1 V. Vuolanto & C. Laes (eds.) (2016) Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World. Routledge. Jacob L. Mackey jacob.mackey@qc.cuny.edu Roman Children as Religious Agents: The Cognitive Foundations of Cult Introduction This chapter offers an account of Roman children’s cognitive agency in their own religious learning. It serves as an alternative to accounts in which Roman children figure as passively molded by socializing agents or forces. 1 On my account, Roman children were, and were recognized as, agents, who in turn recognized others as agents from and with whom they could learn. Romans could often describe children as passively shaped by adults, but they could also note children’s active learning. Two such examples instance the chronological sweep of the evidence from the Latin west considered here: Cicero’s recognition that children learn without instruction, sine doctrina, motivated by examples of virtuous behavior and, centuries later, Augustine’s insistence that he learned of his own accord, by paying attention, advertendo, rather than under coercion. 2 I focus here on traditional Roman religion because this domain was not primarily an object of formal pedagogy, and certainly not of catechesis, but was instead acquired informally, through observation of and participation with others. Even when religious knowledge was taught formally—I discuss the case of choral hymns—the pedagogy was, so far as the evidence permits analysis, such as to yield to children a substantial degree of cognitive autonomy. Beryl Rawson's work on Roman children was often informed by anthropologists, who ‘developed theories of informal learning, recognizing different 1 See Laes and Vuolanto, this volume; Vuolanto, this volume. 2 Cic. Fin. 5.42 and Aug. Conf. 1.14.23.