Les satyres laconiens à l’aune du modèle attique

Abstract

The Laconian satyrs have been little studied because of several historiographical obstacles. Victims of the “Spartan mirage”, they have been largely forgotten, since they have nothing to do at first sight with the austere city of Sparta. Then, the qualification of the Spartan style as “secondary” compared with the Attic style, led to their being relegated to the category of imitations. The establishment of the corpus, the serialisation and defining of the themes made more precise identification possible, and also the comparative approach with other styles, diachronic analysis and archaeological contextualization have cast a new light on their interpretation. It seems there is a specific type of Laconian satyrs, with a specific mode of representation and a not very clear system of relationship with Dionysos; the Laconian satyrs seem to suggest above all drinking and drunkenness. In conclusion, a closer examination of the archaeological context results, ultimately, in a better understanding of what they mean.

Keywords

• Sparta
• satyr
• iconography
• Laconian
• Dionysos
• historiography