Youth in the Roman Empire
The Young and the Restless Years?

This book examines the lives of Roman boys and girls and explores the possible existence of a separate youth culture.

Christian Laes (Author), Johan Strubbe (Author)

9781107048881, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 March 2014

277 pages, 7 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

Modern society has a negative view of youth as a period of storm and stress, but at the same time cherishes the idea of eternal youth. How does this compare with ancient Roman society? Did a phase of youth exist there with its own characteristics? How was youth appreciated? This book studies the lives and the image of youngsters (around 15–25 years of age) in the Latin West and the Greek East in the Roman period. Boys and girls of all social classes come to the fore; their lives, public and private, are sketched with the help of a range of textual and documentary sources, while the authors also employ the results of recent neuropsychological research. The result is a highly readable and wide-ranging account of how the crucial transition between childhood and adulthood operated in the Roman world.

1. Questioning the concept of youth
2. Minority, majority: youth, divisions of the human life course and Roman law
3. Terminology and characteristics of youth
4. Rites of transition
5. Youth and ancient medicine
6. Youth and education: the rhetor and 'university'
7. Associations of adolescent youths
8. Youthful behaviour
9. Youths in public offices
10. Occupational training
11. Marriage
12. Youth and Christianity: continuity or change?
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Population & demography [JHBD], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]