Children in Greco-Roman Society: Age, Development, Work and Nosological Relevance. A Historical-Medical Perspective

Abstract

The definition of childhood in historical studies is as recent a problem as the attention devoted by scholars to this age group. A reflection on the nomenclature used in Greek and Latin literary, epigraphic, legal and properly medical sources and the comparison with paleopathological studies allows us to interpret the historical perception of childhood in terms of incompleteness. In the Hippocratic and Galenic tradition this incompleteness unites children to fragile and marginalized categories, namely women and the elderly, but above all it does not recognize their specific diseases, delaying the birth of pediatrics for centuries.