ABSTRACT
Louise Pratt (2013) offers a succinct summary of the portrayal of children in Archaic and Classical Greek literature, stressing the centrality of pathos, precocity and play. Scholarship has argued that Hellenistic authors paid more attention to children than previously, that children now became more prominent and that more attention was paid to them. Yet major historical and methodological problems are associated with these presumptions, particularly since much of the so-called Hellenistic attitude towards children can be found already in the Classical period. Discussion of the exposure of children, adoption and boys’ athletic contests reveals no change; yet in one area, education, a change in the Hellenistic period can be detected.
