ABSTRACT
This chapter serves to explore some primary questions about the depiction of children and perceptions about them in Byzantium. The aim is to discuss how children were differentiated from adults, in what contexts and with what intentions. The chapter questions distinctions between girls and boys. It addresses the subject and identification of images, including with whom the children are depicted, the activities in which they are portrayed, what they wear and their characteristics. Portrayals of children are sometimes used by historians to determine customs, but the images can also inform on two other closely associated levels. The first concerns the nature of the representation, how the image is handled pictorially and the impression intended by its appearance in relation to its context. The second addresses what the image communicates about children societally, not in terms so much of habits, but society’s perception of children, their place in the cultural framework and attitudes towards them. The discussion explores whether the depictions intentionally portray an image of a child or of an adult, or perhaps some other idea or symbol, and the difficulty often encountered in determining the intended identification. It also considers whether the children are visualized within an adult world, where the image principally conveys an adult context, or whether the focus is on children on their own terms.
