Collection Publications: Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens

Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens

As I said before, the Athenians are more devout about religion than anyone else. -- Pausanias (I.24.3) With the critical eye common to many travelers in a foreign city, Pausanias made this judgement about the citizens of the polis (city-state) of Athens during a trip there around 150 A.D. It is from his and other historical accounts that we know about the religious rituals of the Greeks as well as their art and architecture, much of which is no longer extant. By the time of Pausanias' visit, the Athenians had been celebrating their most famous festival, the Panathenaia for over seven hundred years. Held in honor of Athena, the patron goddess of the city, it was founded in 566 B.C. and remained a high point of civic and religious life until the fourth century A.D. Study of the Panathenaia is important for the insight it gives us into the social and religious practices of the first democratic society. It also helps us to understand some of the most significant works of art created in ancient Athens, such as the sculpted frieze of the Parthenon and the large painted vases awarded as prizes at the festival. Greek festivals were held on the same date every year and often were celebrated with special splendor every fourth year. The most famous of the festivals were held at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, lsthmia, and Athens. At these religious celebrations, the worshipers considered it appropriate not only to offer their deities prayer s, votive gifts, and sacrifices of animal flesh, but also to perform musical concerts, theatrical plays, or feats of athletic prowess in the honor of the gods. By holding festivals, Aristotle wrote, the Greeks "pay due honor to the gods and at the same time provide pleasant relaxations for themselves." The Panathenaia was held annually during the summer on the 28th of Hekatombaion (equivalent to late July on our calendar), reputedly the day on which Athena sprang full-grown from the head of her father Zeus. The "Greater" Panathenaia, which, like the Olympics, occurred every four years and lasted approximately a week, featured athletic and equestrian contests as well as competitions in music and poetry. It also included special events that were restricted to the members of the ten Athenian tribes, such as the boat race in the city's harbor, military dancing (known as the pyrrhike) and even a contest for something called "manly excellence." The most sacred events of the festival began with a torch race that started in the grove of Plato's Academy outside the city walls and finished at the altar of Athena on the Akropolis. Partly athletic, partly religious, this transfer of fire is still part of the Olympics today. On the following day at sunrise, the official Panathenaic procession commenced at the Dipylon Gate and moved solemnly along the Panathenaic Way to the Akropolis. In the long line of marchers were citizens, other residents of the city, and foreign delegations: knights on horseback , charioteers, musicians, old men bearing branches, youths and maidens with sacrificial equipment, elders, officials, and the priest and priestess of Athena. The festival culminated in the presentation of a newly woven robe, or peplos, which was draped on the sacred olive wood statue of Athena Polias. Now lost, this image may be reflected in the many small terracotta statuettes of a seated goddess that have been found on the Akropolis.

CONTESTS AT THE PANATHENAIA

"But as they were running the last part of the race, then Odysseus said a prayer inside his own mind to grey-eyed Athena: "Hear me, goddess; be kind; and come with strength for my footsteps." — Homer, Iliad (23.768-70) The ancient Greeks were renowned for their practice of staging competitions in which they demonstrated their gymnastic and artistic skills. Some of these contests, particularly the athletic and equestrian events, may have originated in the practice of war and in ritual s honoring the dead. Eventually, however, the games (agones) became cultural and religious celebrations: a dedication of physical energy and display of competitive excellence to honor the gods. By the fifth century B. C., it had become common for professional athletes to travel throughout Greece and compete in a periodos or circuit of games. We know much about such contests from references in Greek literature, but a principal visual source for our knowledge of Greek sport is Athenian pottery, in particular the large vases known as Panathenaic prize amphoras that were commissioned specifically for the festival. Expertly decorated and filled with valuable olive oil, they were given as awards to the victors in most of the athletic and equestrian events. The painted decoration was the same for each vase: on one side, a depiction of the warlike Athena, spear raised and striding forward; on the other, a scene of the contest for which the amphora and its contents were the prize. It is largely from these images that we know about the use of athletic equipment, namely the javelin, discus, and jumping weights, about such details as the dress of judges and trainers, and the various holds of wrestlers. Athletic contests at the Panathenaia consisted of the footrace, pentathlon, wrestling, boxing, and the pankration, a no-holds barred type of wrestling with only gouging and biting prohibited. Wrestling, boxing, and the pankration were considered the "heavy" events possibly because there were no weight classes and the heftier athletes tended to dominate. Boxing was particularly brutal since no protective equipment was worn except leather thongs to bind the hands, and blows were delivered to the head rather than the body. The equestrian contests were the most dramatic spectacles and were dominated by aristocrats since only the very wealthy could afford to maintain stables and hire jockeys. The four-horse chariot (quadriga) race was probably the most prestigious event, as the largest number of prize amphoras (140) was awarded to the winner. The Greek poet Pindar credits Athena with the invention of the double pipes, so it is appropriate that musical contests were part of her festival. There were four types of competitors: the aulete who played the aulos or double pipes; the aulode, who sang to the accompaniment of the pipes; the kitharist, who played an elaborate form of lyre known as the kithara; and the kitharode, who both played and sang. Music would have been heard as well at some of the athletic events such as pyrrhic dancing, during the Panathenaic procession, at the sacrifice on Athena's altar, and afterwards at the victors' banquets. The contests at the festival also included poetic recitations of the epics of Homer by professional performers known as rhapsodes, whose skill was such that they could reduce their audiences to tears . Like the tragedies and comedies presented at the annual festivals of the god Dionysos, the music and poetry performed at the Panathenaia constituted both a religious act and popular entertainment. Although prize vases were not awarded to the victors in these events, scenes of such competitions were depicted on vases similar in shape to the Panathenaic prize amphora.

GREEK ART AND THE PANATHENAIA

‚—¶she caught up a powerful spear, edged with sharp bronze, heavy huge, thick, wherewith she beats down the battalions of fighting men, against whom she of the mighty father is angered, and descended in a flash of speed from mount Olympus‚—¶ -- Homer, Odyssey (I.99-102) It is not known whether the city was named for Athena, or if she was named after the polis. Regardless, her image could be seen throughout Athens. Her likeness - and that of her attribute, the owl - decorated the pottery of the Athenians and was stamped on their coins. She was also depicted in m an y guises in the statues housed in her various temples and dedicated by worshipers in the outdoor spaces of the Akropolis. Most often Athena appeared as she is described above-- a warrior armed for battle with helmet, spear, shield, and her aegis, a breastplate fringed with snakes and embellished with the fearsome head of the gorgon, Medusa. She was also worshiped in a more peaceful guise as Athena Ergane, the goddess of craftsmanship, whose patronage of weavers and potters was important for the well-being of the city's economy. Her most famous image in antiquity was the forty-foot colossal statue fashioned of ivory and gold by the famed sculptor Pheidias. As its name Athena Parthenos implies, it stood inside the Parthenon, the temple constructed in 447-432B.C. at the instigation of Perikles. Showing the goddess standing calmly, with her shield and spear at her side and a winged victory in her right hand, the statue symbolized the tremendous civic pride of a city at the very height of its political power. On the Panathenaic peplos, a story-cloth woven by aristocratic Athenian women during the nine months preceding the festival, she was traditionally shown fighting the Olympian gods' mighty enemies, the giants. Although Greek textiles rarely survive, we get a glimpse of the richly decorated garments worn by deities in sculpture and on painted vases, and the Parthenon frieze shows the peplos itself being folded by the priest of Athena. On the Panathenaic prize amphoras, Athena was portrayed as the guardian and protectress of those who worshiped her. The earliest surviving vase of this type was produced at the time of the founding of the festival's athletic contests in 566 B.C. and the latest examples are four centuries later in date. It has been estimated that for each quadrennial festival a minimum of 1400 vases [were] required. The commissions to produce these would have been extremely lucrative for Athenian workshops and were given to some of the finest artists in the city. Panathenaic prize amphoras were painted in a technique known as black-figure, in which the background remains the reddish-orange color of the clay while the ornament and figures are painted with a mixture of water and clay (slip) which fires shiny black in the kiln. This method of vase-painting dominated until 530 B.C., when Athenian potters invented the red-figure technique in which the figures are left in the color of the clay and the background is painted in black slip. However, because of religious conservatism, the festival vases continued to be executed in black-figure. This conservatism is also evident in the figure of Athena on the front of the vases; although she grows taller over time, she retains the static pose and two-dimensional quality of early Greek art. The vase-painters were not so restricted in their depiction of the athletes on the back; their poses and musculature reflect contemporary developments in Greek painting. In addition to the amphora (a two-handled jar for liquids such as oil and wine) Greek potters produced a range of utilitarian shapes. Many, such as drinking cups (kylix or skyphos), the wine jug (oinochoe), and the bowl for mixing water and wine (krater), were used at men 's drinking parties known as symposia. Other narrow-necked shapes like the miniature Panathenaics and the lekythos held perfumed oil, which was used for personal hygiene or for anointing the dead . The lekythos was often decorated in yet another technique known as white-ground in which the surface of the vase is coated with a white slip, on top of which figures are either outlined or drawn in black silhouette. History has already judged the culture of Classical Athens to be a high point of western civilization. To what extent its brilliance can be attributed to the city 's foremost festival , the Panathenaia, is still a matter of conjecture. However, we ca n state that the marble buildings of the Akropolis, the sculptures adorning Athena 's temples, the statues dedicated in her sanctuary, and the vases commissioned for her festival are unsurpassed in all of Greek art. The Panathenaia inspired a level of civic consciousness and pride in polis that in turn generated one of the richest displays of Classical art. Long after Macedonian troops and Roman legions had swept away the political autonomy of the Greek city-states, Athens remained preeminent in the arts. Perikles foresaw the lasting greatness of the city when he spoke these words in his famous funeral oration: Taking everything together then, I declare our city is an education to Greece‚—¶mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our empire which we have left. Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. -- Thukydides, The Peloponnesian War (II.41)