Shanshan Bai

My dissertation investigates Roman Spartan festivals from the Augustan age to the Severan period with the hope of responding a few academic debates, i.e., the decline of Sparta, its normalization and reaction to the Roman rule. I illustrate the agonistic culture of Spartan festivals and the ways through which Sparta was connected to the Roman Empire by way of examining three types of festivals, namely the ones in honor of heroes, leaders and emperors and disclosing their origin, establishment, organization, activities and cultural meanings. I investigate reasons why Roman Spartan festivals were prosperous, and in what ways Sparta shaped its own image and interacted with the Roman world.

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter is centered with a case study of the Leonidea, which demonstrates archaism of Roman Greece as a mean to adapt to imperial campaigns. The second chapter sheds light on the Euryclea, a festival in honor of the Spartan leading family Euryclids, and the way it served for Sparta to communicate with emperors and other cities. The last chapter analyzes festivals in honor of imperial family members, and explains the relation between Sparta and the royal family for the sake of exhibiting Spartans' motivation to establish the festivals.

My main argument is that Spartan festivals shone the glory and uniqueness of Spartan agonistic culture and connected the city to the broader empire. Sparta being a civitas libera, its festivals received less interventions from Roman emperors and aristocrats than Panhellenic ones and those of Asia Minor. Sparta responded to its Roman benefactors by means of archaism, but less actively than Roman colonies. Though Sparta updated images on coins speedily after the death of emperors, its festivals in honor of emperors endured through time.

This paper examines two problematic appellations of boy victors, παῖς καθαρός and παῖς κρίσεως τῆς Ἀγησιλάου, and the subdivision of boys in the Spartan festival Leonidea in inscription IG V.1 19. I propose several emendations to the edition of this inscription with the hope to correct a mistake and add two events into the athletic contest. I argue that age and birth were important criteria for the sub-classification of παῖδες, whereas physical development did not play a major role in the process. By means of adopting different categorizations in different games, Sparta memorialized its heroes, both warriors in the past Persian war and contemporary benefactors, innovated its traditions of athletic training and contests, and displayed its reputation of excellence in the Leonidea.

Reviewed Work(s):
Glen Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World, New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Antony Spawforth, Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
鲍尔索克在书写过程中更注重罗马人的视角，对希腊地方的物质文化少有涉猎，而斯波 夫斯的作品填补了这方面的内容。二者皆对奥古斯都的同盟和城市有所涉及，斯波夫斯更多 地以希腊城市的个案为例，对同盟的讨论相对较少。不过，斯波夫斯补充了奥古斯都对德尔 斐近邻同盟的干涉，这是鲍尔索克较少触及的。上述两本著作可见，奥古斯都对希腊地区的态度与政策影响深远，他的后继者们部分地 继承了他的政策，这在哈德良身上表现尤为突出。罗马政策的连贯性与断裂性、皇帝的导向 作用与帝国精英的沟通作用、小亚细亚地区与希腊本土的差异、罗马权贵对希腊社会地方文 化的影响、希腊城市对他们的回应、希腊世界的内部竞争等议题都是学者关注的重要问题， 还有待后续学者的持续耕耘。

Cyrene’s ktisis (foundation of a city) in the Libyan Logos of Herodotus’ Histories has been widely used to reconstruct the colonization of the Greeks, and it has been analyzed from the perspective of colonization, narrative tradition, historiography, etc. This paper provides a reading of Cyrene’s ktisis and accentuates the significance of understanding the “history of foundation” as a genre of historiography. This paper analyzes the ways through which Herodotus’ historiēs apodexis (demonstration of inquiry) was conducted in order to achieve the essential objective in his Histories, i.e., to record the human achievement due to the fact that the glory and prosperity will not remain forever at one place. By means of comparing the narrative of Herodotus with the related narrations in Pythian odes 4 and 5 of Pindar and The Hymn to Apollo of Callimachus, and investigating the inherited genealogical and oral traditions in Herodotus’ historiography, I argue that Herodotus works as both a critical inquirer and a didactic narrator rather than a story-teller in writing the history of foundation.
Key words: Cyrene; historiography; Herodotus；Pindar; Callimachus

In Roman Spartan inscriptions, the demos could refer to the people, the public institution assembly in opposition to the council, the city, etc. It was frequently embodied in formulae and honorific titles in both honorific inscriptions and public decrees, for example, κατὰ τὴν τοῦ δήμου βούλησιν, ὑπό τε τῆς λαμπροτάτης βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ ἱερωτάτου δήμου, κατὰ τὸν νόμον καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ δήμου, ὑπό τε τοῦ δάμου, μητέρα εὐσεβείας καὶ δήμου καὶ βουλῆς, etc. For what purposes did these expressions serve in Roman Spartan inscriptions? In what ways was the demos involved in the civic, political and legal activities?

conference The Afterlife of the Greco-Persian Wars: From Antiquity to Modern Times
The Leonidea festival was celebrated annually in honor of Leonidas and Pausanias, Spartan heroes of the Persian war, since Trajanic period. The Spartan king Leonidas had been the chief commander in the battle of Thermopylae, and was praised by many literary sources, while the regent Pausanias who commanded at Plataea did not enjoy such a good reputation, and he was seen as a traitor who adopted bad customs from barbarians.  Why did the Spartans honor a failed hero alongside a “traitor” of the Persian war under Rome?