Panathenaic festival

“ Another contest peculiar to the Panathenaea was a muster of men (εὐανδρία) . Like the dramatic representations, the torch-race, and the Pyrrhic dance, this{375} was a liturgy, that is, a voluntary service performed by a rich citizen. It was his duty to select the handsomest and strongest men of his tribe, to clothe and equip them, and present them at the festival; that tribe which, in the opinion of the judges, made the best impression, received the prize. ”

“ The gods are there together because man is collectively assembled.
The great procession culminates in a sacrifice and a communal feast, a sacramental feast like that on the flesh of the holy Bull at Magnesia. The Panathenaia was a high festival including rites and ceremonies of diverse dates, an armed dance of immemorial antiquity that may have dated from the days when Athens was subject to Crete, and a recitation ordered by Peisistratos of the poems of Homer. ”

“ Athena struck the ground, and an olive-tree sprang up, the emblem of peace and of the victories of commerce, and the assembly awarded the prize to her. The goddess having thus received the sovereignty of Athens, it was but natural that a day should be set apart for her special honor, and a festival instituted to commemorate the great event. This was the greater Panathenaia, or All Athenians Day, which was celebrated every fourth year in honor of the goddess, and which, as its name implies, was taken part in by all the people of the city. ”

“ Here the hecatomb was offered on the great altar in front of the temple, as well as the sacrifices of the Attic clients. A plentiful banquet concluded this chief day of the festival, for the meat sacrificed was divided among the people, being distributed among all the demes separately, who specially told off a number of members to receive their share. The meals took place also according to demes. The after celebration at the Peiraeus consisted in the regatta already mentioned. We cannot tell how long the whole festival of the greater Panathenaea lasted ”

“ Panathenæa, a festival, or rather two festivals, the Lesser and the Greater, anciently celebrated at Athens in honour of Athena, the patron-goddess of the city.
Panchatantra, an old collection of fables and stories originally in Sanskrit, and versions of which have passed into all the languages of India, have appeared in different forms, and been associated with different names. ”

“ By all the gods and demons, I beg you, dear mother, to leave your rocks and fields in the country, and before you die, discover what beautiful things there are in town. Just think what you are losing,--the Haloan Festival and the Apaturian Festival, and the Great Festival of Bacchus, and especially the Thesmophorian Festival, which is now going on. If you would only hurry up, and get here to-morrow morning before it is daylight, you would be able to take part in the affair with the other Athenian women. ”

“ All day the festival goes on—the praying, the offering of gifts, the burning of little candles before the shrines—until the sun sets across the open country far beyond in gold and crimson glory. But even then there is no pause, no darkness, for hardly has the sun's last bright shaft faded from the pagoda spire far above, while his streamers are still bright across the west, than there comes in the east a new radiance, so soft, so wonderful, it seems more beautiful than the dying day. Across the misty fields the moon is rising ”

“ Should not a religion have a festival or holy day of this kind? Is not the conception of God as the ruler and sustainer of nature, the immanent and all-pervading spirit, one aspect of the Divine, which can fitly be thought of and celebrated year by year? Thus each of the three great Pentateuchal festivals may reasonably and joyfully be observed by liberals and orthodox alike. ”

“ Of folks-festivals, with processions, illuminations, and fireworks, always the same, now in honor of one saint, now of another, and frequently of the Madonna, we have generally two every week. The brilliant parts of the festival, are often very brilliant and tasteful; but the horrible explosions of powder-men, which are set up, like a kind of mustard-pot, in rings and rows on the square, which tumble about everywhere, after they have exploded; the smoke which they occasion, and the incessant jingling of bells, disturb our hearing, our eye-sight and all our other senses. ”

“ The festival was called the Pan-Athenæa; it was celebrated every year, but in its full splendour only every fourth year.
The word pan means all, and Athenæa, Athenians. It was so named because all free-born Athenian citizens were bound to appear in it, but none others were allowed that honour. Accordingly, in this bas-relief we see marshalled in procession all the various people in whose occupations "the blue-eyed goddess" [4] was supposed principally to interest herself. ”

“ It was the last day of carnival, which is the most noisy festival of the year, when a fever of joy, a mania of amusement, unparalleled in any other country, seized the Roman people. Everybody is disguised; hardly does there remain at the windows, an unmasked spectator: the scene of gaiety commences at a given hour on a certain day, and scarcely ever does any public or private event of the year hinder any person from joining the sports of the season. ”

“ In many of them the play-instinct is clearly evident, while in a few such as Vartavar, the whole self, with all its sentiments, instincts, tendencies, and emotions, is given the fullest and most unrestrained freedom. A festival, if it is anything, is a letting loose of the reins ”

“ Every act of civil life was so closely allied to the religious life, that it could not be performed without a sacrifice or a festival. A festival celebrated the cutting of the dykes, another the opening of the canals, a third the reaping of the first sheaf, or the carrying of the grain; a crop gathered or stored without a festival to implore the blessing of the gods, would have been an act of sacrilege and fraught with disaster. ”

“ The cult of the wine-god, Dionysus, was thus fostered at Sicyon by Cleisthenes, and at Corinth by the Cypselids; while at Athens a new festival of this deity, which so completely overshadowed the older festival that it became known as the Great Dionysia, probably owed its institution to Peisistratus. Another festival, the Panathenaea, which had been instituted only a few years before his rise to power, became under his rule, and thanks to his policy, the chief national festival of the Athenian state. Everywhere, again, we find the tyrants the patrons of literature. ”

“ There is one aim—to express the music perfectly and in the most lofty spirit; therefore the festival is both a vital element in the community and a welder of the people into a social unity. The chorus is also an influence for democracy. There is a weekly rehearsal. Women sometimes walk several miles to attend this and members rarely miss a meeting. One couple came twelve miles every week for eight years. There is no expense except for music and sometimes the sum does not go over sixty cents a year. ”

“ Here they were initiated in the mysteries of their national piety, [1143] accompanied by all the charms of music, and of a style of declaiming no less impressive than that of the theatre. At this festival, celebrated every five years, all the ceremonies were performed by virgins, none of whom could be above ten years old; [1144] we must, therefore, infer that they underwent much previous training, and were instructed carefully respecting the object of the rites. Another religious festival at which youthful virgins only officiated, was the Arrhephoria, celebrated in honour of Athena or Herse. ”

“ If the priests do not make good the deficiency, some one else will be kind enough to step forward. Better luck next year! The festival, they hope, is to become more popular as time goes on, despite the chilling prophecy of one of our friends: “It will finish, this comedy!” ”

“ Lectures, processions, singing parties are the invariable accompaniments of the festival and they not only afford an outlet to the religious zeal of the people but help in fostering the national sentiment also and in creating an interest in the outstanding questions of the day. The Reformers and Moderates have stood aloof from the festival and have misunderstood its aims and objects and its place in the work of the national uplift. But their opposition has no more arrested the popularity of the festival than the howlings of the Anglo-Indian press ”

“ Next morning he said to me:
"I feel unusually reckless today. I've been thinking the matter over and it seems to me that, on the day of the Festival, there will be thousands of sightseers in dingy cloaks and umbrella hats. I am of the opinion that you will run little risk on the streets anywhere in the poorer quarters of the city. I'm going to take you out with me to see the fun. We'll keep far away from where Caburus and Cossedo and their helpers are to take their stands. We'll see the morning fun and then eat a hearty meal and sleep all the afternoon." ”

“ They form an organic whole, constituted in accordance with one definite idea, consisting of the three great festivals Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, each in itself the centre of a special season. The foundations and heart of the whole festal system of the Church were given by a higher Hand, and only the development—the much less important part of the whole—is to be attributed to the thoughts and contrivances of men.
It now remains for us to consider the second division of the Christian festival system—the Saints’ Days. ”

“ To understand the history and meaning of the bas-relief reproduced in our illustration, we must first learn something of the worship of Athena in her chosen city of Athens. An annual festival was held here in her honor, and every four years occurred a very elaborate celebration called the Panathenæa. The Panathenæa lasted several days, and attracted throngs of people from all parts of Greece. There were contests in gymnastics and music, torch-races, horse-races, feasts and dances. Sacrifices of oxen were offered on the altar of the goddess, every state having to furnish an ox for the purpose. ”

“ The best remaining, both as regards workmanship and condition, are those on the south side, representing the struggles of the Lapiths and Centaurs. The inner frieze, running round the top of the temple walls, and surmounting the inner columns, represented the great Pan-Athenaic festival, including figures, in low relief, of knights and chariots, magistrates and maidens, priests and victims, and terminating in an assembly of the gods at the east end. ”

“ Every fourth year the festival was celebrated with peculiar magnificence; gymnastic sports were added to the horse races; and there is little doubt that Peisistratus aimed at making the penteteric Panathenaea the great Ionian festival in rivalry to the Dorian Olympia. The penteteric festival was celebrated in the third year of each Olympiad. The annual festival, probably held on the 28th and 29th of Hecatombaeon (about the middle of August) , consisted solely of the sacrifices and rites proper to this season in the cult of Athena. ”

“ Cheerfulness and happiness are, in my humble opinion, duties and habits to be cultivated; but, if you don't think so, I certainly would not deny you the privilege of being wretched: don't let us quarrel about it.
Rather let us turn to the Artists' Festival, which takes place in this month, and is one of the great attractions of the season. Formerly, this festival took place at Cerbara, an ancient Etruscan town on the Campagna, of which only certain subterranean caves remain. ”

“ Gregory, Tiridates, the legends of St. Rhipsime and St. Gaiane, and the other legends associated with the introduction of Christianity. Although centered about a religious ceremony which probably lasts no longer than fifteen minutes, the occasion is thus made a festival, and is about as important in fostering a real sentiment of patriotism and of church loyalty as any other single festival.
The ceremony of the manufacture of the holy oil is not of such central importance. It also, however, has the advantage of not occurring very frequently, coming as it does only once in every four years. ”

“ Perhaps some antiquarian will have discovered a papyrus on [83] which he has deciphered a hymn in praise of Artemis, coupled with an ode to the City, to be sung by the Epheboi, the youths of the place, and the girls destined to be Temple priestesses, at the great festival of springtide when nature’s self celebrates the glory of resurrection after its winter sleep, and decks the world with flowers. ”

“ Formerly there were other public festivals, as Lammas, Michaelmass, &c., which the Church had substituted for heathen feasts which have ceased to be public festivals, and I trust we may indulge the hope that the time is not far distant when, instead of all such festive relics of heathenism, the Church and people will substitute one daily festival of obedience to the honour of the founder of Christianity, viz., the festival of a righteous life. ”

“ Whether the grand festival that was meant was in Attica or elsewhere was a question which he never thought of, and which the oracle did not offer to solve. For the Athenians also have a festival which is called the grand festival of Zeus Meilichios or Gracious, viz., the Diasia. It is celebrated outside the city, and the whole people sacrifice not real victims but a number of bloodless offerings peculiar to the country. ”