Children as culprits and criminals : children in mischief, delict, and crime in Roman Empire

Abstract

A new trend that has emerged in the childhood studies of antiquity. This approach considers the child to be an active agent and participant of the life in family and society, as opposed to the traditional view of the child as a mere object in the hands of the adults around. In this paper, I propose to follow this trend to push further the discussion the problematic of children breaching the legal and social norms as children could be not only the victims of dark and violent situations that could happen, they could also be the perpetrators. Focusing on extant legal and literary evidence from the long-lasting era of Roman Empire (though better evidence we have for the late imperial era) I would like to discuss our possibilities to reconstruct the phenomenon of children as active participants in violence in Roman antiquity, how were they treated, what can we know about their motivation and experience. However, given the sources, only the frame of the reality in which the children acted can be reconstructed.