Modern philosophy and law are based on ideas that children, unlike adults, need special rights and guarantees. This implies the difference between a child and an adult, which entails the difference in the legal position of these groups. The author, based on the study of the works of ancient works, is trying to penetrate the ideological images of the child in the ancient world. Analyzing philosophical, literary, pedagogical works, he concludes that the ancient Greek and ancient Roman cultural-historical, pedagogical and legal traditions became the conductor of the human mind and progress in the views of the child. Latin vocabulary, used to designate the social and legal conditions of the child, developing and improving, carried the peoples and civilizations of knowledge that the basis of modern philosophical and legal ideas about children.