Companion to Sparta II

620 Jacqueline Christien The existence of a road network had occurred to B. Phaklaris, a young researcher working on the ruins of Kynouria. In his thesis ((1990) 263–75) he noted the various traces he had seen and, although they were not the initial subject of his research, he was struck by their abundance.4 A colleague of Phaklaris, G. Pikoulas, who was working in Megalopolis north of Laconia, was also interested in roads; his own thesis contained a very interesting chapter ((1988) 198–217) going well beyond what Pritchett had noticed concerning the north of the Spartan state. Pikoulas subsequently undertook an in‐depth study of these roads in the north of the Peloponnese and in Arcadia. This gave rise to a work in Greek (Pikoulas (1995)), later published in English (1999). Recently, the same author has published an important survey of Laconian roads (2012). I am delighted to see that he is in broad agreement with my own proposals, which he has supported with solid documentation and the enhanced precision afforded by modern methods.5 This work of Pikoulas can now be used as an authoritative guide even if, inevitably, at some points there may be room for refinement. Given these studies we can reasonably assume that Laconia was criss‐crossed by chariot routes linking Sparta to the coast across the mountains. (Indeed, something similar may be true of mainland Greece in general and also of Sicily, as we shall see later.) The Laconian network is dense and also links most of the perioikic cities to each other. These are good roads; in terms of materials they were probably not very expensive to carve out and to maintain. For the necessary skilled labour, there were – we assume – helots. These roads were not very practical from our modern point of view which is used to the concept of Roman roads. If two wagons met coming from different directions, crossing‐places no doubt existed to allow them to continue. But two convoys coming from different directions would have had problems. We might speculate that the system functioned as a circuit which would partly explain the density of the network. In that case, for convoys there would have existed a one‐way system. This road system seems to have lasted through the whole of Antiquity, until the arrival of the Slavs (seventh century ad) and even later. It often acted as a guide to later net- works and long stretches remained in place until the arrival of modern vehicles. It is impossible to know the date at which this network was set up, but it is clear that Sparta was at its centre and it therefore probably dates to the high point of Spartan dominance. It can be explained by the need to dominate Messenia and also explains the conquest of the Kynouria (sixth century?). It was a network well adapted to the mountainous terrain because it allowed ravines to be climbed without the risk of chariots’ overturning. It enabled heavy convoys to circulate in regions where we might not imagine such to have been possible. 24.3  The Laconian Network Overall, the present writer is in agreement with Pikoulas’ results. For the moment, his book (of 2012) is only published in Greek. What follows are the main elements of his survey, with some observations by the present writer added in italics.6

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 621 24.3.1  Roads radiating from Sparta To the north, there were two main roads joined by secondary roads, one passing by Pellana with a communications hub near the river Eurotas at the foot of Mt. Chelmos, near Belmina, and the second by Sellasia with a communications hub at the plain of Karyai (which Pikoulas rightly situates at Analipsis; cf. Loring (1895) 56–7). It appears that there was also a road which crossed Skiritis. Concerning the second main road above mentioned, Pikoulas believes that it converged with its associated lesser roads towards the north east beyond Sellasia on the way to Karyai. The present writer believes in the hypothesis of a road through Oinous (and the Bassaras basin) and towards the source of the Tanos via the summit and the head of the ravine of Vamvakou, where one can see the remains of a small sanctuary. A branch left this road going towards the south of Thyreatis and the Brasiotis valley. One or two roads led from the main road, further to the north through Skotitas (modern Arachova, now Karyai), to the summit of Zugos, at an altitude of 1,200 metres, and then descended to the river Tanos. It was the road used by Pausanias the Periegete in the 2nd century ad coming from Argos. To the west: Pikoulas and the present writer agree that a road led from beyond Mistra, and climbed the shoulder of Taygetos. Lacking further information, Pikoulas has this road descend only towards Kalamai and Pharai. This in effect concurs with my own hypothesis that the routes spread out after the ‘diodos’, (‘the passage’: IG V 1.1431. l. 26), with a road at the summit of which we rediscover the traces above Pellana and routes fanning southwards towards the river Choerios, towards the sites of Alagonia, Gerenia and Kardamyle, and to the north in the direction of Argytis, and the right bank of the river Nedon (Christien (1989a) 30–3). Given the traces identifiable at altitudes of more than 1,600 metres on the Taygetos Range, Pikoulas believes in a road providing access to Limnai and, via the Poliani basin, to the plain of Stenyklaros in Messenia. This road has also left traces on the ground to the north of Poliani. It appears particularly mountainous. One wonders why it appears to have been so important given that it was possible to go towards the low plain of Messenia and then to go north without difficulties of terrain. But in fact the plain of Messenia, to the north of Thouria, was covered by the Aris marshes and was doubtless impracticable for wagons, thus explaining the mountainous route through Limnatis (and further north through Ampheia). A second road crossed Mount Taygetos by its southern shoulder, leading to Kardamyle – and a third road, in my opinion (and according to information received from the area of Goranoi), led towards the Milia ravine and Thalamai. Pikoulas mentions the second road and the beginning of the third. This confirmation that roads crossed the Taygetos Range is important. It contradicts the traditional assumption of historians that the Laconians had to go round the Taygetos Range to reach their subject territory of Messenia. It is true that these mountain roads must have been difficult to use in winter, because there is snow here above an altitude of 1,000 metres from November onwards. But the mountain roads allow us to understand why feasts and military campaigns took place in summer (under Sparta’s famous pitiless sun). Travelling over the mountains may perhaps have stopped in winter. To the east: there was also a group of mountains, though less high (apart from in the north). We have observed on the ground that the north‐east road reached Thyreatis.

622 Jacqueline Christien A point which has struck researchers is that all the ports of the east coast are linked to Sparta either directly (as Thyreatis by the road to Mount Barbosthenes) or indirectly (as from Geronthrai). A road led from the south of Sparta, crossing the Eurotas near Skoura by bridge or ford; there is today a place where the river can be crossed without a bridge, but only when water is low. This road led to ancient Geronthrai (modern Geraki), which appears to have been an important communication hub. Roads from Geronthrai led: ●● north and east to reach Glympeis (and no doubt Prasiai beyond); ●● also to Polichne and to Prasiai via Marios; and to Kyphanta; ●● to the south and the plain of Helos and then to Gytheion in the west; ●● to Akriai in the east; ●● and, importantly, to the south‐east towards the plain of Lefkai, Epidauros Limera and Cape Malea. The extraordinary importance of Geronthrai as a communications hub for Laconia implies that it had a particular administrative importance as well. This is confirmed by the abundance of local epigraphy. It seems eminently likely that Sparta permanently controlled, or had residents at, this place. It was doubtless one of the places where there was a harmost. This demonstrates once again the cruel deficiencies of our sources with respect to Spartan internal realities. The network of routes between the plain of Helos and the Argolid Gulf leads us to surmise that, when the roads were being built, Cape Malea was a dangerous spot, whether from storms or pirates, and was to be avoided. To the south: there was a main road from Sparta towards Krokeai and Gytheion. Few traces remain, since this was always an inhabited zone involving many shifts in population and consequently much destruction of evidence. This road fanned out to the south of Amyklai. A second route crossed the Eurotas further south and went directly towards the Helos plain. It seems to the present writer, in the light of the route taken by Pausanias in the Roman period, that after Gytheion it also branched off towards Las then towards Pyrrhikos and Teuthrone (Kotronas). And doubtless a branch led up the depression towards the west, allowing access to the region of the quarries of Pyrgos Dirou. 24.4  Laconian Roads: Conclusions Visible traces of ancient roads diminish from day to day. Destruction is caused by modern vehicles, and by countless roads and paths built for a population which is increasing and now motorized. Nevertheless, the survey established by Pikoulas allows us to arrive at a completely new idea of communications in ancient Greece. We note the respectful care with which the subject is broached in a recent synthesis on the Greek economy (Bresson (2007) 88–91); practically all the sites of cities seem to have been linked by roads usable by wagons. The Laconian political and social system, with its numerous, hard‐working and largely unfree labour force, favoured the creation of a road network. Even helots needed to travel long distances, as for service on campaigns, whether as auxiliaries or under arms (the battle of Plataia is a famous example, but see also Thucydides (5.57.1 and 5.64.1)). Their material produce also needed to be transported, not least to Sparta.

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 623 Figure 24.3  Grooves of ancient roads at harbour serving quarries near Elaphonissos (modern Vinglapha) (photo: author). It is therefore understandable that Spartan kings, as commanders of the army and as potent officials in peacetime, are also recorded as responsible for roads. In addition to population centres, quarries too require roads. Several of the quarries in Spartan territory, to be described below, have roads in their vicinity. This is the case, for example, with roads that Pikoulas found in the Mani. (There are two others: the road to the rosso antico quarry that was destroyed by Italian workings in the early twentieth century, and the road descending from the summit of Tainaron, whose traces can be seen on the west side of the port of Kisternes.)The roads from the port to the north of Elaphonissos (Figure  24.3) illustrate strikingly the traces of human labour and their importance for the quarries. However the roads of Laconia are only part of a much larger question: that of Greek roads in general. We now have clear evidence for the Peloponnese (cf. Tausend (1998)), but occasional indications demonstrate that road‐systems existed much further afield. 24.5  Roads in Greece and Elsewhere The gauge of roads measured in Laconia is of 1.4 metres, that is four Spartan feet, which would make this network appear to be a Laconian initiative. Generally, in the Peloponnese the gauge is in the range 1.40/1–50m. It is doubtless the type of road that the kings of Macedonia adopted in the fifth century bc when they started to develop their country. But what was the ultimate origin of such grooved roads?

624 Jacqueline Christien We find many of these roads in the west, in Sicily (and also South Italy), where I have seen several traces. In Selinous, Akragas, Camarina, Syracuse, and Eloro (Copani (2005) 252–4 and 258) these roads apparently have a gauge of 1.32 or 1.50 metres (4 feet of 33 cm or 5 feet of 30 cm). The road of which there is a long stretch to the south of Eloro (Figure 24.4) seems to be a narrow way with a width of around 1.32 m. Traces of a road between Syracuse and Megara Hyblaia are also visible. Italian archaeologists supply some precious details. Thus in Camarina there is a road which leaves the town, crosses the cemeteries, and which, according to these archaeolo- gists, can be clearly dated to the early years of the sixth century bc (Pelagatti (1976/7) 523 and fig. 1; Di Stefano (1997/98) 745–50). In Syracuse Voza ((1976–77), 551–5)7 has discovered under a paved road of the Roman imperial era another paved road with wheel‐ruts dating from the first century bc; under the latter, again, he found an earlier road with wheel‐ruts which must be at the latest from the Hellenistic era. Here we have an example of a Greek road system disappearing under a Roman one. Figure 24.4  S.E. Sicily, south of Eloro (Torre Vindicari): long traces of ancient road (photo: author).

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 625 Figure 24.5  Syracuse (Sicily): double traces of road in the theatre (photo: author). Although the Greek cities in Dorian Sicily (Figure 24.5) also used this type of road, they are not the only ones in the West. In Messapia, J.L. Lamboley ((1996) 323–7) also noted the existence of a network of this kind with three different gauges. Initially, the width would have been of around 1.50 metres. Then in the second half of the fourth century bc (the arrival of Archidamos III c.342; Christien (2009)) the Tarentine foot was adopted, giving a gauge of 1.40 metres.8 Even if, as Lamboley says, we cannot date the origins of this kind of road precisely, the roads are ancient and did not originally depend on their Greek neighbour Taras for their gauge. Is this, then, an element that the western Greeks may have borrowed from local populations and made into a system? It is a simple, inexpensive system for rocky countries. 24.6 Conclusions Returning to our subject of Laconia, was it Sparta’s need to conquer Messenia that gave rise to the development of these roads? Or, conversely, was it the existence of these roads, by enabling the Laconians to explore beyond their mountains, that led to the conquest of Messenia and above all to its consolidation? Beyond Laconia, historians and archaeologists now need to enrich their work by taking account of the new knowledge about roads. We can no longer proceed on the assumption that the Greek world depended on the Athenian system alone, which prior- itized maritime routes. Scholars may have been ignoring a different system of transport, one which was perhaps much more important for the general population.

626 Jacqueline Christien 24.7  Laconian Quarries The importance of quarries in the Greek and Roman worlds is a subject of increasing interest.9,10 The present writer’s thirty‐five years of research in Laconia have involved a large number of ancient quarries. Some are Greek, others Roman, but even the latter show signs, in most cases, of having been worked already during the era of Laconian independence (Christien (2014)11). All the quarries mentioned in the present chapter have been personally examined in detail, except for those which seemed not to be of Greek origin. Our focus here is on the quarries which appear to have been used by the Laconians, that is between the eighth and second centuries bc. We shall see that, as with roads, Sparta’s use of quarries has something to say about its political history. Laconia suffered until recently from a lack of research on its quarries. This derived ultimately from Sparta’s deliberately exclusive political constitution, which in the classical period tended to exclude it from the wider world of trade. The region is mentioned in modern studies concerning coloured marble, black marble from Tainaron, and rosso antico or green andesite from Krokeai, but these studies relate mainly to the Roman period. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans loved coloured marble. However, a number of quarries on the Laconian coastline have encouraged new research. At the same time, there is a new interest both in ancient quarries generally and in those of Laconia in particular. Laconian quarries belong to several categories. On the one hand there are coastal quarries whose marble was used for export and on the other hand inland quarries for domestic use. The latter outnumber the former, and pose fewer historical problems. In addition, there are quarries of marble (or similar stone) and others of poros (or similar stone). 24.7.1  Inland Laconian quarries Marble quarries: grey marble The Laconians started working grey marble very early.They had a conveniently close source in the Taygetos Range above Amyklai. Did they open this quarry for the needs of the sixth‐century sanctuary the Amyklaion or did the quarry exist already? This quarry is at the head of a small ravine from which a road winds downhill allowing the transport of blocks of marble. Slightly to the north, on the same plateau of Platyvouni which overlooks Amyklai, there is a multiple quarry site, which apparently supplied Roman Sparta, with a branch road (Christien and Della Santa (2001/2) 211–16; CAL no.701, 193). Although very near Sparta and easily accessible, these are not the only inland quarries of grey marble. Another source of this stone was in the valley of a tributary of the Kelephina (Oinous), a little to the north of Vresthena (around 20 kilometres north of Sparta). The marble is to be found in vertical strips, at the edge of the riverbed: Figure 24.6. We have observed two mining‐sites on the left bank of the stream, one at around two kilometres from the village, the other the large quarry (37°14’35.57’N, 22°30’11.79’E), three kilometres away. The latter seems to have produced, to judge by

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 627 Figure 24.6  Vresthena, north of village. Carved stones  on hilltop above the riverbed (photo: author). the copious remains, grey marble and a kind of yellow sedimentary stone. However, the southern edge of the quarry is of yellowish white marble. It was described by Lepsius (1890, 35–6) and evidently had the same appearance in his day. But it was reopened for the construction of a local church early in the twentieth century. The celebrated Chrysapha reliefs (to the east of Sparta) were produced from material in a quarry to the south of that village, excavated in vertical strips (CAL no. 692, 189). Apparently a sculptor who lived in Chrysapha had opened a small local quarry, in order (we surmise) to celebrate the cult of Zeus Lakedaimonios (Christien (2010) 89–94). Finally, a grey marble quarry exists also in the Taygetos Range (on the route from Thalamai or Kardamyle?), at Goranoi (CAL no. 700,192). This quarry is difficult to access, but Laconia of the second half of the sixth century bc seems to have had a fairly high level of production of statues (and of buildings?). Several sanctuaries had to be supplied with stone, not only in Sparta but also in its wider territory. Two or three teams may have worked simultaneously in connection with the exploitation of different sites.12 White marble: this marble is rarely found inland and anyway the Spartans preferred grey marble. However, the Spartan statue which today is the most famous of all comes from one of these sources and proves the importance of this other marble. The sculpture of Leonidas appears to have been made from yellowish white marble, with brown veins. The quarry was for long unidentified. Greek colleagues have now produced a survey of Laconian quarries, but even that did not succeed in answering the question. However, it

628 Jacqueline Christien Figure 24.7  Vresthena, north of village. Large carved stone on hilltop (photo: author). is now clear: the marble for the Leonidas seems to have come from a plateau north of Vresthena (Figure 24.7) (37°14’20.57’N, 22°30’11.79’E). At an altitude of 800 metres, the plateau shows signs that marble was mined by removing the surface material. There are huge blocks of marble in situ, which have been extracted in the traditional way but there is no cutting face, the marble deposit being shallow. It is possible that the large quarry (Map 24.2, see further below) was an attempt at mining the vein of white marble by the same method as at the summit quarries at Platyvouni or at Gorani. However this vein only consisted of a thin crust and the workers would very rapidly reach the underlying sedimentary rocks. At the edge of the river Kelephina we see another exploitation of white and grey marble and of yellow rock (37°14’22.07’N, 22°29’49.98’E), and further to the south a small quarry of white marble (37°14’21.39’N, 22°29’46.40’E) hidden in the trees. The region is called locally ‘Ta Marmaria’ (‘the marble places’). Finally, further to the north, at the sources of the river Tanos, on the Laconian side, modern mining has recommenced on a summit quarry (Petrovouni, at an altitude of some 1,200–1,300 metres) which produces white marble, white marble with black veins, grey‐white and dark‐grey marble. The modern mining has now covered the ancient traces. This quarry is far away (some 40 kilometres) from Sparta but must have supplied the slabs of white marble that we find from the fourth century bc onwards. This marble is of a much better quality than that of Vresthena, but had to be transported from further away. A small sanctuary stands at the head of the Bambakou ravine (Boblaye (1836) 72) and has a road heading towards Sparta by way of the mountains.

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 629 Messenian Pyrgos Dirou Gulf Charouda Tsopakas Laconian Gulf Mezapo Erimos (ancient Messa), Prophitis Ilias Haghios Kiriaki Kipoula (ancient Hippola) Alika (ancient Kainepolis) 0 Kilometres 5 Marmari 0 Miles 3 Cape Tainaron Map 24.2  Quarries: Mani peninsula and Cape Tainaron. 24.7.2  Quarries of yellow sedimentary rock At the edge of the river Eurotas (the bridge of Kopano, to the north of Sparta: Pikoulas ((2012) 602–5) there are gigantic quarries of clayish rock. How this stone was used remains to be discovered. It was also extracted in quarries north of Vresthena. The Kopano quarry demonstrates that huge blocks were mined. The small sanctuary called Leonidaion (at Sparta) is made of massive blocks of stone of this kind. They could also have been used for the defences of Sparta in the third and second centuries bc, of which the great walls, ten kilometres long, were built of brick on a foundation of stone. 24.7.3  Coloured stones Between Gytheion and Sparta, the celebrated quarries at Krokeai, of green (Waterhouse and Hope‐Simpson (1960) 106–7; Le Roy (1961) 208; Zezza and Lazzarini (2002) 260–1; CAL no. 668, 182) or violet andesite (which is less famous and less sought after but may be more abundant), seem not to have been used before the time of the Roman Empire. The stone is difficult to work, very fragmented and seems not to have been particularly appreciated in Sparta. It is possible, however, that at the end of Greek independence, with the development of mosaic, quarries of green stone, ‘green like grass’,13 were pressed into service. This stone, which had to my knowledge two veins at least, one to the north‐east of Akriai, at the southern edge of the Kourloula, near the poros quarry, the other on the old route from Marios to Kyphanta, at the exit from the

630 Jacqueline Christien Marios basin, was not Krokeai porphyry but was a completely green stone and used for mosaic (perhaps only in Roman times). 24.7.4  Coastal quarries We often forget that, although Sparta itself is some forty kilometres from the sea, the state of Laconia had a long coastline. From the mouth of the Tanos in Thyreatis, in the north‐ eastern Peloponnese, to the river Neda in the north‐west of Messenia, there are several hundred kilometres of coast. It is true that natural ports are rare but the inhabitants knew how to organize things: Gytheion, the harbour for Sparta, was an artificial port. The neighbouring harbour of Las, which can no longer be seen, being sanded up and the coastline having undergone straightening, could itself have been a natural port at the time. The author known as ps.-Skylax, text dating from around 350 bc, provides us with a list of Laconian ports (Periplous 46). Sparta, which at an early date occupied the fertile plains of Messenia, did not need to organize trading. Its territory provided virtually all its own needs, except for precious metals and tin. And there were even small, though insufficient, quantities of copper.14 However, the ports, on the headlands in particular, followed a very important maritime route which linked Asia Minor to the West. The Phoceans, Cnidians, Samians and Aiginetans successively must have made use of these harbours. The Persian Empire, which collected tribute, and above all the Athenian Empire, by organizing flows of trade mainly between Attica, the eastern basin of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, limited or interrupted these Mediterranean voyages. They restarted more sporadically when Syracuse intervened with its ships in the struggle against Athens after 413. 24.7.5  Marble quarries Grey marble: One is struck, travelling in the Mani, to see so much deserted countryside with mounds of pebbles, bare slopes and rocky inhospitable coasts. The west side of the Mani contains, at altitudes of between 100 and 200 metres, a series of collapsed table‐lands where, during the troubled period of the Middle Ages and in modern times, people took refuge. In Antiquity, however, Pausanias only mentions three ancient habitation sites situated towards the south of the peninsula, where ditches between geological faults have retained sediment producing a little cultivable earth. These are the promontory and the port of Messa (modern Mezapo), the city of Hippola on the table‐ land (modern Kipoula), and the city of Kainepolis (modern Alika), on the south coast. To the north of Mezapo a vast zone of table‐lands seems to lack human settlement, no doubt because there is no water. On the other hand, there is marble. There is grey marble practically everywhere in the Mani. It was mined at Marmari (grey‐white marbles: CAL no. 696, 191) and to the north of Mezapo in quarries on the water. But there was also considerable mining of grey marble at Prophitis Ilias (36°30’19.88’N, 22°27’50.11’E) which scholars tend to overlook because of the interest in another rock exploited there, the rosso antico. However, to reach the vein of rosso antico, it was necessary to remove thick layers of grey marble, and it is possible

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 631 that mining, that is summit mining of the kind carried on at Goranoi or Platyvouni, began as the mining of grey marble. White marble was recently the subject of our research (Le Tallec and Christien (2014)) and it initially seemed to us that Laconia possessed little of this stone. However, experience of Vresthena changed our thinking and encouraged us15 to explore the Mani. This time we discovered, south of Areopolis, the ancient quarries whose existence Frederick Cooper had previously noticed ((1988) 67). Cooper’s primary interest was in the peninsula of Tainaron. There is indeed at Marmari, as he suspected, a vein of white marble and also of grey marble but the quantity available at this spot is small, indeed very small in relation to all that Cooper wished to define as marble of Laconian origin. There is another quarry of white marble just to the north of the black marble in Tainaron but again it was apparently of little importance. (Admittedly, this white‐marble quarry can be seen only from the sea, and is perhaps more important than it appears from the sea.) White marble quarries (and also those of the grey‐white variety) do indeed exist in the Mani but mainly to the north of the Tainaron peninsula. They are difficult to identify as they do not have a quarry face. They are of the type which required exploitation by removal of surface material, as at the summit of Vresthena Mountain. 24.7.6  From Areopolis to Mezapo A quarry covers several hectares near Pyrgos Dirou at Phourtalia, close to the church of Haghios Ogdonda (36°37’20.02’N, 22°22’58.98’E). The traces of marble workings extend towards the south, where a modern quarry has opened recently on the southern edge of the plateau (36°37’15’N, 22°22’51’E), apparently on some ancient quarry markings. The same applies to Charouda, where an inscription (IG V.1.1278–9) is to be seen in the wall of the church of Taxiarches (36°36’22.10’N, 22°22’14.62’E), and where a sculptured relief dating from the sixth century bc has been found. The relief represents a hoplite and is currently in the Sparta museum; it confirms that this was an ancient site. A large modern quarry at the southern edge of the plateau has not been examined but it is possible that, as at Pyrgos/Phourtalia, the modern miners were guided by ancient traces in opening their quarry. Towards the south, there are traces of ancient mining near the ruined palaeomaniate church of Trissachias, to the west of Tsopakas, and there are apparently others to the west and to the south‐west of Kouloumi (the last point in the north–south chain of table‐lands).16 At this spot Woodward ((1906/7) 242) saw, in a natural hollow, a relief of Herakles which implied the presence of miners and which strongly resembled the statue of Herakles at Plitra (ancient Asopos). But these sculptures are difficult to date: are they classical, Hellenistic or Roman? The remains of a statue in marble nearby appeared to Woodward to be of the third century bc. Such figures of Herakles play a dual role: he is the god of miners and also the god who accompanies the souls of the dead. There were, it appears, three kinds (at three periods?) of mining in this area. One consisted of removing surface material, another of digging holes in order to excavate a quarry face. (Such holes were reused at the time of the transformation of the Mani into

632 Jacqueline Christien a territory of refuge, when they were turned into water cisterns, next to the churches.) The layer of marble (sometimes with different colours) typically extends between 150 and 200 metres. It is fairly thin. A third type of mining consisted of steps to exploit the thin layer of marble at the edge of the plateau. This layer of stone slopes gradually towards the south and finally disappears to the south of Kouloumi. There we find the first quarry on the sea, to the west of Erimos. In these stony landscapes, which were overpopulated at the time of the Turkish occupation, it is difficult to identify the remains of an ancient habitat. These places in fact have little arable land and few springs. They must have been used essentially for the mining of stone. In all these places there is beautiful, intensely white marble, often in the form of large crystals, but in a thin layer. Time has covered these marbles with a blackish slime, but the recent feverish reconstruction in the Mani has resulted in the opening of modern quarries and obviously the ancient sites were immediately targeted. At Pyrgos Dirou there is a horizontal quarry (so to speak) which it was decided to preserve (Figure 24.8, at Phourtalia), but also a modern quarry near the sea on the top of the slope. This modern quarry clearly made use of an old quarry at the edge of the plateau which enabled the opening of quarry faces around three metres thick. Work at the Charouda quarry has advanced too far for us to tell what existed previously on the site. However, there are traces of ancient mining on this plateau and one such trace was converted into a cistern. So, we calculate that the general picture here resembled that near Pyrgos. At Tsopakas, as a result of the presence of palaeomaniate (and later) building, the operator was, to his annoyance, ordered to mine outside the archeological zone. The trench that he had started to dig reveals beautiful white marble. Figure 24.8  Phourtalia (Pyrgos Dirou). White marble quarries in Mani (west coast) (photo: author).

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 633 It is possible that the marble from this area was removed via Messa (modern Mezapo) where the remains of a road to the port are well preserved. The slope would have facilitated such removal and the small port was well sheltered. I believe therefore that we need to revisit Cooper’s ideas (1988, 74, and 1996, 112) and to renew the study in particular of the marbles used on the west coast of the Peloponnese. It is possible that the Mani supplied most of this coast, which has no sources of marble of its own up to and including Olympia (the same applies to poros). Black marble: these quarries are better known both because they were mentioned in Antiquity and because they are visible from the sea. The west coast of Cape Tainaron, in its southernmost recess, has huge quarries of dark grey and deep black marble (Figure  24.9). They were excavated over a long period. From the sixth century bc onwards, the Laconians proudly displayed this marble in Olympia (Le Tallec and Christien (2014)). In the sixth century bc, it was used there for Laconian seats. Pausanias pointed out that in front of the statue of Zeus there was paving of black marble (5.11.10); this was certainly an offering from the Laconians to the divine ancestor of their royal dynasties. The quarries close to the sea were obviously intended for the export of marble. Working conditions must have been very difficult in such an inhospitable place as Cape Tainaron. The resulting marble was in all likelihood rare and costly, and thus considered worthy of the gods and very likely associated with the god of the Cape, Poseidon. The earlier, Greek, quarries appear to be in the south; in the centre and the north there are Roman quarries. Another excavation can be seen further north, on the Cape, near Mianes, on top of a hill. The Romans greatly appreciated this marble. In the Greek era, Figure 24.9  Tainaron. Black marble quarries (photo: author).

634 Jacqueline Christien although it signalled Spartan identity – or perhaps because of that – contemporary artists and their patrons could not decide how to use it. Around the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries bc, it was used for sculpture bases at Olympia, as for example the base of the statue of Kyniska, horse‐racing sister of king Agesilaos of Sparta. The south of the small promontory of Teuthrone (modern Kotronas) also supplied black limestone, perhaps during the Hellenistic era, or only later. 24.7.7  Rosso antico These quarries, north east of Cape Tainaron, were surveyed towards the middle of the nineteenth century (Dubois (1908) 105; Waterhouse and Hope‐Simpson (1961) 119–20; CAL no. 699,192).17 Rosso antico is a dark red stone, viewed as a luxury. It was used during the Mycenaean period. Its quarries seem to have been reopened from the late fourth or early third century bc onwards; they were intensively worked during the Roman era. Before the Roman period, this red marble was used for inscriptions: for example, an honorific decree for an inhabitant of Cythera dating from the third century bc (IG X.14.636) and another in honour of a Laconian dating from the beginning of the same century (IG X.14 717). This stone also appears in mosaics (perhaps from the middle of the third century) and, more unexpectedly, in the recently‐discovered tombs of Spartan families (Raftopoulou (1998) 134–5). Unfortunately information is scarce. The British archaeologists Waterhouse and Hope‐Simpson ((1961) 119–20) noted that there were traces of on‐site work which would appear to predate the period at which we estimate quarrying of rosso antico to have occurred. However, this could be explained if, as I believe, grey marble had already been excavated on this site in the archaic and classical periods. Other coloured stones – black, green and red – have been found near Mianes (summit of Tainaron), near Kotronas (ancient Teuthrone) and on the north bank of the Gulf of Scutari. They seem to be from the Roman era (Bruno (2002) 20–6) but future work, for example on Messapian mosaics (Masiello et  al. (2013)), may well change our ideas concerning the periods at which these coloured stones were used. 24.7.8  Quarries of poros and similar stone We have a large number of such quarries in Cape Malea – and also in the Mani which contains zones of both poros and marble. On Cape Malea a belt of poros has been worked at several different places. On the south coast of Monemvasia, there are large quarries buried under sand but with traces still visible. The northern portions of these ancient quarries have been recently destroyed by the erection of housing. However, before being obliterated, these northern quarries had been reopened in modern times for the construction of Monemvasia. Some twenty kilometres south of Monemvasia is a hill capped by a Greek fort (from which ancient pottery with black glaze has been recovered). The present writer believes this to be the site of Side (Christien (1989b) 92, with fig 1 and photo 8), much further north than has usually been thought but the last place on this coast with agricultural land

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 635 capable of feeding a city. This hill overlooks, to the south, a basin sheltering the hamlet of Haghias Phokas. North of this last site there is a poros quarry (CAL no. 662,180). On the west side of the Malea peninsula, Vinglapha, opposite the island of Elaphonissos, was the site of huge excavations. A port with several quays shows that stones were here loaded for enormous construction sites (Figure 24.3). Venetian quarries (overlooked by a small fort on a headland) in the north‐east of the plain of Boiai (now Neapolis), which were perfectly visible forty years ago, and the road nearby, have been filled in and turned into fields. However, ancient quarries, situated at the north‐western edge of the plain, can be still seen (CAL no. 689, 188; Christien (1989b) 89–90 and photos 5–8). These were intensively worked in Antiquity. This is perhaps the place where Apollon Lithisios stood (IG V.1. 21318). The quarries now are beginning to disappear under sheepfolds. On the island of Cythera (on the east coast, at Scandia, the ancient harbour), we also find beautiful ancient quarries (Kokkorou‐Alevras et  al. (2011) 178–80; Christien (2014) 186, photo 2). Going northwards along the coast of the gulf of Laconia we meet large poros quarries at ancient Asopos (Plitra) which have been well described by Kokkorou‐Alevras et  al. ((2009) 171–7). Used as a cemetery during the Roman period we can imagine that they had been worked for stone previously. To the south of Asopos the promontory of Arkhangelo shows signs of a poros quarry.19 To the north of Asopos there was also a small quarry at Boza at the northern end of the promontory of Xyli. The traces of a road have now disappeared and the quarry has been destroyed. In the Laconian gulf (north and west of Asopos) we have the site of Akriai at the foot of the mountain, near the remains of an ancient road, a quarry of poros seems to have been exploited for local use. At Gytheion, guided by an inscription of the sixth century bc,20 we located a large ancient quarry to the east of the foot of Larysion. The inscription suggests that from the sixth century onwards the Laconian coast was a place where locally‐quarried stone was employed. 24.7.9  In the Mani Gytheion lies at the edge of Mani. Nearby, the west coast of northern Areopolis is fringed with Pliocene terraces which supplied fine benches of poros stone. On the slopes behind Leuktra, to the north of Thalamai (Cooper (1988) 67; CAL no. 711, 195), near Oitylos (CAL no. 679, 185), there are sizeable poros quarries. They were certainly used for the sanctuaries and walls of nearby towns fought over in the 360s bc between Thebans, who sought to annex them to Messenia, and Lacedaimonians whose myths told of episodes relating to their very identity which took place in these regions. Thalamai was reputed to be the region where the Dioscuri – Castor and Pollux – were born, as well as being the site of an old oracle. At Oitylos, the remains of the city walls are still visible in places, dating from the end of the fifth or more probably the fourth century bc (Forster (1903/1904) 160–1). Further south, in Mani proper, the terraces of poros disappear and poros exists only in low, compartmentalized, locations in this very fractured landscape. However, there are two huge, magnificent quarries, which must have been worked for export. One is to the

636 Jacqueline Christien Figure 24.10  Alika (ancient Kainepolis). North side of the church square: large quarry of poros stone (photo: author). south‐west of Mezapo (ancient Messa) near Haghia Kyriaki (Woodward (1906–07) 243; CAL no. 677, 185) at the south foot of the Tigani, climbing towards ancient Hippola. There are Roman‐era reliefs in the wall of the church of Kipoula (ancient Hippola), indicating that the quarries were also intended for local production. The other quarry is near ancient Kainepolis, close to the church of Alika (CAL no. 670, 183). It seems that all these quarries may have been worked over a long period (down to the end of the Byzantine era?), as many local churches have large rectangular blocks in their walls (Hadji Minaglou (1994)). The Alika quarry (Figure 24.10), in which the medieval village was built, is typical. The situation is similar for Thalamai and Haghia Kyriaki (south‐west of Mezapo), where there are huge quarry faces; here one can clearly trace extraction in very long blocks, corresponding with the blocks used for the churches. 24.8 Conclusions It is now clear that the headlands of Laconia supplied large quantities of stones for the buildings and sculptures of the Greek world. I consider that we must now revisit the ideas of Cooper ((1996) 108). He believes that the marble used at the fifth‐century temple of Bassai in Arkadia resembles that found in other places north of Messenia: Alipheira, Mazi, Perivolia, Phigaleia and Olympia, in works dating from the end of the sixth to the beginning of the third centuries bc. In his 1988 study (p. 74) Cooper pro- posed that a whole series of objects, some of which were famous, were made of marble from Mani. This conclusion has much significance for the increasingly‐contested topic

Roads and Quarries in Laconia 637 of Spartan austerity. In the decades from the Great Earthquake of the mid 460s until the end of the fifth century Sparta produced, as Thucydides shows (1.10.2), no abundance of new showy buildings, a situation which continued until Hellenistic times. And yet Spartan territory contained much fine stone which could have supplied such buildings. Our study of Spartan quarries confirms that classical Sparta’s famous abstention – from the 460s onwards – from grand building schemes was deliberate, reflecting a decision not to use available resources in certain ways. Sparta’s attitude towards its own fine stone is comparable with its policy throughout the classical period of not minting local coins, in spite of an abundance – especially after the conquest of the Athenian empire – of gold and silver (Christien (2002)). Marble from Spartan territory was, during the classical period, used elsewhere in Greece to make a point about Sparta itself. But evidently the point to be made at home was a different one. NOTES 1 When working previously on the territory of Syracuse, I had already seen such traces of roads at the site of Eloro, around 20 kilometres south of Syracuse, and at Syracuse itself, even for the ascent to Epipolai and for access to the theatre. I was able to discuss the subject with members of the administration of Camarina who had discovered a whole hub of roads near Ragusa. 2 There is a brief introduction in the Laconia Survey (Cavanagh et al. (2002): Vol. I, 211–17). There is a more detailed bibliography in Gengler‐Marchetti ((2000) 78–9). 3 I learned a short time afterwards that G. Pikoulas (see later below), who until then had worked in Megalopolis, had started to move south towards Laconia following the road network from the north. 4 But, if I am correct, without giving an illustration. 5 The invention of the GPS has greatly facilitated this type of work by allowing the different overall elements to be incorporated reliably in a map. 6 Pikoulas (2012) includes a very efficient map, sadly unavailable for reproduction here. The present writer has supplied the present, partial, map (Map 24.1), based on her own researches. 7 In a conversation in Camarina, he observed the existence of a problem regarding the hub of these roads near Ragusa. 8 Lamboley has listed the characteristics: ‘the roads rarely take a straight line; they follow the contours of the landscape. and carefully avoid hollows, aiming to stick to the edges of terraces … Their lines are often intended to allow rain water to drain’ ((1966) 325: trans. A.P.). 9 A comprehensive survey of Greek quarries, together with extensive bibliography and illustrations, has recently been published. But, as in the case of roads, it is in Greek: G. Kokkorou‐Aleuras, E.  Poupaki, A. Efstathopoulos and A. Chatzikonstantinou, C O R P U S APΧEIΩN ΛATOMEIΩN (Λατομεία του ελλαδικού χώρου από τους προισ̈ τορικούς έως τους μεσαιωνικούς χρόνους) (= Corpus of Ancient Quarries (Greek Quarries from Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)). Athens. 2014. For Laconia and Messenia, see pp. 180–96. Hereafter this work is referred to as ‘CAL’. Easier to consult, and focused on Laconia, is: G. Kokkorou‐Aleuras, A. Chatzikonstantinou, A. Efstathopoulos, E. Zavvou, N. Themos, K. Kopanias and E. Poupaki: ‘Ancient quarries in Laconia’ in: W.G. Cavanagh, C. Gallou and M. Georgiadis (eds), Sparta and Laconia: From Prehistory to Pre‐modern. (Proceedings of the Conference held in Sparta, organized by the British School at Athens, the University of Nottingham, the fifth Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and the fifth Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities 17–20 March 2005.) British School at Athens Studies 16. London, 2009, 169–77. However the only quarry closely examined here is that of Plitra (formerly Asopos), a poros quarry reused as a necropolis by the Romans.

638 Jacqueline Christien 10 A sign of this is the various conferences regularly organised and published by ASMOSIA (‘Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones used in Antiquity’). 11 Cf. also Le Tallec, in Y. Le Tallec and J. Christien, ((2014) 149–70). 12 For example, two rural sanctuaries have been excavated at Akriai and Aigai. The small, obscure sanctuary at Aigai produced two large grey marble statues, a goddess on a throne and a kouros. The latter is wearing little boots like the Twins of Delphi (probably the Dioscuri, the offering of an Argive who may have worked in Laconia): Bonias ((1998) 38–64, in Greek). Curiously the Survey of Laconia (Vol. II, 294), refers to the quarries of Platyvouni and of Goranoi as being of white marble. They are of grey marble! Cf. Christien (2014, photo 6). 13 See the Roman authors Statius (Silvae 2.2.90–1) and Martial (Epigr. 6, 42, 11–13): both refer to green stone and Statius to ‘green as grass’. The green stones that the present writer has seen were not in the Taygetos Mountains. Perhaps, however, the Roman authors were alluding to the green stone of Tainaron, which is at the extremity of the Taygetos Range. There, above Kisternes, is found a green and white stone (and another of pink and white, nowadays called ‘peach flower’), that was exploited in Roman times. Further study is needed of the Tarentine and Messapian mosaics, which might reveal whether exploitation of green stone started earlier. 14 This allows us to answer a question raised by Stibbe ((2009) 156) concerning the number of bronzes in the temple of Apollon Hyperteleatas. There is a mine of good quality copper about three kilometres north of the temple, which may have sufficed for a local craftsman. 15 On this occasion with Ms Maria Mylona, a government officer in charge of the environ- ment at Molai. Our first expedition to Vresthena (inland) and Kouloumi (west coast of Mani) was made in 1994. Ms Mylona’s cooperation was essential for obtaining the necessary information. 16 A Greek researcher announced in CAL that several articles on these quarries would be pub- lished. As regards Kouloumi, the presence of marble ruins and signs of extraction had been noted by A.M. Woodward as early as 1906–7. 17 Italian quarry‐workers had reopened an excavation at the end of the nineteenth century. The site as it existed before this reopening was described by Charles Dubois ((1908) 105–6): ‘The quarries of red marble are to be found above Dimaristika, near the little church of Haghios Helias. On the slopes, right next to the church, are four quarries with steep sides containing scattered lumps of debris. We can also see a number of blocks and the traces of a path marked out among the rocks for the transport of marble – above the layers of red marble can be found grains of a greenish seam  –  In that place, several large layers were actively worked in Antiquity –’. On this site the present writer has seen grey limestone (‘greenish‐grey’ might be more accurate), which had been actively worked. 18 We know from Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v. Λιθήσιος) that this god had a cult in Malea. 19 The ancient road between Asopos and Kotyrta (modern Daimonia) divided into two shortly before Kotyrta, one branch leading in the direction of the acropolis, the other to the coast where it ran alongside a temple and quarries before going downwards towards the south. One can still see traces of it under the sea at Marathias. This road seems not to have been noticed by Pikoulas. The present writer has seen traces where the road began its descent to the coast and, some kilometres further, the traces under the sea. In Antiquity this was a coastal road. 20 F. Ruzé and H. Van Effenterre ((1994) 318–19). Autopsy of the present writer confirms there was indeed a large quarry. Since the prohibition on removing stones dated from the sixth century bc, the quarry had presumably been open before then. Was it reserved for Laconians? Its situation at the port of Gytheion must have caused it to be highly prized.

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CHAPTER 25 Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period Nigel M. Kennell The Spartans of the Roman period were famous. In the words of Cicero (Flacc. 63), they were “the only people in the whole world who have lived now for more than seven hun- dred years with one and the same set of customs and unchanging laws”. Roman Sparta was typified by its citizens’ desire to advertise themselves as unique, particularly in their adherence to venerable custom (see Lafond, Chapter  15, this volume). On the other hand, the city’s later periods of unrest, revolution, and impotence were also well known (Strabo 8.5.5; Plut. Philop. 16.9; Inst. Lac. 42 [239e–240e]; cf. Philostr. VA 17). These apparently contradictory perceptions of contemporary Sparta’s relationship with its his- tory expose the tension between the historical record and Sparta’s powerful later image as a city whose institutions and traditions were vital embodiments of the Hellenic past. With this in mind, the literary, epigraphical, and even archaeological evidence for Roman Sparta, scanty though it is, provides the means for understanding how one particular group, the Spartans, articulated a cultural memory informed by a (largely) created past which they utilized to protect and further their interests during years of domination by the external power of Rome. Cultural memory is to a society what individual memory is to a person (Assmann (2011) 4–5, 26). While the analogy has some shortcomings, in that a society has no physical neural networks, the term does usefully characterize the preservation through various institutions, both cultural and social, of the knowledge of certain events or per- sons and the sinking into oblivion of others. The set of things whose remembrance is the function of cultural memory forms a sort of canon for a society (Assmann (2008) 100–2). They are recalled, lived out, and celebrated through festivals, monuments, and especially A Companion to Sparta, Volume II, First Edition. Edited by Anton Powell. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

644 Nigel M. Kennell at specific locations (lieux de mémoire), which provide strong stimuli for remembrance. That which is commemorated in this way need not be historically accurate, or even true, but it still constitutes the essence of a group’s identity and individuality and, as such, is held to be unchanging through time. A past must be selected and constructed, processes that typically occur after some form of break – social, political, or religious – in continuity (Assmann (2011) 18–19, 248–9, cf. 39). After the defeat and exile of King Kleomenes III (235–222 bc), who briefly managed to restore a portion of Sparta’s old status through his military and social reforms, the city certainly suffered major ruptures in its institutional and social fabric during the second and first centuries bc, despite later claims to Spartan continuity. First came enforced membership in the Achaean League from 186 to 146 bc (on these dates, see later below) and the loss of “ancestral” institutions such as the citizen training system, called the agoḡ e ̄ from the Hellenistic period onwards. Only after the Roman victory over the Achaeans in 146 bc were Spartans able to recover what was called their ancestral constitution, and even then only in limited fashion (Plut. Philop. 16.9; Paus. 8.51.3). But the restored city was significantly diminished even from its years under the rule of Nabis (205–192 bc), the last independent Spartan ruler before the Achaean hegemony. Now Sparta no longer controlled most of Laconia, let alone long‐independent Messenia, for the old perioecic cities had formed the Lacedaemonian League at Nabis’ fall, when helotage also disappeared, with helots probably comprising a notable portion of the new League’s population (Kennell (1999)). Although post‐Achaean Sparta appears to have shared in the relative prosperity enjoyed by other Greek cities in the later second century, with almost completely tranquil relations with its former dependent cities, Rome’s civil wars soon swept over the city, as over mainland Greece generally. Spartans were not fool- ish enough to ally themselves with the Pontic king Mithridates in his anti‐Roman ­crusade  –  indeed they may have provided troops for Sulla’s Italian campaign (App. BC 1.79) – but insatiable requisitioning by Roman generals would soon ravage Laconia (App. BC 1.102). Laconian cities such as Gytheion were forced to accept loans at exor- bitant interest rates to pay off the debts they incurred meeting Roman demands (IG V.1 1146), and even Sparta itself was in desperate straits following another extortionate tax assessment (IG V.1 11; cf. Cic. Verr. 1.60, 2.80). On the whole, though, Sparta was lucky in its manoeuvring during these perilous years. While it had supported Pompey against Caesar (Caes. BC 3.4.3), the city won a favourable decision in its boundary dispute with the Messenians in 44 bc (Tac. Ann. 4.43) and switched allegiance, sending troops to aid Octavian against the republicans at Philippi (Plut. Brut. 41.8, 46.1). Nonetheless, this did not prevent Sparta being treated as a pawn later, when the Treaty of Misenum (39 bc) ceded control of the Peloponnese to Sextus Pompey for five years (Vell. Pat. 2.77.2; App. BC 5.72). Although the treaty soon became a dead letter, Antony had an excuse for another round of oppressive requi- sitioning in the region (App. BC 5.77, 80). When the civil wars drew to a close and the former allies Octavian and Antony fell out, Sparta found itself in an unusually advanta- geous position. Eurycles, the son of a prominent local man (IG II2 3885) executed as a pirate by Antony (Plut. Ant. 67.3), personally commanded a contingent of ships on Octavian’s side at the battle of Actium. The victor awarded Sparta the presidency of the Actian Games at Nikopolis (Strabo 7.7.6; Plut. Ant. 67.2–3) and installed Eurycles him- self in power at Sparta (Strabo 8.5.1, 5.5), where he and his descendants, with some

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 645 notable interruptions, exercised considerable sway until the end of Nero’s reign (Kennell (2010) 183–6), probably without holding any official position, in a style reminiscent of archaic tyranny (Kennell (1997) 351–4, 356; Balzat 2005). Attempts by modern historians to assign to Eurycles and his descendants a constitu- tional position through which they wielded power at Sparta have foundered on the ambiguous or contradictory evidence (Balzat 2005). Strabo’s references (8.5.1, 5.5) to Eurycles as leader (heḡ emōn) and to his power (epistasia) have particularly resisted expla- nation. Legends on coins minted in Eurycles’ name, for instance, indicate that they were struck “in the time of Eurycles” or “at the expense of Eurycles” (Grunauer‐von Hoerschelmann (1978) 63–71, taf. 19–21). Moreover, while his children may have joined elite religious groups (IG V.1 141), the few scraps of epigraphical evidence avail- able from the first century bc seem to show the revived Kleomenean constitution func- tioning smoothly. In the early 20s the ephors and the city addressed a letter to the city of Delphi (IG V.1 1566); a list of patronomoi, Roman Sparta’s eponymous magistrates, from six consecutive years in the first century indicates that upper‐class Spartans continued to fill positions in this Kleomenean institution (on the patronomate, later below and Kennell (1997); pace Lafond, this volume, Chapter 15). As well, bricks from the second half of the first century bc were stamped with names of patronomoi (Kourinou (2000) 54–7). Euryclid power actually rested on imperial favour, traceable back to the official friendship (amicitia) Augustus bestowed on Eurycles. Political life, at least the advertising by the elite of their achievements on behalf of their city, seems to have been dormant, if not actually suppressed in this period, only to develop again following the end of the family’s power in the Flavian period. The excavators of Sparta’s late‐Hellenistic or early‐Roman theatre on the south‐west flank of the acropolis tentatively suggest that the change in government may be associ- ated with a radical transformation in the theatre’s fabric in 78 ad and the first inscribed careers of prominent Spartans, which appeared soon after on the east parodos wall (Walker and Waywell (2001) 294). The theatre is a good place to begin an examination of how cultural memory manifested itself at Roman Sparta. In fact, it might stand as an emblem of that phenomenon. Built under Eurycles, the theatre boasted an unusual feature, a movable scene building of a type now attested also in the theatre at Messene (Walker and Waywell (2001) 294). Its construction methods were up‐to‐date, with Roman‐style foundations of layered rubble and concrete. Despite this modernity, and of course the incongruity of a theatre at a Sparta increasingly self‐conscious about its tradition of aus- tere rejection of the arts in any form, its exterior aspect was thoroughly Greek, even classicizing, in its use of stone and Pentelic marble in the Doric style  –  “a grandiose recreation of the fine Classical Greek theatre design … stressing in its appearance the Dorian heritage of Sparta” (Waywell, Wilkes, and Walker (1999) 103). Eurycles dominated political life in a fashion that was more characteristic of a Roman “strong man” (Balzat (2007) 343) than of a Spartan leader but he may well have had a hand in the concerted promotion of aspects of Spartan “tradition” which formed the core of the city’s cultural memory. The Leonideia, games in honour of the hero of Thermopylai, which were reorganized in the late first century ad (IG V.1 18–19), may have been first resurrected or even founded under Eurycles, with orators delivering encomia of Leonidas and Pausanias, victor of Plataia, at the new theatre (Spawforth (2012) 122–30). In addition, it is possible that Eurycles was responsible for the

646 Nigel M. Kennell remodelling of the famous Persian Stoa with columns of “white marble”, building material characteristic of the Augustan age (Paus. 3.11.3; Spawforth (2012) 118–20). Augustus’ visit to Sparta in 22/1 bc signalled not only his support for Eurycles, at least for the time being, but also his approval of the martial Spartan values the training system (agōge)̄ had come to represent by his joining the Spartan ephebes in their common meals (phiditia) (Strabo 8.5.1; Dio Cass. 54.7.2; Paus. 3.26.7, 4.31.1; Spawforth (2012) 90–1). Whether Eurycles took an active role in promoting the agoḡ e ̄ as a Spartan tradi- tion cannot be determined due to the lack of evidence from this period, but in the later first and second centuries ad, when inscriptions become more plentiful, the training system had undoubtedly become a key component of Spartan cultural memory and the main vehicle by which Spartans represented themselves to themselves and the world. The agoḡ e ̄ of the Roman era was the product, after two periods of desuetude, of revivals, the first under Kleomenes III and the second after the Roman victory over the Achaean League in 146 bc. At that time the imperial power approved Sparta’s recovery of her “ancestral” institutions, as far as was practical after the city’s misfortunes and so much degeneration, according to Plutarch (Philop. 16.9), following four decades (188– 146 bc) of forced membership in the Achaean League under an Achaean‐style constitution in which Spartan youths were no longer trained in the Spartan way (Livy 38.34.9). Recent doubts as to the likelihood of Roman involvement in the revival of the agōge,̄ and that traditional citizen training at Sparta was actually in abeyance for all forty years of the Achaean period (Lévy (1997) 153; Ducat (2006) x–xi), stem from a misapprehension about the significance of ephebates to the Hellenistic city. As a source of citizen soldiers, these training systems were quite definitely an object of interest to the ruling powers such as the Romans, as recent research has made clear (Chaniotis (2005) 46–51; Kennell (2005) 19–20). Roman permission to revive the agōge ̄ would have been, if not needed, then certainly desirable. Although the latest revival of the agoḡ e ̄ just after 146 bc would have taken place within the limits of the communal memory of aged Spartans, the training system they recalled, which served as the model, was not the Classical system but that revived under Kleomenes III. Thus, true continuity between the Classical training system and that of the Roman period is tenuous at best and arguably non‐existent. In any case, even were the Roman‐era institution to reproduce the Classical in every detail, every act of revival entails a break from the natural evolution of a tradition and a conscious effort to recon- struct a past that is relevant to the present. Since the Archaic period, maturation rituals for both males and females had been per- formed at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia near the Eurotas river. In the third century bc, the goddess’s cult statue appeared on coins struck by King Kleomenes, thus advertising the training system’s prominence in his reform programme. It has been suggested that he was also responsible for reconstructing Artemis’ temple (Grunauer‐von Hoerschelmann (1978) 11–16, gr. III). Kleomenes’ institution of the patronomate (pace Lafond, this volume), whose main charge at least later was oversight of the agoḡ e,̄ also points to its centrality in his vision of Sparta (Kennell (1995) 11). The earliest eyewitness to the agoḡ e ̄ of Roman Sparta is Cicero, who, like Libanios our latest witness (Or. 1.23), con- fined himself to mentioning the infamous contest of endurance (Tusc. 2.34, 2.46, 5.77), when naked youths submitted to flagellation by the altar of Orthia to mark their coming of age. The ritual had been drastically transformed from an earlier ceremony involving a

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 647 battle with whips over cheeses placed on Artemis’ altar (Xen. Lak. Pol. 2.9) either under Kleomenes in the third century bc (Kennell (1995) 79) or at a later date after the resto- ration of the Spartan constitution in 146, with some even detecting Augustan influence (Spawforth (2012) 92–4). At any rate, the bloody spectacle suited Roman views of Spartan toughness and contributed to the establishment of a well‐defined Spartan civic identity within the Roman Empire. Apart from the Endurance Contest, Spartan youths also competed in several less violent events whose names, in an artificial version of the ancient Laconian dialect, were redolent of antiquity. The moā was a singing contest, the keloia a competition in hunting calls, and the kathther̄ atorion a hunting dance. This last seems earlier to have been called the kunagetas or “hunter”  –  a name appearing in three very fragmentary inscriptions from the first century bc (IG V.1 260, 267, 268) – and to have acquired its more recon- dite name sometime in the Flavian period, thus displaying the process of Laconization in keeping with an increased emphasis on Spartan “heritage” in the later first and second centuries ad. Ironically, its former name, kunagetas, is itself an artificial creation whereby a Doricised version of the Attic word kuneḡ etes̄ was preferred to the proper Doric form, kunagos (Kennell (1995) 51–4). Language in the agoḡ e ̄ also functioned in a more systematic way to preserve and pro- mote Spartan cultural memory, in the inscribed victory dedications. From as early as the fourth century bc evidence survives that victors (more accurately, their fathers) erected bronze sickles won in the singing and dancing contests that were attached to stone slabs (stel̄ ai) as dedications in the sanctuary of Artemis (IG V.1 255). After a lengthy hiatus, these sickle dedications appear again in the first century, with texts in a lightly Doricised form of the koine ̄ (common) dialect of Hellenistic Greek. In the second century, however, words in some inscriptions appear in what is supposed to be the ancient Laconian dialect spoken in the sixth and fifth centuries bc. Use of artificial archaizing forms increases through the century to the point where even Roman names such as Iulius (Julius) are given Spartan form, producing oddities such as Ioulior (Kennell (1995) 87–92). The evocation of Sparta’s primitive origins can be seen also in the later agoḡ e’̄ s ­structure. For much of the Roman period, youths passed through an elaborate five‐step system of age grades from ages sixteen to twenty, each with an archaizing name: mik- kichizomenos, pratopampais, hatropampais, melleiren̄ , and eiren̄ . Within each grade, youths served in bouai (cattle herds) under bouagoi (cattle leaders), terms heavy with pastoral imagery. Each boua was notionally attached to one of Sparta’s ancient, and apparently obsolete, ob̄ ai or villages, which, clustered against the low hills forming the upper city, had famously survived unwalled until the Hellenistic period. Passing out of the agoḡ e,̄ young Spartan eirenes competed in a ball contest in the city’s theatre in teams of sphaireis (ballplayers) representing the ephebic ob̄ ai (Kennell (1995) 28–41). The sphaireis game, like the theatre where it took place, is typical of how later Sparta pre- served aspects of its cultural memory. Alone among the ephebic contests attested in the Roman period, it has an unimpeachable Classical pedigree, appearing in Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lakedaimonians (9.5) as a contest open to all Spartan warriors (Kennell (1995) 131). Since the Spartans also claimed to have invented ball‐playing (Hippasos ap. Athen. Deipnos. 1.25 (FGH IV 430)), the incorporation of the sphaireis game into the agōge ̄ as a coming‐of‐age ritual can be viewed as a part of the training system’s later role as the pre‐eminent repository of Spartan memory.

648 Nigel M. Kennell Thus, visitors to Sparta in the mid‐second century would have witnessed ephebes contending in the theatre in a competition Spartans claimed as their own, and at the sanctuary of Artemis participating in ancient‐sounding contests, divided into age grades and teams whose names evoked the original districts of the city. They would have seen stel̄ ai around Artemis’ temple and altar bearing tangible witness to the Roman city’s con- tinuity with its illustrious past. In addition, I believe they may have heard the ancient dialect spoken once again during the various ceremonies of the agōge ̄ (Kennell (1995) 87–93). The effect would have been powerful, to say the least. The agoḡ e’̄ s importance as the primary vehicle by which Spartans of the Roman period engaged with their cultural memory is thrown into relief when one considers how unex- ceptional were the other aspects of life in the city. The public institutions of Roman Sparta, though ephors and the gerousia still existed, exhibit few differences from those of other provincial cities of the Greek East (Kennell (1985); Cartledge and Spawforth (2002) 143–59). Houses excavated under the modern city show a Spartan elite that enjoyed the luxurious rentier lifestyle found everywhere in the empire, in urban villas boasting private bathing facilities, attached workshops, and a wealth of elaborate mosaics to decorate their floors, while Roman‐era cemeteries are typical of their period (Spyropoulos, Mantis, et al. (2012) 94–5). Thus, Sparta’s urban fabric in the second and third centuries of our era as revealed by (mostly) salvage excavation was that of a pros- perous middling settlement, with public amenities such as baths, gymnasia and broad streets, including at least one street lined by colonnades (Steinhauer (2009) 273). Although the city was by no means a “theme park” or “museum of living history” during the Roman period, it cannot be denied that many of the ways in which cultural memory was performed and expressed in cities of the Greek East are most evident and fully artic- ulated at Sparta. Through regular performances of the ceremonies in the agoḡ e,̄ Spartans re‐enacted the most salient features of their traditions. The message of the city’s fidelity to its ancient heritage was also carried by buildings and areas within the city that functioned as lieux de mémoire for visitors and citizens alike through their evocations of mythological and historical events, often linked to the activities of ephebes, central to Spartan self‐­ perception. Pausanias, author of a well‐known second‐century guide to the antiquities of Greece, remains our main informant, due to the paucity of archaeological remains. At the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, the temple retained throughout the Roman period the form Kleomenes had given it in the late third century bc, while the altar was signifi- cantly enlarged, surely to make room for those undergoing the rigours of the Endurance Contest. Monumentalization to accommodate spectators also began at this time – a sign of the conscious appreciation of the agōge’̄ s importance to Spartan cultural memory – in the form of stone seats for distinguished visitors, probably in the second half of the first century bc (IG V.1 254). Not until late in the third century, in fact after the devastating incursion of the Heruli into the Peloponnese in ad 267, was built the site’s most visible structure, the amphitheatral seating for the mass of visitors attracted to the whipping contest, which was so vital that it was still held in the 340s (Lib. Or. 1.23). Just north of the sanctuary, Pausanias saw the shrine of Sparta’s legendary lawgiver Lykourgos, whom Spartans worshipped as a god (3.16.6). Although the British excava- tors at the beginning of the twentieth century hopefully identified it with a large Hellenistic altar they found in the area (Dickins (1905–6)), the identification has been

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 649 authoritatively refuted (Kourinou (2000) 149–51). As is now appreciated, Lykourgos was a totemic figure for Spartans in the Roman period. A shadowy figure even to scholars in antiquity (Plut. Lyc. 1–3), Lykourgos was supposed to have lived in the earliest days of Spartan history. Unanimous consensus credited him with the establishment of almost every institution and custom, usually held to be legally binding, that had characterized Sparta’s supposedly unique style of life and had brought Spartans hegemony over the Greeks. With the agōge’̄ s function in the Roman period as the primary vehicle for the expression of Spartan exceptionalism, Lykourgos was its natural figurehead. The agoḡ e ̄ was called the “Lykourgan customs”, and patronomoi were sometimes honoured for their presidency (epistasia) of the customs (e.g. IG V.1 500, 527, 543, 544), probably in return for providing financial subsidies (Kennell (1995) 44). As with venerable codes of law, the Lykourgan customs had their own interpreters (IG V.1 177, 554; see DS 13.53.3) and teachers (IG V.1 500, 542, 543). Lykourgos was also responsible for the Endurance Contest, though the Roman‐era version was so different from the ritual described by Xenophon (Lak. Pol. 2.9) six centuries previously that the account Pausanias heard (3.16.9–11), crediting Lykourgos with the founding of the contest he witnessed, can only have been a relatively recent invention (Kennell (1995) 78–9). At the city’s theatre, Lykourgos’ statue stood in front of the lists of officials and careers of notable Spartans that were inscribed on the east parodos wall and overlooked the site of the sphaireis contest that marked passage from the agōge ̄ to the community of adult citizens (Kennell (1995) 62). On the occasions when Sparta’s coffers were depleted, Lykourgos himself assumed the office of patronomos, although mortal proxies (epimelet̄ ai) carried out his actual duties in the agoḡ e ̄ (Kennell (1995) 43–4). For Spartans in the Roman period Lykourgos was a emblematic figure. Assigned definitely to Sparta’s distant past, with his role as the creator of the Spartans’ distinctive style of life and with the continuing evolution or even invention of stories about him, Lykourgos’ function was to stimulate and focus memory on a major element of Spartan traditions (Assmann (2011) 23–8). Other elements of those traditions can also be traced in the urban topography of Roman Sparta. A statue of Lykourgos and another of Herakles, both probably of Hellenistic or later manufacture, presided over the bridges to an island surrounded by plane trees called the Platanistas (Plane‐Tree Grove), where two teams of ephebes met in combat with each other (Paus. 3.14.7–10). A recent study has placed the Platanistas in the well‐watered region of the Mousga river north of the acropolis and north‐west of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, where the landscape may show signs of the river having been dammed in antiquity in order to create an artificial lake suitable for the Platanistas island (Sanders (2009) 199–200). Herakles and Lykourgos, both evoking powerful associations for Spartans, here unite two threads of cultural memory: the creation of the Spartan state and its laws (Lykourgos) and the Spartan claim to possession of Laconia (Herakles) and by extension Messenia, both of which would be recalled through the actions of Spartan ephebes. Lykourgos’ role is obvious, but the figure of Herakles leads to another narrative which continued to hold rich meaning for later Spartans: the conflict between Herakles and the sons of Hippokoon. In preparation for the Platanistas fight, ephebes sacrificed puppies at the Phoibaion near Therapne, south‐east of the city (Paus. 14.9), which has been seen as an allusion to a key incident in this myth (Gengler (2005) 318). The Spartan version can be reconstructed as follows. Herakles came to Sparta seeking purification for his killing

650 Nigel M. Kennell of Iphitos, but Hippokoon, now king of Sparta after dethroning his brother Tyndareus, refused. Herakles’ cousin Oionos killed a dog belonging to the sons of Hippokoon (Hippokoontidai) after it attacked him. In revenge, they bludgeoned Oionos to death. Enraged, Herakles set upon Hippokoon and his sons but was wounded and so withdrew to Taygetos, where Asklepios tended him. Returning to Sparta, Herakles killed all his new enemies and set up sanctuaries and trophies, while according heroic honours to Oionos and the Hippokoontidai (Paus. 3.15.1–5; Gengler (2005) 317). Near the theatre, venue for the sphaireis game, Herakles founded the sanctuary of Hera the Goat Eater (Aigophagos) in return for her allowing his revenge on Hippokoon and his sons (Paus. 3.15.9). In the area of the Platanistas were located the her̄ ōa of the Hippokoontidai Alkimos, Enaiphoros, Dorkeus, and Sebrios, while a little further away at the ephebic exercise ground known as the Dromos (Racecourse) was another her̄ ōon, to Hippokoon’s son Alköon (Sanders (2009) 198), and nearby, the sanctuary of Athena of Just Requital (Axiopoinos), another related foundation of Herakles (Paus. 3.15.6). Close by, Eumedes, a sixth son, had his tomb near a statue of Herakles, to whom the sphaireis sacrificed (Paus. 3.14.6). Herakles’ retreat from Sparta and his victorious return, like other related myths, had long served to mirror and justify Heraklid, and Spartan, claims to control of Laconia and the southern Peloponnese (Calame (1987)). In the Roman period, notable families recorded their descent from Herakles, to the exact number of generations, to mark their inherent right to dominate public life through magistracies and hereditary priesthoods. Tyndareus and his sons, Kastor and Polydeukes, were also popular ancestors (e.g. IG V.1 529, 536, 559, 562), since they fought beside Herakles against the Hippokoontidai, a detail suppressed by Pausanias (Calame (1977) 2.52–9). This particular genealogy also had territorial implications, for in the Messenian version Tyndareus spent part of his exile in the district of Thalamai in Messenia near the border with Laconia, where the Dioskouroi were born on the islet of Pephnos (Paus. 3.26.2–3). According to the Spartans, by contrast, Tyndareus went to Pellana north‐west of Sparta, so the Spartan genealogies serve to counter Messenian pretensions. They may also have expressed, if not a desire for some sort of hegemony over the cities of the Free Laconian League, then the Spartan position in the ongoing border disputes over this and other areas between the Messenians and Laconians (Gengler (2005) 328; cf. Tac. Ann. 4.43). Back in the area of the Platanistas, near the tomb of Alkman, whose poem Partheneion may have concerned the rivalry between the Hippokoontidai and Dioskouroi, were shrines of Helen and, closer to the city wall, of Herakles, where one could see an armed statue of the god as if in combat with the sons of Hippokoon (Paus. 3.16.3). Helen, sister to Kastor and Polydeukes, figures in several myths which left traces in the topography of Sparta. Pausanias mentions a sanctuary of Artemis Knagia, named after a certain Knageus who joined Kastor and Polydeukes on their expedition to Attica to rescue their sister (Paus. 3.18.4). Possibly located somewhere in the northeast of the city, though its exact position is unknown (Kourinou (2000) 99), the sanctuary may have marked the route Kastor and Polydeukes took out of the city and would have lain within the urban area most associated with ephebic activity. Although cult worship of Helen and her husband Menelaos on the promontory east of the Eurotas died out in the Hellenistic period, she and the Dioskouroi were objects of a lively cult during the Roman empire at the Phoibaion sanctuary on the west bank of the Eurotas just outside the city on the

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 651 southeast (Kourinou (2000) 202–3) where, as mentioned above, the sphaireis teams sac- rificed before proceeding to the city’s centre (Cartledge and Spawforth (2002) 195). Within the city walls, Helen’s shrine was one of several sites that prompted remembrance of stories associated with Sparta’s role in the Trojan War. Near the Dromos one could visit the house of Menelaos, where his marriage to Helen took place (Paus. 3.14.6; Sanders (2009) 199). Sparta’s most important and historic street was the Aphetaïs road running southwards to the city wall from the agora, which is now securely identified as the plateau on Palaiokastro hill lying to the east of the acropolis (Kourinou (2000) 104–8). The road’s name, the “starting”, supposedly came about because Ikarios set it out as the race course for the suitors of his daughter Penelope in the contest that was won by Odysseus (Paus. 3.12.1). Nearby was the statue of Aphetaios, where the race began (Paus. 3.13.6). As they went along the Aphetaïs, passers‐by would have seen the three sanctuaries of Athena of the Path (Keleutheia) which Odysseus erected some distance apart, starting with the one just south of the agora (Paus. 3.12.2–5; Kourinou (2000) 137–8). Penelope herself was another memory figure in the Roman period, with the title “New Penelope” avail- able to noble women who emulated her in wifely virtue (IG 5.1 598, 599). Towards the end of his itinerary along the Aphetaïs, after noting some of the most ancient shrines in the city, such as the her̄ ōa of Iops and of Lelex, the aboriginal king of Lakedaimon (Calame (1987)), Pausanias comes upon an area called the Hellenion, where, according to one story, the Achaeans met to plan revenge on Paris for his outrage on Menelaos. This particular Spartan account draws on the old assertion of a prominent role for Spartans in the pre‐Dorian Peloponnese, which probably was also the impetus for, among other things, the establishment of the cult of Kassandra‐Alexandra and Agamemnon at Amyklai, another sanctuary obviously evocative of the Trojan myth (Salapata (2011); see also Hall (1997) 91–3). Objects and places linked to major characters in Homeric epic formed a loose web of associations to prompt memory of the great mythical Panhellenic campaign against an eastern enemy, whose central element was the Spartan location where Greeks met to plan the war of vengeance for the wrong done to Menelaos. In light of this, it is unsurprising that the Hellenion exercised another claim on the collective memory, for here Spartans held that the Hellenic states had assembled to prepare their defence against an even greater eastern menace: Xerxes’ invasion of 480 bc (Paus. 3.12.6). Though the local tra- dition was unhistorical  –  the Hellenic coalition met at the Isthmos of Corinth (Hdt. 7.172.1) – it does reflect the later Spartans’ intense identification with the period of what had long been considered their city’s finest achievement: leading the Greek cities in the Persian Wars. This acquired greater immediacy after the Romans under Augustus adopted rhetoric and symbolism associated with the Persian Wars in their conflicts with the Parthians (Spawforth 1994), and they were no longer “a normal historical occurrence, but a founding myth, which marked the consecration of Hellenism as such” (Pernot (1993) 2:452). Around the Hellenion were several other sites to excite reminiscences of this crucial period in the city’s history. Nearby was the tomb of Talthybios, herald to king Agamemnon, where the Trojan and Persian Wars were bound together, for, as Pausanias relates, it was his wrath that afflicted the Athenians and the Spartans for their maltreatment of the ambassadors Darius had sent to demand earth and water (Paus. 3.12.7; Hdt. 7.133).

652 Nigel M. Kennell Maron and Alpheios, second only to Leonidas in bravery at Thermopylai, were also hon- oured in an adjacent sanctuary (Paus. 3.19.9). Back in the agora, the Persian Stoa men- tioned above, though much modified over the centuries, continued as a powerful emblem of Spartan triumph. On the acropolis, next to the famed temple of Athena Chalkioikos (of the Bronze House) where he was starved to death at the ephors’ command (Thuc. 1.134.2–4), stood two bronze statues of Pausanias, the victor of Plataia, while his later tomb and that of Leonidas himself (Paus. 3.14.1) were situated in the lower city, visible to audiences in the theatre, at least until the permanent scene building was constructed in the second half of the first century ad (Walker and Waywell (2001) 294). At the Leonideia festival, its contests open only to Spartans (Paus. 3.14.1), the Persian Wars were remembered, above all in the competition in funerary orations praising Leonidas, Pausanias, and the other heroes, particularly those at Thermopylai, whose names could be seen inscribed on a nearby stel̄ ē (IG V.1 660; Spawforth (2012) 124). Near Lykourgos’ altar in the north‐west of the city, was the tomb of Eurybiades, the commander of the Spartan fleet at Artemision and Salamis (Paus. 3.16.6). Unfortunately, the location of Lykourgos’ tomb is not revealed by Plutarch in a passage about an omen that occurred upon the return of his remains to Sparta (Lyc. 31.3). A site near his altar is far from impossible. This area in the city’s north‐east not only provided a mythic framework for ephebic activity but also, rich as it was in allusions to early Spartan history, served as a node of cultural memory more generally. Tradition had assigned Lykourgos, originator of the Spartan discipline, a son called Eukosmos (Good Order), whose grave was of course close to his father’s altar (Paus. 3.16.6). On the way to the north‐east gate was a her̄ ōon to the sixth‐century sage Chilon (Paus. 3.16.4; Kourinou (2000) 72–3), whom some considered the founder of Sparta’s most powerful office in the Classical period, the eph- orate (DL 1.68). Chilon may also have been a motive force for the successful pursuit of hegemony in the Peloponnese through diplomacy (Cartledge (2001) 120), which was commemorated in the agora by the grave containing the bones of Orestes (Paus. 3.11.10) “reclaimed” from Tegea in the mid‐sixth century (Hdt 1.67–8). Somewhere in the region of the acropolis also stood a temple of Athena Ophthalmitis, a dedication of Lykourgos to commemorate his loss of an eye in an assault by Alkandros, a young aris- tocrat who objected to his laws (Paus. 3.18.2; Kourinou (2000) 98–9). Spartans remembered Lykourgos and Chilon for founding central features of their collective identity: the organs of state, the Spartan discipline, and the city’s role as a mil- itary power of the first rank in Greece. They also commemorated other beginnings. Memory of the primeval differentiation and naming of the landscape was kept alive though temples, sacred areas, and statues associated with such figures as Iops, who lived before Lakedaimon received its name (Paus. 3.12.5; Calame (1987)); Kynortas, son of Amyklas, the eponym of Amyklai (Paus. 3.13.1); Eurydike, daughter of Lakedaimon (Paus. 1.13.8); and Tainaros, son of Poseidon, after whom Cape Tainaron was named (Paus. 3.14.2). Two lieux de mémoire evoked the return of the Heraklids with their Dorian allies. On his itinerary through “another exit” from the agora, either to the north (Kourinou (2000) 141) or to the south (Sanders (2009) 202), Pausanias mentions a house tradi- tionally regarded as that of Krios, a seer at Sparta under the Achaeans before the Dorian conquest (3.13.3–5), which contained a cult of Karneios of the House (Oiketas).

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 653 This  Karneios, whom Pausanias is keen to distinguish from the better‐known Dorian divinity Apollo Karneios, was venerated in the city before the arrival of the Heraclids (Sanders (2009) 201) and thus represents the pre‐Dorian “Achaean” phase of Spartan history. But Krios, its former owner, was part of the story of the Heraclids through his daughter, who passed information to them on how to capture Sparta. Ever since the Hellenistic period, many historians had considered that the return of the Herakleidai marked the threshold between myth and history (Diod. Sic. 4.1.2–3). Thus the house of Krios provides a pivot between the pre‐Dorian (mythical) and Dorian (historical) stages in Sparta’s development. Inscriptions from the second century ad record the names of two ancestral priestesses and a priest of Karneios of the House (Boiketas), who conjointly held the priesthood of Karneios of the Racecourse (Dromaios) (IG V.1 497, 589, 608). That a deity from Sparta’s Achaean period had a connection with the ephebic exercise ground is unsurprising, given the strong archaizing tendencies of the agōge ̄ at the time. A similar juxtaposition occurred with the hero shrines of Kleodeios, son the Heraklid Hyllos, and the mythical, therefore Achaean, Oibalos, father of Tyndareus and Hippokoon, whose story, as we have seen, is so bound up with the agōge.̄ Both struc- tures were, Pausanias tells us (3.15.10), not far from the theatre, site of the ephebic sphaireis game and, on its east parodos wall, of political display by the elite. While reminiscences of the establishment of Dorian Sparta appear only fleetingly in Pausanias’ Spartan itineraries, more prominent are traditions about the extension of Spartan power in Laconia and its conquest of Messenia in the early years of the city, which made Sparta the state controlling the largest land area in mainland Greece and laid the foundations for its later primacy. At the bottom of the Aphetaïs, in the vicinity of the Hellenion, where a multitude of military memorials clustered, Pausanias saw the sanc- tuary of Zeus Tropaios (Turner of Armies) (Paus. 3.12.9), built by the Dorians after conquering Amyklai and the other Achaean communities of Laconia. His use of the ethnic designations “Dorian” and “Achaean” securely fixes this monument in the city’s primordial past and gives an air of objective reality to his narrative about Sparta’s gradual extension of power in Laconia under the early kings of the Agiad dynasty (Paus. 3.2.5–6), whatever the historicity of these traditions (Kennell (2010) 31–3). The sanctuary of Zeus Tropaios, whose epithet is the masculine form of tropaion (battle trophy), may or may not have contained an object thought to be the very trophy the Dorians erected, but its placement surely conveyed an equivalent meaning. Situated towards the southern limit of the city, near where, we may reasonably suppose, the procession for the Hyakinthia made its way out of the city toward the festival site at the shrine of Apollo Amyklaios (Athen. 4.173–4; Mellink (1943) 17; Kourinou (2000) 415), the sanctuary would surely have reminded participants and spectators of the events that had bound Amyklai to Sparta. Likewise evoking the city’s early days, even though unrelated to this particular thread of historical memory, were the graves of the Eurypontid kings located in this d­ istrict (Paus. 3.12.8). Teleklos, the Agiad king who according to tradition had subjected Amyklai to Sparta (Paus. 3.2.6) and whose death at Messenian hands on the border with Laconia had sup- posedly precipitated the First Messenian War, had his hēroō n near the start of the Aphetaïs, to the left of the Boöneta (Paus. 3.1.4; Kourinou (2000) 146–7). This building was called “Ox Bought”. because it was sold to the state for oxen by the widow of King Polydoros, another king who figured in the Messenian Wars (Paus. 3.12.3). In the agora,

654 Nigel M. Kennell by the grave of Orestes, stood a statue of this king, perhaps visible from the Boöneta (Paus. 3.10.11). By Pausanias’ time, Polydoros had become a particularly prominent figure of Spartan tradition. He had evolved from simply being the joint author of the so‐called “rider” to the Great Rhetra, as viewed by Aristotle (Plut. Lyc. 6.7), into a democratic hero of sorts, “according to Spartan opinion very favourable to the people” (Paus. 3.3.2), whose image appeared on the city’s official seal in the second century ad (Paus. 3.10.11) and who in the Hellenistic period had been assigned a key role in the allotment of equal lots of land (kler̄ oi) among citizens by adding 3,000 lots to Lykourgos’ original 6,000 (Plut. Lyc. 8.6; BNJ 596 Comm.; see also Figueira, this volume, Chapter 22). Pausanias’ characterization of Polydoros as a fair but humane judge with never a harsh or insulting word for anyone fits his later image, while his murder by a dis- gruntled young aristocrat recalls the assault on Lykourgos and has been thought to echo the fate of the ill‐starred Agis IV, the forerunner of Kleomenes III in attempting reform at Sparta. Third‐century reformist propaganda may even have been behind the promo- tion of the “legend of Polydoros” (Marasco (1978) 125–6). Polydoros’ Eurypontid co‐king Theopompos, under whom Sparta won control of Messenia, was commemorated appropriately as well, with a statue in the city’s north‐east opposite the temple of Lykourgos in a highly charged district near the statue of Eurybiades, commander at Salamis and Artemision. Here, two prominent Spartan mili- tary victors were linked with Lykourgos, the emblematic figure of Spartan memory. In addition to his military exploits, Theopompos had joined Polydoros in drafting the “rider” to the Great Rhetra and, according to a tradition earlier than that crediting Chilon, had actually founded the ephorate (Arist. Pol. 1313a 26–7). His statue’s placement in the vicinity of both Eurybiades’ image and the lawgiver Lykourgos’ shrine is consequently significant. Memorials of the Messenian Wars, like most others Pausanias records, were almost certainly not authentic relics from early Archaic Sparta. For the most part, the statues and buildings just mentioned probably dated from the Hellenistic period, or at least the traditions connecting them with the city’s legendary history were later creations. This is also the case with the last lieu de mémoire for the Messenian Wars, the shrine of Thetis in the region Theomelida, north‐west of the theatre, where the graves of the Agiad kings were to be found (Paus. 3.14.3; Kourinou (2000) 93). Pausanias heard from his guides that Leandris, wife of the Agiad king Anaxandros son of Polykrates, had established the cult when she learned that a sacred statue of Thetis was in the possession of a Messenian priestess whom her husband had captured in a raid against the rebellious Messenians. Although a kernel of history about the Second Messenian War may have survived in this tradition unchanged for eight centuries until Pausanias heard the account, the story is more likely to have been a later invention, particularly since the captured priestess’s name, Kleo, is best suited to the Hellenistic period; it is attested only rarely in the fifth century and no earlier (s.v. http://clas‐lgpn2.classics.ox.ac.uk) (consulted 13 April 2015). Between the agora and the theatre lay the cenotaph of Brasidas (Paus. 3.14.1), Sparta’s most talented general in the last years of the Archidamian War of the 420s. However, Lysander, the victor at Aigospotamoi and for a brief period the most powerful man in the Aegean, received substantially more mementoes, despite his less‐than‐stellar posthu- mous reputation (Kennell (1995) 95). A statue of Agias, his seer at the battle, occupied

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 655 a central location, in the agora by the altar of Augustus (Paus. 3.11.5); the temple of Ammon prompted an account of how Lysander encouraged Spartans “to revere the god even more” after a dream during the siege of Aphyta in Thrace (Paus. 3.18.33; Plut. Lys. 20.6); and Lysander’s dedication of two Victories was conspicuously set above eagles in the pediment of the west stoa on the acropolis (Paus. 3.17.4). In addition to these static stimuli scattered throughout the city, memory could be evoked by certain activities, notably rituals and festivals. As we have already seen, the battle at the Platanistas served to bring the battle against the sons of Hippokoon to the minds of spectators and participants alike. In a similar fashion, the Hyakinthia, an ancient festival of lasting prestige, also evoked the distant past and, as is the case with such festi- vals, effaced the distance between the present and the distant mythical past (Assmann (2011) 37–8) by annually recalling the fate of Apollo’s lover Hyakinthos. Still celebrated at the sanctuary of Apollo Amyklaios, the later festival lasted three days, according to the Hellenistic historian Polykrates (FGrHist 588). The first day was spent in symbolic mourning for the dead youth. The next was devoted to music, equestrian processions, and dances in the ancient style by Spartan youths. On the last day, young girls tried to outdo one other in the elaborate ornament of their carriages in a colourful procession to Apollo’s sanctuary where many sacrifices were made, and all citizens and slaves then dined at the same time. The feast day was so popular that the city emptied from dawn to dusk. How many of these elements of the festival survived into the Roman period is impos- sible to determine. On the other hand, Pausanias describes the different sorts of sacrifice offered Apollo and Hyakinthos (3.18.3) and refers to women called “the daughters of Leukippos” (Leukippidai), who were charged each year with weaving a robe (chiton̄ ) for Apollo at Amyklai, which may have occasioned the parade on the last day of the Hyakinthia (Hupfloher (2000) 67; Richer (2012) 318–19, 361). Spartan women had a lengthy tradition of participating in the festival which is reflected in the only Roman‐era inscriptions to mention the festival. On two occasions, the city honoured women who held the post of archeïs and “theōros‐for‐life” of the most revered contest of the Hyakinthia (IG V.1 586, 587). Archeïs denoted a sort of priestess peculiar to the cult of Apollo Amyklaios, while in this particular case the theor̄ os probably held the agōnothesia, which entailed administrative and financial duties connected with the contest (Hupfloher (2000) 63–9). The “contest” (agōn) itself may have been a formalized version of the competition in decorating carriages Polykrates mentioned or, as is likely in the Roman period (for which there is some earlier evidence: Mellink (1943) 22–3), either an eques- trian (hippikos agon̄ ) or athletic contest (gumnikos agōn). Unfortunately, no extant Spartan inscription records a victor in the Hyakinthia. The most important festival of Apollo at Sparta was the Gymnopaidiai (Richer (2012) 383–422), when, as later sources relate, nude ephebes and boys (paides) performed dances and sang hymns to the god (Paus. 3.11.9; Athen. 24 631 b–c). A chorus of men, attested in the Classical period, no longer appears as an element in the Roman‐period festival. Of all the Spartan festivals, only the Gymnopaidiai had a structure built specifi- cally to serve as its venue, the Choros (Dancing Place), which can be identified with a raised theatral area supported by a well‐built Classical retaining wall situated on the west side of the agora (Kourinou (2000) 114–27). The Gymnopaidiai also had a long tradi- tion associating the festival with Spartan military exploits. Ever since, or soon after, the

656 Nigel M. Kennell victory over Argos at Hysiai (ca. 544 bc) that brought the borderland of the Thyreatis back under Spartan control, the dancers had sung commemorative songs and worn spe- cial wreaths, once called thyreatic crowns but later simply “feathery” (psilinoi) crowns, which were actually made of palm leaves (Sosibios FGrHist 595 F5). The tradition continued into the Roman period, as makers of these crowns (psilinopoioi) appear in two lists from the first century bc (IG V.1 208 l.4; 209 l.24). A later source relates that paeans at the Gymnopaidiai were also sung for the fallen “at Pylaia”, which, if not to be corrected to the phrase “at Thyrea”, would point to an association with Thermopylai (Richer (2012) 409), a battle whose significance for Spartan identity was foundational. In contrast, many at the Gymnopaidiai would also no doubt have recalled the dramatic moment in 371 bc when news of the crushing defeat at Leuktra arrived at Sparta on the last day of the festival, when the men’s chorus had taken its place (Xen. Hell. 6.4.16). Performed in an old elevated structure with a panoramic view over the city, over its ancient monuments and southward to the thirteen‐metre‐high statue of Apollo Amyklaios five kilometres away, the old, traditional dances (Lucian, On Dance 12) of the Gymnopaidiai would have embodied Spartan military tradition for spectators and participants alike. The absence of the men’s chorus from a festival so resonant with Spartan tradition shows that, as in the case of the agoḡ e,̄ the city’s youth were considered the most suitable actors to promote and transmit Spartan cultural memory in the Roman period. Sparta’s other major festival for Apollo, the Karneia, whose first victor was reputedly the poet Terpander, was considered to be even older than the Gymnopaidiai (Hellanikos FGrHist 4 F85a; Plutarch, On Music 9.1134 b–c). The festival consisted of contests in singing and perhaps dancing (Cartledge and Spawforth (2002) 194). At the time of Demetrios of Skepsis, the first half of the second century bc, and probably before, the Karneia was celebrated over nine days in a quasi‐military fashion, with nine tent‐like structures erected, one for each of the groups of nine men representing the three Spartan fraternities (phratriai) (Athen. 4.141e). The fraternities have been thought to reflect the original three Dorian tribes that conquered Laconia (Ehrenberg 1924, 24–5). If this was the case, then the Karneia would have served to stimulate the collective memory of Dorian Sparta’s ultimate origins, a function for the festival that would conform particularly well to Spartans’ self‐conscious archaism during the Roman period. Unfortunately, hard evidence for details of the post‐Hellenistic Karneia is almost completely confined to a single, non‐musical activity, a pursuit of “grape‐runners” (staphylodromoi). Grape‐runners were young adult males wearing wreaths who were pursued and, with any luck, caught for the good of the city, in a form of fertility ritual to promote the grape harvest (Anec. Graec. Bekker 1.305). The grape‐runners, two of whom appear in now‐lost inscriptions from the first and second centuries ad, were drawn from unmarried young men called Karneatai, themselves chosen by lot for a four‐year period to oversee the festival (Hesychius s.v. staphylodromos). Like the Hyakinthia, the Karneia may also have included an athletic contest, since a victor in the Karneia (Karneonikes̄ ) was among those sharing in feasts in honour of the Dioskouroi and Helen in the later first century bc (IG V.1 209 l.20). In general, though, like the Hyakinthia and Gymnopaidiai, the Karneia would have stood for the continuity of cult and culture over many centuries and as such represented Spartan cultural memory as it was configured under the Roman Empire.

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 657 The monuments and images Pausanias describes, along with the epigraphical evidence, show that local traditions about the Spartan collective past focused on several discernible points, or nodes, of memory. First were beginnings: the articulation and naming of Laconia’s topographical features by its aboriginal inhabitants. Next was Herakles’ struggle with the Dioskouroi against the Hippokoontidai, which provided justification for Dorian dominance in Laconia and Heraklid rule in Archaic and Classical Sparta. Prominent families in the Roman period who traced their descent from Herakles and the Dioskouroi were doubtless drawing on this mythic tradition to support their positions in the city and the wider region generally (e.g. IG V.1 471, 529, 530, and 971). Early Sparta’s “conquest” of Laconia permeated the Hyakinthia. Memories then collected around the figure of Lykourgos, the author of every institution and custom which set Spartans apart and whose spirit the citizens of the Roman city endeavoured to present as continuing to imbue certain aspects of their public life. After him, the conquest of Messenia is the next memory node, since the great expansion of land available for exploi- tation by Spartans established their city on the path to primacy in Greece. The advance of Spartan power in the sixth century was represented by Chilon, whose tomb physically associated him with the legendary lawgiver. Chilon’s institution of the ephorate would also have been recalled at the Old Office of the Ephors in the agora, where in Pausanias’ day dignitaries were honoured with public feasts (Paus. 3.11.11; Kennell (1987)). Nearby was the grave of Epimenides, the Cretan seer who had proph- esied Sparta’s defeat by the Arkadians in the sixth century, which led to a change in Spartan policy away from open aggression towards their neighbours. Memories of this stage in Spartan history would also have been stimulated in this region of the agora by the sight of the grave containing Orestes’ bones, “reclaimed” from Tegea as part of that new Chilonian policy of assertive diplomacy (Hdt. 1.67–8). The Persian Wars were undoubtedly a major element in Spartan cultural memory. But the monuments Pausanias saw and the ritual activities connected with the Persian Wars tended to focus on persons rather than events. Plataia had the “Freedom” Games (Eleuthereia) (Spawforth (2012) 130–8), but Spartans celebrated the Leonideia, com- peting in oratory in praise of Leonidas, the regent Pausanias, and the other heroes of the struggle. Tombs of prominent leaders against the Persians were on view throughout the city, as well as the place where the Greeks met to plan their strategy. Individuals also provided the means for recalling the Peloponnesian War, the other event from the fifth century thought worth remembering. A cenotaph commemorated Brasidas’ heroic death at Amphipolis, and Lysander’s memory was promoted through his dedications on the acropolis, a statue of his prophet, and a temple. The fourth century, far from the most auspicious in the city’s history, featured Kyniska, sister of Agesilaos II, the first female victor at the Olympics in the chariot races of 396 and 392 bc, whose her̄ ōon was fittingly at the Platanistas (Paus. 3.15.1), and the latest figure from Sparta’s history before the Roman period, Euryleonis, another female chariot victor at Olympia in 368 bc, whose statue stood on the acropolis (Paus. 3.17.6). In addition to the emphasis on the stimulation of memory through individual histor- ical personages, the other bias visible in the Roman city is towards Archaic history until the Persian Wars. The tendency is also manifest in Sparta’s image in the Greek East gen- erally under the Empire. The professional orators who entertained the educated public with speeches based on historical themes could find many suitable Spartan subjects from

658 Nigel M. Kennell the Archaic period, when all the laws of Lykourgos were faithfully obeyed, or they might honour Spartan leaders in the Persian Wars, such as Leonidas, but despite Sparta’s vic- tory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War, the rigorous Panhellenic sentiment that held sway among the Greeks of the Roman period would not allow a personality like Lysander to be held up as a model of correct behaviour (Kennell (1995) 94–7). In the first century bc Romans began to identify the Parthians, their rivals over control of the Levant, with the Greeks’ historical foes the Persians, a process which allowed Rome to assume the role of Hellenism’s champion against its deadly eastern enemy (Spawforth (2012) 103–6). As a consequence, Rome’s utilization of the ideology that had coalesced around the Persian Wars tradition substantially shaped Spartans’ attitudes to this part of their own history and gave them considerable cultural capital to be exploited in their relations with other Greek cities and with the dominant power. The force of Sparta’s image as a city with a particularly close connection to Greece’s ancient past is manifested in its attraction for cultivated non‐Spartans. Visitors came to witness the ephebic re‐enactments of Sparta’s incomprehensibly ancient rituals. Others made the greater commitment of becoming patronomos, which put them nominally in charge of the agōge;̄ that post probably entailed financial contributions rather than assid- uous administration (Kennell (1995) 44–5). In the Roman period, as one of the three most distinguished Greek cities (Dio Chrysostomos, Or. 46.6) – the others were Argos and Athens – Sparta was an especially attractive destination for those desirous of affirm- ing their connection with a continuous living tradition from the earliest days of Greek civilization. These individuals, to be considered below, were part of a widespread trend in the second century ad. The Panhellenion, founded in ad 131/2 as the focus of the Imperial cult in old Greece, the Roman province of Achaea, proved a magnet for those cities eager to identify themselves more closely with the Greece of the pre‐Hellenistic past (Spawforth (2012) 351–2) by sending representatives to its meetings and the fes- tival of the Panhellenia. In like manner, the men from cities within and outside the Panhellenion who became patronomoi were associating themselves with one of Hellenism’s original poles. The earliest known non‐Spartan patronomos was the emperor Hadrian in ad 127/8. Later foreign holders of the office came from the highest echelons of the Greek civic elite: C. Claudius Demostratus, a senator from Pergamum and quaestor of Achaea in the middle of the second century, and A. Claudius Charax of Ephesos, historian and suffect consul for ad 147 (Spawforth and Walker (1986) 92–3). As neither city belonged to the Panhellenion, Demostratus and Charax must have followed their own personal inclina- tions by holding the patronomate. The motivations of C. Cascellius Aristoteles may have been slightly different, as his home city, Kyrene, was a member with long‐established ties with Sparta, something Hadrian had stressed in official communications to the city in the 130s (Kennell (1995) 86–7). Tiberius Claudius Atticus of Athens, headquarters of the Panhellenion, became patronomos soon after its founding and had himself passed through the agoḡ e ̄ when he lived in Sparta during his father’s exile from Athens under Domitian. His own son, the celebrated sophist Herodes Atticus, who wrote in a style echoing that of the notorious fifth‐century Laconizer Kritias, later maintained an extensive estate in northeastern Laconia (Kennell (1995) 86; Cartledge and Spawforth (2002) 113). The powerfully attractive image that Spartan cultural memory projected drew cities to highlight kinship ties with Sparta, however tenuous, or in their absence to invent them.

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 659 In Asia Minor, the cities of Kibyra and Selge celebrated their Spartan kinship on coins and city walls. Synnada and Alabanda hedged their bets by proclaiming mythic connec- tions to both Athens and Sparta (Kennell (1995) 84; Jones (1999) 119). Further afield, the historian Josephus in the first century ad kept alive Jewish claims to kinship with the Spartans that may have originated in the late Hellenistic period and were bolstered by  a  purported exchange of letters supposedly initiated by the Spartan king Areios I (309–364 bc) (I Macc. 12.20; Jos. Ant. Jud. 12.225; BNJ F8a and b Comm.). A strong case has recently been made for reassessing the part Romans played in the privileging of the Classical past among Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire (Spawforth 2012). Far from manifesting anti‐Imperial sentiment among Rome’s subjects, Greek archaism, as it has been called (Kennell (1995) 83–4), was in fact a product of the shap- ing of Greek attitudes by Roman authorities from Augustus onwards. The Greeks were led to identify themselves with a “true” Greece free of anti‐Roman inconveniences such as the resistance shown by the Macedonian kings and the Achaean League in the later third and second centuries bc. Also dangerous were any recollections of the Mithridatic revolt against Rome in 90–85 (App. Mithr. 29) in which several prominent states, including Athens, took part. Even the Roman civil wars of the 40s and 30s, in the first of which Spartans chose the losing republican side before cannily allying themselves with Octavian against Brutus and then Antony, might stir subversive passions. Arranging a version of Greek history acceptable to the Romans meant consigning martial and cultural achievements to a distant and unthreatening past. Thus Augustus constructed and Hadrian strengthened Hellenism’s role as a respect- able component of Roman identity (Spawforth (2012) 271–2). Sparta especially profited from this process. As early as the second century bc, Spartans and Romans were consid- ered kinsmen (Posid. FGrHist 87 F59), and Sparta’s martial image naturally accorded with Roman self‐perception. Distilled into the agoḡ e,̄ Spartan traditional values might serve as a template for others, as in Hadrian’s letter to Kyrene mentioned above. Safely incorporated into Roman culture, the products of Sparta’s agoḡ e,̄ like the ex‐ephebes of other cities, could fruitfully use the military skills they had learned in the service of the Empire, and not just to protect their own hinterlands from thieves and brigands (Kennell (2009)). Young Spartans served with the emperor Lucius Verus against the Parthians (ad 161–6) and in the early third century Spartans joined Caracalla’s procession across the East in a contingent called the lochos of Laconia and Pitane, an allusion to the Spartan military unit that may (Hdt. 9.53.2) or may not (Thuc. 1.20.3) have fought at Plataia against the Parthians’ predecessors. At Sparta, cultural memory did not crystallize around the traditions of Classical Greece as occurred at Athens and elsewhere. Archaic history provided most of the material for the canon of Spartan memory. Because of the city’s turbulent history in the Hellenistic period and its immense significance as “something good to think with” among philoso- phers, historians, political scientists, and moralists of every sort from the fifth century onwards (Tigerstedt (1965–77)), non‐Spartans also shaped this canon significantly. The lengthy period of domination by the Achaean League that ended with the Roman vic- tory in 146 bc and the return of Sparta’s battered “ancestral” constitution and way of life (see above) effectively ruptured communal memory of the city’s institutions. In order to revitalize the institutional life of the city, later Spartans would probably have supple- mented whatever memories their old compatriots had of the Kleomenean system, which

660 Nigel M. Kennell survived his fall more or less intact, by consulting some of the many works on Sparta by non‐Spartan intellectuals. Foremost among these, I believe, would have been the books on the constitution and Lykourgos by Sphairos the Stoic philosopher and ally of Kleomenes III (Kennell (1995) 98–114; contra Ducat (2006) 29–34). In any case, we do know that “for a long time” Spartan ephebes assembled at the offices of the ephors for an annual reading of the Constitution of the Spartiates by Dikaiarchos of Messene (Suda, s.v. Dikaiarchos), a practice that would fit the Roman period well (Kennell (1995) 19). The recitation of a study on their ancient laws, customs, and lifestyles written by a non‐ Spartan scholar was surely intended to provide a paradigm for young Spartans’ behaviour and legitimation for Spartan cultural memory in the form it assumed during the Roman period. An analogous practice exists among the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation of coastal British Columbia, who prominently display texts by the anthropologist Franz Boas to prove the worth of their culture to the white intellectual world; through them they can moreover assert their aboriginal rights in disputes with Canadian governments (Whitehead (2010)). Similarly, the image, validated by centuries of ancient scholarship, that Spartan cultural memory projected was doubtless a factor in Roman sympathy for the city’s interests at the defeat of the Achaean League, while both Sparta and Messenia deployed historical evidence in their boundary dispute of ad 25 (Tac. Ann. 4.43). The canon of Spartan cultural memory developed over time but was essentially the product of the later Hellenistic and Roman periods, when elements of the “Spartan mirage”, to which non‐Spartans made substantial contributions, were incorporated into expressions of civic identity and cultural practices revived or invented, through which Spartans could live out and project a particular self‐image. So powerful was Sparta’s active cultural memory that it effectively collapsed time between the Archaic and Roman periods, inducing visitors (and probably Spartans themselves) to believe that many of the city’s institutions and customs really had survived unchanged since the time of Lykourgos. BIBLIOGRAPHY Andreadaki‐Vlazaki, M., Garezou, M.‐X., et  al., eds, 2000–2010 Από το Ανασκάφικο Ερ́ γο των Εφορείων Αρχαιοτήτων. Athens. Assmann, A. (2008), ‘Canon and Archive’, in A. Erll and A. Nünning eds, 97–118. Assmann, J. (2011), Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Trans. D. Wilson. Cambridge. Balzat, J.‐S. (2005), ‘Le pouvoir des Euryclides à Sparte’, ÉC 73: 289–301. Balzat, J.‐S. (2007), ‘Les Euryclides en Laconie’, in C. Grandjean, ed., 235–50. Bremmer J., ed. (1987), Interpretations of Greek Mythology. London. Calame, C. (1977), Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaique, 2 vols. Rome. Calame, C. (1987), ‘Spartan Genealogies: The Mythological Representation of a Spatial Organisation’, in J. Bremmer, ed., 153–86. Cartledge, P. (2001), Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 to 362 bc, 2nd edn, London. Cartledge, P., and Spawforth, A. (2002), Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities, 2nd edn, London. Cavanagh, W., and Walker, S. eds (1999), Sparta in Laconia. London. Cavanagh, W., Gallou, G., and Georgiadis, M. eds (2009), Sparta and Laconia: From Prehistory to Pre‐Modern. London.

Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period 661 Chaniotis, A. (2005), War in the Hellenistic World. Malden, MA. Dickins, G. (1905–6), ‘The Great Altar near the Eurotas’, ABSA 12: 295–302. Ducat, J. (2006), Spartan Education: Youth and Society in the Classical Period. Trans. E. Stafford, P.‐J. Shaw, and A. Powell. Swansea. Ehrenberg, V. (1924), ‘Spartiaten und Lakedaimonier’, Hermes 29: 23–72. Erll, A. and Nünning, A., eds (2008), Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin and New York. Gengler, O. (2005), ‘Héraclès, Tyndare et Hippocoon dans la description de Sparte par Pausanias: Mise en espace d’une tradition mythique’, Kernos 18: 311–28. Goldhill, S., ed. (1994), Greek Historiography. Oxford. Grandjean, C., ed. (2007), Le Péloponnèse à l’époque hellénistique et sous le Haut‐Empire [Actes du colloque de Tours, 6–7 octobre 2005]. Bordeaux. Grunauer‐von Hoerschelmann, S. (1978), Die Münzprägung der Lakedaimonier [Antike Münzen und Geschnittene Steine 7]. Berlin. Hall, J. (1997), Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge. Hodkinson, S., and Powell, A., eds (1999), Sparta: New Perspectives. London. Hupfloher, A. (2000), Kulte im kaiserzeitlichen Sparta: Einer Rekonstruktion anhand der Priesterämter. Berlin. Jones, C. (1999), Kinship Diplomacy in the Ancient World. Cambridge, MA. Kennell, N. (1985), ‘The Public Institutions of Roman Sparta’, Diss. University of Toronto. Kennell, N. (1987), ‘Where was Sparta’s Prytaneion?’ AJA 91: 421–2. Kennell, N. (1995), The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill. Kennell, N. (1997), ‘Herodes Atticus and the Rhetoric of Tyranny’, CP 92: 346–62. Kennell, N. (1999), ‘From Perioikoi to Poleis: The Laconian Cities in the Late Hellenistic Period’, in Hodkinson and Powell, eds, 189–210. Kennell, N. (2005), ‘New Light on 2 Maccabees 4:7–15’, JJS 56: 10–24. Kennell, N. (2009), ‘Marcus Aurelius Alexys and the “Homeland Security” of Roman Sparta’, in Cavanagh, Gallou, and Georgiadis, eds, 285–91. Kennell, N. (2010), Spartans: A New History. Chichester. Kourinou, E. (2000), Σπάρτη: Συμβολὴ στὴ Μνημειακὴ Τοπογραφία της. Athens. Lévy, E. (1997), ‘Remarques préliminaires sur l’éducation spartiate’, Ktèma 22, 151–60. Marasco, G. (1978), ‘La leggenda di Polidoro e la ridistribuzione di terre di Licurgo nella propa- ganda spartana del III secolo’, Prometheus 4: 115–27. Marc, J.‐Y., and Moretti, J.‐C. eds (2001), Constructions publiques et programmes édilitaires en Grèce entre le IIe siècle av. J.‐C. et le Ier siècle ap. J.‐C. Athens. Mellink, M. (1943), Hyakinthos. Leiden. Pernot, L. (1993), La rhétorique de l’éloge dans le monde gréco‐romain. 2 vols. Paris. Richer, N. (2012), La religion des Spartiates: Croyances et cultes dans l’Antiquité. Paris. Salapata, G. (2011), ‘The Heroic Cult of Agamemnon’, Elektra 1: 41–3 Sanders, G. (2009), ‘Platanistas, the Course and Carneus: Their Places in the Topography of Sparta’, in Cavanagh, Gallou, and Georgiadis, eds, 195–203. Spawforth, A. (1994), ‘Symbol of Unity? The Persian‐Wars Tradition in the Roman Empire’, in S. Goldhill, ed., 232–47. Spawforth, A. (2012), Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution. Cambridge. Spawforth, A., and Walker, S. (1986), ‘World of the Panhellenion: II. Three Dorian Cities’, JRS 76: 88–105. Spyropoulos, T., Mantis, A., Panagiotopoulou, A., and Vasilogambrou, A. (2012), ‘E′ Εφορεία Προιστορικών και Κλασικών Αρχαιοτήτων’, in M. Andreadaki‐Vlazaki, M.‐X. Garezou et al., eds, 93–8 (http://www.yppo.gr/0/anaskafes/pdfs/E_EPKA.pdf).

662 Nigel M. Kennell Steinhauer, G. (2009), ‘Παρατηρήσεις στην Πολεοδομία της Pωμαικής Σπάρτης’, in Cavanagh, Gallou, and Georgiadis, eds, 271–8. Tigerstedt, E. (1965–77), The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity, 3 vols. Stockholm. Walker, S., and Waywell, G. (2001), ‘Rome in Sparta: The Early Imperial Phases of the Roman Theatre’, in J.‐Y. Marc and J.‐C. Moretti, eds, 286–95. Waywell, G., Wilkes, J., and Walker, S. (1999), ‘The Ancient Theatre’, in W. Cavanagh and S. Walker, eds, 97–111. Whitehead, H. (2010), ‘The Agency of Yearning on the Northwest Coast of Canada: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Salvage of Autochthonous Culture’, Memory Studies 3: 215–23. FURTHER READING Assmann, J. (2011), Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Trans. D. Wilson. Cambridge. A study of how ancient societies constructed and handed down authoritative views of their pasts, by the originator of the influential theory of cultural memory. W. Cavanagh, G. Gallou, and M. Georgiadis, eds. (2009), Sparta and Laconia: From Prehistory to Pre‐Modern. London. A compendious collection of colloquium papers covering a wide range of archaeological and historical subjects. N. Kennell (1995), The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill. A study of the Spartan citizen system, in particular the relationship between its Classical and Roman‐era phases. E. Kourinou (2000), Σπάρτη: Συμβολὴ στὴ Μνημειακὴ Τοπογραφία της. Athens. An important study, based on close familiarity with the archaeological evidence, of the monu- ments, roads, and walls of ancient Sparta. In Greek with an English résumé. A. Spawforth (2012), Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution. Cambridge. A re‐examination of later Greek views of the Classical past which argues that the Roman state played the decisive role in shaping them. E. Tigerstedt (1965–77), The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity, 3 vols. Stockholm. A discursive study of the development of the image of Sparta held by non‐Spartan writers, with bibliographically useful footnotes.

PART V Reception of Sparta in Recent Centuries



CHAPTER 26 The Literary Reception of Sparta in France Haydn Mason The effect of the Spartan myth in France shows an unbalanced pattern. It takes till the eighteenth century for its impact to be felt, and it falls away again after the French Revolution, to some extent because the Revolutionary leaders had espoused Spartan ideals, but also in response to a world more heavily based on commercial capitalism. What exactly is the Spartan myth? Ancient Sparta has left us no document on this s­ ubject, and numerous interpretations exist. Paul Cartledge sums it up as having three compo- nents: the Spartan polity had been uniquely free from internal disorder; this was due mainly to the omnipresent lawgiver Lykourgos, whose laws had been dutifully obeyed by the Spartan citizens; and these laws were strikingly different from those of other Greek States (2001, 170). Stephen Hodkinson puts some flesh on these bones. For him, there are four essential strands: the military system, with all male members as soldiers, membership depending upon the compulsory supply of food to the common mess where they dined daily; the economic system, in which each citizen had enough land and helots to meet his personal engagement; the political system, where the citizens in assembly had a formal rule in decision‐making, while considerable influence remained with the kings and the gerousia; the social system of a common, public and rigorously equal way of life (2000, 3–4). 26.1 Pre‐Enlightenment The Middle Ages largely ignored the Graeco‐Roman cultures of Antiquity. But with the Renaissance and the discovery of Sparta (mainly through Plutarch), Italy in particular developed an interest, with Machiavelli displaying a considerable amount of reflexion on A Companion to Sparta, Volume II, First Edition. Edited by Anton Powell. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

666 Haydn Mason the Spartan State. This was less marked in France. Jean Bodin (1530–96) paid Sparta attention in Les six livres de la république, but only to dismiss the ‘régime mixte’ (with powers shared between the kings and the gerousia) as unworkable. Only absolute sover- eignty in the hands of the kings made for a viable State; only this form of inequality could protect order in the body politic. The coming of Henri IV to the throne in 1589 and the establishment of a secure kingdom after the religious wars appeared to be the proof of Bodin’s theory of sovereignty. Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) found Sparta an interesting topic and, influenced by Plutarch and Seneca inter alios, he was won over to admiration: ‘Montaigne est séduit par cette primauté de l’esprit communautaire’ (‘Montaigne is seduced by this primacy of the communal spirit’).1 The author of the Essais (1580) sees Lykourgos’ immutable laws as a protection against arbitrariness and revolutionary disorder, a key value in Montaigne’s hatred of revolution. But that said, Lykourgos went too far, since he removed the need for personal autonomy amongst the citizens and allowed too much authority to religion in law‐making. In addition, Montaigne is put off by the cruelty inherent in Spartan ­education, though he approves of its aims. In this mixed picture, however, he awards Sparta the prize for the best regime that has ever existed in European civilization. Both he and Bodin reflect the troubled times in which they lived, in their desire to see the establishment of a stable political order in France. That stability reappeared under Louis XIV (1643–1715), who from 1661 assumed personal control of the French government. So reference to Sparta becomes yet more irrelevant. While René Descartes (1596–1650) makes a fleeting allusion in his Discours de la méthode (1637) to the unity of Sparta decreed by Lykourgos, he shows little interest in what Sparta connoted. Rather more enthusiasm is to be found in Denis Veiras’s Histoire des Sévarambes (1677), not unexpectedly as the work is a Utopic tale. Inspired by Plutarch’s Life of Lykourgos, Veiras describes a régime of total equality ruled by Sevarias, where education is managed by the State, children being taught from seven years of age in schools completely independent of parental control. The State is governed by a monarch on Divine Right principles, which however are not absolute. If there is here an indirect criticism of the Roi‐Soleil’s rule, it is at most muted, for Veiras insists on the duty of obedience to the lawful authority. More characteristic of the age is Jacques‐Bénigne Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire ­universelle (1681). Its author, a leading apologist for the Church under the great monarch, would have found little to praise in an egalitarian State. Bossuet does in fact include an appreciative paragraph or two on ancient Greece, but it is punctuated by dev- astating condescension. The law, he concedes, was totally sovereign; but that is of no concern to present‐day interests: ‘la Grece … préférait les inconvénients de la liberté à ceux de la sujétion légitime, quoiqu’en effet beaucoup moindres’ (Oeuvres complètes, iv. 247) (‘Greece preferred the disadvantages of liberty to those of legitimate government, which in fact were much less serious’). Nor is François de Fénelon, any more than Bossuet, inspired by Sparta, though he pursued a line of moderate opposition to the monarchy. Les aventures de Télémaque (1699), which was to remain so popular throughout the eighteenth century, bears few traces of Spartan influence; and in his Dialogues des morts (1692) Fénelon’s liberal outlook is shown in his objection to Spartan life. Sokrates, speaking to Alkibiades, expresses strong antipathy to Sparta’s treatment of the helots and to her overriding militarism: ‘Quelle barbarie que de voir un peuple qui se joue de la

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 667 vie d’un autre! … Les Lacédémoniens […] ne savent que faire du mal’ (Œuvres xix. 193–4) (‘What horrible barbarism, to see a nation make play with the lives of others! The Spartans … know only how to do evil’). No better instance of attitudes to Sparta under Louis XIV can be found than Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697). An omnivorous reader, Bayle intended the Dictionary to be a universal encyclopedia. So Sparta is treated in six different articles. But collectively they demonstrate a wholesale indifference to Spartan ways. Bayle’s main concern is not with the political institutions, but only the dangerous consequences for public morality that he sees in the festivals when young men and women mingle together fully naked. His views on the troubled history of the ancient republics are peremptorily summarized as ‘une leçon bien capable de désabuser ceux qui s’effarouchent de la seule idée de Monarchie’ (article ‘Hobbes’, remark C) (‘a lesson quite capable of disabusing those who are frightened by the very idea of Monarchy’). However, the absolutist ideology which appeared unarguably right at the height of Louis XIV’s reign was to undergo great changes as relativist theories of history emerged. Attention shifts from dynastic policies, warfare and international treaties to focus rather on social and intellectual matters. ‘Philosophic history’ by such as François‐Marie Arouet de Voltaire will become the norm. (The very title of Voltaire’s world‐history, Essai sur les moeurs, is itself a manifesto.) In this new environment, ancient Greece becomes a focus for discussion; and within it Sparta is generally seen as antithetical to Athens. A society based on austerity, equality, a strict system of public education and civic patriotism is set alongside one loving cultural refinement, personal liberty and affluence. Spartan warlike inclinations are contrasted with Athenian ‘douceur’ (‘softness’). The debate on luxury that will develop momentum in the eighteenth century will find in Greek and Roman Antiquity models from which to draw moral and political lessons. 26.2  Rollin and Montesquieu A vital influence is provided by Charles Rollin (1661–1741), whose Traité des études (1726–28) and Histoire ancienne (1730–38) achieved an immediate popularity that was to continue into the next century. Despite his fervent Jansenist convictions, Rollin led the way in fostering an interest in Greek history, which had formerly been the province of arcane scholarship. (Grell (1995) sees Rollin as the ‘réference essentielle’ on Sparta: i.  57–8.) The Traité in particular sets out an authoritative study programme for the Université de Paris, reflecting Rollin’s past experience as Rector. Rollin importantly c­ reates an ardent admiration for Lykourgos that will become a dominant theme in other later writings: II n’y a peut‐être rien dans toute l’histoire profane de plus attesté ni en même temps de plus incroyable que ce qui regarde le gouvernement de Lacédémone, et la discipline que Lycurgue y avait établie … Il conçut le hardi dessein de réformer en tout le gouvernement de Lacédémone. (ii. 364) There is perhaps nothing in secular history better documented or also more incredible than that concerning the government of Sparta and the control of it that Lykourgos had established. He devised the bold plan of completely reforming Spartan government.

668 Haydn Mason Rollin drew up a balance‐sheet on Sparta, dividing his reflexions into ‘choses louables’ (‘praiseworthy things’) and ‘choses blâmables’ (‘blameworthy things’). The former include: mixed government, where the law is the ‘unique maîtresse’ (‘the sole sover- eign’) rather than the kings; an equal land‐sharing (which, after the political institu- tions, he considers the most important achievement); and the education system. But on the other side of the picture he lists: the ‘barbaric’ custom of exposing weak children to die; the often cruel treatment of the young in the schools; the exclusion of cultural training; the ‘inhumanly’ stoical attitudes of the mothers; and the concentration on ­military pursuits. Rollin is particularly offended by the lack of modesty in the nudity at festivals, and he attacks Lykourgos’ laws as being related to the ‘ténèbres’ (‘darkness’) and ‘désordres’ (‘disorders’) into which he believes that paganism was plunged. To it he opposes the ‘purity of the laws of the Gospel’ and ‘the dignity and excellence of Christianity’. While the land distribution and the absence of money are admirable in helping to abolish economic inequality, Rollin also points out that Lykourgos, ‘en établissant ces lois, avait les armes à la main’ (‘was armed when creating these laws’). By contrast, Christians had in their thousands sold up their property to follow Christ into poverty (ii. 389). Rollin’s admiration is clearly tempered by his fundamental belief in a quite different mode of living. What Rollin contributes in information about Sparta paves the way for the reflexions on the nature and significance of Sparta that Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu (1689–1755) will offer in his great work, De l’esprit des lois (1748). As the title indicates, the author seeks to discover the laws underlying various forms of government; and he proposes his famous taxonomy, dividing all societies into three types: democracy, mon- archy and despotism. In order to illustrate what he means by democracy, he turns to the republics of Antiquity, motivated by what he calls ‘virtue’, which he interprets as a combination of ardent patriotism and love of equality. Such a State, he believes, had to be small, for otherwise it could not coherently exist (viii. 16); therefore it cannot belong to the modem age. As proof of this, Montesquieu cites, with some irony, a failed experiment: the seventeenth‐century English Commonwealth, where the citizens, though lacking antique virtue, had made impotent efforts to set up a democracy (iii. 3). In this ancient world, Sparta plays an exemplary role, albeit secondary to republican Rome. Like Rollin, Montesquieu is impressed by Lykourgos’ extraordinary qualities, which verge on the incredible: ‘Quand vous voyez, dans la vie de Lycurgue, les lois qu’il donna aux Lacédémoniens, vous croyez lire l’histoire des Sévarambes’ (‘When you look at Lykourgos’ life and the laws which he gave to the Spartans, you think you’re reading the story of the Sevarambes’). He goes on to express admiration for Lykourgos’ political sense in understanding the character of Sparta and also his subsequent ruthlessness in contravening received ideas so as to make that character compatible with the laws: Lycurgue, mêlant le larcin avec l’esprit de justice, le plus dur esclavage avec l’extrême l­iberté, les sentiments les plus atroces avec la plus grande modération, donna de la stabilité à sa ville. Il sembla lui ôter toutes les ressources, les arts, le commerce, l’argent, les murailles: on y a de l’ambition, sans espérance d’être mieux: on y a les sentiments naturels, et on n’y est ni enfant, ni mari ni père: la pudeur même est ôtée à la chasteté. C’est par ces chemins que Sparte est menée à la grandeur et à la gloire … (iv. 6)

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 669 Lykourgos, combining together larceny and a spirit of justice, the harshest slavery and extreme liberty, the most appalling sentiments and the greatest moderation, conferred sta- bility upon his city. He seemed to be depriving her of all her resources, the arts, trade, money, the city‐walls; ambition exists but with no prospect of improving one’s lot; natural feelings exist, yet there are no children, husbands, fathers; even modesty is removed from chastity. These were the means whereby Sparta was led to greatness and to glory … Though generally favourable to Sparta, Montesquieu does not go so far as to prefer it to Athens. As the title of this work suggests, his purpose is to conduct an enquiry into the ‘spirit of the laws’. How do laws and customs, in their manifold diversity the world over, obey the general rules of both the physical and the social worlds? (Unsurprisingly, he has been termed the first sociologist.) So, in setting down Sparta and Athens side by side, he offers no moral judgment. Instead, their different natures are outlined, and the consequent implications: Il y avait dans la Grèce deux sortes de républiques: les unes étaient militaires, comme Lacédémone; d’autres étaient commerçantes, comme Athènes. Dans les unes on voulait que les citoyens fussent oisifs; dans les autres on cherchait à donner de l’amour pour le travail. (v. 6) In Greece there were two types of republics; some were military, like Sparta; others were commercial, like Athens. In the former, citizens were required to be idle; in the latter, efforts were made to inspire a love of work. This paradoxical emphasis upon idleness is consistent with Montesquieu’s ambivalent approach to a State like Sparta. Here was a society in which inequalities of wealth appar- ently did not exist and where the love of frugality led to one particular form of happiness, ‘le seul bonheur de rendre à sa patrie de plus grands services que les autres citoyens’ (v. 3) (‘the unique happiness of giving greater service to the motherland than did other c­ itizens’). For himself, he indulges no illusions about this kind of well‐being, comparing it with asperity to the monastic life: ‘Pourquoi les moines aiment‐ils tant leur ordre? C’est justement par l’endroit qui fait qu’il leur est insupportable’ (v. 2) (‘Why do monks love their order so much? Precisely because of what makes it intolerable to them’). Hence the ‘excellence’ of such a community depends on the absence of luxury: ‘moins il y a de luxe dans une république, plus elle est parfaite’ (vii. 2) (‘the less luxury there is in a republic, the more perfect it is’). Yet Lykourgos had abolished not only luxury but also the arts, commerce and even private family feelings. Sumptuary laws are essential. Even so, unconditional democracy is doomed to fail sooner or later: ‘Les républiques finissent par le luxe’ (vii. 4) (‘Republics end up with luxury’). Given that they are also necessarily small, Montesquieu’s conclusion becomes clear: Sparta has no place in the contemporary world. In any event, democracies are no more free than artistocracies: ‘La liberté politique ne se trouve que dans les gouvernements modérés’ (‘political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments [i.e., monarchies]’). Although Montesquieu seems to hesitate between the republican ideal and modern England, he eventually decides in favour of the latter. Nevertheless, his wide‐ranging survey, alongside Rollin’s scholarly account, serves to put Sparta in the forefront of Enlightenment consciousness. The two obliged their readers to confront the wider questions posed by a nascent capitalism. What validity, if any, might one still attach to rank and privilege?