Children’s Supplication in Classical Athens. Religious Skills, Survival and Inferiority

Abstract

The present paper explores children’s experience as supplicants to authorities in power as a vital tool for coping with life-threatening circumstances in classical Athens. The examination of the specific characteristics of children’s performance, as it is represented in literary and artistic sources, reveals the inability of minors to execute all the stages of the rite of supplication. Children’s participation was demonstrated principally in the physical aspects of supplication, while they were unable to perform the verbal, argumentative element of the ritual, which generally was carried out in its prescribed form by adults who accompanied the children, and initiated and supervised the rite. The incapacity of children, as the article shows, correlates with the stereotypical inferiority and weakness that defined the stage of childhood in classical Athens. Hence, unlike other religious activities which involved minors and reflected a successful socialization process, the rite of supplication spotlights children’s position as societally weak members of the community.