| Summary: | The ancient city of Sparta preserves for us, contemporaries, the image of a martial and harsh city. The ritual competitions organized around the altar of Artemis Orthia are not for little: in front of the altar of the goddess, the ephebes of the city must endure as long as possible the whiplashes that are given to them. The notoriety of this ritual ensemble has led to the production of numerous sources seeking to justify a violence considered singular. Among the alleged causes, those of a religious nature have been qualified as aition by historians of religion: they are then apprehended as myths explaining the rite. This aition/ritual dichotomy, however, is only a contemporary projection on the Ancients’ stories. Assuming that the ancient authors are not in any way colleagues, this article will start from an analysis attentive to the different enunciating contexts of the sources. From this point on, it will become possible to question the multiple logics of the ancient temporal configurations which, in our eyes, link ritual temporality and religious temporality. We will ask then ourselves if it is possible to identify a greek way of understanding religious time.
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