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The Image of Tradition

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SOURCE: Cartledge, Paul, and Antony Spawforth. “The Image of Tradition.” In Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities, pp. 190-211. London: Routledge, 1989.

[In the following excerpt, Cartledge and Spawforth affirm the archaism of Roman Sparta in its memorial observance of social traditions from the classical period.]

[The] profound political, social, and economic changes undergone by Sparta in the last three centuries bc had the effect of levelling much of the city's old distinctiveness. In the Roman Empire's heyday, under the Antonines and the Severi, Sparta emerges as in many ways a typical provincial Greek city, with its comfortable urban amenities, its up-to-date entertainments and its society dominated by a wealthy educated élite but not impervious to one of the characteristic figures of the Imperial age, the successful parvenu of freedman stock. On first sight this picture seems at odds with perhaps the best known aspect of Roman Sparta today: the maintenance, until as late as the fourth century, of an archaizing ‘Lycurgan’ facade to civic life. In fact, the ‘Lycurgan customs’ of Classical Sparta (as they were remembered or reconstructed in the Roman age) formed only one element in a set of local traditions informing and shaping a wide range of civic activities. Moreover, modern perceptions of archaism at Roman Sparta have been distorted by a tendency to see it in isolation, without reference to its links with the political and cultural preoccupations of the larger Roman world in which Sparta was now embedded. In Rome's Greek-speaking provinces, where ‘ancient tradition was the touchstone of civic life’, archaism of one sort or another was a widespread civic phenomenon, above all in the age of the Greek renaissance, when it was encouraged by the Greek policies of Roman emperors such as Hadrian. From this larger provincial perspective Sparta is chiefly interesting because—for reasons to which we shall return—the dialogue between past and present was louder and more persistent there than in many other cities. This chapter explores three ‘themes’ in this dialogue, two major and one minor: the rôle of Sparta in the Persian wars on the one hand, on the other ancestral religion and the Lycurgan customs. An attempt will then be made to analyse, in Sparta's particular case, the dynamics of local archaism.1

The recollection of the Persian wars at Roman Sparta has a particular interest, firstly, because it provides a clear example of an episode in the Classical city's history which remained to the fore of civic consciousness throughout the principate (and possibly until later) and, secondly, because here the broad link between local archaism and Imperial initiatives cannot be in doubt. Although the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Plataea were commonplace topoi in the Greek and Roman schools of rhetoric, an often quoted passage in Plutarch shows that the memory of Greece's glorious repulse of the Persians between 490 and 479 bc still held a strong patriotic appeal for Greeks living under Roman domination. Complicating the resonances of the wars in the Imperial age, however, was the fact that Roman emperors from Augustus to Gordian III, recognizing their potency as national myth, followed Philip and Alexander in exploiting them for propagandistic purposes when representing Roman struggles against oriental ‘barbarians’ (now in the form of the Parthian and Sassanian Persian Empires) to a Greek audience. These larger attitudes help to explain the prominent part played by recollection of the Persian wars in those cities in Achaia which traditionally claimed decisive rôles in the repulse of the Persians and its commemoration: Athens and Sparta, but also Plataea, a city which, since the mid-third century bc, justified its existence largely through the hosting of cults and festivals celebrating the victory of 479 bc. In Sparta's case, the inhabitants of the Roman city were confronted in no uncertain terms with the ghosts of Thermopylae and Plataea when—for propagandistic as well as sentimental reasons—they were required by a succession of Roman emperors (L. Verus in 161, Caracalla in 214 and—quite possibly—Julian in 363) to send armed contingents on Imperial campaigns in the east. In a more peaceful vein, Roman Sparta played a prominent part in the four-yearly ‘Freedom’ festival or Eleutheria at Plataea, along with Athens being party to a ceremonial dispute over which city was to lead the procession, enacted as a recurrent contest in declamation between orators representing the two sides. This curious tradition, probably invented in the late second century bc, was evidently intended as a deliberate echo of the alleged quarrel between Athens and Sparta in 479 bc over the so-called meed of valour. In the second and third centuries, when the recreation of the past through the medium of rhetoric was a feature of the show-oratory of the Second Sophistic, the rhetorical ‘duel’ at Plataea became well known among educated Greeks and even formed the subject of a Greek rhetorical treatise.2

In this same period the Spartans were cultivating the claims of their own city as a ‘shrine’ to the Persian wars. In the mid-second century the city's tourist-itinerary embraced a group of civic monuments evoking Sparta's part in the wars, including the tomb of Eurybiadas, the Spartan admiral-in-chief at Salamis, the memorials for Leonidas, Pausanias, and the Spartan dead at Thermopylae, and the Persian Stoa in the agora. The second-century city also had its own commemorative ceremonies. Two of these formed part of the ritual at the annual ephebic festival for Artemis Orthia: the ‘procession of the Lydians’ and the so-called contest of endurance (below), both of which, according to Plutarch (our sole source for this tradition), were said to commemorate an incident on the eve of Plataea when the Spartan king Pausanias was set upon by a band of Lydians as he performed a sacrifice. The allegedly commemorative function of these rites hints strongly of more recently invented tradition, however, especially in the case of the endurance-contest, the true precursor of which seems to have been a ritual game in the Classical sanctuary of Orthia centred around the theft of cheeses.3

The Roman city also celebrated an annual festival, the Leonidea, in memory of Leonidas and Pausanias, the Spartan heroes of Thermopylae and Plataea respectively. It was known to Pausanias, who mentions declamations in memory of the dead and games in which only Spartans could compete. It was also the subject of a long and fragmentary inscription which once formed part of an honorific monument set up near the memorials for the two kings opposite the theatre. The text lays down detailed regulations for the conduct of the festival and clearly reflects its complete reorganization. In fact there is no earlier evidence for this festival, in spite of which its origin is usually attributed to the fifth century bc. Bulle's hypothesis of a sliding stage at the Spartan theatre depended on the assumption that the Leonidea were celebrated under Augustus; now that his theory has been placed in doubt on archaeological grounds, however, the accompanying premiss cannot be said to retain much weight. The only indication of the festival's existence earlier in the Roman period derives from the fact that on the occasion of its reorganisation the previous value of the cash prizes was said to have been ‘doubled’, the new endowment for the festival apparently totalling HS 120,000, just over a third of which (HS 42,000) had been given (or rather promised) by C. Iulius Agesilaus so as to provide or increase the prize-money in specified events. As to date, the inscription belonged to a year in which the gerontes included one Nicippus son of Nicippus, kasen to Eurycles Herculanus, who was born in about 73. From this it follows that the minimum age for gerontes in the Imperial age can no longer have been sixty, as in the old gerousia, since the text cannot possibly be dated as late as 133; indeed, the fact that Agesilaus had been athlothetēs of the Urania in 97/8 seems an obstacle to placing it much later than the end of Trajan's reign. On the assumption that a minimum age as low as thirty must be excluded, if only because it seems too young for a body calling itself (literally) ‘the old men’, we are left with forty as perhaps the most likely age-threshold in the Roman period, placing the inscription late in the reign of Trajan. This dating, if correct, is of some interest, since it would consign the ‘renewal’ of the festival to the period (113-117) of Trajan's great eastern campaigns, in the preparations for which the Peloponnese had been actively involved. It is at least possible that the two events were connected: at a time when Greek memories of the Persian wars—not least in southern Greece—were being fanned by a major Roman initiative against the Parthians, Sparta chose to place on a firmer footing the old festival commemorating the city's famous exploits against the Persians at Thermopylae six centuries earlier.4

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An excellent study has done much to lay to rest the view of older scholarship that Greek paganism was in decline or ‘crisis’ during the first two and a half centuries ad; on the contrary, civic cults based around the Homeric and Hesiodic pantheon, as well as novelties of more exotic origin, were the object in this period of a ‘lasting traditional “religiousness”’, in which respect for ancestral practice loomed large. An ancient community such as Roman Athens, where an array of venerable deities continued to be the object of rites and festivals, struck visitors as particularly pious (cf. Paus.iii.24.3). The impression that Sparta, a city well-known for its religiosity in Classical times, provided another focus of old-world piety in the Imperial age emerges clearly from the same author, who listed for the city an impressive array of twenty-one hero-tombs and as many as sixty-four temples or sanctuaries. The Roman city was open to newer ways of approaching the divine: we have already noted the Imperial cult, established under Augustus, and that of Sarapis, a second-century innovation; by the reign of Marcus the city was also host to a community of Christians in the pastoral care of the bishop of Corinth. The emphasis here, however, is on the evidence for the continued prominence of traditional cults in civic life, which a brief discussion of those of Apollo, the Eleusinians and the Dioscuri will hope to exemplify.5

The worship of Apollo, a deity particularly associated with the Dorian Greeks, lay at the heart of Classical Sparta's three principal religious festivals: the Hyacinthia, the Carnea and the Gymnopaediae, all three of which were still celebrated in the Imperial age. The Carnea—as it happens—are only attested for the Augustan period, when their local prestige was such that a victor in the accompanying games or ‘Carneonices’ enjoyed, like an Olympic victor, the privilege of sitēsis or public maintenance. The other two are best attested in the Antonine and Severan ages, when they are mentioned by several contemporary Greek authors, including Pausanias, according to whom the Gymnopaediae were the most zealously maintained of Sparta's traditional festivals, and Philostratus, who implies that, together with the ephebic festival of Artemis Orthia (below), these were the three religious gatherings at Sparta attracting the most foreign visitors in Imperial times. In the mid-second century the Gymnopaediae took place in a specially designated part of the agora, where ephebic choirs sang in Apollo's honour; Lucian adds that there were traditional dances too. Rather less is known of the specifically Roman content of the Hyacinthia, which were celebrated at the Amyclaeum. A fragmentary dedication for an ‘instructor’ (didaskalos) suggests the maintenance of the old songs and dances of the Spartan youth; if organised on agonistic lines these activities perhaps constituted the Hyacinthian ‘games’ to which two Antonine inscriptions refer, although hippic or athletic contests, for which there is evidence from an earlier period, may also be in question. As for the Amyclaeum itself, its famous cult-statue appeared on the Roman city's coinage, and, in part thanks to this and its other works of Archaic Greek art, it formed the chief tourist-attraction at Roman Sparta outside the urban centre. It is one of the few civic sanctuaries the continued existence of which is attested into the fourth century.6

The worship of Demeter and Core at the sanctuary of the Eleusinium, some seven kilometres south-west of the city on the edge of the Spartan plain, was certainly as old as the fifth century bc, when the goddesses, as a well-known inscription records, were honoured with chariot-games. The flourishing state of this sanctuary in the Imperial period is brought out by a series of inscribed dedications found either near the ancient site or at the modern village of Amyklai (formerly Sklavokhori), to which they had been removed as building-material in more recent times. Like many Demeter-cults elsewhere, the Spartan Eleusinium was essentially a women's sanctuary, as is shown by the striking fact that these inscriptions are all dedications by or for females, the bulk of them recording the setting-up of statues of well-born Spartan matrons in the name of the city. In the Imperial age, to judge from repeated references to a female official called the ‘mistress of the banquet’ (thoinarmostria), the ritual (and social) focus of the cult was an annual feast, at which perhaps only women were present. The dependence of the cult on the generosity of individuals, in this case well-to-do women, is shown by the descriptions of the posts of thoinarmostria and pōlos as ‘liturgies’ and the scope for their incumbents to hold office ‘magnificently’ (megaloprepōs) or ‘with high-minded generosity’ (megalopsukhōs). For its more impressive dedications the sanctuary likewise relied on the piety of leading families, as with the two elaborate reliefs now in the British Museum, one of them given in the last decades of the second century by Claudia Ageta, a granddaughter of the senator Brasidas.7

In myth the Dioscuri were natives of Sparta and in the Classical age had enjoyed a special relationship to the dual kingship. In the Roman period, the continuing reverence in which these demigods were held is shown by the frequency with which they or their symbols were depicted on local coin-issues; as the numerous instances of ‘Dioscurid’ pedigrees suggest, the cult retained aristocratic, if no longer royal, overtones. Since the time of Herodotus the chief Spartan sanctuary of the Dioscuri lay to the south-east of the city at the cult-centre of Phoebaeum on the right bank of the Eurotas, below the bluff on which stood the sanctuary of Helen and Menelaus. Inscriptions point to the vigorous life of this sanctuary, where the Dioscuri had their temple or shrine (naos), until as late as the mid-third century. Sacred banquets are attested under Augustus by a series of inscribed stēlai which show the integration of the cult into civic life, since they record the participation of the senior members (presbeis) of the boards of bideoi, gerontes, ephors, and nomophulakes, along with the gunaikonomos. These stēlai are decorated with reliefs depicting the Dioscuri in the company of Helen. This iconography suggests that by the reign of Augustus the cult had been enlarged to include the worship of the sister of the Dioscuri, a development perhaps to be associated with the cessation of cult at the nearby sanctuary of Menelaus and Helen, which excavation dates to the late second or the first century bc. Although the site was now abandoned, it seems likely that the age-old worship of Helen was not, being merely transferred to the more accessible sanctuary on the plain below. By the mid-third century the sanctuary also celebrated games, grandly called the ‘Great Dioscurea’, although no foreign victors are attested and they perhaps were a local event only. From the reign of Augustus until the mid-third century a dual priesthood of Helen and the Dioscuri can be traced as a hereditary perquisite within an inter-related group of leading local families, whose financial support did much to contribute to the cult's outward vitality: under Trajan or Hadrian P. Memmius Pratolaus and his priestly partner and kinswoman, Volusene Olympiche, funded building activity at the sanctuary; and the fact that in the mid-third century the hereditary priest was also hereditary president (agōnothetēs) of the Dioscurea suggests that a priestly ancestor had endowed the games earlier in the Roman period, their presidency then devolving by hereditary right to his descendants.8

The revival or re-invention of ancestral practice was another feature of Greek civic religion in the Roman period of which examples can be detected at Sparta. The festival of the Urania, founded in 97/8, was celebrated in honour of Zeus Uranius, whose priesthood was one of two which the former Spartan kings held by hereditary right. In the Roman period the priesthood only emerges into view after the foundation of the Urania, now no longer a hereditary post but one to which the city made appointments for a fixed term. Its more or less complete dependence on the festival is shown by the fact that one incumbent (under Hadrian) served simultaneously as panegyriarch and that another (under Trajan) was baldly styled ‘priest of the Urania’. It seems at least possible that this civic priesthood of Zeus Uranius was no older than the foundation of the games, the cult having been allowed to lapse following the demise of the dual kingship three centuries or so earlier, to be revived under Nerva as little more than a venerable-looking vehicle for the new festival. Ancestral piety would be one explanation for such a revival, but perhaps an insufficient one: those Spartans most closely involved in founding the new festival (including no doubt the athlothetēs C. Iulius Agesilaus) may have felt that its association with a historic (indeed a royal) cult would enhance the international prestige on which depended its agonistic success. It should be added that the initial titulature of the games, the ‘Greatest Augustan Nervan Uranian Games’, shows that the festival was also intended to honour the emperor, whose association with the worship of ‘Heavenly Zeus’ is attested elsewhere by this date.9

A second episode of revival concerns the oracular shrine of Ino-Pasiphaë in the formerly perioecic town of Thalamae on the western side of Taygetus. In the Hellenistic period this oracle used to be consulted by the ephors on Sparta's behalf. The practice seems to have lapsed by the time of Cicero, who writes of it in the past tense; the oracle may have ceased to speak; or Spartan access perhaps became problematic after the ‘liberation’ of the perioecic towns in 192 bc. But two inscriptions from the sanctuary, dating to the earlier second century, reflect once more a recurrent Spartan presence at Thalamae. One of them records three groups of Spartan visitors under Trajan, Hadrian and Pius respectively. Their size and make-up seem to have varied, but the first included representatives of the chief Spartan magistracies, the second four out of the five ephors in the year 127/8. The official, civic, character of these visits was understood by Bölte, who did not go on, however, to make the connection with oracular consultation. With little doubt this inscription is a record of embassies of civic magistrates sent, as in the Hellenistic period, to consult Ino-Pasiphaë; the lapse of time between the date of each is well suited to an irregular pattern of consultation, taking place as the need arose; and the inclusion of a choral element recalls the choirs of boys and girls accompanying embassies sent from other Greek cities to the oracle at Clarus in this period. It is probably no coincidence that the evidence for this apparent renewal of ancestral Spartan practice coincides in date with the larger revival of oracular activity in the Roman east, in which the oracle at Thalamae evidently shared; when the sanctuary was visited by Pausanias, he found the cult-statue almost obscured under its weight of festive wreaths.10

Lastly, Sparta and Delphi. In Classical times Sparta ‘placed a premium on maintaining a special relationship’ with the sanctuary of Apollo. The force of tradition emerges strikingly in the inscriptional evidence for the perpetuation of these ties into the early third century. After 146 bc Sparta was no longer represented on the Amphictyonic Council. But the maintenance of cordial relations with the citizens of Delphi is shown by the despatch of Spartan judges to hear Delphian lawsuits in about 100 bc and by mutual grants of proxeny-privileges in the early principate. Those conferred by Sparta on a Delphian notable in about 29 bc were partly prompted by his services for Spartan visitors to Delphi. A Spartan who received this same honour from the Delphians in about 23, Alcimus son of Soclidas, bears the same rare name as a Spartan naopoios at Delphi in 360 bc, suggesting his membership of an old family with hereditary Delphian ties. After a silence of almost two centuries, Spartan interest in Delphi resurfaces in the Severan age, when Tib. Claudius Spartiaticus, grandson of the senator Brasidas and a leading figure in his city, received an honorific statue from the Delphians, installed within the sanctuary. More remarkably, to this period probably belongs the latest evidence for Spartan consultation of Apollo's oracle. The oracular ambassador (theopropos) despatched by Sparta on this occasion, one M. Aurelius Euamerus, was assigned by Bourguet to the mid-second century on prosopographical grounds which are less than compelling. It seems more likely that his Roman citizenship, like that of most Spartan M. Aurelii, derived from the Antonine constitution of 212 or 213. His mission would then provide the latest evidence for a relationship kept up over some eight centuries.11

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Since at least the time of Herodotus the Spartans had attributed their distinctive form of polity to the prescriptions of Lycurgus, their semi-mythical lawgiver. From the first century bc until late antiquity we have good evidence for the restored position of Lycurgus at Sparta as the ‘good genius’ of civic life. Coin-issues of the triumviral age present us for the first time with an (imaginary, of course) portrait of Lycurgus, which was probably based on some sculpted prototype, now lost: he appears as a majestic, Zeus-like figure, wreathed and bearded. As at Classical Sparta, he was worshipped in the Roman city as a god. The focus of this cult was a sanctuary on the right bank of the Eurotas not far from that of Artemis Orthia; its enormous masonry altar, showing signs of Roman-period repairs, has been tentatively identified by excavation (App.I, 37). In the Antonine and Severan ages, to judge from the god's repeated patronomates, his sanctuary was a wealthy one. As late as the fourth century, the Spartans could confer no higher honour on benefactors of the city than to set their portrait-statues beside one of Lycurgus which stood (it seems) in the vicinity of the theatre—a juxtaposition intended to convey a flattering ‘equality’ between the ‘ēthos and deeds’ of the honorands and those of the great sage.12

In the second and early third centuries, civic magistrates could claim to have discharged their duties ‘according to the ancient customs’ or were publicly praised for their ‘protection of the Lycurgan customs’: civic life in the Imperial age, that is, still claimed in some sense to be shaped by the lawgiver's prescriptions. Before assessing the content of these ‘Lycurgan customs’, however, the problem of the disputed date of their ‘restoration’ needs addressing. According to Livy, the Lycurgan institutions of the Hellenistic city had been suppressed by the Achaean League in 188 bc. They were then ‘revived’ under Roman patronage at a date left vague by Pausanias (‘later’), but which Plutarch by implication assigns to the Roman settlement of 146/5 bc, since he explicitly couples the restoration of the ‘ancestral polity’ with Sparta's final secession from the Achaean League. Notwithstanding this last item of evidence, the ‘Lycurgan’ restoration is usually placed before 167 bc on the basis of another passage in Livy, who glossed the sight-seeing visit to Sparta of L. Aemilius Paullus in 167 bc with the remark that the city was ‘famous, not for the magnificence of its public works, but for its disciplina and its institutions’. A few scholars have rightly seen that Livy here is merely echoing the conventional Roman perception of Sparta: the passage cannot safely be used to show that by 167 bc the ‘Lycurgan customs’ had been restored—a reversal incompatible with Sparta's full sympolity at the time with the Achaeans. The point is an important one, since the later date leaves a gap of well over a generation between the suppression and the revival of the customs, increasing the likely rôle in this revival of antiquarian tradition over first-hand recollection.13

The extent and limits of this ‘restoration’ can now be assessed. The long-standing custom, whereby the ephors each year read the work of Dicaearchus of Messene on the Spartan constitution to the city's youth seems best referred to the Hellenistic, not the Roman, period. In fact, local government at Roman Sparta, for all that its outward forms recalled famous features of the ‘ancestral constitution’ (gerontes, ephors and so on), in its day-to-day workings was shaped by far more recent influences (Cleomenean, Achaean and Roman). Nonetheless, there is some indication that the ancestral polity continued to supply at least a frame of reference for innovations in the administration of the Roman city, as with the institution of the ‘contest for best citizen’ (agōn tēs aristopoliteias). An apparently identical contest is found at Roman Messene, the one probably copying the other, since no comparable civic institution is found outside this particular corner of the Greek world (conferment by cities elsewhere of the honorific title of ‘best citizen’ does not amount to the same thing). The Spartans seem to have taken the first step, since an inscription presents the establishment of their contest between about 110 and 120 as a ‘renewal’ of an older institution, although nothing is known in their more recent past which could be plausibly claimed as a model for this contest. Given that other Greek cities at this time employed the same idea of ‘renewal’ (ananeōsis) to allude to the distant, even mythical, past, Chrimes may well have been correct in proposing that the Spartan contest modelled itself on the method (allegedly instituted by Lycurgus) by which the Classical city elected gerontes from the citizen-body: according to Plutarch, success went to the candidate judged by the assembly to be ‘best’ (aristos) in respect of personal excellence, who was then crowned with a wreath like an agonistic victor: this last practice is not actually recorded for Roman Sparta, but the ‘best citizen's wreath’ was a feature of neighbouring Messene's contest; the involvement of the Roman city's dēmos in the selection of the winner, however, is well attested. On this view, the ‘contest for best citizen’ was an antiquarian creation, giving a traditional guise to a newly invented institution which redefined the ‘Lycurgan’ ideal of civic virtue in contemporary, euergetistic, terms. … 14

Notes

  1. Disparaging comments on Spartan archaism: e.g. Bölte 1929, col. 1451; Marrou 1965, 59-60. ‘Touchstone’: Lane Fox 1986a, 68-9. For the idea of ‘invented tradition’, coined by modern historians: E. Hobsbawm in Hobsbawm/Ranger 1983, 1-1-4.

  2. Plut. Mor.814b; cf. Jones 1971b, 113-4. Roman emperors: Bowersock 1984, 174-6 (Augustus); Lane Fox 1986a, 11-12 (Gordian III). Parthians as barbaroi in official Roman documents: e.g. SEG xxiii.206.11 (Augustan); Reynolds 1982, no.17 l.10 (Severan). Plataea: Sheppard 1984-6, 238; Strubbe 1984-6, 282-4; Robertson 1986 (dispute). Meed of valour: Plut. Arist.20.1. Historical themes in show-oratory: Bowie 1974, 170-3.

  3. Monuments: Paus.iii.11; 14.1; 16.6. Artemis Orthia: Plut. Arist.17; Xen. Lac.Pol. ii.9; cf. H. Rose in Dawkins 1929, 405.

  4. Leonidea: IG v.1.18-20; Bogaert 1968, 99-100; Connor 1979 (Classical age). Nicippus: IG v.1.20b.3; Woodward 1923-5, 168, col.C6/C7, 9 (better). Birth of Herculanus: Spawforth 1978, 254. Minimum age of gerontes: Chrimes 1949, 139-40 (advocating fifty). Roman preparations: Baladié 1980, 273-7.

  5. Greek paganism under the principate: Lane Fox 1986a, chs. 2-5. Pausanias: the computations are those of Kahrstedt 1954, 192. Christians: Euseb. Ecc.Hist.iv.23.1-2; cf. ch. 15 in this volume.

  6. Carneonices: IG v.1.209.20. Gymnopaediae/Hyacinthia: Paus.iii.11.9; Luc. de salt.12; Philostr. VA.iii.11.9. IG v.1.586-7 (Hyacinthian ‘games’); SEG ii.88 (didaskalos). Earlier contests: Mellink 1943, 22-3. Amyclaeum: Paus.iii.18. 7-19.6; Grunauer-von Hoerschelmann 1978, 97-106 (coins).

  7. Inscription: IG v.1.213.31-4. Dedications: IG v.1.579-80; 581?; 592; 595; 605?; 607; SEG xi.676-7 and add. et corr.677a-c. Demeter cults: Burkert 1985, 159-61. Eleusinium: Paus.iii.20.5; Cook/Nicholls 1950. Cult: Spawforth 1985, 206-8. Liturgies: IG v.1.583; 584 + 604 (SEG xi.812a) with Kourinou-Pikoula 1986, 68-9; 594; 596. Reliefs: IG v.1.248-9; Spawforth 1985, 230-31 with pl.21a; Walker forthcoming.

  8. Dioscuri: Wide 1893, 304-23; Burkert 1985, 212-3. Pedigrees: ch. 12. Sanctuary: Hdt.vi.66; Paus.iii.14.10. Coins: Grunauer-von Hoerschelmann 1978, 38-9, 42-3, 45; 65-6; 100-101. Cult, sanctuary and priesthood: Spawforth 1985, 195-6, 203-4 (building activity), 207-8. Stēlai: IG v.1.206-9, esp.209.6-10; cf. Bölte RE 5.A1, 1934, cols.1190-1 (correctly seeing here a civic cult, not a private association). Agōnothetēs: IG v.1.559, 6-11; cf. Jones 1940, 175.

  9. Priesthood: Hdt.vi.56; IG v.1.36a; 40. Titulature: IG v.1.667.1-2; cf. I. Opelt in Wlosok 1978, 429-30.

  10. Cic.de div.i.95. IG v.1.1314-5 with Bölte RE v.1A, 1934, cols.1190-1 (rejecting the old view of a private thiasos). For the patronomates which date the three visits see Chrimes 1949, 464 (Charixenus I), 466 (Memmius Damares); Bradford 1986a (Hadrian). Claros: Lane Fox 1986a, chs. 4-5. Paus.iii.26.1.

  11. ‘Special relationship’: Cartledge 1987, 34. Judges: references at ch. 11, n.14. Proxeny-grants: FD iii.1.no.487 (IG v.1.1566); iii.2.no.160; SIG3 239.iii.30 (naopoios); Bradford 1977 s.v. Alkimos. FD iii.1.no 543 (Spartiaticus); 215 (Euamerus). Spartan Aurelii: Spawforth 1984, 263-5.

  12. Theatre-statue: SEG xi.773; 830 (cf. Paus.iii.14.8). Cult and sanctuary: Plut. Lyc.31.3; Paus.iii.16.6. Coins: Grunauer-von Hoerschelmann 1978, 40-41 with pl.13. Cf. Richter 1984, 156-7.

  13. Magistrates: IG v.1.543.11-12; 560; SEG xi.626.2. Liv.xxxviii.34; xlv.28.4 (cf. Toynbee 1969, 410 n.3; Tigerstedt 1965-78 ii, 167, 344 n.30); Plut. Philop.16.6-7; Paus.vii.8.5; viii.51.3. Modern views: e.g. Ehrenberg 1929, cols.1442-3 (with earlier references); Chrimes 1949, 50; Shimron 1972, 117. The view taken here is also that of Kennell 1985, 13-19; 1987, 422 n.17.

  14. Suda s.v. ‘Dikaiarkhos’. ‘Contest’: references at ch. 11, n.22; cf. IG v.1.467 (‘renewal’), 485 (role of assembly). Chrimes 1949, 159 citing Plut. Lyc.26.1-3. Messene: Schwertfeger 1981; cf. IvO no.465 (‘wreath’). Cf. the ‘renewal’ of the mythical kinship between Aegeae and Argos c. 150: Spawforth/Walker 1986, 103-4.

Abbreviations

In addition to obvious or easily identified abbreviations of modern works, the following epigraphic abbreviations are used:

CIG: Corpus Inscriptorum Graecarum

CIL: Corpus Inscriptorum Latinarum

FD: Fouilles de Delphes, in progress

IDélos: Inscriptiones de Délos, vols. by various authors

IG: Inscriptiones Graecae

IGB: G. Mihailov, Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria repertae (1956–70)

IGRR: R. Cagnat, Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes (1906–27)

IGUR: Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae

ISE: L. Moretti, Iscrizioni storiche ellenistiche (1967–75)

IvO: W. Dittenberger and K. Purgold, Olympia: die Ergebnisse … der Ausgrabung. V. Die Inschriften, 1896

SEG: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum

SIG3: W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3rd edition

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