Description
Book SynopsisThe first full-length treatment of the Panathenaia, the most important festival in ancient Athens. Investigates how individuals participated in this long-lived, all-Athenian celebration, and how their participation constructed and fostered both group and social identity. Essential for anyone working on ancient Greece and especially Greek religion.
Trade Review'Shear's approach is programmatically holistic; she uses literary, epigraphical, and archaeological sources as well as theories of the social sciences … This book provides impressive evidence for the festival throughout its history and thought-provoking insights into the logics of constructing identities for the various subgroups attested as participants over the course of time. Hopefully, it will motivate further discussion about the importance and relevance of cult practices for social history - and for the cult.' Marion Meyer, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Table of ContentsPreface; 1. The Panathenaia: An Introduction; 2. Giants and Heroes: The Mythologies of the Panathenaia; 3. The Little Panathenaia; 4. The Great Panathenaia: Ritual and Reciprocity; 5. The Panathenaic Games: Entertaining the Goddess; 6. Creating Identities at the Great Panathenaia: Athenian Men; 7. Creating Identities at the Great Panathenaia: Other Residents and Non-Residents; 8. The City, the Goddess and the Festival; Appendix 1. The Hellenistic Archons of Athens: 323/2 to 48/7 BC; Appendix 2. The Parthenon Frieze and the Panathenaia; Appendix 3. The Races for the Apobates and the Dismounting Charioteer; Appendix 4: The Pyrrhiche and the Tribal Team Events; Appendix 5: The Date of IG II2 3079 = IG II3.4 528; Appendix 6: The Officials of the Great Panathenaia in the Third Century BC; Appendix 7: Tiberius Claudius Novius and the Great Panathenaia Sebasta; Appendix 8: The Text of Agora XVIII C197; Tables; Bibliography; Index Locorum; Index of Collections; General Index.
