ABSTRACT
Sparta had not been left unscathed by the violence of the times, in 268 enduring invasion for the first time since 88 BC. It is surely no coincidence that interventions at Sparta by Roman officialdom, including financial officers, become more noticeable in the early third century. The financial straits of Sparta’s curial class as the third century progressed emerge in other ways. It was normal practice in the Roman city for the cost of civic dedications to be funded by the families of the honorands. Open tensions between local Christians and the city’s pagan population are revealed by a letter from Libanius to his Spartan friend Ausonius, penned in 365 and of some importance for providing ‘one of the few instances in Greece where violent conflict between pagans and Christians can be documented’. Clear signs of destruction attributable to the Gothic occupation of Sparta so far are slight.
