Home Classical, Ancient Near Eastern & Egyptian Studies Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia

  • Jessica Paga

    Jessica Paga is the Gale & Steven Kohlhagen Associate Professor of Classical Studies at William & Mary. Her publications include Building Democracy in Late Archaic Athens (Oxford, 2021; paperback 2023) and several articles and essays on Greek architecture, ritual, theater, and sacred spaces. She is currently working on two monographs related to the kinesthetic experience of Greek architecture and serves as an architecture and quarry specialist with the Naxos Quarry Project.
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill
Explore this Subject How to publish with us
Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome
This chapter is in the book Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract

Every four years at the Great Panathenaia, Athenians gathered to participate in games and contests in devotion to their patron goddess, Athena. The festival culminated with a brilliant procession of men, women, children, metics, and animals, all headed to the Akropolis for prayers, dedications, and sacrifice. It was at such a procession in 514/13 BCE that the tyrant Hipparchos was killed, setting the Athenians on a cascading journey that would eventually end in demokratia. The violent event was immediately mythologized and transfigured from an act of jealous passion to a calculated political assassination, a deliberate attempt to craft a new memory, distinct from historical facts. This essay argues that in subsequent Panathenaic festivals, both the physical act of walking in formation and the passage of the processional route helped to transform this new communal memory into embodied enactment, rendering each participant a potential tyrannicide.

Abstract

Every four years at the Great Panathenaia, Athenians gathered to participate in games and contests in devotion to their patron goddess, Athena. The festival culminated with a brilliant procession of men, women, children, metics, and animals, all headed to the Akropolis for prayers, dedications, and sacrifice. It was at such a procession in 514/13 BCE that the tyrant Hipparchos was killed, setting the Athenians on a cascading journey that would eventually end in demokratia. The violent event was immediately mythologized and transfigured from an act of jealous passion to a calculated political assassination, a deliberate attempt to craft a new memory, distinct from historical facts. This essay argues that in subsequent Panathenaic festivals, both the physical act of walking in formation and the passage of the processional route helped to transform this new communal memory into embodied enactment, rendering each participant a potential tyrannicide.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456-010

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 19.12.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111197456-010/html
Scroll to top button