BBC - Romans - Families and Children

7 July 2009
Accessibility help
Text only

Teachers and Parents

Web Links

Schools Help
Copyright

Contact Us

Like this page?
Send it to a friend!

	Life in Roman times for women was quite hard. The father was the most important member of the family. He had the power of life or death over everyone. When a new baby was born it would be laid at its father's feet - if the father picked the baby up it would live, and if he ignored the baby it would be taken away to die. Mothers and children were never seen as important. From the 1st century B.C. women began to have more rights and could divorce unkind husbands. But they were never seen as really being equal to men.
	Most children did not go to school. Parents had to pay for their children to go and they would only teach boys! Schools were also quite scarce, and were always built in towns. Girls and poorer children might be taught to read and write at home but this was rare. These children would more likely have to help their parents at work from an early age. Some wealthy Roman parents would employ an educated slave called a pedagogue to teach their sons. The pedagogue would also take the boy to school and carried a stick to beat him with if he was naughty or did not work hard.
	For short messages and at school they would write on wax tablets using a pointed metal stylus . If you made a mistake you smoothed the wax flat with the opposite end of the stylus. For important letters the Romans used a metal pen dipped in ink to write on thin pieces of wood or specially prepared animal skins. Books did not have pages, they were written on scrolls made from pieces of animal skin glued together and then rolled up. We know that Roman women would also write because some of their letters have survived. One was found at Vindolanda, a fort near Hadrian's Wall. It is a birthday party invitation from Claudia Severa to her friend Sulpicia Lepidina and was written at the end of the 1st century A.D.


	School children had their own goddess. She was called Minerva and she had her own festival at the beginning of March. After the festival the school year began.


	Punctuation was not very popular, so Roman writing was hard to read. Latin writing did not have capital letters or even full stops at first!

About the BBC | Help | Terms of Use | Privacy & Cookies Policy