stars, such as Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, to fix the dates of their
religious festivals (see Richer 1998a:155–98 for the astronomical observations under-
taken by the Spartan ephors every eight years, probably at the time of the heliacal
rising of Sirius). The request for sundials the Spartans made to Anaximander in the
middle of the sixth century testifies to their interest in ordering the calendar in
the best possible fashion (Diogenes Laertius 2.1). For them it was certainly a matter
of carrying out the required religious celebrations at the most appropriate time, so as
to ensure their efficacity.
The Hyacinthia festival marked the renewal of the world. It occupied ten days in
the classical period, but later on only three. Its etiological myth is preserved by Ovid
(Metamorphoses 10.164–6; cf. Richer 2004a:85–6, 2004b:410–14), from whose
words we can deduce that it was, in principle, organized in such a way that its end
coincided with the full moon following the vernal equinox.
Two other important religious celebrations in Laconia were the Gymnopaidiai and
the Karneia. During the Gymnopaidiai Apollo was honored in song, and this festival
commemorated one or more battles, the Battle of the Champions, in which the
Spartans were victorious over the Argives in 546 BC, and perhaps also the battle,
unhappy but glorious, against the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC. The Karneia
festival was a fertility ritual that commemorated the arrival of the Dorians and their
Heraclid leaders in the Peloponnese (cf. Richer forthcoming (b); for this festival see also
Chapter 12). It seems that the Gymnopaidiai festival, which could last from three to five
days (Richer 2005b:246 n. 70, 249, including n. 95), was as a rule completed during
the full moon closest to the time at which the heliacal rising of Sirius was observable at
Sparta, probably August 1 or 2. The festival will accordingly have finished approximately
between July 18 and August 17 (Richer 2005b:256–9). The Karneia, which lasted nine
days, normally ended a lunar month after the Gymnopaidiai, and so approximately
between August 16 and September 14, except when military considerations or, perhaps,
the need to intercalate a month into the calendar determined otherwise.
There may have been a logical connection between the Hyacinthia and the Karneia,
that of the alternating predominance of Apollo and Dionysus. Plutarch tells that at
Delphi in winter one could ‘‘call upon Dionysus for three months in place of Apollo’’
(Moralia389c¼On the ‘‘E’’ at Delphi9). There may have been an analogous
phenomenon at Sparta: the rite of thestaphylodromoi (‘‘grape-cluster runners’’)
expressed the importance of Dionysus during the Karneia prior to Apollo being
given pride of place during the following Hyacinthia (BekkerAnecdota Graecai
305 ll. 25–30, s.v.staphylodromoi).
The Spartan calendar was structured by many other festivals, and it is of particular
note that, ‘‘Every day on which there is a new moon, and on the seventh day of every
month, each [of the kings] is given, at the expense of the treasury, an adult victim for
sacrifice in the temple of Apollo, together with a bushel of flour and a Laconian quart
of wine’’ (Herodotus 6.57). And so religious life unfolded within a well-defined
chronological framework of a sort that ensured that the Spartans always knew what
action they needed to perform to make their contribution to the order of the world
and their own happiness (for the importance of happiness,eudaimonia, in the
Spartans’ political project, see Richer 2001b).
The Spartans also established strong encouragements to self-control, conceived of
as leading to happiness, in sacralizing thepathe ̄mata.
The Religious System at Sparta 247