Roger Dunkle
The Festival
The Panathenaea (‘all-Athenian festival') was Athens' most important
festival and one of the grandest in the entire Greek world. Except
for slaves, all inhabitants of the city and suburbs could take part in
the festival. The Panathenaea was one of those occasions when women
could get out of the house and take an active role in a public function.
Even metics (resident aliens) and freed slaves could participate (up to
a certain point). The holiday fell on the 28th day of the month
called Hekatombaion,1
roughly equivalent to last ½ of July and first ½ of August,
and the first month of the Athenian year. This holiday was believed
to be an observance of Athena's birthday and honored the goddess as the
city's patron divinity: Athena Polias ('Athena of the city').
In 566 BC, at the initiative of Pisistratus (soon to become tyrant of Athens),
this festival was extended every four years over a number of days with
many public events (Great Panathenaea). The following discussion
will concentrate on this more splendid form of the festival, which
lasted for a number of days, consisted of three elements: contests, procession,
and sacrifices.
It is not known with any certainty how many days the Great Panathenaea lasted, but here is one modern reconstruction, which posits an eight day festival:2
1. musical and rhapsodic contests
2. athletic contests for boys and youths
3. athletic contests for men
4. equestrian contests
5. tribal contests
6. torch race and pannychos (nocturnal
ritual): procession and sacrifice
7. apobates and boat race
8. awarding of prizes: feasting and
celebration
Athletic Contests
Athletic
contests, included foot races, wrestling, boxing, pankration (a combination
of wrestling and boxing), pentathlon (5 event contest: stade race, javelin-throw,
discus throw, long jump, and wrestling), four-horse chariot and two-horse
chariot races, horseback race, javelin-throw from horseback, apobatês
race pyrrhic
dancing,3 euandria (physical
fitness or beauty contest), torch relay race (about which more later),
and boat race. All these events, except for the torch and boat races,
were held in each of three age categories: boys (12-16), ageneios (16-20),
and men (20+) and took place in the Agora until 330 B.C. when a stadium
was built in the outskirts of Athens. Boat races were not typically
part of Greek athletic festivals, but they may have found a place in the
Panathenaic festival because of Athena's
connection with boat-building (the Argo). Pyrrhic dancing, physical
fitness, torch relay race, and boat races were tribal competitions restricted
to Athenian citizens, whereas even non-Athenians took part in the
track and field and equestrian events. Except for the four last named contests,4
the prizes (for first and second place only) were varying numbers
of amphoras
filled with olive oil. The olive tree and its fruit were sacred to
Athena and the oil was a very valuable commodity in the ancient world.
It could be used like butter for cooking, as soap, and as fuel in lamps.
The winning athletes normally sold their prize oil for cash. Besides the
everyday usefulness mentioned above, olive oil was in great demand by administrators
of the numerous athletic festivals throughout the Greek world. Athletes
rubbed themselves with oil before competition and scraped it off afterwards
with a metal device called a stlengis.
As an indication of value, in the fourth century B.C. the prize for the victor in the stade race (a 600 ft. long foot race) in the men's category was 100 amphoras of olive oil. In terms of today's dollar, the olive oil would be worth roughly $89,000 and the amphoras, which held the oil, about $2800. Greeks from other cities were allowed to compete in all the athletic contests among individuals. The competitions among tribes were limited to Athenians.
The two-mile torch relay race with four runners from each of the ten Athenian tribes was run from the altar of Eros outside the Dipylon gate to the Acropolis. The object was to win the race without causing the torch to go out. The winning tribe received a bull and 100 drachmas. The fire of the winning torch was used to light the sacrificial fire on the great altar of Athena on the Acropolis. The torch race was part of an all-night (pannychos) celebration also involving music and dancing on the night before the most important day of the festival when the procession and sacrifice took place. The apobatês race and the boat race closed out the festival contests.
Music Contests
Three musical contests involved
singers accompanying themselves on kithara (kitharôidos),
singers accompanied by an aulos
(a reed wind instrument similar to a clarinet or oboe), and aulos
players. The prizes for these contests were crowns (for first place
winners only) and cash. For example, the first prize for the kithara-singer
was an olive
crown in gold worth 1,000 drachmas and 500 silver
drachmas.5
Rhapsodic Contest
Reciters called rhapsodes
(literally, 'stitchers of song') competed at public festivals in the recitation
of epic poetry, in particular the Homeric poems and other poems belonging
to the Epic Cycle. They performed without musical accompaniment.
Prizes are unknown.
According to pseudo-Platonic dialogue called Hipparchos: Hipparchus, a son of the tyrant Pisistratus, and brother of Hippias, who succeeded his father as tyrant “... first brought the poems of Homer to this land [Athens] and compelled rhapsodes to go through them in order, each taking up the cue, as they do now.” This statement suggests that before Hipparchus established this rule, rhapsodes recited only isolated selections from Homer, like funeral games for Patroclus, the embassy, the ransom of Hector’s body and other favorite scenes from the Epic Cycle.
The claim that Hipparchus "first brought the poems of Homer to this land" probably means that he, with the help of experts (like the Homeridai on the island of Chios, believed to be the birthplace of Homer) established the standard texts of these poems, which the rhapsodes now had to adhere to and to recite as a whole, not just favorite parts. It is believed that the Homeric texts used by the rhapsodes are the ancestors of Homeric poems that we have inherited.
Procession
The procession assembled before dawn at the Dipylon gate in the northern
sector of the city. Here is a suggested lineup
of the procession:6 The frieze that runs
around the inner chamber of the Parthenon is generally
believed7 to represent the Panathenaic
procession, although it is clear that all the following are not represented
in the surviving sections. Where possible, links to the actual
sculpture or drawings of the relevant sections of the frieze appear in
the following list.
1. Four little girls carrying a peplos8
for the life-size statue of Athena
Polias
2. Priestesses of Athena and Athenian
women carrying gifts
3. Sacrificial
animals (cows and sheep)
4. Metics
(resident aliens), wearing purple robes and carrying on trays cakes and
honeycombs for offerings
5. Musicians
playing the aulos and the kithara.
6. A colossal
peplos
(for Athena Parthenos) hung on the mast of a ship on wheels
7. Old
men carrying olive branches9
8. Four-horse chariots with a charioteer
and fully armed man (apobatês)
9. Craftswomen (ergastinai
- weavers of peplos)
10. Infantry and cavalry
11. Victors in the games
12. Ordinary Athenians arranged by deme
The procession moved on the Panathenaic Way through the Agora towards the Acropolis. Some sacrifices were offered on the Areopagus and in front of the temple of Athena Nikê(Athena Victory) next to the Propylaea ('Gateway'). Only Athenian citizens10 were allowed to pass through the Propylaea and enter the Acropolis. The procession passed the Parthenon and stopped at the great altar of Athena in front of the Erechtheum. Each year a newly woven peplos (female garment) was taken by the craftswomen (ergastinai) into the Erechtheum and placed on a life-size old wooden statue of Athena Polias ('Guardian of the City'), while every four years in the Great Panathenaea, an enormous peplos was taken to the Acropolis for Athena Parthenos ('virgin') in the Parthenon.11
Since it would have been virtually impossible to put this peplos on a 39 ft. high statue, perhaps the dress was merely hung in the Parthenon. This peplos was so large that it was carried on the mast of a ship on wheels (like a float in a modern parade). The connection between the ship and Athena is unknown, but the use of a ship to carry the peplos must have seem appropriate in the fifth century after Athens had built the great fleet with which it dominated a large part of the Aegean world. Finally, there was a huge animal sacrifice at the Athena's altar and representatives from each deme in Attica, chosen by lot, enjoyed a meat banquet along with bread and cakes.
One Unforgettable Panathenaic Festival
During the celebration of the Panathenaea in 513 BC, when
Athens was ruled by the benevolent tyrant Hippias, sexual jealousy, personal
affront, and political conspiracy led to an event that Athenians believed
to be a turning point in their history.
Harmodios was a very handsome young man loved (erômenos - 'recipient of love') by an older man (erastês 'lover') named Aristogeiton. Trouble arose when Hipparchos, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, made sexual advances to Harmodios, who spurned them. Aristogeiton, overcome with jealousy and rage, decided to overthrow the tyranny. Meanwhile, Hipparchos, rejected a second time by Harmodios, decided on revenge. He invited Harmodios’ little sister to carry a basket in a religious procession (a great honor) and then claimed that he had never invited her at all because she was unworthy. Aristogeiton, supported by Harmodios and other haters of the tyranny, decided to assassinate Hippias on the very special day of the great Panathenaic procession. But before they could put their scheme into action something happened to disrupt their plan.
When they saw one of their fellow conspirators talking to Hippias outside the city in the Potters’ Quarter (Kerameikos, cf. ‘ceramic’), Aristogeiton and Harmodios thought that their plan had been revealed to Hippias. Thus they ran into the city into the Agora and killed Hippias’ brother Hipparchos near a sanctuary called the Leokoreion (Thuc. 1.20.2). Both lovers were killed by Hippias’ guards (Thuc. 6.54.1 – 6.59.4).
Aristogeiton and Harmodios immediately became legendary heroes and were honored as tyrannicides because many Athenians believed (wrongly) that Hipparchos was tyrant at the time of the assassination (Thuc. 1.20.2). Herodotus points out that that the assassination did not end the tyranny (which lasted for 3 more years) and all it accomplished was to make Hippias and his other brothers angry (6.123.2). Thucydides says that, as a result of the assassination, Hippias became paranoiac and put many citizens to death (6.59.2). In any case, statues of Aristogeiton and Harmodios were set up in the Agora, the originals of which were carried off by the Persians in 480 BC and were replaced soon after. The descendants of Harmodios and Aristogeiton received the distinction of dining at the state’s expense in the Prytaneion, one of the greatest honors the state gave to its citizens.
Notes
1. Every Greek city had different names for their
months (the names of our months are
inherited from the Romans). Hekatombaion (literally, an offering
of 100 oxen) was probably given as a name to this Athenian month because
of the sacrifice of large numbers of cows to the goddess in the Panathenaea.
Return to text.
2. Jennifer Neils, "The Panathenaea: An Introduction"
in Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens,
ed. by Jenifer Neils (Princeton 1992), 15. The athletic events took
place in the Agora until a stadium was built on the outskirts of Athens
in 330 B.C. Return to text.
3. The event involved dances in full armor.
Legend has it that Athena did this dance after the Olympian gods' victory
over the Giants. Return to text.
4. In pyrrhic dancing, physical fitness, torch
relay race, and boat race, the competition was among the ten Athenian tribes
and not individuals. The prizes for these contests consisted of a
bull plus a cash reward. No doubt the winning tribal contestants
sacrificed the bull and enjoyed a good beef meal. Return
to text.
5. The kithara-singers contest was
unusual in that there were prizes for first through sixth place.
Normally only the first and second place finishers got prizes in other
contests (as in the aulos player & singer and
aulos-player
contests). The value of the prize for the first place kithara-singer
(1500 drachmas) would have taken the average worker over two years to earn.
Return to text.
6. P. Connolly and H. Dodge, The Ancient City:
Life in Classical Athens & Rome (Oxford 1998), p. 87. Return
to text.
7. The discussion of the Panathenaic procession
above is based on the premise that the Parthenon frieze depicts this event.
There are, however, some problems with this assumption and recently a theory
was proposed by Joan Connelly ("Parthenon and Parthenoi: A Mythological
Interpretation of the Parthenon Frieze," AJA, January 1996, pp.
53-80) that the frieze represented the sacrifice of one of Erechtheus'
daughters. Return to text.
8. A peplos was the typical garment worn
by women in the archaic period and was a traditional gift to Athena as
early as the Iliad (6.302-04). Return to text.
9. Xenophon has one of his characters in the
Symposium
(4.17.4 - 4.18.1) say: "For they choose handsome old men as olive-shoot
bearers for Athena [in the Panathenaic procession], because beauty accompanies
every age." Return to text.
10. Metics (resident aliens), barbarians (non-Greeks),
and freed slaves who had marched in the procession up to this point had
to stay behind. Return to text.
11. Both peploi were decorated
with an embroidered depiction of the Olympian gods' victory over the Giants,
in which Athena played a leading role. Return
to text.