Children in Archaic and Classical Greek religion: Active and passive ritual agency

Abstract

Children in Archaic and Classical Greece undertook a variety of religious roles, some in the private sphere of personal cults and family observances, but others in a public cult of their city. They commenced their own religious life by visiting shrines in company with adults of their family. When they undertook, albeit with adult organization, the central role in acts of worship, they had a direct religious agency. In its more passive roles, the child accompanied adults as a witness to religious activity. Children had both an active and a passive agency in religious rites of the Archaic and Classical periods.