What Happened to the Argive Borderlands during the Hellenistic and Roman Period?

This contribution will focus on the evolution of the representations and occupations of the borderlands by the city of Argos. By focusing on this specific case, a city in the Peloponnese, we will question the theories of historiography on the becoming of frontiers during the major changes that are the guardianship of Greek cities by the Macedonian Kings, then by the Roman State. 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.

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Scientific responsibility and organization: Elena Franchi