It’s not uncommon to find people who assume that ancient Roman children didn’t have fun. While some others think that from a very early age, the male children were trained to be gladiators and the females, healers. Well, this isn’t exactly true.
It is in fact a fact that they had fun as there are numerous paintings to support this claim. There are many mosaics and paintings that show Roman children playing various games and having fun. Some writings go as far as describing children at play.
An example of such writings is the writings of Horace. The writings of Horace share stories about children riding hobbyhorses, building playhouses and even making little carts and hitching mice up to them to pull them around.
When a child was born, they were given an object called a crepundia. It was like the Ancient Roman version of a rattle. The crepundia was a brightly coloured necklace with many small ornaments, resembling flowers, swords, axes, or suns. The noise the necklace made when the baby moved was fun for the baby along with its bright colours.
The girls then played with dolls, and when there was a poor Roman family, their mom would sew rags and make rag dolls for the girls. Girls from wealthy Roman families had dolls made out of wax or clay and they had body parts like arms and legs.
The boys on the other hand thought of war. The ancient Roman children grew up with stories from their brothers or their fathers about fighting in the war and so it shaped their mindset.
As a result of this, when they would get toys, most of them were war-type toys or games. The boys also got wooden swords and shields that they used to play games with other children in the neighbourhood and they played pretend.
Another popular toy during the Ancient Roman times was Tops. Children loved to spin the top. Most times, the tops were painted in different colours. Pull toys and whistles were also popular in Ancient Roman times.
The Romans also made animals from wood, these animals had wheels and could be pulled around. They also had balls made from reed and linen.
Yo-Yo’s were really popular and swimming which we consider a sport now was one of the numerous games the ancient Roman children played.
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