Introduction. Playing, ‘acting like a child’
p. 273-276
Texte intégral
1Throughout the 5th century, vase-painters gradually gave greater prominence to young children, who became a subject in their own right on miniature vessels mass-produced from around 430 for over 40 years.1 We will look here at images from this group of almost a thousand wine jugs or choes (chous in the singular),2 which imitate the shape of the ordinary three-lobed-mouth oinochoe (type III) with a capacity of around 3.2 litres. The format of the choes is smaller, with a height of 3 to 15cm.3 Almost all come from Attica or mainland Greece,4 with the exception of exports to Greek colonial contexts, notably Spina in southern Italy, and local production in Apulia.5 Added to this group are small aryballoi and squat aryballoi, perfumed oil vases, and tubular-spouted vessels known conventionally as ‘feeding bottles’,6 produced during the same period.
2Almost all these miniature vases show children having fun. The youngest are still crawling or learning to walk, while the oldest are about ten years old. The majority seem to be in their first hebdomad, which ends at the age of seven with the beginning of school, when the girls are separated from the boys.7 They are characterised by their physical appearance and a set of accessories and animals specific to their age group. Alone or in groups, they are active in a festive context often featuring a jug like the container bearing their image.
3This change in the painters’ interests is often explained by the potential impact of Pericles’ decree of 451-450, which restricted citizenship to male children born of the legitimate union of Athenian fathers and mothers.8 Limiting access to civic rights may have given greater value to women and children in the household, as well as to family ties.9 In the second half of the 5th century, other political and health events, namely the Peloponnesian War and the epidemic that ravaged Athens during this period, probably also played a role in the development of this vase production, as we shall see further.
A childish paidia
4The activities displayed by children on these miniature vases reflect a way of thinking about play and the specificities of childhood that resonate with a semantic range of terms related to the Greek radical pais, ‘the child’. Michel Casevitz10 has shown that paizo associates play with the pre-adult age category, in the sense of ‘playing, acting like a child’, and even more broadly of ‘playing a musical instrument’, ‘dancing’ and ‘joking’. This lexical field also refers to the civic dimension of education (paideuo, ‘to train’, ‘to educate’), which transforms the young individual into a cultured being, pepaideumenos. Stephen Kidd11 has demonstrated how all-encompassing the notion of paidia was. While today play is defined as an enjoyable activity, the Greek paidia primarily referred to a pleasant emotion, a feeling of joy that invites people to indulge in all sorts of pleasurable activities, including play, such as dancing, singing, drinking, and eating.12 Play was therefore an integral part of the child’s identity, pais, and involved the collective, gymnastic, and choral activities associated with the festivals, rituals, and sacrifices that ensured the stability of a city united in its respect for the gods and the pursuit of the common good.
5The meaning of paignion, also derived from pais and often translated as ‘toy’, similarly extends far beyond the modern ‘toy’. Like athurma, a term with a very similar meaning,13 paignion does not refer to a particular form or materiality but encompasses all kinds of objects that fascinated and brought joy, from jewels to shells, including those made out of odds and ends.14 Moreover, paidia and paignion could also mean a religious festival, heorte,15 and the pleasure inherent to the associated choragic and athletic performances.16
6In Plato, man is compared to a toy, paignion, created by the gods, who must learn to control the movements of his body and soul in a harmonious and reasoned way, like puppets, thaumata.17 This comparison could be extended to the child, who was a sort of paignion, an entertaining plaything to be trained through education. A series of funerary epigrams explicitly refer to the child who died too soon as athurma or paignion.18 In an epigram by Crinagoras (1st cent.), the little Hymnis is described as a ‘plaything’, athurma,19 taken from her parents prematurely, while other poems refer to the dead child as a paignion who cheers up Persephone.20 The images of children enjoying themselves on miniature vases also convey the pleasure of observing them.
Playing and learning
7The Platonic dialogues in The Republic and Laws seek to explain the structural proximity between play and learning.21 “Don’t bring your youngsters up by force in their studies […] but in a playful way”, asserts Socrates in The Republic,22 rejecting the use of coercion and violence. The notion of play unites that of pleasure and effort, spoude, a term often translated as ‘serious’, but which encompasses zeal and ardour. These ‘serious’ games can reveal and stimulate children’s aptitudes. The Athenian in Laws gives a few examples that view boys as future citizens:
What I assert is that every man who is going to be good at any pursuit must practise that special pursuit from infancy, by using all the implements of his pursuit both in his play and in his work (paizonta te kai spoudazonta). For example, the man who is to make a good builder must play (paizein) at building toy houses, and to make a good farmer he must play at tilling land; and those who are rearing them must provide each child with toy tools modelled on real ones. […] So, by means of their games (dia ton paidion), we should endeavour to turn the tastes and desires (tas hedonas kai epithumias) of the children in the direction of that object which forms their ultimate goal.23
8The aim was also to guide the younger children, who are in a constant state of desire and hunger for pleasure, towards controlling their passions and respecting common rules.24 But the game must be beautiful, i.e., orderly, “on the grounds that, if it becomes lawless and the children likewise, then it will be impossible for their children to grow into law-abiding and worthy men”.25 ‘Play’, paizein, was not limited to childhood. In his search for the ideal city, the Athenian in Laws points out that play should be a lifelong activity for men and women alike: “This, then, is the role to which “every man and woman ought to pass through life in accordance with this character, playing at the noblest of pastimes.”26
Notes de bas de page
1The production seems to have started earlier, around 460/450, but became extensive between around 430 and 390; Crelier 2008: 152-153.
2The first corpus of miniature choes was compiled by van Hoorn 1951, expanded by Green 1971, then Hamilton 1992, and completed in the Beazley Archive Pottery Database (BAPD). See also Crelier 2008: 72-75, 152-168 and Seifert 2011: 108-138, as well as the catalogue of nearly 600 playful scenes on the Callisto database: www.callisto.unifr.ch. I would like to thank Hanna Ammar for compiling all these images as part of her research within the ERC team.
3On the maximum size of these little jugs, about 15cm high, Hamilton 1992: 73-77. On the transformation of the oinochoe into a chous, Schmidt 2005: 156-165.
4On the contexts of the finds in Athens, rarely in graves, Hamilton 1992: 70-71 and the observations by Crelier 2008: 73-75, based on the study of the Kerameikos cemetery, which disproves a production for funerary purposes put forward, for example, by Green 1971. This does not rule out their symbolic value as a transition marker in the grave, Beaumont 2013: 81-82.
5On the choes from Spina, see Berti 1991; Muggia 2000; D’Ercole 2007. In Sicily, Giudice 2007: 363-364, no. 46.
6For more information on this type of vase (which rarely, if ever, contains milk), see Jaeggi Richoz 2023.
7On the separation of girls and boys around the age of six, Pl. Lg. 7.794c. We have adopted the Greek medical writers’ division of the life cycle into seven-year periods. See Hippoc. Hebd. (Littré VIII, 636). On these divisions, Golden 1990: 12-22. On various divisions of the life cycle that continue into Roman times, Laes 2011: 77-99.
8On this law and the notion of female citizenship, Sébillotte Cuchet 2016; Blok 2017.
9E.g., Beaumont 2003: 72.
10Casevitz 2018. See also Jouët-Pastré 2006.
11Kidd 2019 and 2021.
12Greek and Latin funerary inscriptions associate the same pleasures: “Eat, drink, have fun!” (esthie, pine, paize); Muñoz 2014; Dasen, Mathieu 2020.
13On athurma, Kidd 2019 and 2021; Dieu 2022.
14Patera 2022.
15Ar. Lys. 698-702: the festival in honour of Hecate is called paignia; Scholia on Ar. Lys. 700: paignia: heorte. Hdt. 9.11: the Lacedemonians celebrated the Hyacinthian festivities by enjoying themselves, paizete. See Patera 2022 with other examples.
16See the dances at the Gymnopaedia in Sparta; Paus. 3.11.9. See Part 2. Gymnastic games.
17Pl. Lg. 1.644d-645b and 7.803c. See the use of the term in Pl. Resp. 7.814b, translated by LSJ, as ‘puppetshow’. On this comparison and the translation of thaumata as ‘puppets’, Borgeaud 2022 and Zichi 2022.
18See the epigrams collected by Laribi-Glaudel 2022a and 2022b.
19Anth. Pal. 7.643. Hymnis was “the loveable pet of his house”, which suggests that she might have been a slave. On the slave as erotic ‘plaything’, see also Floridi 2022.
20Anth. Pal. 7.483. Inscription from Syros, IG XII 5 677; Vérilhac 1978: 87-89, no. 59; Hunter 2019: 147. See also Nobili 2022.
21Pl. Lg. 7.808b-810c. On these educational principles, Jouët-Pastré 2006.
22Pl. Resp. 7.536e-537a (transl. C. Emlyn-Jones, W. Preddy, Loeb).
23Pl. Lg. 1.643b-d (transl. R.G. Bury, Loeb).
24Pl. Resp. 4.424e-425a; Lg. 7.819c.
25Pl. Resp. 4.424e-425a (transl. C. Emlyn-Jones, W. Preddy, Loeb). See also ibid. 8.558e. See the aphorism by Nietzsche 1886, no. 94: Reife des Mannes: das heißt den Ernst wiedergefunden haben, den man als Kind hatte, beim Spiel (“Maturity means regaining the seriousness one had as a child when playing”; transl. V. Dasen).
26Pl. Lg. 7.803c (transl. R.G. Bury, Loeb).
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Penser (avec) la culture vidéoludique
Discours, pratiques, pédagogie
Selim Krichane, Isaac Pante et Yannick Rochat (éd.)
2022
Jouer dans l’Antiquité classique/Play and Games in Classical Antiquity
Définition, Transmission, Réception/Definition, Transmission, Reception
Véronique Dasen et Marco Vespa (éd.)
2021
Lire les magazines de jeux vidéo
Couverture(s) de la presse spécialisée française
Sélim Ammouche, Alexis Blanchet, Björn-Olav Dozo et al. (éd.)
2022
Temporalités et imaginaires du jeu
Rémi Cayatte, Audrey Tuaillon Demésy et Laurent Di Filippo (éd.)
2023
La Plume dans la Play
Comment les techniques d’enquêtes ont investi la presse jeu vidéo
Boris Krywicki
2024
