La ginnasiarchia nelle « poleis » dell’ occidente mediterraneo antico by Giuseppe Cordiano (review)

I94 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS conflits ou frictions entre leurs membres. notamment en Beotie (de nouveau, l'auteur neglige les pages de Paul Roesch sur le sujet, Etudes beotiennes. 397-401). en Thessalie. dans les Confederations acheenne et etolienne. Finalement, Rome fut de plus en plus souvent appelee a arbitrer des conflits locaux, mais sans y mettre, semble-t-iL beaucoup de conviction. En generalle senat envoyait des legats sur place ou confiait la chose aune tierce cite. Rome a aussi traite plusieurs affaires avec opportunisme. tranchant plus d'une fois en faveur de ses allies ou amis. L'auteur conclut que, s'il n'existait en Crece rien de ce qu'on pourrait qualifier de droit internationaL les Crecs partageaient neanmoins dans ce domaine des croyances. des principes et des coutumes. Consciente que les inscriptions qui nous sont parvenues. et qui avaient donc ete gravees. representent des reussites et non des echecs, S. Ager adopte une position prudente. a mi-chemin entre le cynisme de V. Berard et l'optimisme d'autres auteurs : sans pour autant demontrer que toutes ces ententes ont eu la vie longue. les textes conserves temoignent assurement de la confiance des Crecs dans ce genre de reglements. TeIle est la teneur de cette etude presentee avec soin et intelligence. Le recueil des documents ainsi mis a jour et leurs commentaires rendront de grands services. LEOPOLD MIGEOTIE DEPARTEMENT D'HISTOIRE UNIVERSITE LAVAL QUEBEC G1K 7P4 GIUSEPPE CORDIANO. La ginnasiarchia nelle «poleis» deli' occidente mediterraneo antico. Studi e testi di storia antica. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. 1997. Pp. 168. ISBN: 88-467-0026-0. The Creek city's single defining institution was undoubtedly the gymnasium . attested as it is from the Crimea to the Nile. and from Babyion to southern France. The magistrate usually put in charge of a city's gymnasia was the gymnasiarch, who was always drawn from the highest echelons of the civic elite. In the lengthy first chapter of his book. Cordiano assembles the scattered and scrappy evidence for these officials in the Creek cities of Sicily. Haly. and southern France; in the second. he argues that Hieron II of Syracuse was responsible for a restructuring of the gymnasiarchy in the towns under his control to exploit the military potential of the ephebes in training there. BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 195 This arrangement results in Ci certain imbalance in the presentation of the materiaL as only a small fraction of the inscriptions collected in the first chapter figures in the second. Cordiano starts with a survey of the essential characteristics of the Greek gymnasiarchy. with an emphasis on its role in regulating the activity of ephebes (21-28). He rightly calls attention to the military aspect of ephebates. But in sketching his picture of the relationship between gymnasiarchs and ephebes. he devotes considerable space to the Athenian ephebate as described in the Aristotelian Constitution oE the A tllenians. even though the unique nature of the Athenian gymnasiarchy meant that it was not the model for the magistracy in other cities. On the other hand. he barely touches on the rich resources of the gymnasiarchical law of Beroia. which. in the full edition of Gauthier and Hatzopoulos. should have appeared in enough time for him to make bettel' use of it.' Generally speaking. Cordiano's treatment of the epigraphical material in the first chapter is serviceable. though rather superficial (38-91). For instance, he takes a single reference to a gymnasiarch in a Latin inscription from Velia as clear evidence of "la presenza deI ginnasio ... ancora in eta romana" (46). without taking into account Delorme's warning that the existence of a gymnasiarch does not necessarily imply that a city had a gymnasium per se.' Serious flaws occur in the second part of the book. when Cordiano constructs an elaborate argument concerning a reform of the gymnasiarchy he thinks occurred in Syracusan towns in Sicily and which he attributes to Hieron II (95-130). On the face of it such a connection is plausible. and Cordiano makes a good case for the Syracusan leader's interest in maximizing the military effectiveness of gymnastic training (62-63; 98-101). However. the epigraphical evidence is too flimsy...