A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds by Rawson Beryl;

Author:Rawson, Beryl;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2010-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

7.1 Wet-Nurses and Other Child-Minders

Until weaning is completed, the growth of the child depends on the quality of its food. In Greek and Roman culture, parents often entrusted their newborn to a wet-nurse (tithene, tithe, trophos/nutrix), usually a slave or a lower-class freeborn woman, who normally lived with them (figure 18.8). It was advised to choose with care the right person, as milk is not a neutral bodily substance, but transmits many properties, physical and moral. Soranus devotes an entire chapter to the meticulous inspection of the nurse’s milk … and temper. The nurse’s character must be checked as thoroughly as her physical health. The mind of the newborn, compared with wax (e.g. Tacitus, Dialogue on the Orators 29), is from the start and forever impressed positively or negatively. Mnesitheus (apud Oribasius, Libri incerti 15) and others even advise choosing a woman resembling the mother physically or a handsome person, others (Favorinus apud Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 12) reject violently the recourse to wet-nursing as immoral; submitting the child to the pernicious influence of a foreign non-kin person implies the destruction of family ties (Dasen 2010a). Wet-nurses had to follow a specific diet and to accept giving up their sexual life that would corrupt the milk in case of a new pregnancy (cf. Roman Egypt contracts; Gourevitch (1984) 248–58).

Figure 18.8 Attic red-figure hydria, ca. 440–430 BCE. Harvard Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, bequest of David M. Robinson, 1960.342. © Michael A. Nedzweski and President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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