Did the Ancient Romans have children's homes or orphanages?

Answer 1

No, they did not. The status of a child was very low, approximately the same as a slave. A child's entire health, education, and welfare were dependent upon his or her family or caregivers. It was not uncommon for babies, especially girls and any whose families were unable to care for them, to be "put out with the trash." These unwanted children were thrown out into the open field for the dogs, birds, or other animals to eat. Older children who became orphaned would struggle on the streets for survival, stealing, scrounging through garbage, and competing with rats and such for food. Often these children would not make it to adulthood, dying from starvation, fighting, or exposure. Even if they did make it to adulthood, they were uneducated, unskilled nobodies who still lived on the underbelly of society.

This practice was not new or unique to the Romans. It had been around for centuries, notable by the fact that the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel used it as a metaphor in the sixth century BCE for the condition of Israel: "And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pities you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born."

Lucky children were taken in and raised by relatives or others who saw something of value in the children. This was usually a character and a build conducive to hard work, and most were raised to be servants or slaves. The very lucky ones might be raised by a relative who mentors the child as his own and, in time, might even be adopted by the benefactor. In general, this only happened in noble or royal families, e.g., some Roman emperors were adopted as children into the royal line and raised to be nobility.

Keep in mind that not everyone treated children as throwaways, and even though the ancient Romans did not sponsor orphanages, there were peoples and cultures within the Roman Empire that cared for their widows and orphans. These people saw the value of human life and worked to uphold it. The Jewish people provided a minimum of care to the widowed and fatherless of their own people. Some could even be quite generous with their aid, allowing their fellow Jews to keep their humanity and some dignity. Followers of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire began taking in orphans and caring for them in single or group settings, the beginnings of orphanages as we know them.