Hanna Ammar

This article comes from a paper presented at the annual conference organized by The Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past in September 2018. It analyzes the images depicted on Attic vases produced between c. 440-370 BC, in which children play with particular toys, the wheeled carts. The study of these images gives us several leads to understand the educational values attached to these toys, depicted by the vase painters as markers of the different stages of children's development and of the acquisition of mobility.

A significant number of Greek vases from the classical period, produced in Athens in the second half of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, depict children of various ages – from the crawling toddler to the teenager – who engage in playful activities. In particular on a type of miniature wine jug called chous (plural choes), as well as on other types of vessels with similar depictions. On these scenes, some children are clearly identifiable as little boys: their nudity often reveals male sexual parts, and at the same time gender markers as hairdressing and clothing allow us to identify little girls.
The playful activities depicted on these objects, often involving particular types of toys, are a moment of interaction between children. As a matter of fact, if some of them are playing alone, vase painting depicts children playing in small groups from two to four participants. Therefore, playing becomes a privileged moment of interaction between children of different ages as well as between little girls and little boys.
The presentation will focus on these interactions: is there a specific way to play between girls and boys? Are there types of games / types of toys exclusively reserved for boys / for girls? What about the children, mainly toddlers, who seem to be voluntarily depicted without obvious gender markers? We will reconsider the criteria for the identification of boys and girls, already debated by many modern authors. We will also rise the issue of bad and good way of playing for one gender and the other. Through the study of this catalog as well as textual and archaeological sources, we hope to help understand if specific ways of playing are related to gender identification in classical Greek iconography.

Sur les choés attiques, ou cruches miniatures, nombreuses sont les scènes où des enfants s’adonnent à des activités qui semblent s’inscrire dans un contexte festif. Ces jeunes filles et jeunes garçons y manipulent des objets caractéristiques des rites religieux athéniens. Régulièrement associées au deuxième jour de la fête des Anthestéries, les images décorant les choés peuvent-elles néanmoins faire référence à d’autres célébrations religieuses, où les activités ludiques des enfants se mêleraient à celles des fêtes communautaires des adultes? Ces questionnements soulèvent alors les modalités de la participation des enfants à ces rites religieux.

The subject is part of my doctoral thesis on ‘Childhood at play’ in the classical Greek world under the direction of Prof. Véronique Dasen at the University of Fribourg, as part of the ERC project ‘Locus Ludi. The cultural fabric of play and games in classical antiquity’.
The presentation will be based on my catalogue of depictions of children at play in Classical Greek art, in particular on a type of miniature wine jug called chous (plural choes), as well as on other types of vessels with similar depictions of children. On these objects, produced in Athens in the second half of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, many scenes show children – boys and girls – of various ages – from the crawling toddler to the teenager – who engage in playful activities, alone or in small groups. Many of these children manipulate a small cart with wheels, often a simple wooden stick used as a handle connected to a disc as wheel. More complex carts are also present, some being miniature chariots driven by small animals (dogs, goats, etc.).
The function of this toy, its fabrication and context of use, is debated by many modern authors. For Lesley Beaumont (Childhood in Ancient Athens: Iconography and Social History, 2012), the wheeled stick is to associate with the ritual context of these scenes, and marks the participation of the child to his/her first religious festival, probably the Anthesteria. In other words, this particular toy would be used by the vase painters to distinguish the children who have already celebrated this transition from early childhood to the next stage of life from those who have not.
Starting from this theory, other questions will be asked: how can the wheel cart be related to a religious event? Were they offered on this occasion? Can it be considered as a gender marker, reserved to little boys as on the funerary stelae of the same period, where no girls are depicted with such toy (as opposed to vases where girls use them)? Is it an age class identifier, used to evoke the learning of walking by the little ones? The comparison of iconographic, textual and archaeological sources will throw another light on the nature and function of this object.