CREATION OF DIPLOMATIC SPACE AT ROME IN THE MEDIO-REPUBLICAN ERA

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 IVth 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.