Roman boys will be boys

Did young people in ancient times with their responsible public functions mature earlier, or were they fickle, sometimes idealistic, adolescents?  In the book Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk (Young People in the Roman Empire), Leiden historian Johan Strubbe and his colleague from Leuven, Christian Laes, analyse a current debate. Do literary sources and inscriptions contradict one another?

Young man wearing a white toga. Mosaic from the 2nd-3rd century AD (Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier). Before reaching physical maturity, young boys (up to 14-15 years of age) and girls (up to 12 years old) wore the toga praetexta, with a purple border. They also wore an amulet to protect them from the evil eye, the bulla.

Adolescent brain

Dr Johan Strubbe, senior lecturer in Ancient History, is following with great interest the research of Leiden developmental psychologists into the development of pubertal and adolescent brains.  The book Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk,Jonge jaren, wilde haren?, recently published, starts with a reference to this.  It is primarily about young Roman people – especially boys – of some 15-20 years old.  

Fickle

‘In the English translation, we pay even more attention to that developmental research,’  says Strubbe. ‘We recognise a remarkable number of characteristics. The research carried out by developmental psychologists shows that the brain is still developing up to the age of 24 or so, and also that it develops in stages: reason and emotion are not yet in balance. Around this age, young people in ancient times also acquired responsible positions.  We also see the comments of older people about the recklessness of young people, their fickleness. We read the complaints that young people are unable to appreciate the consequences of their actions, that they always choose what appears to be the best option in the short term.’    

Blood and head

The Roman authors also had a biological explanation for this, explains Strubbe.  This was the theory of the bodily humours.  ‘ Young people were characterised by an excess of blood and heat. In the course of the years, they would cool down and become more balanced.  There was no need to be overly concerned about them.’   

‘When I start my lecture, they just carry on winking at one another and talking about charioteers, miming, horses, dancers, past or future fights.  Even better: some stand around like statues, their arms crossed.  Others pick their nose with both hands, yet others remain seated when many people jump to their feet enthusiastically; they force enthusiastic listeners to sit down, and others count the number of newcomers, while yet others stare at the leaves on the trees.’   

The orator Libanius (4th century AD) talks about a lecture he held for students in Antioch, Orations 3 in het Romeinse Rijk  p.92).

Debate

But the new developmental psychological insights were not the motive for writing the book. The principle behind it is a fierce debate that has still not been resolved after twenty-five years, and in which Leiden historians played an important part. The impetus was the question whether in ancient times there was a separate youth phase between around fifteen years of age, the age at which young boys started to wear the white toga for men, and twenty-five years of age.

Ferocitas

Yes, there certainly was such a stage of youth, argued the Leuven researcher  Emiel Eyben in 1977 in a thick and influential book about ‘ the young Romans’, based on a wealth of literary sources.  In fact, Roman adolescents were remarkably like those of the twentieth century.  They were full of Sturm und Drang, idealistic, and at the same time reckless. Ferocitas, tempestuousness, is the keyword according to Eyben.

Public functions

There was no ‘youth phase’, responded the Leiden – now emeritus – professor of Ancient History, Harry Pleket, and his PhD researcher Marc Kleijwegt, who published his dissertation in 1991 on ‘the absence of adolescence in Graeco-Roman society’.  Young people played a part in society at an early age, was their contention.  At age fifteen, boys were expected to be small adults, and also to fulfil public functions.  Girls were marriageable at the age of twelve.  

Thirties or forties

Pleket and Kleijwegt relied on a different type of text, namely the inscriptions which provide a great deal of information about the public careers of members of the Roman and Greek elite. There was also no clear terminology for youth and young people, they concluded: terms such as iuvenes and their Greek equivalents could just as easily refer to men in their thirties or forties.

Critical review

Until recently these two visions existed side by side. ‘They never understood one another,’  says Strubbe. ‘ Kleiwegt offered no discussion on the literary sources, and Eyben never addressed the epigraphical material.’  Strubbe and his Leuven colleague Christian Laes wonder whether a synthesis was possible. Strubbe: ‘Not many new inscriptions have been added.  So we made another very critical review of the source material: what ages were referred to by what terms? Is this or that particular inscription reliable as a source of evidence?’’

Balanced

The book covers a great variety of themes, such as Greek and Latin terms for youth and young people, transition rites, generation conflicts, young people in ancient medicine, education, clubs, youth behaviour, legal stipulations, visions of youth, and the influence of Christianity. The result is a very detailed and balanced review, which deals with the debate issue by issue.  On some points Pleket and Kleiweg are proved right, on others, Eyben.

Make love not war

The terminology for the various life phases was indeed extremely vague, Strubbe and Laes have established.  And the poetae novi such as Catullus and Ovidius, who express the deep feelings of youth in their poems, and proclaim against war - ‘make love not war’, says Eyben – were often rather older youths. Strubbe: ‘Eyben’s error was in particular that he represented the image of the literary sources as the image of all Roman young men, while these sources relate to an elite youth in the city of Rome, such as the sons of senators and gentlemen who had nothing to do, or students in the later period of antiquity, far from parental authority.’ 

Elite families

On the other hand, those responsible public positions were also not quite what they seemed.  ‘They were very rare,’  according to Strubbe. ‘And they were certainly not given as a matter of course.  The political culture of the Roman Empire was radically different from today. A small group of elite families were constantly competing with one another.  The young men were used to keep the family in power, and held mainly symbolic positions, intended to make the family’s wealth serviceable to the city.

Youth clubs

This destroys one of the pillars of Kleiweg’s argument, according to Strubbe. ‘It opens the possibility of a youth period, when a young man had little to do.  One of my students, Saskia Hin, has written a thesis – which has since been published – on youth clubs in the cities of the Greek East. This shows that these clubs were not a kind of education which offered a fast preparation for participation in public life, as Kleijwegt thought.’  

Thrason Leon, son of Hierocles, from Hieracome, (deceased) aged (..) held the office of high priest when he was aged ten, of governor of an academy when he was eleven, of priest to the greatest god Zeus Panamaros when he was sixteen, and was a priest of Zeus Chrysaoreios Propator when he was twenty.

Inscription from Stratoniceia, a town in the south-west of Asia Minor, second century AD.  Often quoted, but not representative of the activities of young men, according to Strubbe (Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk p. 150). -------

Hippies in togas

Is it then possible to ascribe a true winner? ‘We are tending more in the direction of Eyben,’ says Strubbe. And he immediately adds that this does not mean that young Roman men were some kind of hippies in togas – as Eyben was accused of claiming -, or that there is no difference between them and the 21st century sms generation.

Less problematic

Strubbe: ‘Of course, that brain research and those socio-biological constants provide very interesting information. But it is a matter of how a society treats that information.  Is the behaviour condoned or not? What are the patterns of expectation? And do you see, for example, that unstable and unruly behaviour were considered less problematic in Roman society than in present-day society.  For young men, at least.  Girls had to preserve their virginity until marriage.’

Elite

Moreover, there is a lot that we don’t know, says Strubbe with audible regret.  The sources – literary sources and inscriptions – relate to a small male elite. We know almost nothing about the girls; authors were not interested in what the girls thought.  We also have no idea what those young men from the inscriptions did in the evenings, after they had attended the town council.  Maybe they behaved the same as modern adolescents.  And we can only hazard a guess about their inner selves.  The inscriptions say nothing at all about this.’

--- Christian Laes and Johan Strubbe, Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk.Jonge jaren, wilde haren?  Davidsfonds/Leuven 2008. ISBN 978 90 5826 508 1,     € 24,95.

Link: Dr J.H.M. Strubbe

(15 July 2008/HP)

Elite
Moreover, there is a lot that we don’t know, says Strubbe with audible regret.  The sources – literary sources and inscriptions – relate to a small male elite. We know almost nothing about the girls; authors were not interested in what the girls thought.  We also have no idea what those young men from the inscriptions did in the evenings, after they had attended the town council.  Maybe they behaved the same as modern adolescents.  And we can only hazard a guess about their inner selves.  The inscriptions say nothing at all about this.’   --- Christian Laes and Johan Strubbe, Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk.Jonge jaren, wilde haren?  Davidsfonds/Leuven 2008. ISBN 978 90 5826 508 1,     € 24,95.   Link: Dr J.H.M. Strubbe