Panathenaic Games

The Panathenaic Games were held every four years in Athens in Ancient Greece since 566 BCE.A Brief History of the Olympic Games by David C. Young, p. 23 They continued into the third century CE.Susan Heuck Allen, Finding the walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlík, University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-20868-4, p. 39. These Games incorporated religious festival, ceremony (including prize-giving), athletic competitions, and cultural events hosted within a stadium.
==Religious festival==
The games were part of a much larger religious festival, the Panathenaea, which was held every year. Every fourth year when the games were also held, the festival was known as the "Great Panathenaia," and was three or four days longer than the regular festival. They were the most prestigious games for the citizens of Athens, but they were not as important as the Olympic Games or the other Panhellenic Games.
==First Great Panathenaea==
The first Great Panathenaea was held during the rule of Peisistratos in 566 BCE, and was modelled on the Olympic Games. Peisistratus also added music and poetry competitions, which were part of the Pythian Games but not the Olympics. The games were divided into games for Athenians only, and games for Athenians and any other Greeks who wanted to participate. The games for all Greeks were essentially the same as the Olympics, with boxing, wrestling, pankration, pentathlon, and chariot racing, but chariot racing was the most prestigious of these, unlike the Olympics where the stadion (foot race) was more important.
These games in which only the Athenians were allowed to participate were somewhat different. These included a torch race from the Piraeus to the Acropolis (the supposed ancestor of the modern Olympic torch relay that takes place prior to the Games, though in reality the modern torch race was invented as propaganda for Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympic Games), mock infantry and cavalry battles, a javelin throw on horseback, the apobatai (a chariot race in which the driver had to jump out of the chariot, run alongside, and jump back in), the pyrriche (apparently military exercises accompanied by music), and the euandrion (essentially a beauty contest among the athletes). The prestigious event was a four-horse chariot race and the winner received a prize larger than for any of the athletic contests.A Brief History of the Olympic Games by David C. Young, p. 46 In later years there was also a rowing competition.
==Ceremony==
The procession to the Parthenon was more important than the games themselves. During the Great Panathenaia, a special robe (the peplos) was made by the women of Athens for the statue of Athena, which was carried to the Parthenon as part of the procession. There was also a large sacrifice made to Athena, the hekatombe ("sacrifice of a hundred oxen") and the meat from the sacrificed animals was used in an enormous banquet on the final night of the festival, the pannychis ("all-nighter"). Many scholars believe that this procession is the theme of the Parthenon Frieze.
Award ceremonies included the giving of Panathenaic amphorae which were the large ceramic vessels that contained the oil given as prizes. The winner of the chariot race received as a prize one-hundred and forty "Panathenaic Amphorae" full of olive oil.
== Cultural events ==
The Panathenaea also included poetic and musical competitions. Prizes were awarded for rhapsodic recitation of Homeric poetry, for instrumental music on the aulus and cithara, and for singing to the accompaniment of the aulus and cithara (citharody). In addition, the Games included a reading of both the Odyssey and the Iliad.
==The Panathenaic Stadium==
The athletic events were staged at the Panathenaic Stadium, which is still in use today. In 1865, Evangelis Zappas left a vast fortune in his will with instructions to excavate and refurbish the ancient Panathenaic stadium so that modern Olympic Games could be held every four years "in the manner of our ancestors".The Modern Olympics, A Struggle for Revival by David C. Young, p. 42 The Panathenaic stadium has hosted modern Olympic Games in 1870,The Modern Olympics, A Struggle for Revival by David C. Young, Chapters 4 & 13 1875, 1896, 1906 and 2004.
==References==
*Roisman, Joseph, and translated by J.C Yardley, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011) ISBN 1-4051-2776-7
Category:Ancient Greece