Une histoire territoriale d’Argos hellénistique et romaine par le prisme de deux sanctuaires extra-urbains

Abstract

The study of the two main extra-urban sanctuaries of Argos, the Heraion and the sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea, allows us to drawn a territorial history of the city during the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. While during the Classical and early Hellenistic periods, the Argives integrated extra-urban and border areas into their political and cultic system and into the representations they made of their city, there was a change of territorial paradigm under the domination of Hellenistic tyrants. These rulers privilege the centralization of the political, diplomatic and cultic functions within the walls of Argos, to the detriment of the extra-urban spaces condemned to become peripheries, which keep only economic or symbolic functions. Under the Roman domination, the community reappropriates part of these peripheral spaces and invests them with new functions, notably linked to the imperial cult.

Keywords

• territory
• sanctuaries
• cults
• Argos
• territorial policies
• Heraion