On the ninth day in case of the boy, or the eighth in that of the girl, the child is named, after certain ceremonies of purification.  The whole proceeding bears much resemblance to a christening, except that there is no calling in of the services of a church.  The relations and friends gather in the hall, each bringing his present, and even the slaves make their little inexpensive offerings.  The gifts are chiefly little trinkets of gold, silver, and ivory—­rings, miniature hands, axes, swords, or crescents—­which are to be strung across the baby’s breast.  The original purpose of all these objects was to act as charms against the blighting of the child by evil powers, or, more definitely, by the “evil eye,” that malignant influence which still troubles so many good Italians, both ignorant and learned.  With the same intention the father hangs upon the child’s neck a certain object which it will carry till it comes of age.  If a few years later you met the boy Publius in the Roman streets, you would find him wearing a round case or locket in gold, some two inches in diameter and resembling the modern cased watch.  Inside is shut his protecting amulet.  When he is sixteen and puts on the man’s toga, his amulet will be laid aside.  In the case of the little Silia it will be worn until she marries.  Poorer folk, for whom gold is too expensive, will enclose the amulet in a case of leather.

The naming over, the child is registered.  The Romans were adepts in the art of utilising a religious or superstitious practice for purposes of state, and the development of the registration of births and deaths is but one instance.  In older times it had been a custom, on the occasion of a birth, to pay a visit to the shrine of “Juno the Birth-Goddess,” and to leave a small coin by way of offering.  It is easy for a state to convert an already established general custom into a rule; and at our date this shrine of Juno had become practically a registration office, where a small fee was paid and the name of the child entered upon the rolls.

We need not follow with any closeness the infancy of either boy or girl till the seventh year.  The ancient world was very much like the modern.  Suffice it to glance at them cutting their teeth on the teeth of wolves or horses, rocked in cradles decorated with gold and purple, or running about and calling their parents by the time-honoured mamma, tata—­words, if we can call them words, which came from those small Roman mouths precisely as they have come from time immemorial from so many others.  Their slave nurse, who is a Greek and talks Greek to them, tells them the old wives’ tales and fables.  They play with rattles, balls, and little carts, with pet birds and monkeys, and the girl with dolls of ivory or wax or of painted terra-cotta.  They have swings, and ride on sticks and build houses.  When bigger, the boy has his tops and hoops, with or without bells, and he plays marbles with nuts.  Meanwhile attempts are made, somewhat after the kindergarten pattern, to teach them their alphabet by means of letters shaped in wood or ivory.  Whether or not it is modern kindergarten method to tempt children to learn by offers of sugar-plums, that course was often adopted in the world of both Greece and Rome.