Création de l'espace diplomatique à Rome à l'époque médio-républicaine

Abstract

The litterary texts and above all the archaeological informations, indicate that, during the medio-republican period, must have appeared the Graecostasis, a space entirely devoted to the reception of the embassies. Romans must have felt the necessity to create a specific place in order to receive ambassadors who belonged, from a religious and cultural point of view, to a completely different world. Therefore, Romans could have created this space at the time the Massaliotes received the hospitium publicum, at the very beginning of the IV^th century B.C. Indeed, giving public hospitality to ambassadors sent by Greek cities, they introduced them in the area of the pomerium, as extraneous people, and they used Graecostasis as a space of transition, so this strangers could be assimilated in the city itself. By the way, they created what can properly be called a diplomatic space.