Children in Pompeii & Herculaneum

Recently I gave a family-friendly talk at the British Museum about Children in Pompeii and Herculaneum. This was part of the halfterm events accompanying Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum Exhibition. Fans of my Roman Mysteries books who couldn't come asked if I could write a report... so here is a summary of my talk.

Flavia Gemina, detectrix

I started out with an illustrated reading from The Roman Mysteries Treasury called A Day in My Life, about a day in the life of a Roman girl, Flavia Gemina. Flavia is the main character of my Roman Mysteries books. Although she leads an unusually eventful life and lives in Ostia, rather than the Bay of Naples, many aspects of her life and the the lives of children in Pompeii and Herculaneum would have been similar: rising at dawn, washing in the garden by the fountain, a light breakfast, household prayers with paterfamilias in atrium, lessons in the morning, a light lunch, siesta or the baths after lunch, dinner at around four in the afternoon and bed at sunset. In a reversal of today, poor people would eat out, buying their food from "fast food joints" and only people rich enough for cook slave and kitchen would eat in. 

When a baby was born, it would be wrapped tightly in strips of cloth called swaddling to keep it safe, then placed at the feet of the seated father. If he took the baby onto his knee (Latin genu) that meant he acknowledged the child as his, i.e. the baby was genuine! If not, the baby might be "exposed", i.e. left to die outside the town wall! (The Secrets of Vesuvius tells a story of this happening). Babies were not usually named for the first week or two as so many did not survive. Nor did many children survive past infancy. In ancient Roman times you could die of something that is easily treatable today.

Romans did not have our concept of childhood as an idyllic time to have fun and be innocent. Children were essentially mini-adults, working as soon as they were able and, if you were a girl, marrying as young as 12!

sewing with a bone needle

Working-class girls, i.e. those from the plebs, would probably help with the family business as soon as they were able, until they got married and started having children. Some girls might learn enough reading and maths to make lists and do basic accounts. The wife of the baker Terentius Neo is famously holding a stylus and writing tablet in a fresco from Pompeii. She is obviously proud of the fact that she is a pleb who knows how to read and write. 

The proper occupation for unwed, upper-class girls (in the equestrian or patrician classes) was weaving. You would spin wool into yarn, then weave that yarn into cloth on a loom then stitch it into garments with a bone needle. 

Girls would marry at 14 or 15, then have a baby and very often die, as childbirth was the biggest killer of young women in Roman times. At my talk, I showed a picture of a birthing chair from Cairo such as pregnant Roman women might have used when they gave birth. When I asked the audience what they thought this was for, one cute little girl wondered if it was "a baby's cot"? But I think you will agree: there are a few flaws in that suggestion!

Working class boys would probably go to school until they knew the basics of reading, writing and maths. "School" was often just a screened-off part of a columned walkway in the forum, so it would have been quite noisy. Richer boys and occasionally girls might have enjoyed a private tutor. Greek-born or Greek-speaking tutors were highly sought after as Greek was the language every educated boy or girl needed to learn. In my books, Flavia and her friends are tutored at home by a handsome young Greek named Aristo. Most children would not be this fortunate.

gestures of an orator

The Roman version of University for boys would be the study of rhetoric. Many went abroad. Two popular destinations were Athens and Rhodes. That was the ancient equivalent of studying at Oxbridge in the UK or Stanford in America. Here they would learn how to be an orator so they could practise law and climb the ladder of honours to political office. This is the course that Flavia's patrician boyfriend Flaccus pursues. (For more about this, read The Slave-girl from Jeruslaem)

mosaic of a Roman ball!

How did Roman kids have fun? We have found a few toys, but not many. Essentially Roman children had fun the same way adults did: a trip to the chariot races, arena, playing with dice, watching cockfights, hunting, etc. Even the Roman mosaic from Ostia of a startlingly modern-looking football (right) was probably for adults to throw around in the palaestra, the exercise area of the public baths.

As I prepared this talk, it struck me yet again that our lives would have seemed unimaginably luxurious and safe to ancient Romans. Even the most basic bathroom with its porcelain fixtures, cold and hot running water, scented soaps and clean towels would have been a luxury undreamt of by Alexander the Great or Augustus Caesar! 

To illustrate how blessed we are, I showed objects that we have easy access to now which they did not have in Roman times. "Which one of these objects (below) on its own would have been worth an Emperor's ransom?" I asked.

Which of these on its own would have been worth an emperor's ransom?

One person suggested the tomato, because you could plant the seeds and grow more of this exotic fruit. Another suggested chocolate though Romans might have to acquire the taste. The electric plug reminds us they had no electricity so of course it would have been useless. The clock reminds us they had no batteries so that would have been useless, too. Glasses might be useful, but what if they didn't match your prescription? And who could you call with a telephone but no providers? For me, the object beyond price would be the Savlon. Although they didn't have a clear concept of infection, they did know about balms and ointments. In a time and place where the smallest scratch could become infected and kill you, that tube of antiseptic cream would certainly have saved many lives.

so-called "boat houses" Herculaneum

Assuming you lived to be 10 or 11, how would you have survived the eruption of Vesuvius? That was my next question. I described the not-too-scary beginnings of the eruption of Vesuvius – a lot of ash shooting up but no lava or flaming rocks – and I gave children in the BP lecture theatre a choice of sheltering in sturdy vaulted "boat houses" forming the foundations of the Herculaneum baths, or running away with nothing but pillows to cover their heads. Anyone who has grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area or Japan would know the safest place to shlelter during an earth tremor would be under a sturdy vault. But in this case the correct answer is "pillows" as death overtook those who sheltered in the vaulted storehouses of Herculaneum when the superheated air collapsed in a pyroclastic surge!

eruption of Vesuvius as depicted in CBBC Roman Mysteries TV show

They should have run away!

I didn't show the children in my audience any of the pictures of plaster casts made from the bodies of children who died in the eruption, but I did talk about the famous "dog of Pompeii" and I reassured them that he gained eternal fame through his few moments of suffering. And of course he inspired my first book: The Thieves of Ostia! This brought me to my four characters, based on the four elements of which Romans believed the world was composed. 

And that brought me to perhaps the biggest differences in Roman times and modern: the concept of the four humours. Romans believed people were full of four basic juices which they called humours: blood, mucus, yellow bile and black bile. I quickly determined through raising of hands, if members of my audience were cheerful sanguine "otters", stoically melancholic "cats", faithfully relaxed phlegmatic "golden retrievers", or hot-tempered choleric leader-type "lions". You can take the Four Humours Quiz HERE.

sponge-stick and an "as" of the Emperor Domitian to show scale

And finally no talk about daily life in Ancient Rome would be complete without my discussion of What Romans Used for Toilet Paper! I showed images of various options to wipe, not forgetting my Roman "as" for scale. (It's the size of a 50p but much more fun to say than "50p"). I finished with my pièce de résistance: a demonstration of how the sponge-stick was used. And that was it!

If you liked some the things I talked about in this post and want to know more about life in first century Italy, you will love the Roman Mysteries books. For more info, go to my author page or my website. 

You Can Be an Archaeologist Detective!

My friend Dr. Hella Eckardt (no, that's not her) is a brilliant archaeologist. She knows that the graves of dead people from Roman times provide lots of clues about how they lived. Over the past few years, she and her clever colleagues have studied over 150 skeletons from Roman Britain (between 200-400 CE).

Recently Hella and a team from the University of Reading chose four of the 150 graves to investigate in detail. Together with webmasters from the Runnymede Trust, they have now designed a website that allows schoolchildren (and anybody else) to “look into” those graves and make their own deductions. You can look at the bones of four individuals, including a little girl. You can hear what experts have to say about what the bones, teeth and grave goods tell us.

Then you can make your own deductions and even write a story if you like. That’s what I did. I took the clues the experts gave me and made up a possible story for each of the four. I even got to help name them! We called the little girl Savariana. The young man is Brucco, the exotic and rich young woman from Africa is Julia Tertia and the man from the Black Sea region is Piscarius.

Yesterday a panel of experts spoke to over two hundred schoolchildren in year 3 (aged 8 and 9) at the Museum of London. The children came specially to help us “launch” the new Romans Revealed website.

The speakers were introduced by Dr. Nina Sprigge (far right in the picture below). Her job is to enthuse teachers and schoolkids about the museum's collections and she does a great job.

The children and their teachers got to hear Hella (in the middle) talk about how diverse Roman Britain was, with goods and people coming from all over the empire.

They got to hear Dr. Caroline McDonald (far left below) tell us about all the bones in the vaults of the Museum of London: they have over 17,000 skeletons!

Caroline McDonald, Hella Eckardt, Nina Sprigge & the Spitalfields Lady!

Debbie Weekes-Bernard from the Runnymede Trust brought some booklets with ideas for exciting lessons teachers can build around this new website.

Valentine Hansen & me

Valentine Hansen played the part of an ex-soldier in Britannia. He taught the children to say "hello" in Latin and what it meant to have three names.

I got to speak too! I briefly told the kids how I get ideas by playing with my replica Roman objects, including my infamous Roman bottom wiper: a sponge on a stick! (Learn more HERE!)

Dr. Helen Forte was there, too. She is a Latin teacher but also illustrates the Minimus Primary Latin course and some of my books. She did some of her marvellous drawings for the Romans Revealed website.

But the oldest guest by far was a woman from Rome. She was two thousand years old. You guessed it! She is the skeleton. Although visitors to the Romans Revealed website will only examine virtual bones on the Romans Revealed website, the Museum of London had brought out real bones!

Valentine examines a reconstruction of the Spitalfields Lady

The so-called Spitalfields Lady is probably the most famous of the 17,000 skeletons in the Museum of London vaults. We think she used to look like the bust in the picture up above.

Spitalfields Lady today

But today she looks like THIS! (right)

Dr. Becky Redfern, a researcher at the Museum of London, told us that we can tell by her teeth that she was born in Spain but then grew up in Rome! She then came to Londinium (the Roman name for London) where she sadly died. She was very rich and you can see the objects buried with her in the Museum of London Roman gallery.

You can't see a real skeleton like the Spitalfields Lady unless you visit the Museum of London, but you can visit four other skeletons by a click of the mouse. Have fun and tell me what you think of it!

Romans Revealed!

Caroline Lawrence writes historical fiction for children with kid detectives. She has written over twenty books set in first century Rome including The Roman Mystery Scrolls series – illustrated by Helen Forte – which would be perfect for kids in year 3 or up studying the Romans! Carrying on from the Roman Mysteries, the Roman Quests series set in Roman Britain launched in May 2016 with Escape from Rome.