In ancient Rome, life was perilous for the young. About a third of Rome’s children were stillborn or died in infancy—and many others never made it past childhood. To honor their son, the parents of M. Cornelius Statius, who died at the age of eight in the mid-second century A.D., commissioned a lovely marble sarcophagus, carved with relief scenes from his brief life. Soon after birth, infants born to the privileged classes were bathed and placed at the feet of their fathers, who signaled acceptance of the child by ordering that the infant be fed. (Under Roman law a […]
