ABSTRACT
In the fifth century the pagan, classical, Sparta with which this book is concerned drops out of sight. In his apologetic work The Cure of HellenicMaladies, composed early in the century, the Christian bishop Theodoret triumphantly referred to the complete demise of the Lycurgan regime at Sparta. Whether this text should be taken au pied de la lettre to prove the final disappearance of all vestiges of Roman Sparta’s archaizing laconism is perhaps arguable. However, in spite of recent claims for ‘the survival of paganism [in Greece] well into the Byzantine period’, it is not easy to believe that a fully civic institution such as the Roman city’s ephebic training, with its cycle of contests organized around pagan sanctuaries and festivals, could have long survived the law of Theodosius I, promulgated in 391 and upheld by later emperors, which banned pagan rites and closed temples for public use1.
