The Hellenistic World and Rome
invasions, a major Hellenic centre. But the most systematic communal re-
creation, or re-enactment, of the past which modern study has revealed was
that at Sparta. Spawforth’s study has shown, however, that this re-creation,
whose salient features drew tourists from all over the Greek world, did not
really reproduce at all precisely the institutions of archaic and classical Sparta,
and was the work, as elsewhere, of a local elite among whom the Roman citi-
zenship was increasingly common. Note for example the inscription of the
early third century in which a group of hissynarchontes(fellow magistrates),
all with Roman names, honour ‘‘Pop(lios) Mem(mios) Pratolaos also called
Aristokles Damarous,aristopoleiteutēs[best citizen], for his protection of the
Lykourgan customs, and his benevolence towards them.’’^77
An equally vivid picture of the communal evocation of tradition is pro-
vided by Guy M. Rogers’ analysis of the foundation of Vibius Salutaris in
early second-century Ephesos.^78 Salutaris was of course a Roman citizen and
equestrian office-holder; the route of the procession which his foundation
instituted would take the participants down streets which had been com-
pletely transformed by monumental public building in the course of the first
century..; the statues to be carried included representations of Trajan and
Plotina, as well as the personified Senate, equestrian order, and the Roman
people; and the terms of the foundation were approved by the proconsul and
hislegate. But the prime honorand was the main deity of the city, Artemis;
and the other statues included one of Enonymos, son of Kephios/Ouranos
and Gē; Pion; probably Androklos, the mythical founder of the city; and
certainly Lysimachos, the early Hellenistic re-founder, as well as Augustus
himself. The rituals celebrated the present as the fulfilment of a long history,
not an opposition between Greek past and Roman present.
But of course the primary place among all recent work on the Greek
city of the Roman period must belong to Michael Wörrle’s publication of
the foundation inscription of a newagōn(contest), theDēmostheneia, set up
at Oenoanda under Hadrian by a leading local notable, and Roman citizen,
C. Iulius Demosthenes.^79 This almost perfectly preserved inscription of
lines perhaps surpasses all others in its expression of the structure and values
of the imperial Greek city. I will isolate only a few features. First of all, there
is something of which our evidence rarely gives so vivid an impression, the
.IGIV., no. . See Spawforth in P. Cartledge and A. J. Spawforth,Hellenistic and
RomanSparta:ATaleofTwoCities(), –.
. G. M. Rogers,The Sacred Identity of Ephesos: Foundation Myths of a Roman City().
. M. Wörrle,Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Studien zu einer agonistischen
Stiftung aus Oinoanda().