Ancient Greek History and Contemporary Social Science by Canevaro Mirko;Erskine Andrew;Gray Benjamin D.;Ober Josiah;

Author:Canevaro, Mirko;Erskine, Andrew;Gray, Benjamin D.;Ober, Josiah;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

3 CONNECTING ATHENS TO THE OIKUMENE: PANATHENAIC AMPHORAS

For archaeologists and historians, the Great Panathenaia are most famous for the procession that is displayed on the Parthenon frieze, but they were also an important agonistic event.17 In the hierarchy of Greek contests, the Panathenaia were counted among the festivals that followed the Big Four (Olympia, Pythia, Nemeia, Isthmia). The prizes are well documented, particularly by an important epigraphic document, a detailed prize list from about 390–375 BCE. The inscription shows the variety of prizes: oxen in the team events, golden wreaths and silver cash in the musical contests, and amphoras filled with oil in the ‘Olympic’ gymnic and hippic disciplines.18 Not only did the winners receive prizes, in the gymnic and hippic disciplines, but there was also a prize for the runner-up. The relation was one to five: for example, the winner of the boys’ wrestling competition got thirty amphoras, the runner-up six; the winner in the men’s armor race got seventy amphoras, the runner-up fourteen. In the kithara players’ competition, even fifth place got a prize.

The total value of the prizes was immense. The inscription is fragmented, and some uncertainties remain, but most of the lines are preserved, and with regard to the number and the prestige of the different disciplines, we can calculate that the Athenians produced roughly 1,400 Panathenaic amphoras for each celebration.19 Concerning the prizes for the musical contests, most numbers are lost, but the preserved lines for the cithara singers show a total of 4,000 drachmas. Taking all the prizes together, it is clear that this was one of the most expensive components of the Panathenaia. Most of the attested winners came from outside Attica, so Athenian citizens did not benefit directly from these public expenses. This raises an important question: why did the Athenians spend so much money on prizes?

Prizes such as oxen and those made of metal have not left any recognisable traces in the archaeological record, but Panathenaic amphoras did. Although the extant fragments are only a small part of the original output,20 the corpus is sufficient for an historical analysis. Panathenaic amphoras are a peculiar type of Greek pottery: All of them were painted in black figure, even when this technique had fallen out of fashion for centuries. One side of a Panathenaic amphora usually showed references to the discipline the prize belonged to; more interesting in our context is the other, more standardised one. Although not completely uniform, the pattern of this side is the same on all amphoras: Athena Promachos, wearing a peplos with aegis, a Corinthian helmet, shield and spear, dominates the scene with her warlike appearance. She is flanked on both sides by columns, on the top of which roosters are sometimes depicted. A very important feature of this side is the inscription, running from top to bottom: τῶν Ἀθήνηθεν ἄθλων, ‘one of the prizes from Athens’. On rare occasions a second inscription names the eponymous archon, giving valuable information about the date. The subject of this side of the amphora is very clear: it is Athens that is referred to, both in the image and in the text.

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