Luxury and Wealth in Sparta and The Peloponese
Luxury and Wealth in Sparta and The Peloponese
Luxury and Wealth in Sparta and The Peloponese
IN S PARTA
AND THE
P ELOPONNESE
edited by
Stephen Hodkinson
and
Chrysanthi Gallou
Contributors
Sophia Aneziri, Alain Bresson, Lucia Cecchet,
Paul Christesen, Alain Duplouy, P.J. Finglass,
Elena Franchi, Chrysanthi Gallou,
Georgia Kokkorou-Alevras, Ellen Millender,
Sarah C. Murray, Robin Osborne, Annalisa Paradiso,
Selene Psoma, James Roy
© 2021
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Louise Jones, and printed and bound in the UK by Gomer Press, Llandysul,
Ceredigion, Wales
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The Classical Press of Wales, an independent venture, was founded in 1993, initially to
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In memory of Anton Powell ix
Stephen Hodkinson
Introduction xi
Stephen Hodkinson and Chrysanthi Gallou
PART I
GENERAL PERSPECTIVES
PART II
SPARTA AND LAKONIKĒ
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Index 275
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Shortly after this volume was submitted to the Classical Press of Wales
(CPW), the world of Spartan and Peloponnesian studies suffered a great
loss with the untimely death in June 2020 of the press’s founder and
General Editor, Dr Anton Powell. Since the late 1980s Anton has been a
towering figure in the field of Spartan studies. Not only has he personally
authored many important and seminal articles on archaic, classical
and hellenistic Spartan history and society; equally importantly, he has
developed a diverse global community of like-minded academic colleagues
within the International Sparta Seminar and has used the CPW as a venue
for the Seminar’s deliberations to appear in print. Since 1999, CPW has
published no fewer than 15 books on Spartan history and its modern
reception, including several monographs by international colleagues. The
astounding renaissance of Spartan history over the last generation would
have been impossible without Anton Powell.
It was therefore a great pleasure to us at the Centre for Spartan and
Peloponnesian Studies (CSPS) when Anton agreed to add the present
volume from our 4th International Conference in 2016 to CPW’s
distinguished list of publications. That agreement was rooted in Anton’s
long-standing association with Nottingham. He lived in the city for four
years in the late 1980s, purposely choosing a house overlooking the
Trent Bridge cricket ground from which he could view the field of play.
During the summers of 1986 and 1987 Anton used to time his breaks
from academic work to coincide with bowling spells by Nottinghamshire’s
world-renowned fast bowler, the New Zealander Sir Richard Hadlee –
who was subsequently awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by
the University of Nottingham. Anton had a deep love for the city of
Nottingham, both for its lively intellectual life and for its rich working-
class culture. My wife and I had recently moved our family home to the
Nottingham area and it was our physical proximity and our close personal
and family friendship during those years that underpinned Anton’s and my
subsequent long-term academic collaborations.
Maintaining his Nottingham links in later years, Anton became a
frequent visitor to CSPS. Alongside his academic talks, he used his pop-
up CPW bookstall to spend much time talking with and assisting our
students. It is hence a matter of great sadness to us that this volume has
come to fruition at a time when Anton is no longer with us to see it in
print. His death leaves a gaping hole in the personal and academic lives of
many people here in Nottingham and around the world.
Fare well, dear colleague, dear friend. We will not forget you.
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https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/conference/fac-arts/humanities/archaeology/
luxury-and-wealth-in-the-archaic-to-hellenistic-peloponnese/index.aspx.
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the Athenian acropolis in the late seventh or early sixth century, was a
clear indication of magnificence. The Peloponnese mostly lacked good-
quality marble and its use was extremely limited throughout the Archaic
period, except on the most extravagant projects such as the sixth-century
throne of Apollo at Amyklai, which utilised grey marble from Taygetos
along with imported white marble from Doliana in Arkadia. An especially
notable contrast became evident at Delphi from the sixth century onwards.
Whereas the treasuries of other cities were typically made entirely of
marble, those of Peloponnesian cities used traditional local materials such
as soft limestone (poros), a material which also remained in considerable,
though not exclusive, use into the Classical period at Olympia. The
Peloponnesians’ non-use of marble cannot be plausibly explained in terms
of limited wealth or incompatibility with the Doric architectural order. It
perhaps betokens a more fundamental ‘conservative’ religious attitude (or
habitus) evident also in their contemporary monumental sculpture.
In Chapter 11 Sarah C. Murray highlights another, potentially related,
regional peculiarity of the archaic Peloponnese. Examination of references
to non-coercive acquisitive behaviour across a range of literary texts
(Herodotus, Pindar and lyric poetry) reveals a consistent pattern in which
references to or concerns about sudden or capricious mobility of wealth
are far less common in accounts of Peloponnesian society or in works
for Peloponnesian audiences compared with accounts of, or works for
audiences in, central Greece or Ionia. The clear impression given is that
the Peloponnese was a region marked by greater stability of wealth and
fewer opportunities for getting rich quickly. Part of the explanation may
lie in a lower degree of the kind of major military activity that decimated
populations and their accumulated wealth. Part may also lie in fewer
opportunities for upward mobility by craftsmen, especially in Sparta with
its comparatively high level of disdain for such persons, its allocation of
(at least some) professions according to heredity rather than merit, and its
comparative lack of famous or even named architects and sculptors. Was
it perhaps concern about the destabilising potential of prospering artisans
rather than the corrupting potential of their products that underpinned the
Spartans’ reputation for material austerity?
The focus on the Peloponnese as a whole is maintained in the two
papers on the Hellenistic period by Sophia Aneziri (Chapter 13) and
Selene Psoma (Chapter 14), which reveal interesting continuities and
changes from Murray’s account of the Archaic period. Focusing on
epigraphic evidence for euergetism, Aneziri highlights further indications
of Peloponnesian distinctiveness, both in the limited and unbalanced
nature of the evidence compared with other regions and in the unusual
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* * *
It remains for us to thank the many people and organisations who made the
original conference a success and who have helped to turn the conference
into the present volume. Pride of place must go to Bill Cavanagh, Jim Roy
and Peter Davies, who made significant contributions to the conference
planning as fellow members of CSPS’s Management Board. Bill and
Jim also chaired conference sessions, as did Ellen Millender and Paul
Christesen, and critiqued several draft papers for the volume. Peter was
also part of an efficient and dedicated team of conference assistants, in
company with Elisavet Fergadiotou, Kendell Heydon and Vasiliki Brouma.
We are equally indebted to invaluable administrative help from the
School of Humanities Management and Research Office, especially
Monica Beale and Nicola Tuxford. We also gratefully acknowledge
generous financial support from a variety of sources: the J.F. Costopoulos
Foundation; the University of Nottingham’s School of Humanities
Strategic Fund and Faculty of Arts PVC Fund; and the Nottingham-
Leicester Ancient History Fund. A grant from the Classical Association
enabled us to provide several student bursaries.
Besides the chapters in this volume, the conference itself was graced by
excellent papers from Lyndsay Coo, Thomas Coward, Kate Gilhuly and
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