The Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") was a landmark in
ancient Rome in the
Forum Holitorium, or produce market. The Roman grammarian
Festus says it was so called "because they would bring babies there to be fed with milk."[1] It seems to have been a public charity where poor parents could obtain milk for their infants,[2] or a central site for locating and hiring
wet nurses.[3] It has also been interpreted as a sanctioned site of
child abandonment, where parents unable or unwilling to care for newborns could leave the child in the hope that it might be pitied and fostered (that is, given milk).[4]
The Columna Lactaria was located close to the
Temple of Pietas, which displayed a painting on the theme of Caritas Romana ("Roman Charity"), about a woman giving breastmilk to an aged parent.[5] The column was probably destroyed by the construction of the
Theater of Marcellus, beginning in the 40s BC.[6]
One of the neighborhoods razed for the construction of the theater was the
Vicus Sobrius, where the residents offered libations of milk to a
Punic godRomanized as Mercurius Sobrius. This community may have maintained the Columna Lactaria;[7]Robert E.A. Palmer thought that the milk-offerings of Punic
cult might shed light on the significance of the column.[8] Into the early 20th century, the
piazza Montanara adjacent to the theater continued to be a place where wet nurses could be sought for hire.[9]
References
^Infantes lacte alendos deferebant:
Paulusex Festo 105 in the edition of Lindsay = Müller (88) p. 118, as cited by Mary Beagon, The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal: Natural History Book 7 (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 314
online; Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 94
online.
^Beagon, The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal, p. 314.
^Suzanne Dixon, Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World (Routledge, 2001), p. 62
online[permanent dead link]; Keith R. Bradley, "Wet-nursing at Rome: A Study in Social Relations," in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 214
online.
^Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary, p. 94; Arthur H. Shapiro, Everybody Belongs: Changing Negative Attitudes toward Classmates with Disabilities (Routledge, 1999, 2000), p. 172
online, with a great deal of recasting of the evidence to suit the book's stated purpose.
^Beagon, The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal, p. 314
online.
^Robert E.A. Palmer, Carthage and Rome at Peace (Franz Steiner, 1997), p. 102.
^John Bert Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 11–12
online.
^Mario Torelli, Typology and Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs (University of Michigan Press, 1992), p. 116
online. Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary, p. 94, discounts the meaning of any association of the "Milk Column" with the Caritas Romana story, but see also Palmer, Carthage and Rome at Peace, p. 98, note 98
online.[permanent dead link]