"So that we may always have something to offer"
Cultural memory in an age of Spartan impotence, 2nd century AD
Five centuries of change
Not many Greek cities changed as much as Sparta in the centuries between the classical period and the Roman period. Nowadays, when people think of Sparta, they mostly envision the age during which it reached the zenith of its political and military power, the period of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars; the classical age. However, the city continuously existed for another twelve centuries after the disastrous battle of Leuctra, which broke Spartan hegemony on the Peloponnese. In this storymap we will take a look at this much less well understood and studied period of Spartan history. Specifically, we will zoom in on the 2 nd century AD, the Sparta which Greek travel writer Pausanias visited and described.
By this time there was truly very little left of the Sparta of old. The Sparta of which Thucydides famously said:
“For just suppose the city of Sparta were wiped out and all that was left were its shrines and the foundations of its buildings, I think that years later future generations would find it hard to believe that its power matched up to its reputation.” (Thuc. 1.10.5)
The map below was drawn in the 18th century by Jean-Denis Barbie du Bocage. It is important to note that it is based purely on literary evidence, and is not considered accurate at all. However, it does show some of the distinguishing features of classical Sparta. Note for example the lack of city walls and the fact that the "city" was more like a collection of villages.
By the 2 nd century AD the Spartans had not ruled themselves for almost 4 centuries. After Leuctra it had struggled on independently for about a century, but in 192 BC it was forced to join the Achaean league, ending Spartan independence forever.(Stewart 2017, 398) By the time of Pausanias, then, the city had become a thoroughly mediocre Greek provincial city. As it had lost power and influence, it had gained the standard monuments and amenities expected of a self-respecting Greek city.(Cartledge and Spawforth 2002, 176-9)
The great chasm between Sparta’s illustrious past and its mediocre present evokes the following question: How did the Spartans of the 2 nd century AD reconcile their glorious past with their mediocre present? In this storymap we will take a look at the strategies the Spartans employed to resolve this tension. We shall see that the evidence points to a concerted effort to create an urban timescape that stressed continuity with the Spartans of old. We find this evidence mainly in two places: the monuments that lined the streets of Roman Sparta, and the institution of the agoge, Sparta’s supposedly ancient education system.
The scarcity of evidence
Sadly we know very little about the topography of Roman Sparta. The site has been very poorly excavated. We can only determine the locations of a few monuments with certainty.(Greco 2016, 113) This is in large part due to the fact that the modern city of Sparta was built right on top of the ancient site.
For this reason, we are forced to rely heavily on the account of the Greek travel writer Pausanias, who visited the Greece's famous cities between around 150-180 AD.
Another factor that adds to the confusion, is that Pausanias is frustratingly vague with his topographic descriptions; “he is creating a memorialized mythic and historic landscape, and not merely cataloguing the physical landscape”.(Stewart 2013, 257) We will thus, in the first section, only rarely be able to reflect on the archeological evidence, or even the precise location, of the structures we will discuss.
Here you see the most recent reconstruction of Pausanias' route. (Sanders 2009, 197-200)
The numbers stand for the day of his stay on which he undertook the journey.
Route proposed by Stibbe in 1989
The route proposed by Musti and Torelli in 1992
Route proposed by Kourinou in 2000.
These different scholarly interpretations of the route Pausanias took are based on the few excavated points of reference. The expected locations for other monuments thus changes, depending on which reconstruction you subscribe to. Note for example the changing locations of the sanctuary of Hera and the Gymnasium.
Memory nodes
From the writings of Pausanias, several memory nodes can be identified in the cultural memory of the Spartans of the Roman period. That is to say, several moments in time that seem to have loomed large in the imagination of Spartans in this period. Most monuments that Pausanias mentions refer back to these moments in time, creating a unique and meaningful timescape, that tells the story of the ancient city, as those in Roman times would have understood it. We will now briefly take a look at these nodes in chronological order.(Kennel 2017, 657)
Pre-Doric roots
Age of heroes
The oldest node in the Spartan cultural memory are the pre-Doric kings and heroes of Laconia. I have not provided a date here, because our understanding of what actually happened when in this period is very muddy.(Kennel 2011, 51) Suffice to say the Spartans would have placed these kings in the mythological age, the age of heroes. It partly provides an explanation for the ancient toponyms of the city and its surrounding territories, by way of ascribing the names to mythical pre-Doric kings and other important figures.(Calame 1987, 153-6) The most obvious example of this are the eponymous king Lacedaemon and his wife Sparta.
Reconstructed genealogy of the pre-Heraclid kings. Underlined in red are some of those who feature most prominently in Pausanias' account. Source: Calame 1987, 181
Along one of the most ancient streets of the city, south of the agora- the Aphetaïs road - Pausanias finds a monument to Lelex, the first aboriginal king of the land.(Kennel 2017, 651; Paus. 3.12.4)
Proceeding by the street Apheta we come to shrines of heroes: there is a shrine of lops, who is supposed to have lived about the time of Lelex or Myles; and a shrine of Amphiaraus, son of Okies, which the Spartans think was made for Amphiaraus by the sons of Tyndareus, because he was their cousin. There is also a shrine of the hero Lelex himself. (Paus. 3.7.4)
These pre-Doric rulers of Lacedaemon and their families often figure in the foundation myths of the oldest monuments in the city. Just one example is the sanctuary of Athena on the Acropolis, of which Pausanias says:
Here there is a sanctuary of Athena, who is surnamed both Protectress of the City and She of the Brazen House. The construction of the sanctuary was begun, they say, by Tyndareus. (Paus. 3.17.3)
Hercules and the Dioscuri
Age of heroes
This is the memory node that provides an explanation for the Doric dominance over the native populations. According to myth, Hercules and the Dioscuri – Castor and Pollux – feuded with the native royal house of the Hippokoontidai. Pausanias records the following myth:
‘A boy named Oeonus, a cousin of Hercules (for he was a son of Licymnius, the brother of Alcmena), came to Sparta with Hercules. The lad was going about looking at the town, and had come opposite the house of Hippocoon, when a watch-dog flew at him. Oeonus threw a stone at the dog and knocked him over. So the sons of Hippocoon rushed out and despatched Oeonus with their clubs. This goaded Hercules to fury against Hippocoon and his sons; and, in the heat of passion, he attacked them at once. But he was wounded and slunk away. However, afterwards he marched against Sparta and succeeded in punishing Hippocoon and his sons for the murder of Oeonus.’ (Paus. 3.15.3)
The famous Hercules of Farnese. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
Hercules and the Dioscuri are omnipresent in 2 nd century Sparta. There is a sanctuary to Hercules close to the city wall, which contains an image the ‘attitude’ of which ‘is said to have been suggested by the fight with Hippocoon and his sons’. (Paus. 3.15.3) He also is said to have founded many sanctuaries. The sanctuaries of Athena Axiopoinos and of Hera are but two examples.
The Dioscuri had their own sanctuary and cult close to Roman Sparta’s racecourse. They are linked to many other monuments and places in the city as well. The significance of these three mythical figures is their link to the mythological explanation for the Doric conquest of Lacedaemon. Hercules was seen as the progenitor of the Spartan royal and noble houses, founded after the Hippokoontidai were defeated(cf. the genealogy of pre-Doric kings), while the Dioscuri were intimately linked to the ancient Spartan institution of dual kingship.(Cartledge and Spawforth 2002, 150)
3rd century AD Roman statues of Castor and Pollux. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit
Lycurgus
9th century BC
The memory of Lycurgus was omnipresent as well. He was probably the most important figure in the history of Sparta, for the Spartans of the time of Pausanias. By the ancient Greeks and Romans the lawmaker Lycurgus was seen as the origin point of all the laws and customs that made Sparta unique.(Christesen 2017, 544) It is thus no wonder that the Spartans of Pausanias’ time, a time when Sparta had lost most of its uniqueness, he especially became an object of veneration. They continuously invoked him to imbue their public life with special meaning. (Kennel 2017, 657) Pausanius states that:
The Lacedaemonians have also made a sanctuary for the lawgiver Lycurgus as for a god, (Paus. 3.16.5)
This sanctuary must have been located north of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.(Kennel 2017, 648)
Possible location for the sanctuary of Lycurgus, compared with the locations of the acropolis and the agora.
For amongst the laws which Lycurgus laid down for the framing of the constitution were rules regulating the fighting of the lads. (Paus. 3.14.8)
Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
Of great importance was the link between Lycurgus and the agoge, the traditional Spartan education system which we will discuss more later on. As the semi-mythical author of the Spartan constitution, 2 nd century Spartans attributed the agoge to him as well. It had even acquired the official name of ‘the Lycurgan customs’. The location of his shrine, in close proximity to one of the main centers of the agoge -the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia- can thus be seen as highly symbolic.
To the Spartans of the Roman period, the agoge was the link that connected them to this foundational figure and by extension to the age of Spartan greatness and distinctiveness. How important this link was to the Spartans of the period, can be gleamed from the fact that fifteen of the sixty-nine paragraphs of Pausanias’ description of the city contain references to the agoge.(Kennel 1995, 82-83)
Early conquest
8th century BC
The next node immortalises the early Dorian conquests of the neighboring communities. The beginning of the process by which the Spartans would eventually achieve hegemony over the peninsula. The focal point of this node was the sanctuary of the Tropaean Zeus, Zeus the turner-of-armies. This monument supposedly contained the very trophy that the Dorians erected after they conquered Amyklai and other surrounding Achean settlements.
The sanctuary of Tropaean Zeus was made by the Dorians after they had conquered the Amyclaeans and the rest of the Achaeans, who in those days possessed Laconia. (Paus. 3.7.7)
It was located at the south end of the city, along the road to Amyklai. During the festival for the Hyakinthia, festivalgoers would walk past it as they walked to the sanctuary of Appollo Amyklaios. They would thus be reminded of the historical links that bound the settlements to one another. Another example is the hero shrine of Teleklos, the king who -according to tradtion- had conquered Amyklai. This shrine was located somewhere at the start of the Aphetaïs (Kennel 2017, 653)
Sparta in relation to the rest of Greece
Modern and ancient Sparta
Amyklai
The site of modern and ancient Amyklai
Conquest of Messenia
Late 8th century - late 7th century BC
Precise geographical data for the conquest of Messenia is not available, but the conquest most likely covered the area west of the Taygetos mountains and south of the Neda river.
Thetis's face, detail from a scene representing Thetis raped by Peleus. Side A from an Attic red-figure pelike, ca. 510 BC–500 BC. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
The Spartan conquest of Messenia can be said to constitute the next memory node. A couple examples of monuments that can be classified under this label are the following. The statue of king Theopompus, the king who ruled at the time Messenia was conquered, located in the northeast of the city, opposite of the sanctuary of Lycurgus.
As well as the shrine of Thetis, located north-west of the theatre. This sanctuary was apparently established by Leandris, wife of Agiad king Anaxandros, when she found a sacred statue of Thetis in possession of a Messenian priestess captured by her husband.(Kennel 2017, 654)
The sanctuary of Thetis, they say, was constructed for the following cause. In the war with the Messenian rebels, King Anaxander invaded Messenia, and among the women who fell into his hands was Cleo, priestess of Thetis. Anaxander's wife, Leandris, asked him to give her Cleo. She found that the priestess was in possession of the wooden image of Thetis, and with Cleo's help she founded a temple in honour of the goddess. (Paus. 3.14.4)
Chilon and "aggressive diplomacy "
≈550 BC
3rd century AD mosaic showing the seven sages of ancient Greece. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
The next memory node is connected to the rise of Spartan hegemony on the Peloponnese. It is embodied by the figure of the second great lawgiver -and one of the seven sages of antiquity- from Sparta’s history: Chilon. His shrine was meaningfully located near the sanctuary of Lycurgus, the other great Spartan lawgiver.(Kourinou 2000, 72-3) Chilon was associated with two things, the institution of the Ephors, and Sparta’s sixth century change in policy. Some ancient historians, most notably Diogenes Laertes, attribute to him the practice of the Ephors working in close concert with the kings; of making them ‘yolk-mates’.(Kennel 2011, 160-1)
Extent of the Peloponnesian league c. 506 BC. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit
He was also associated, in his capacity as Ephor, with the new Spartan policy of ‘aggressive diplomacy’.(Kennel 2017, 652) This new policy was initiated by the acquisition by diplomatic means of the bones of Orestes, who was considered Lacedaemonian by the Spartans. These bones were buried and commemorated on the Agora. The new policy saw a move away from Sparta trying to dominate its neighbours by pure force, and towards less violent tactics. It thus laid the foundation for the establishment of the Spartan-led Peloponnesian league, greatly enhancing Spartan power.(Kennel 2011, 82-3)
The Persian wars
492–449 BC
To my mind, the exploit of Leonidas outdid all the exploits that have been performed before or since. (…) Xerxes gave proof of the highest spirit, and he distinguished himself brilliantly on the march. Yet Leonidas with a handful of men whom he led to Thermopylae would have prevented the great king from so much as setting eyes on Greece and from burning Athens, if the man of Trachis had not led the army of Hydarnes by the path over Mount Oeta, and so enabled them to surround the Greeks. (Paus. 3.4.6)
Marble statue of a helmed hoplite (5th century BC), maybe Leonidas, Sparta, Archæological Museum of Sparta, Greece. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
The next major node was the Persian war. It is no wonder that the Spartan-led coalition to defend the Greek world was still a major source of civic pride by the time of Pausanias. The tombs of Leonidas and Pausanias were located in the lower city.(Paus. 3.14.1) Close to the sanctuary of Lycurgus he found the tomb of the Spartan naval commander Eurybiades. (Paus. 3.16.6)
Another great monument commemorating this historical period was the famed Persian Stoa, which Pausanias rated as the most eye-catching monument at the agora.(Paus. 3.11.3) This Stoa was supposedly built and decorated with the riches the retreating Persians left behind. Its columns were decorated with marble carvings of the defeated Persian enemy. Sadly we have not yet found any archeological remains of this structure.(Spawforth 2012, 118-9) Another major site connected to this node was the Hellenion, an area where according to tradition all the Hellenic states came together to prepare and coordinate their defence of Greece against the Persian onslaught.(Paus. 3.12.5)
The central place of the Persian wars in the cultural memory is especially interesting, because it was not only important for the Spartans, or Greeks, themselves. It was also a cornerstone of imperial propaganda. From the rule of Augustus onward, the Romans would adopt the rhetoric and symbolism of the Persian wars as propaganda and justification for their own campaigns against the Parthians.(Kennel 2017, 651)
The Peloponnesian war
431–404 BC
Map showing allied states and major events of the Peloponnesian war. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
The Peloponnesian wars were severely underrepresented in the timescape of Roman Sparta, for reasons that we will get into later. A cenotaph of the general Brasidas, famous for his sacrifice at Amphipolis, was to be found near the theatre and the graves of Leonidas and Pausanias.(Paus. 3.14.1) On the Acropolis, meanwhile, there was a monument to the two important victories of the Spartan admiral Lysander in the form of two eagles with two Victories upon them.
‘These were dedicated by Lysander to commemorate his two battles, the battle of Ephesus, in which he beat the Athenian galleys under Antiochus, pilot of Alcibiades, and the later battle of Aegospotami, in which he destroyed the navy of Athens’.(Paus. 3.17.4)
Selective memory?
An attentive reader might have noticed something. The latest memory node is the Peloponnesian war, which ended around 550 years before Pausanias visited the city. Surely other things happened in those centuries that merit some form of remembrance? Indeed, the timescape of Roman Sparta was utterly dominated with references to Spartan prehistory, the archaic period and the very beginning of the classical period. Interest in their own history seems to fizzle out at the Peloponnesian war. Only very few monuments refer to events that happened during the fourth century BC or later.(Kennel 2017, 657)
1050–800 BC
Dark ages
800–480 BC
Archaic period
480-323 BC
Classical period (ends with the death of Alexander)
323-31 BC
Hellenistic period
This is in marked contrast with the other important cities of Greece. For most Greek cities the period between the Persian wars and the death of Alexander was the era they liked to refer to; this period was where they located their glorious past. The explanation for this is twofold. First of all, although the pinnacle of Spartan power was probably the period immediately following the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, this period could not really be celebrated in the Hellenic civilisation of Pausanias’ time. By this time, the Athenian worldview had come to dominate within the Greek world and in philhellenic Romans. In this perspective, the Spartans were always cast as the villains of the war. This domineering Athenocentrism seems to have smothered Spartan pride in their victory. (Kennel 1995, 95)
The restored victory monument (tropaion) of the Battle of Leuctra. Lefktra, Boeotia, Greece. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
Secondly, and this is speculation on my part, the pinnacle that they reached after defeating the Athenians was simultaneously the start of a long and winding road to irrelevance. Especially after the disastrous battle of Leuctra in 371BC, wherein they were defeated by the Thebans and their allies, Sparta would slowly lose its distinctiveness and power, until it became what it was during Pausanias’ time, a middling and relatively prosperous city just like any other in the Roman province of Achaea. Thus, they focussed on the period during which they were truly special. The buildings with which they surrounded themselves were a manifestation of this. The timescape of Roman Sparta was designed to stress continuity with this period. This will become even more clear in the next section, dealing with the agoge.
The agoge
For this next section, we will take a look at the Spartan agoge – education system – and how it allowed the Spartans of Pausanias’ time to connect to their ancestors in a more intimate way. For this, the concept of festival time is of central importance. This concept, developed by Jan Assman, entails the idea that festivals collapse the human conception of time into itself. Once one enters a festival, one enters a world in which the normal sense of time ceases to exist. It gets replaced by a singularity of experience, intimately connected with all of those who went to different iterations of the same festival in the past.(Assman 1991, 13-18) This is a useful concept because the Spartan agoge was intimately tied to the yearly circuit of festivals.
Broadly speaking the agoge consisted of musical, athletic and military training. The prowess of students in each of these fields was tested in contests during religious festivals.(Cartledge and Spawforth 2002, 186-88)
"Young Spartans exercising" by Edgar Degas, ca. 1860. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
The Spartans of Pausanias’ time argued that the agoge constituted an unbroken line back to the ancient Spartans, and specifically their founder, Lycurgus. It is not within the scope of this storymap to discuss the validity of this claim, but the scholarly consensus seems to be that most of the later agoge, was very different to the ancient version, although the various contests often contained kernels of historical truth.(Kennel 1995, 79–82.) We will now take a look at two of the most well known of these tests and how each was set up to establish a link with the past.
The locations
Both the contests we will cover here took place at sites that have been excavated.
Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia
Location of the endurance contest. First excavated 1906-1910 by R. M. Dawkins and the British school at Athens.(Dawkins 1929)
Roman Theater
Location of the sphairais game. First large scale excavation in 1924-25 by M. Woodward and the British school at Athens. (Waywell and Wilkes 1995, 435)
Endurance
Location of the sanctuary.
The endurance contest took place at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia who was the patron god of Spartan youth.(Kennel 1995, 82-3) This exact site had been used as a place of maturation rituals for both males and females since the archaic period.(Kennel 2017, 646) The form the contest took during the Roman time is as follows. On a day in either May or June Spartan youths would gather at the sanctuary.
Graph showing the chronology of the buildings at the site. Source: Dawkins 1929, 49.
Drawing of the ritual from the 1911 book the coward of Thermopylae. Source: Snedeker and Solon 1911, 114.
After introductory sacrifices, prayers and rituals had been performed, the youths would present at the altar, where they would be subsequently whipped by men known as ‘the floggers’. The goal was to endure being whipped as stoically as possible. The youth who could endure the whipping the longest would receive extraordinary honors; they held the title of ‘altar-victor’ for life and a statue of them was erected in the vicinity of the sanctuary.(Kennel 1995, 71-77)
By the time of Pausanias it was believed that this ritual was founded by Lycurgus himself. This connection to Lycurgus was emphasized by the proximity of the sanctuary of Artemis to the shrine of Lycurgus.(Kennel 2017, 648) However, we know now that the ritual is an archaizing invention of a later period, loosely based on a ritual from the classical period described by Xenophon, wherein two groups of Spartan youths staged a mock battle armed with whips and with the puzzling goal of stealing cheese from the altar of the sanctuary.(Kennel 1995, 79-82)
The most salient detail of the Roman contest, is its highly performative nature. Already in the second half of the first century BC were the first stone seats built for distinguished onlookers.(Kennel 2017, 648) Throughout the Roman period Roman elites held a special fascination with Sparta and its education system. The displays of the agoge were thus a tourist attraction of sorts. Many distinguished Romans came to visit Sparta specifically to witness it's quaint traditions, perhaps none so distinguished as Cicero:
Spartan boys will bear to have their bodies torn by rods without uttering a groan. I myself have seen at Lacedaemon, troops of young men, with incredible earnestness contending together with their hands and feet, with their teeth and nails, nay even ready to expire, rather than own themselves conquered. (Cic. Tusc. 5.77)
Stone seats found at the site of the sanctuary. Dedicated by Soixiadas. Source: Dawkins 1929, 37.
However, not too much emphasis should be put on the agoge as purely a tourist attraction. "Tourism" at the time was very small scale and could not have financed the continued existence of the agoge. The system was thus almost completely financed by local benefactors. From this we can gleam that the agoge must have provided Sparta’s elite with some intangible cultural benefits, chief among these was most likely the prestige of living in a city that boasted such venerable and ancient traditions with impeccable pedigree.(Cartledge and Spawforth 2002, 194–95)
Reconstruction of the late Roman theater surrounding the sanctuary. Source: Maltezou 2022, 175.
Most of the onlookers must have thus been locals, family of the youths and other community members.(Kennel 1995, 71-72) How important it was for the community to witness this ritual is revealed by the fact that in the third century AD a theater was built around the altar, making the performative nature of the ritual – as opposed to its purported educational purpose – even more explicit.(Dawkins 1929, 37-38)
Click to look around at the archeological site
Source: Boutsikas 2011, 61.
The sphaireis tournament
Location of the Theater
The sphaireis tournament was the end of the agoge. Youths who had competed in it it were hereafter considered adults. This meaning was symbolically conveyed by its location. Most other contests took place somewhere at the outskirts of the Roman city. This last one, however, took place in the very heart of the political and religious center of the town: The Theater on the acropolis.(Kennel 1995, 61-62) On this hillside, overlooking the ancient city, the boys would transform into adults. Thus representing concretely the movement from the outskirts of society as youths, to the center of society as adults.
View overlooking the city and the remains of the theater. Click to look around.
Reconstructed plan of the theater. Source: Vannucci 2022, 229.
The game that was played here was most likely episkyros (on the lime), which might have also carried the evocative name sphairomachia (battle ball).(Kennel 1995, 60-61) A Greek writer from the 2 nd century, Pollux, has left us a description of what very likely is the game the Spartans played:
“it is played in a crowd which has split into two equal sides. Then with white lime they draw a line down the middle which they call "the lime," and onto which they place the ball. After drawing another two lines behind each team, preselected team members throw the ball over the other team, whose job it was to catch hold of the moving ball and throw it back until one side pushes the other over the back line.” (Kennel 1995, 61)
Cast a relief with two teams at the ball game. The player on the left edge of the picture throws the ball, the team on the right is ready to defend. Source: Wikipedia. Click here to visit.
Here, the connection to Lycurgus was even more explicit than at Artemis Orthia. Watching over the game was a statue of the lawgiver. This statue was situated in front of the parodos wall, whereupon the names and careers of magistrates were inscribed. The theater likely doubled as a place of assembly for local magistrates, explaining the presence of the political. Later, in the fourth century, two other statues were erected, flanking Lycurgus. These statues were dedicated to two proconsuls of Achaea, symbolically aligning them with Sparta’s great political hero.(Vannucci 2022, 239) One even bore the inscription “The new Lycurgus”. (Kennel 1995, 62)
What we see here, then, is a perfect coming together of the two ways Lycurgus was invoked to stress continuity with the past. He watches over the graduation of Spartan youths in the education system that he supposedly personally designed, while also being associated by proximity with the towns most important politicians. Politicians who see themselves as part of a single continuous tradition started by the famous lawgiver.
Conclusion
We started this storymap with the question, how did the Spartans of the 2 nd century AD reconcile their glorious past with their mediocre present? As I hope my argument has made clear, a partial answer to this question can be found in the built environment. As we have seen in the first section. The buildings of Roman Sparta made many references to days gone. By the time of Pausanias most of the events referenced had happened more than 550 years ago. To put this into perspective, imagine living in a place where most monuments surrounding you refer back to events that happened when the Byzantine empire still existed.
I have argued that the reason for this archaism was precisely the mediocre and unassuming nature of the city in Roman times. They created a timescape that allowed them to bind this past to the present and future, expressing and stressing continuity with the Spartan glory days. Especially important in this timescape were Lycurgus and the Persian wars. Lycurgus was seen as the simultaneous architect of the political and education system that had once made Sparta great. By stressing continuity in both politics and education ever since Lycurgus’ own time, his image imbued Roman Sparta with a fraction of this greatness. The Persian wars were seen as the pinnacle of Spartan achievement. Leading the other Greeks to victory against the barbarian invaders also resonated with the political climate of the Greek renaissance and allowed Roman emperors to use its imagery and rhetoric as propaganda for their own campaigns against the Parthians.
Similarly, the central importance of the agoge for the community of Roman Sparta can be explained as a consequence of the profound changes the city had undergone. Almost nothing remained of those things that had once made Sparta unique and powerful. Its military had been thoroughly neutered, its political independence had long since ceased and even the political institutions that ruled the city, though they carried some names reminiscent of Sparta’s greatness, were remarkably similar to those of other cities in Roman Greece. The agoge was one of the few things that helped them stand out. It is thus no wonder that so much effort was spent on emphasizing the direct connection it afforded them to an age of glory long past.
As to how this connect to Assman's conception of festival time, indulge me and consider the following scenario. The citizens of Roman Sparta, during a religious holiday, walked past the shrine to Lycurgus, who they recognized as the point of origin of the customs that made Sparta great, to the ancient sanctuary of Artemis, the patron god of Spartan youth. They walked past manifold dedications to victories in their ancient agoge. They took their seats and watched the bloody contest, where the youths showed heroic resistance to pain, thinking that this was the same way their illustrious ancestors were brought up. At this moment imagine time collapsing. They must have felt an intimate connection with their rugged forefathers. In this moment the onlookers might be able to forget the painfully average city outside of the sanctuary walls and the comfortable life they lived there. In this parallel dimension of time that that Spartans stepped into, during the endurance contest and other festivals related to the agoge, the tension between Sparta’s glorious past and its mediocre present was resolved.
Bibliography
Assman, J. ‘Das Fest Und Das Heilige. Religöse Kontrapunkte Zur Alltagswelt’. In A Companion to Ancient Education, edited by J. Assman, 13–30. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1991. Boutsikas, E., and C. Ruggles. ‘Temples, Stars, and Ritual Landscapes: The Potential for Archaeoastronomy in Ancient Greece’. American Journal of Archaeology 115, no. 1 (2011): 55–68. Calame, C. Interpretations of Greek Mythology. Edited by J. Bremmer. London: Routledge, 1987. Cartledge, P., and A. Spawforth. Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities. London: Routledge, 2002. Christesen, P. ‘Sparta and Athletics’. In A Companion to Sparta, edited by A. Powell, 543–64. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2017. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Tusculan Disputations. Literally Translated, With Notes, by C.D. Yonge. Translated by C. D. Yonge. New York,: Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, 1877. Dawkins, R. M., ed. The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta: Excavated and Described by Members of the British School at Athens, 1906-1910. London: The council of the society of the promotion of Hellenic studies, 1929. Greco, E. ‘With Pausanias (and Others) in the Agora of Sparta’. In The Comparative Perspective, edited by A. Ercolani and M. Giordano, 113–30. De Gruyter, 2016. Kennell, N. M. ‘Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period’. In A Companion to Sparta, edited by A. Powell, 643–62. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2017.
———. Spartans: A New History. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. ———. The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education & Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Kourinou, E. ‘Σπάρτη: Συμβολὴ Στὴ Μνημειακὴ Τοπογραφία Της’. PhD Thesis, University of Athens, 2000. Maltezou, A. A. ‘Η Μετεξέλιξη Της Πόλης Της Σπάρτης Από Την Υστερορωμαϊκή Στη Βυζαντινή Περίοδο. Η Ανάδειξη Και Διαχείρισή Της’. PhD Thesis, University of the Peloponnese, 2022. Pausanias. Pausanias’s Description of Greece. Translated by J. G. Frazer. London: Macmillan and co., limited, 1898. Raftopoulou, S. ‘New Finds from Sparta’. In Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium Held with the British School at Athens and King’s and University Colleges, London, 6 - 8 December, 1995, edited by W. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker, 125–40. London: British School at Athens, 1998. Sanders, G. D. R. ‘Platanistas, the Course and Carneus: Their Places in the Topography of Sparta’. In Sparta and Laconia: From Prehistory to Pre-Modern, edited by W.G. Cavanagh, C. Gallou, and M. Georgiadis, 195–204. London: The British school at Athens, 2009.
Snedeker, C. D. The Coward of Thermopylae. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1911. Spawforth, A. Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Stewart, D. R. ‘From Leuktra to Nabis, 371–192’. In A Companion to Sparta, 374–402. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2017. ———. ‘“Most Worth Remembering”: Pausanias, Analogy, and Classical Archaeology’. Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 82, no. 2 (2013): 231–61. Thucydides. Thucydides: The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. Translated by J. Mynott. Cambridge University Press, 2013. Vannucci, G. ‘The Statues near Lycurgus in the Theatre of Sparta’. In The Historical Review of Sparta, edited by G. Piras and R. Sassu, 223–50. Rome: Sapienza university press, 2022. Waywell, G. B., and J. J. Wilkes. ‘Excavations at the Ancient Theatre of Sparta 1992–4: Preliminary Report’. The Annual of the British School at Athens 90 (1995): 435–60.