ABSTRACT
There was a procession that involved all classes of citizens, female as well as male, and the resident aliens, or 'metics', who led along the ewes and cows that were to be sacrificed and distributed to the participants; the aristocratic Knights in their ceremonial regalia; officials and priests or priestesses of various kinds; competitors in the games that would later be held (among the more exciting events were the 'apobatai', who had to dismount from a chariot and run the final lap to the finish line, a torch race and a regatta) who would receive the celebrated Panathenaic amphoras filled with choice olive oil and depicting, along with Athena as patroness, the event in which the prize had been won. The procession wound through the Athenian agora from northwest to southeast along the 'Panathenaic way', then climbed the Akropolis hill and made its way to Athena's oldest shrine, the 'old temple' (superseded in the latter part of the fifth century by the Erechtheion), where the ceremonial cloak or 'peplos' that had been brought part of the way as rigging on a wheeled model ship and whose manufacture and fine decoration had been entrusted to 'working women' from aristocratic families many months before, was draped about the goddess' statue. 1
I turn now to the evidence of Perikles' involvement. As part of a detailed account of the Periklean building programme that he gives at Per. 13.6ff., Plutarch puts special emphasis on the Music Hall or 'Odeion' and, in connection with it, changes to the Panathenaia for which he says Perikles was responsible:
Eager for honour as he was (philotimoumenos), Perikles had a decree passed for the first time that a musical contest be held at the Panathenaia, and he arranged that he himself should be elected contest-organizer (athlothetes), as well as rules for those competing in aulos-playing, singing and kithara-playing. Continuously from that time spectators have viewed the music-competitions in the Odeion.
