Goddess and Polis

Laura Leibman
October 28, 2005

Outline

I. Introduction.

1. Thesis Part I: Greek religion was crucial to the polis as it unified the diverse interests of Athens’ citizens. Athenians role as protégés of their patron goddess Athena helped them navigate the potentially uneasy combination of democrats and imperial tyrants.
2. Overview of Greek religion.
   1. Practice and not faith.
   2. Practicing the gods.  The three hallmarks of Greek religion:
      1. Actions rather than sacred texts.
      2. No “sacred/secular dichotomy.
      3. A public religion, rather than a religion of the individul.
   3. Clifford Geertz’s definition of religion.
   4. Why Focus on the Panathenaic Procession?  Thesis Repeated.

II. The Panathenaic Procession:  The Street of the Panathenaia.

1. City Wall and Gate.
2. The Dipylon Gate:  the edge of the Athenian life.
1. Athens and empire.
2. The sacred way.
3. The living and the dead.
3. Kerameikos:  the Potters Quarter.
4. The Agora:  the Market Place.
5. The Propylaia: The Entryway to the Acropolis.
1. Ionic vs. Doric Orders.

III. The Parthenon and Time.

1. Aesthetics of Eternity.
2. Narrative of the sculptural program.

IV. Conclusion.

Terms

Faith (Greek pistis πíστ) vs. Practice (Greek nomizô, νομíζω), which literally means, “to hold or own as a custom or usage, to use customarily. To practice.” When Socrates is accused of “not believing in the old gods (Euthyphro 3b, my emphasis), the Greek word translated as “belief” is nomizô (νομíζω).
Panathenaia ("all the Athenians"). The state festival honoring the Athens’s patron deity, Athena.  The “Lesser” Panathenaia was held every year and lasted only for one day. The Greater Panathenaia was held every four years that included the procession of foreign subjects. In this version of the Panathenaia, a new peplos (robe) is delivered to the Statue of the Goddess. The middle stripe of panels of the peplos contains a depiction of Gigantomachy, the battle of the Giants and the Olympians (depicted in the east metopes of the Parthenon).  Some argue the battle symbolizes the triumph of civilization over savagery.  The procession brings the peplos through the city, hung like a sail on the mast of a wheeled ship.
Athena Polias (“of the city”; protector of the city). Athena Hygiaea (the healer).  Athena Nike (the victorious).
Dipylon Gate.  The main entrance into Athens at the northwest part of the city.
Kerameikos.  The potter’s quarter next to the Dipylon Gate.
Athenian Tribes: artificial political divisions of the Athenian people based on geography rather than kinship.
Agorá (literally "gathering place"). The market place and the seat of numerous civic cults, a sanctuary precinct with its sacred enclosures, altars, tombs of heroes, and festivals (Zaidman and Pantel 97).
Periclean Era (447-432 BCE). 
Stoa. A building having its roof supported by one or more rows of columns parallel to the rear wall; often a market building (Perseus.tufts.edu). The Royal Stoa was the building in the Agorá where Ephialtes had put on display the laws of Solon.  Socrates was summoned to appear here to answer charges of impiety and corrupting the youth.  The Painted Stoa (475-450 BCE, Stoa Poikile), on the North side of the Agorá, was “most famous for its great patriotic frescoes celebrating victories from Athens’ recent and distant past, at Marathon and over the Amazons” (Shapiro 220).
Altar of Twelve Gods (Altar of Pity).  A central altar in the Agorá. Once associated with tyranny, by the Periclean era it had a reputation as the place of refuge and asylum (Shapiro 220).
Propylaia. Entrance gate-building to the Acropolis built by Mnesikles  in 437-32 BCE.
Liminal.  Threshold, boundary, or borderline.
Ionic.  A type of order and column associated with Asia Minor (Ionia).  Ionic columns are taller and slimmer than Doric ones and have curlicues on their capitals (tops).  Ionic temples tend to have double colonnades (rows of columns) giving the temple a forest-like feel.  According to Robin Rhodes, Ionic temples are processional and their “ambiguous boundaries” “invite the mingling of things outside with those within” (Rhodes 57).
Doric.  A type of order and column associated with the Greek mainland.  Doric columns are thicker, shorter, and simpler than Ionic ones.  Doric temples use fewer columns.  The two ends of Doric temples are virtually identical and hence there is “no strong sense of direction inherent in the Doric temple, no sense of procession, no compulsion to enter”;  “the significance of the Doric temple architecture separates it from the horizontal, isolates it from the pedestrian” (Rhodes 56). 
Aesthetics. The quality and nature of sensory responses related to, but not limited by, the concept of beauty.
The Forms (Greek eidos).  Plato’s word for the permanent reality which makes a thing what it is, in contrast with the thing's particulars, which are finite and subject to change.
Human Time.  Diachronic Time.  Time as we normally think of it.  Progresses linearly from the past to the present to the future.
Transcendent Time.  Synchronic Time.  Time as experienced by immortal beings (like the gods)—cyclical and simultaneous.

Quotes & Soundbites

(A) The three hallmarks of Greek Religion

1. First, the ancient Greeks organized religion neither on a sacred text like the Bible or Qur'an, nor on abstract dogmas or creeds, but rather Greek religion was comprised principally of actions: rituals, festivals, processions, athletic contests, oracles, gift-givings, and animal sacrifices." (Neils 13). 
2. The “sacred/secular dichotomy as we know it has little meaning for the Greek world” (OCD 1300).
3. Greek religion was primarily a public religion, rather than a religion of the individual.  “[R]eligious observances contributed to the structuring of society, as kinship groups (real or fictitious), local inhabitants, or less obviously related groups of friends constructed their corporate identity around shared deities and cults” (OCD 1300).

(B) Religion is “a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality so that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (Geertz 206).

(C) “The Athenian Agorá (literally "gathering place") was the seat of numerous civic cults, a sanctuary precinct with its sacred enclosures, altars, tombs of heroes, and festivals. But at the same time it was a symbol of the city of Athens' political activity; along its margins, therefore, there were eventually constructed all the buildings essential to the conduct of political life.” (Zaidman and Pantel 97).

(D) Some of the changes made to the Panathenaic procession during the 5th Century:

1. “[T]he huge peplos (garment for the statue of Athena) woven for the Greater Panathenaia began to be displayed as the sail of a ship wheeled up to the Acropolis” (Shapiro 217).
2. Day five of the Panathenaic festival was given over to tribal contests and these tribes and contests increasingly became the subject of vases during the Periclean era (Shapiro 219).
3. The inclusion in the Agora of the Stoa Poikile (with frescoes celebrating victories from Athens recent and distant past).  The renovated Altar of the Twelve Gods (Shapiro 220)
4. The building and stops at the Propylaia
5. The (re)construction of the Parthenon to include scenes of procession.

(E) The four-part aesthetic of the Acropolis and Parthenon:

1. Multiplicity: paradoxically the lavish abundance of plants, stone etc. in the highest world is the "picture" chosen for the undifferentiated unity of the Forms.
2. Many colors--clear, distinct, and intensely luminous.
3. Soft, smooth or transparent materials, whose shining surfaces are primary signifiers.
4. Clarity and lucidity: not fractured perspectives, nothing ambivalent or obscured. (Lagerlof 158)

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Connolly, Peter.  The Ancient City.  NY:  Oxford UP, 1998.

Geertz, Clifford, “Religion as A Cultural System.” Reader in Comparative Religion:  An Anthropological Approach, ed. William A. Lessa & Evon Z. Vogt. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Kerr, Minott. "’The Sole Witness’: The Periclean Parthenon." Hum 110 Lecture, Reed College. 23 Oct. 95.

Lagerlof, M. The Sculptures of the Parthenon: Aesthetics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000.

Neils, Jenifer. Goddess and Polis: the Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.
The Oxford Classical Dictionary [OCD], ed. Simon Hornblower & Antony Spawforth.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Rhodes, Robin. Architecture and Meaning on the Athenian Acropolis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Scully, V. The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Shapiro, H.A., “Democracy and Imperialism:  The Panathenaia in the Age of Pericles,” Worshipping Athena, ed. Jenifer Neils.  Madison:  U Wisconsin P., 1996.

Traulos, Ioannes. Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens. New York: Praeger, 1971.

Wycherley, R. E. The Stones of Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Zaidman, Louise and Pauline Pantel. Religion in the Ancient Greek City. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

Images

(Bernard SUZANNE.Plato and His Dialogues.1998. http://plato-dialogues.org/tools/mapindex.htm 10.24.05)

In the Agorá:  1. Royal Stoa  2. Painted Stoa  3. Altar of 12 Gods