Text taken from La Lettre du Collège de France n° 34, Paris, Collège de France, p. 24, ISSN 1628-2329
The first lecture ("Women and children first: first evidence of ancient Greek body amulets") focused on the Classical and early Hellenistic periods. Thanks to a few literary sources and a number of visual traces, Prof. Faraone was able to sketch out an overall picture of the type of people who used amulets during these periods. Firstly, he focused on the mainly visual traces - the naked bodies on painted vases and votive statues - showing that in Athens, Cyprus and western Greece, Greek women and boys wore knotted cords and strings of amulets to protect their bodies. The absence of similar amulets on the bodies of adult men suggests that this use was reserved for women and male children. Since textual sources suggest that adult men also used amulets, Prof. Faraone concludes that the category of amulet users includes weakened adult men and other cultural equivalents, such as women and children. Moreover, in the case of children, given that in a very large number of cases it is naked boys who are depicted in the images, which seem to have had some kind of commemorative function (like the jugs of the Anthesteria in Athens and the so-called "temple-boys" in Cyprus), Prof. Faraone suggested that the wearing of childhood amulets by boys was linked to the assertion of citizenship and other forms of status.
