Adrien Delahaye

If spartan history is better known thanks
to the revision of the spartan mirage, Lacedaemon,
however, continues to escape to a great extent from
our knowledge. Sometimes considered as a polis,
sometimes as a state or a symmachia, Lacedaemon
appears to be mainly a matter of regional identity.
Spartans and Perioikoi seem to have shared more
than political ties and the integration of the latter
is based on cultural and ethnic – understood as a
cultural construction – factors. Unfortunately, the
Perioikoi remain far more unknown and are basically
studied as the ‘other’ Lacedaemonians; the
laconian material culture is a way to go beyond this
aporia. Its use remains problematic as the historians
focus on Sparta through literary sources, while
the material culture and the production sphere are
supposedly in the hands of the Perioikoi. This statement
has led us to largely ignore the historical value
of laconian artifacts, especially to study the whole
lacedaemonian society during the archaic period.
The secured perioikic sites are few, but they exist and
can be used in a comparative study with the better
known and published spartan sanctuaries in order
to highlight common features and specificities. Different
categories of votive offerings – as the blackglazed
pottery, the bronze vases and figurines, the
lead figurines and the laconian reliefs – can be used
as identity markers. The first results lead to common
classes of artifacts, used in the same contexts and
seem to indicate common votive practices

Cet article propose de partir de la seule et unique scène connue de transport du corps de guerriers morts au combat dans l’iconographie laconienne, pour revenir sur les pratiques funéraires spartiates, d’une part, et les modalités de représentation graphique de la belle mort sur les images laconiennes, d’autre part. L’image interroge par sa singularité. Elle est tout d’abord collective, alors que les images attiques et corinthiennes privilégient le cadavre unique, porté par un compagnon, en suivant le modèle héroïque d’Ajax et Achille. La scène n’a ensuite rien à voir avec ce que l’on croit savoir des pratiques funéraires spartiates en campagne militaire. À rebours de l’apophtegme lacédémonien Ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς (« ou avec lui, ou sur lui », « lui » désignant le bouclier), les corps sont portés sur l’épaule, tandis que, contrairement au témoignage d’Hérodote sur les morts lacédémoniens à Platées, les corps sont emportés

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This article proposes to start from the one and only known scene of the transport of the bodies of warriors killed in battle in Laconian iconography, in order to return to Spartan funerary practices, on the one hand, and to the methods of graphic representation of the beautiful death in Laconian images, on the other. The image raises questions by its singularity. First of all, it is collective, whereas the Attic and Corinthian images privilege the single corpse, carried by a companion, following the heroic model of Ajax and Achilles. The scene then has nothing to do with what we think we know about Spartan funeral practices in military campaigns. Contrary to the Lacedemonian apophthegm Ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς ('or with him, or on him', 'him' denoting the shield), the bodies are carried on the shoulder, while, contrary to Herodotus' account of the Lacedemonian dead at Plataea, the bodies are carried away

Place of sociability par excellence for the ancient Greeks, the symposion is also a privileged setting for playing with social norms. Beyond the shared consumption of wine, which underpins the group’s cohesion, the symposion allows values and norms to be reaffirmed, but also to be exceeded, within a circumscribed framework. This constant wobbling between the rules and their transgression often takes the form, in the iconography of Greek vases, of a game of mirrors between civilisation and wildness, in which komasts and satyrs embody a counter-model of civic sociability. At a second level of interpretation, this wobbling can also be interpreted metaphorically, throughout the notion of balance. Excessive drunkenness threatens the drinker’s equilibrium by causing him to lose enkrateia, the control of the senses and the body. The use of games of skill and dexterity – of which the kottabos is the best known – makes it possible to materialise, in a playful way, this tension at work in the...

Les satyres, joyeux compagnons enivrés de Dionysos, ne font a priori pas bon ménage avec l'austère Sparte. Ce postulat a conduit à les ignorer considérablement dans les études relatives à l'art laconien. Les satyres ont principalement été étudiés au sein de l'iconographie attique, parfois corinthienne, mais très peu au sein de l'imagerie laconienne, et pour cause : ils y sont rares.

Pottery in ancient Sparta was used for storage, shipping, communicating moral lessons, and more. Dr Adrien Delahaye, French School at Athens, joins the show to explore what scholars know about Spartan pottery in the Archaic and Classical periods.

https://ithacabound.com/podcast/pottery-in-archaic-classical-sparta-w-dr-adrien-delahaye/
https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/pottery-in-archaic-classical-sparta-w-dr-adrien-delahaye/id1559088835?i=1000541624624

Le rire était vu à Sparte comme une sensation dangereuse qui s’emparait du corps et de l’esprit. Sa production artistique nous révèle pourtant un rire lié au vin, mais aussi rituel, transgressif, qui pose la question des normes et de la remise en cause de l’austérité ambiante.

"What is left of the ancient city of Sparta remains below the ground level, and is largely concealed by the buildings of the modern settlement since its construction began in 1834. A considerable portion of the city has been investigated over the years by means of rescue excavations and preventive archaeology, which provided rich results, beneficial to our understanding of the ancient urban environment.
In the effort of collecting and assembling these data, an ongoing mapping project aims to georeference as many excavated plots as possible on a digital platform, and connect them with the relevant data deriving from the excavation reports. The talk will present the current mapping work of both the ancient city proper and its surroundings, with a discussion about the methodology adopted, the problems arisen, and potential the employment of this work for researchers, professionals, and cultural management.”

"Ce qui reste de la ville antique de Sparte se trouve sous le niveau du sol et est en grande partie caché par les bâtiments de la ville moderne depuis le début de sa construction en 1834. Une partie considérable de la ville a été étudiée au fil des ans au moyen de fouilles de sauvetage et d'archéologie préventive, qui ont fourni de riches résultats, favorisant une meilleure compréhension de l'environnement urbain antique.
Dans le cadre de la collecte et de l'assemblage de ces données, un projet de cartographie en cours vise à géoréférencer le plus grand nombre possible de parcelles fouillées sur une plateforme numérique, et à les relier aux données provenant des rapports de fouilles. L'exposé présentera le travail actuel de cartographie de la ville antique proprement dite et de ses environs, avec une discussion sur la méthodologie adoptée, les problèmes rencontrés, et les usages potentiels de ce travail par les chercheurs, les professionnels et les services culturels."

Following the long tradition of reflections on Sparta hosted by the International Sparta Seminar since the early 1990s, the panel aims to extend the work of the last generation of Spartan scholarship in its deconstruction of the ‘Spartan mirage’, the term originated by the French classicist François Ollier in his two-volume work, Le Mirage Spartiate (1933-43). Ollier was Professor of Greek at the University of Lyon; our panel’s focus on the ‘mirage’ at this Celtic Conference in Lyon is therefore highly appropriate.

Previous scholarship has tackled the ‘mirage’ using primarily literary testimonia. In contrast Lakonian archaeological realia can, however, make a decisive contribution to questioning some of the topoi often associated with Sparta. The numerous and increasingly better-published archaeological projects currently being conducted within the territory controlled by Sparta in the Archaic and Classical periods – the territory known to contemporaries as Lakonikē, comprising Lakedaimon and (until 370 BC) Messenia – make this a good time to evaluate the contributions that archaeological and material evidence can make to our historical interpretation of ancient Sparta from the 8th to the 3rd century BC.

Since the 1990s there have been considerable developments in cross-disciplinary dialogue between ancient historians and archaeologists. However, the limits of these interdisciplinary attempts have also become apparent. These limits and the difficulties in dialogue between disciplines are intensified in the case of Sparta. The sudden eruption of Lakonian archaeology to the forefront of classical scholarship, during the British excavations of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at the start of the 20th century, led to a certain degree of historical reconsideration of traditional images of Spartan austerity, at least for the Archaic period. However, if the gap between literary and archaeological evidence was noted for early Sparta – though not for the Classical period – the dialogue between disciplines has sometimes remained superficial. The use of the term ‘Lakonian art’ rather than ‘Spartan’ art is particularly revealing of the obstacles to a true transdisciplinary approach. The difference in terminology is subtle, but has tended to disqualify the use of Lakonian material culture for the study of Spartan history. Conversely, historians’ use of the term ‘Spartan’, instead of ‘Lakedaimonian’, for a range of political, social and cultural phenomena that also involved the perioikoi has had similar effects.

It is time to bring the evidence of archaeology more clearly into current debates, especially recent debates that have questioned one key orthodoxy of the Spartan mirage: the idea that Sparta was an exceptional Greek polis. The archaeological data from Sparta and its territory can increasingly be finely contextualized, compared with other artefacts and images, juxtaposed with or against literary and epigraphic sources and, above all, compared with contemporary archaeological data from elsewhere in the Greek world.

https://13eccclyon.sciencesconf.org/?fbclid=IwAR2h2r4z-dS2wpih8_EyRORrjyAMDtyDOVz1j6wmTfvPQXGvPUtwc3vz6ws

Dossier thématique proposé : Approches historiennes des images. L’analyse et l’exploitation des documents iconographiques en histoire ancienne (II)

Anastasia Painesi
Sièges de pouvoir – sièges de supplice : réflexions sur certains motifs de figures assises dans l’art antique (VIe-IVe siècles av. J.-C.)

Élise Pampanay
Divinités ou personnifications ? L’exemple de deux en-têtes de traités d’alliance athéniens

Maria Ángeles Alonso Alonso
Imago, titulus et construction de la mémoire. À propos de monuments funéraires de médecins dans la regio X

Dossier thématique proposé : Approches historiennes des images. L’analyse et l’exploitation des documents iconographiques en histoire ancienne (I)

Christian Mazet
La Пότνια θηρῶν ou les frontières de l’Autre. Réflexion archéologique sur la signification d’une image homérique en Grèce orientalisante

Adrien Delahaye
Les satyres laconiens à l’aune du modèle attique

Gabriel de Bruyn
À propos du groupe statuaire impérial du théâtre de Bulla Regia. L’apport de la documentation épigraphique à l’analyse iconographique

Marie-Sophie Caruel
L’attitude des artisans gallo-romains à l’égard du travail manuel. Étude de l’iconographie lapidaire funéraire

Résumé
Étudier l’histoire de Sparte pose de manière accrue la question des sources. À la faiblesse de la documentation écrite disponible s’ajoute le problème du « Mirage spartiate », c’est-à-dire de la construction d’un discours historiographique empreint de fantasmes, en particulier par des auteurs  anciens le plus souvent non Spartiates. Si ce dernier est patiemment déconstruit depuis le travail fondateur de F. Ollier, on relève cependant qu’il l’a essentiellement été à partir des testimonia littéraires, tandis que les realia archéologiques restaient peu exploitées. Les vases laconiens, figurés ou non, constituent pourtant une source documentaire qu’il est possible d’analyser dans le cadre d’un questionnement historique. Cette étude propose de revenir sur l’un des aspects essentiels du « Mirage », l’austérité spartiate, dont la mise en place est généralement placée au cours du VIe siècle. La production des figures noires laconiennes, qui connaît son pic de production et son déclin au cours de cette période, constitue un terrain d’expérimentation privilégié pour reposer les termes du débat. Le croisement des données avec et les textes d’une part et l’ensemble de la culture matérielle contemporaine de l’autre – vases à vernis noir, bronzes, reliefs, figurines de plomb et ivoires – permet de mener une approche comparative. La recherche de parallèles dans les séries céramiques contemporaines d’Athènes, de Corinthe ou de Béotie offre enfin le moyen de relativiser la spécificité du cas spartiate. Finalement, l’austérité ne s’avère être que l’une des nombreuses chimères du « Mirage spartiate ».

Mots-clés : Grèce antique, Sparte, Laconie, époque archaïque, époque classique, culture matérielle, céramologie, histoire des représentations, historiographie, iconographie


Abstract
Studying the history of Sparta raises the question of the sources. In addition to the weakness of the available written documentation, occurs the problem of the "Spartan Mirage", that is to say the construction of a historiographical discourse characterised by idealization phenomena, in particular by ancient authors who are usually not Spartans. Although the latter has been patiently deconstructed since F. Ollier's work, it is worth noting that it was mainly based on literary testimonia, while archaeological realia remained little exploited. The laconian vases, figured or not, nevertheless constitute a source that can be analysed in the context of a historical frame. This study proposes to return to one of the essential aspects of the "Mirage", the spartan austerity, whose creation is generally placed during the 6th century. The production of laconian black figures, which experienced its peak of production and decline during this period, constitutes a privileged field of experimentation to restate the terms of the debate. The cross-checking of this data with the texts on the one hand and the contemporary material culture on the other – black glazed vases, bronzes, reliefs, lead and ivory figurines – makes it possible to conduct a comparative approach. The search for parallels in the contemporary ceramic series of Athens, Corinth or Boeotia finally offers a way to put in perspective the specificity of the spartan case. Finally, austerity turns out to be only one of the numerous chimeras of the "Spartan Mirage".

Keywords: Ancient Greece, Sparta, Laconia, Archaic period, Classical period, material culture, ceramology, history of representations, historiography, iconography