Development of Gymnasia and Graeco-Roman Cityscapes

This publication is based on an international Topoi conference that was held in Berlin from the 4nd to 6nd February 2016 and emerged from the research group C6 on Cityscaping, notably the project C-6-8 on Bathing Culture and the Development of Urban Space: Case Study Pompeii. The term ‘cityscaping’ denotes the process by which urban spaces were actively shaped, modeled, and appropriated in ancient cultures. Cityscaping embraces two perspectives: physical modeling and functionalizing of urban spaces through their architectural and urbanplanning configurations (physical cityscaping), as well as literary modeling and functionalizing of urban spaces in texts that either concern the human actors and agents within these spaces or are composed by them (literary cityscaping).1 The project in Pompeii investigates two public baths, the Republican Baths and the Stabian Baths, both built in the 2nd century BC, thus in Hellenistic Samnite Pompeii, and still used after 80 BC, when Pompeii became a Roman colony. While the Stabian Baths from the beginning included a palaestra, explicitly referred to as such in an inscription,2 the Republican Baths have been identified as key element of a large complex that resembled Greek gymnasia and included palaestra(e), running tracks and bathing facilities. Therefore, the project is much concerned with the significance of Greek gymnasia or, more generally, sports facilities in different cultural (Samnite, Roman) contexts.3 This, in turn, sparked interest in a wider contextualization and the importance of gymnasia in the western Mediterranean in the Hellenistic/Republican and Roman Imperial periods, which is overall little studied.4 An important reference for the phenomenon of physical and intellectual education in the western Mediterranean, for the institution and concept as well as space and building, is the Greek gymnasium in the eastern Mediterranean. While this has received much more attention than institutions and facilities in the west, the Greek gymnasium in the east requires a comprehensive reassessment. Ulrich Mania has recently taken up this challenge and completed a study on Gymnasia in the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial times in the east.5 Inspired by the concept of cityscaping, and by the complementary expertise on eastern (Mania) and western (Trümper) gymnasia, the aim of this conference was to examine the development of gymnasia and their impact on cityscapes and urban culture across the Mediterranean world. The gymnasium was one of the key mon-