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Some Notes on the Spartan Σφαιρεῖς

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

A. M. Woodward
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Extract

It seems appropriate to contribute to this volume an unpublished fragment from Sparta of a list of victorious σφαιρεῖς of which Professor Wace kindly gave me a squeeze many years ago, and to append to it some miscellaneous notes on the lists of this class published in IG V. 1, 674–688. Some of these notes have already appeared in print, in earlier volumes of the Annual, but it may be helpful to collect and slightly amplify them here, using the prosopographical evidence now available for establishing a more exact date for some of the lists. It seems also a suitable occasion to examine briefly a new interpretation of these lists suggested in a recent work on Sparta.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 46 , November 1951 , pp. 191 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1951

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References

1 (Miss) K. M. T. Chrimes, Ancient Sparta: a Re-examination of the Evidence (1949).

2 BSA XXVI 164, 1, A 3–5, and 174–7 (a list of the Getontes of his year).

3 We may, I think, disregard the fact that in these two lists, BSA XXVI 167, 1, C3 (α) (β) his name is spelt the same man, apparently, is called op. cit. 163, 1, Ag. I now realise that I was mistaken in suggesting (BSA, loc. cit., 161, 179) that he should be dated to about the end of the reign of Trajan. On the other hand it is impossible to accept the date c 85/6 suggested by Miss Chrimes (op. cit. 463), for two reasons: (1) Agion, son of Artemisios, whose cursus began with the office of in the year of Deximachos in the text just mentioned (1, A9), lived to be a member of the Gerousia for the fifth time under Eudamos, whose date cannot be earlier than c. 140 (c. 141/2, Chrimes). A public career lasting fully fifty-five years is an improbable assumption, to say the least. (2) We know from BSA XXVI, loc. cit. 1, B1 (p) that the senior member of the board of in the year of Nikokrates was whom we find as a in IG. V. 1, 674, to be discussed below, and who was also a member of the Gerousia for the third and fourth times under Philokleidas and Aristokrates respectively. Since the date of the latter was not far from A.D. 112 (see below), it seems most unlikely that a post implying, and probably requiring, considerable public experience, such as that of senior could have been held more than twenty-five years before one's fourth term in the Gerousia. It is much more reasonable to suggest the year of Nikokrates was very close to that of Aristokrates, and possibly should be placed in the short period separating him from Philokleidas.

4 BSA XXVI 165, 1, B1 (γ), and 183.

5 Chrimes, op. cit. 140, concludes that a minimum age for admission to the Gerousia of fifty years seems not improbable. It might be suggested that the age of entry was lowered from the original one of sixty years when membership was made annual and elective.

6 For the age of the which she defines as ‘above the age of twenty’, see Chrimes, op. cit. 132; I take this to mean ‘in their twenty-first year’.

7 I do not understand why Kolbe, in reconstructing the stemma of the family of the Diabetes Phileros, indicates ±90 as his approximate date, whilst attributing the list to the reign of Trajan.

8 Op. cit. 464 and 467–8, note A. She does not, to my mind, strengthen a weak case by postulating not one but two namesakes, one for Kallikrates and the other for Chares, son of Chares, who was in the year of Kallikrates, (BSA XXVI 166, 1, B8)Google Scholar.

9 I have little to add to my summary of the evidence in BSA XXVI 186.

10 BSA XXVI 168, 1, C6 and 170, 1, D3; cf. Box, H., JRS XXII (1932), 167 f.Google Scholar

11 Among the dedications by victors in the at the sanctuary of Orthia the earliest dateable instance of-ω for-og;υ is no. 43, c A.D. 133/4; nos. 46, 50, 52, 54 seem to belong to the period 140–170, and later on it is still more frequent. (Cf. Artemis Orthia, 319 ff.)

12 Chrimes, loc. cit., says ‘near in date to Agetoridas (c. 168/9)’; I should put A. a few years earlier (c. 163/4?).

13 Chrimes, loc. cit., ‘c. 139/40’, with which I agree.

14 IGV. 1, Addenda et Corrigenda, p. 304.

15 On the other hand, nos. 683, 684 and 685, all ascribed to the first quarter of the third century, do not exhibit these rounded letter-forms.

16 Cf. BSA XXVI 165,1, A12 and 180f.; Chrimes, op.cit., 465 dates him c. 116/17, perhaps slightly too early.

17 686 perhaps soon after A.D. 200. See above.

18 III 14, 8–10.

19 Op. cit., 131–4.

20 I am aware of the weakness of an argumentum e silmtio, but there appears to be no space for an entry relating to boxers in the list of athletic contests at the Leonideia recorded in IG V. 1, 19,11. 6–11; the bronze tablet containing a list of money prizes awarded to victors in the same festival (or the Eurykleia?), BSA XXVI 213, is so incomplete that it cannot be used as evidence.

21 III 14, 8–10. Lucian rightly distinguishes the contest on the ‘island’ from the ball-game, which Pausanias does not mention.