La statua del Riso e altri exempla lacedemoni in Coricio di Gaza: riuso e costruzione del passato spartano nella retorica tardoantica

This article examines the reception of the Spartan tradition in the corpus of Choricius of Gaza, a late antique rhetorician active in the first half of the sixth century AD. The analysis begins with the Apologia mimorum, in which Choricius mentions a Spartan statuette of Laughter – a detail otherwise attested only in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, where the notice is credited to the local historian Sosibius the Laconian. The discussion then turns to further passages in which the rhetorician draws on exempla, topoi and historical episodes from the Lacedaemonian tradition. A survey of the declamations, panegyrics, dialexeis and funeral orations shows how Sparta and its most celebrated historical figures provided a flexible rhetorical repertoire, deployed for different argumentative purposes across a range of contexts and genres.