Sophie Laribi Glaudel with the Université de Lorraine  researches the role of children in ancient Greek religious practices. During a talk at the Austrian Archeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), she brought forward the evidence for girls in rituals, festivities and more.

Young Girls as Priestesses

Which roles did young girls play in ritual services in Ancient Greece?

Sophie Laribi Glaudel: We find girls holding ritual services and priesthoods across the Greek world. Based on literary and epigraphical evidences, their role was in my point of view, quite prominent for their community.  However, almost all the evidence we have deals with girls from elite families. So, we don't know much about common girls and have to pay attention to this bias.

All those duties we can identify, are connected to what we call “care”.

What ritual tasks did young girls have?

Laribi Glaudel: Talking about ritual service, we have this inscription from Messene in the Peloponnese from the first century BC, where a young girl explains that she held the torch of the goddess, and she also carried her statue. We do not know which context she is referring to, but still she was appointed with a huge responsibility. In Athens, where we have many testimonies about these girls' ritual services, we know that some girls called the plynterides would have to wash the statue of Athena. Others may have been appointed with the preparation of ritual cakes that could be offered in sanctuaries. All those duties we can identify, are connected to what we call “care”. So, washing, cooking, weaving…

So, still quite female-coded activities?

Laribi Glaudel: Exactly, but not minor activities. We sometimes have a bias believing women's work to be inferior, but they were very important economic tasks that brought money to the oikoi. Also, we sometimes have a bias in believing because the priest was a child it meant that being a priest wasn’t worth much. I think that’s incorrect. I think the children held religious duties because they were children and were thought to be closer to the gods than the adults.

What was the relationship between childhood and religion in ancient Greece?

Laribi Glaudel: That's the question I’ve been trying to answer for years. Firstly, childhood is a cultural construct. Each society constructs its very own “childhood”. Being a child in Athens or Sparta, in the 5^th century or the 4^th century is very different, for example. I think we should therefore try to answer the question the other way around: Which cultural and religious duties were given to children? What do they teach us about the way societies considered childhood?

The Question of Age

How important was the age of the child?

Laribi Glaudel: Our notion of chronological age is, in my view, very modern – or at least not very Greek.  The Romans were very into counting  years, weeks, days, as we can see on Roman funeral inscriptions. But the Greeks never mention the age of the deceased on their inscriptions. So, it seems like age didn’t matter to them as much. What mattered was the social status and the biological status, so whether certain biological changes, for example during puberty, had taken place or not.

However, Julien Dechevez has recently shown that limiting the age for priesthoods in Cos during the Hellenistic period might also have been a way to favour one family over another, so it was very context-dependent. 

Among the criteria was the child’s beauty.

How were the children selected? 

Laribi Glaudel: They had to go through a process called dokimasia in which people from the city verified where you came from, the morality of their families, their bodily aptitude and if they fit the job. Among the criteria was the child’s beauty. Depending on the priesthood, we know that a beauty contest was organised (at least during the 2d century CE) to select the most beautiful boy to serve as priest of Zeus in the city of Aigion, but most likely only among elite families. We also know that some families held cultual duties and from generation to generation. In addition, your family’s fortune was a criterion, because some duties were expensive and the family had to fund festivities or the construction of new buildings.

When did the ritual career of a child end?

Laribi Glaudel: The girls would get married – there was no lifelong chastity or the option of staying unmarried. For the boys, biological changes might end their priesthoods, for example when they grew their first beard – but, we do not know how old they were exactly. Some duties, however, were annual, so they ended only after a year.