ABSTRACT
Scholars such as J.H.Van den Berg and Ph. Ariès2-not professional historians by origin-introduced a dramatic innovation in historical approaches. Influenced by their pioneering-and stimulating-research on, for example, children in the past, not everybody in modern psychology, sociology or history considers childhood-or youth, old age, maternal love…—as a natural, universal, ageless and self-evident ‘phenomenon’. For F.Musgrove, for example, the concept of youth as a separate age of man is rather recent. This scholar-a sociologist-expresses his opinion in a radical way:
The adolescent as a distinct species is the creation of modern social attitudes and institutions. A creature neither child nor adult, he is a comparatively recent socio-psychological invention, scarcely two centuries old…. The adolescent was invented [my italics] at the same time as the steam-engine. The principal architect of the latter was Watt in 1765, of the former Rousseau in 1762.3
We cannot discuss this question in detail here, but such utterances, although they sound.good, are, in my eyes at least, a simplification of historical reality. Much more nuanced is the view of, for example, A.Kriekemans, who is of the opinion that, depending on the cultural environment, the term ‘youth’ may cover different periods of life, is more or less complicated, involves varying levels of conflict, and has its own identity, its own way of living, its own status, its own expectations.4 Let us apply these words to Roman antiquity and examine the place of youth in the human life-span, the social and other circumstances which made possible its existence
as a separate entity, people’s attitude towards it, and its characteristics.
