Sur les traces des chasseurs au pays de Lycurgue

Hunting, as the noblest of all leisure activities and a mirror of human valour, was integrated into the system of values and social practices at every stage of the Spartan citizen's life, from adolescence to full maturity. The paper examines what is known about hunting in each of these stages, focusing on the following significant documents and thematic nodes: the conceptual pairing of ‘hunting and war’ and the relief crater with the scene of the return from the hunt in the Archaeological Museum of Sparta, the relational and ostentatious dynamics that developed through the patronage and display of virtue and wealth in the supplement to the syssitia, the epaïkla, hunting and banquets in honour of Artemis (Libanius, V, 23), the ‘hunting life’ as an image of the harshness and ponoi of Spartan education (Nicolas de Damas, FGrH/BNJ 90 F 56, 3 and the kattheratorion), hunting and intergenerational eros, the problem of krypteia.