooked; though Plato probably goes too far when he desires to extend this care to the end of the third year, and advises nurses to carry the children till they have reached that age.

Fig. 63.

Children’s dress must have given but little trouble during these first years. At home—at any rate in summer—boys either ran about quite naked or else

Fig. 64.

with only a short jacket open in front, like the little boy with the cart in Fig. 63. The girls, however, had long dresses reaching to their feet, fastened by two ribbons crossing each other in front and behind. Naughty children were brought to obedience or quiet by threats of bogies, but, curiously enough, these Greek bogies were all female creatures, such as Medusae or witches: “Acco,” “Mormo,” “Lamia,” “Empusa,” etc.; and when the children would not stay quiet indoors, they seem to have threatened them with “The horses will bite you.” The mothers and nurses used to tell the children all sorts of legends and fairy tales—Aesop’s Fables were especially popular—and little stories from mythology or other tales of adventure, which often began, like ours, with the approved “Once upon a time.” Among the many poetical legends of gods and heroes there were, it is true, some which were morally or aesthetically objectionable, and the philosophers were not wrong in calling attention to the danger which might lie in this intellectual food, supplied so early to susceptible childish minds; yet this was undoubtedly less than what is found in our own children’s stories.

Fig. 65.

Greek children had toys of various kinds, though the excessive luxury attained in these at the present day was unknown to antiquity. A very ancient toy is the rattle, usually a metal or earthenware jar filled with little stones, sometimes made in human form; and there were other noisy toys, with which the children played and the nurses strove to amuse them; though complaints were sometimes made that foolish nurses by these means prevented the children from going to sleep. A very popular toy, found in many pictures in children’s hands, was a little two-wheeled cart (compare Fig. 63), or else a simple solid wheel, without spokes, on a long pole—a cheap toy which could be purchased for an obol (about three-halfpence). Larger carriages were also used as toys, which the children drew themselves, and drove about their brothers and sisters or companions, as we see in Fig. 64. Sometimes tame dogs or goats were harnessed to them, and the boys rode merrily along, cracking their whips. (Compare Fig. 65.) The custom of letting the nurses draw the children in perambulators in the street seems to have been unknown, but baby-carriages, in which the children were drawn about in the room, are mentioned by the ancient physicians. (Compare Fig. 60.)

Fig. 66.

The little girls liked to play with all kinds of earthenware vessels, pots, and dishes; and, like our little girls, they made their first attempts at cooking with these. Many such are found in the graves. More popular however, even in ancient times, were the dolls, made of wax or clay and brightly coloured; sometimes

Fig. 67.

with flexible limbs, like the one in Fig. 66, or with clothes to take on and off, and representing all manner of gods, heroes, or mortals; dolls’ beds were also known. Though boys may have sometimes played with these figures, or even made them for themselves out of clay or wax, yet we generally find them in the hands of girls, who seem to have taken pleasure in them even after the first years of childhood; indeed, it was not uncommon, since Greek girls married very early, for them to play with their dolls up to the time of their marriage, and just before their wedding to take these discarded favourites, with their whole wardrobe, to some temple of the maiden Artemis, and there dedicate them as a pious offering.

Fig. 68.

The boys delighted in other more masculine pleasures. Like our own boys, they played with box-wood tops and whips, singing a merry song the while, or else they bowled their iron hoops, to which bells or rings were attached. The hoop was a favourite toy until the age of youth, and we often find it on vase paintings in the hands of quite big boys. (Compare Fig. 67.) We may certainly assume that

Fig. 69.

they also had little imitations of warlike implements such as swords and shields; a little quiver, which can hardly have served any other purpose (compare Fig. 68) has been found. Clever boys made their own toys, and cut little carts and ships out of wood or leather, and carved frogs and other animals out of pomegranate rinds. Our hobby-horse, too, was known to the ancients, as is proved by a pretty anecdote told of Agesilaus. He was once surprised by a visitor playing with his children, and riding merrily about on a hobby-horse. It is said that he begged his friend not to tell of the position in which he had found the terrible general, until he should himself have children of his own. Kite-flying also was known to them, as is proved by the vase painting represented in Fig. 69, which, though rough in drawing, distinctly shows the action.

Fig. 70.

They were also acquainted with the little wheels, turned by means of a string which is wound and unwound, that are still popular among the children of our day, and about a hundred years ago were fashionable toys known as “incroyables.” What we see in the boy’s hand in Fig. 70 can hardly be anything else. This was a game in which even grown-up people seem to have taken pleasure. On the vases of Lower Italy we often see in the hands of Eros, or women, a little wheel, with daintily jagged edge and spokes, fastened to a long string in such a way that, when this is first drawn tight by both hands and then let go, the wheel is set revolving. (Compare Fig. 71.) Probably this was not a mere toy when used by grown up people, but rather the magic wheel so often mentioned as playing a part in love charms; but about this we have no exact information.

Fig. 71.

Swings must also be mentioned as popular with both young and old. These were exactly like ours: either the rope itself was used as a seat and held fast with both hands, or else a comfortable seat was suspended from the cords. (Compare Fig. 72.) This was a merry game, in which grown-up women sometimes liked to take part; and so was the see-saw, of which even big girls made use. (Compare Fig. 73.) Sometimes the mother or older sister took the little boy by the arm and balanced him on her foot, as the girl in Fig. 74 does with Eros, and, as in the well-known beautiful statue, “The Little Dionysus,” is carried on the shoulders of a powerful satyr. Many a Greek father probably gave his son a ride on his shoulders.

Fig. 72.

Fig. 73.

It is a matter of course that the young people of that day were acquainted with all the games which can be played at social gatherings by children, without any assistance from without. The various games of running, catching, hiding, blind-man’s-buff, etc., in which our young people still take pleasure, were played in Greece in just the same manner, as well as the manifold variety of games with balls, beans, pebbles, coins, etc.

Fig. 74.

Games of ball served as recreation for youths and men, and some of the above-mentioned games of chance, rather than skill, were especially popular with grown-up people, particularly games of dice or “knuckle-bones,” to which we shall refer later on in another section.

Thus our young Athenian spends the first years of his life amid merry play with his companions, under the watchful care of his mother. During the first six years the nursery, where girls and boys are together, is his world, though he is sometimes allowed to run about in the street with boys of his own age. He is not yet troubled with lessons, and although, should he be obstinate or naughty, his mother will sometimes chastise him with her sandal, yet in a family in which a right spirit prevails, the character of the education at this early age is a beneficent mixture of severity and gentleness. Sometimes, it is true, the father does not trouble himself at all about the education of his children, and leaves this entirely to his wife, who may lack the necessary intellectual capacity, or even to a female slave. This, of course, has bad results, and the same happens when the wife, like the mother of Pheidippides, in the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, is too ambitious for her little son, and, in constant opposition to the weak, though well-intentioned, father, spoils him sadly. Let us assume that the boy whose entrance into life we described above, is free from such deleterious influences, and, sound in mind and body, passes in his seventh year out of his mother’s hands into those which will now minister to his intellectual and physical development.