slightly ironic, because for the Greek athletes who won the vases the contents were
undoubtedly as important as the container (if not more so). The amphoras were filled
with olive oil that came from special olive trees owned by the state and said to be
descendants of a sacred olive tree on the Acropolis that was a gift from Athena herself.
Competitions were arranged by age group (boys, youths, and men) and according to
an early fourth-century inscription, the winner of first prize in the youths’ wrestling
contest, as depicted on our vase, received not one, but fifty of them, while the youth
in second place received ten (Neils 1992:15–16).
Our vase is 62.8 cm high and would have held something over 35 liters of oil,
so the first prizewinner would have taken home close to 1,900 liters of oil. Based
on another early fourth-century inscription, the value of the oil in one amphora
can be calculated at about 12 drachmas, which means the youth who won the
wrestling event received oil worth 600 drachmas (Vos 1981:42). Since a skilled
laborer earned about 1 drachma per day, the youth’s winnings were not an insub-
stantial sum – almost two years’ wages. As many as 1,400 amphorae were awarded at
the festival every four years, so there was also a clear economic benefit for the potters
who received the state contracts to make the vases. Thus we can see economic,
political, artistic, and religious strands woven together to form part of the fabric of
the festival.
That the prize vases for the games in honor of Athena should be manufactured by
Athenian potters was appropriate on more than economic and political grounds. One
of Athena’s roles was as patron of potters (and other artisans); on an Attic red-figure
vase from the middle of the fifth century, Athena and Nike themselves appear in a
workshop to crown the artisans who are crafting vases (Boardman 1975: fig. 323).
Athena was thought to have taught the crafts to the Athenians as well as being their
patron, and there was an Attic festival in the late fall that honored Athena Ergane
(goddess of labor) and Hephaestus, the smith god. It was at this festival, nine months
before the Panathenaea, that a loom was set up and women began to weave apeplos,a
garment that would dress the most sacred cult statue of Athena on the Acropolis,
Athena Polias (Guardian of the City).
In fact, a central event of the Panathenaic festival each year was a procession
that accompanied the newly wovenpeplosto the ancient statue on the Acropolis.
Organized by a board of ten men appointed for a four-year term to oversee the
preparations for the festival, the procession itself was what might today be called
‘‘performance art.’’ The various elements of the Athenian population, and even some
non-Athenians, were chosen to participate in what must have been a colorful and
elegant event. The choice of who would participate was carefully made on the basis of
aesthetics as well as status; Xenophon (Symposium4.17) tells us that even the old men
who marched were chosen for their beauty. The procession ended on the Acropolis
with the presentation of thepeplosfollowed by the sacrifice, one by one, of a hundred
heifers at the great altar of Athena Polias that dated back at least to the seventh
century and probably earlier. The meat was then distributed to the Athenians gath-
ered below in the agora. Sacrifices were probably the only occasions when most
Greeks consumed meat.
Needless to say, none of thepeploiwoven for the cult statue has survived; however,
literary sources tell us that the same subject, the battle between the gods
and the giants called the Gigantomachy, was woven into thepeplosevery year. This
402 T.H. Carpenter