Being Young Is No Excuse: Child Labor in Democratic Athens

Childhood is generally regarded as a carefree stage of life characterised by playfulness and dependency, not by work. Yet for a not inconsiderable number of children in the Graeco-Roman world, the transition from childhood to the adult world of labour came early and abruptly. This holds true, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, not only for enslaved children, but also for free minors, including children of citizen stock and even those of privileged social status. Some at least were set to labour as soon as they seemed capable of learning and working in either, in the case of children from upper-class familiFes, achrematic—i.e. honorific—occupations (for instance as priests or weavers of sacred garments), or, in most cases, chrematic, that is, pecuniary-driven jobs. Working conditions and experiences of child workers obviously varied considerably depending on the type of occupation, work environment, legal and social status, or gender of the youth performing the job. Likewise, the motives of children’s parents were likely diverse; viewing child labour as purely exploitative and driven solely by economic necessity may ultimately prove too simplistic. Transmitting family knowledge, training, and equipping children with particular skills (especially in artisanal families) and thus preparing them for professional adult life, must equally have been an important factor. This paper will focus on democratic Athens. Although the evidence for this period is hardly abundant—partly because Athenian authors did not consider child labour worth discussing and, more importantly, because in most cases the age of a given worker is simply not mentioned—we can nevertheless extract some interesting insights. For there are indeed isolated pieces of evidence in a variety of Athenian sources—literary texts, vase iconography, epigraphic and bioarchaeological material—that can be used to reconstruct the working lives and experiences of both free and unfree children in classical Athens. By piecing together these disparate cases of individuals attested in Athenian sources who can reasonably be regarded as not-yet-adults, this paper will seek to shed light on the various domains of child labour, the circumstances under which children in Athens were prepared for adulthood, their working experiences and conditions, and, finally, the impact of not-yet-adults on the society and economy of classical Athens.