¹ Martin 1996: 40 ‘a remarkable new consensus’. Sailer's 1994 book was, amongst other things, an extended response to earlier criticisms of his methodology. For a response to Martin, see Rawson (1997c).

² Recent work, which is required background to any further study, includes Bradley (1991a), Dixon (1992), Treggiari (1991), and the contributions in Kertzer and Sailer (1991) and in Rawson (1991, 1997a).

³ E.g. Evans (1991) and Champlin (1991).

⁴ But Wiedemann himself concedes (3) that his book ‘is not intended to be a comprehensive collection of the evidence, literary, legal, epigraphical, or archaeological’ and his emphasis is on literary sources and the upper echelons of society.

⁵ Provisionally titled Children and Childhood in Roman Italy. The present article will form the basis for a discussion in that book of methodology and source criticism. It is presented in this form now to invite comment and reaction.

⁶ This does not include anonymous children who might have been members of the imperial family or who might have been modelled on those members. It does include specific examples of imperial children whose statues and coin representations were used to promote imperial ideology. It does not include childlike figures such as putti, Cupids, etc. Examples are drawn from Rome and Italy only, to preserve some cultural cohesion. Similar examples are to be found in other parts of the Roman world, but they must be analysed in the context of their own cultural traditions. My collection of images of children is being prepared for publication on the World Wide Web and CD-ROM, with the help of Michael Greenhalgh (Professor of Art History, ANU).

⁷ J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 85.AA.352

⁸ Cf. Currie 1996 on the children on Trajan's Column.

⁹ ANU Classics Department Museum 71.09 (RIC 2.15 no. 2Google Scholar), a denarius with Vespasian on the obverse as Augustus and the heads of Titus and Domitian on the reverse, each as Caesar and son of the Augustus.

¹⁰ TVTELA AVGVSTI on Vespasian's coins of 70 and 71, with a female figure protecting two children with hands raised to her: RIC 2.63 no. 398Google Scholar; 72 no. 480.

¹¹ Pietas and a small child, associated with Titus' deified sister Domitilla, whose progeny were to continue the Flavian line, on his coin of 80. Under Domitian, the same image with Domitian's wife Domitia, on coins in 81-83/4 and 91-92: RIC 2.124 no. 73Google Scholar.

¹² Contrast the difficulties of Greek iconography, of both Classical and Hellenistic periods, where text is comparatively rare, and when it occurs its dissonance with the image sometimes warns us of the dangers of extrapolating from image to judgments about Greek society. See Rawson 1995: 4; Pomeroy 1997: 128-34.

¹³ But there may be senatorial women hidden in the sepulcrales of Rome, e.g. Statoria Marcella and Minicia Marcella, the wife and daughter of Pliny the Younger's friend Minicius Fundanus: their simple monuments (CIL 6.16631, 16632Google Scholar) would not have revealed their status if we did not have Pliny's evidence in Ep. 5.16Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Sailer and Shaw 1984. This form of representation is not denied by Martin (1996) who nevertheless questions whether these representations truly reflect the full Roman family structure.

¹⁵ No single inscription can give us the whole life history of any individual or family. Bradley (1993: 242) compares an inscription to a photograph, recording a single moment, ‘frozen in time’, in a family's life-course. It can actually tell us more about the life-course than that moment; but what is of interest and significance here is the high representation of children in these recorded moments.

¹⁶ CIL 6.33976Google Scholar, IG 14.2012Google Scholar; Kleiner 1987: no. 45.

¹⁷ Cf. international instrumental competitions such as the piano contests in which David Helfgott is represented as competing in the film Shine.

¹⁸ P. Annius Floras, whose story is preserved in the fragmentary tract Vergilius orator an poeta, pp. 209-14Google Scholar of L. Annaei Fiori quae exstant². Malcovati, H. 1972Google Scholar. See Hardie 1983: 180 on Africa.

¹⁹ Cf. Quintilian's examples of boys who gave speeches in public at early ages, e.g. Octavian's funeral eulogy at twelve, followed by his advice not to push the young too fast (12.6.1). In Petronius, Sat. 4, Encolpius' tirade against rhetoricians blames parents’ ambition for driving immature schoolboys into public life.

²⁰ Zanker 1995: 275 and fig. 148; Wrede 1981 no. 243. These scholars take the women to be wife and daughters of the man and the daughters to be represented on the short sides as Muses. The sculpture on a relief now in the British Museum (but of Eastern provenance) depicts a ten-year-old girl, Abeita, with reading materials: her epitaph is in Greek (BM Sculpture 649; Walker 1985: 45 and pi. 35; Walker 1988: 552).

²¹ Pliny says that she ‘had not yet reached 14’, but her epitaph, found near Rome (CIL 6.16631Google Scholar), gives her age as 12 years, 11 months and 7 days.

²² Pietas is not, however, a quality appropriate only to children. It works in two directions between adults and children, as the legal evidence examined below shows.

²³ CIL 6.26409Google Scholar; ANU Classics Department Museum 71.04; late first or second century A.D.

²⁴ Joshel (1992) attributes few of the jobs in her examples to children.

²⁵ T. Flauius Agathangelus appears again in CIL 6.200.V.41Google Scholar, a dedication to Vespasian and his house in A.D. 70 by a long list of citizens of one of the districts of Rome.

²⁶ In CIL 6.18548Google Scholar the Agrippa who is called pupillus is probably Agrippa Postumus, grandson of Augustus and posthumous son of Agrippa by Julia. He is elsewhere called pupus. Born after his father's death, he required a tutor from infancy. The references to pupillus/pupus must predate Augustus’ adoption of the sixteen-year-old Agrippa in A.D. 4. The reference to him as pupillus is in a dedication by his freedwoman Artemis for her one-year-old son Fortunatos.

²⁷ This section owes much to Janette McWilliam, ‘Children in Rome and Italy in the early Empire’, Honours thesis ANU 1990.

²⁸ Translation edited by Alan Watson 1985. The term parentes here can hardly embrace the father; it probably signifies wider familial connections (see Wilkinson 1964), and cognati signify kin.

²⁹ Only in exceptional circumstances would a slave under 30 who was freed by will become a Roman citizen immediately. But from Latin status he had opportunities to achieve full citizenship. See Weaver 1990: 278.

³⁰ Cf. D. 7.1.12.3Google Scholar, Ulpian, in a discussion of usufruct, where potential value is posited for slaves who are at present unproductive, including an infans, whose services can have no monetary value set on them.

³¹ D. 6.1.60Google Scholar, Pomponius. Cf. D. 48.8.12, Modestinus (below), where an infans cannot be held liable for murder because of its ‘innocentia consilii’.

³² The principle of ‘incapax doli’ still exists in Australian law. It was invoked late in 1996 in the State of Queensland when Aboriginal boys under the age of fifteen were accused of spitting at a Member of Parliament (Pauline Hanson) whom they considered racist. The Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987 NSW, sect. 5, states under the heading ‘Age of criminal responsibility’: ‘It shall be conclusively presumed that no child who is under the age of 10 years can be guilty of an offence’. Commentary on this section goes on to state that ‘A child between the ages of eight and 14 is presumed to be doli incapax (incapable of crime)’, but discusses ways in which this presumption might be rebutted, e.g. by evidence that the accused knew that what he was doing was wrong. ‘Thus … the capacity to commit crime … is not so much measured by years and days as by the strength of the accused's understanding and judgement.’ I owe this reference to David Martin, solicitor, Sydney. 33 Cf. Seneca, , De beneficiis 7.1.5Google Scholar, where it is said not to be important to know ‘quare Septimus quisque annus aetati Signum imprimat’.

³⁴ Cf. Seneca's vivid description of children playing various games, De constantia 12.1-2.

³⁵ A writer on representations of women in 19th century British poetry (Hickok 1984: 80-2) believes that the mortality rates of women and children are reflected in some of the preoccupations of women poets of the time.

³⁶ Cf. Nevett 1997 on the use of literary evidence for the study of domestic space.

³⁷ E.g. 3.7.15 on the role of disciplinete, which come at a stage of life between emergence of natural character ((indoles) and the full achievements of adulthood ((operum id est factorum dictorumque contextus).