Panathenaic Way

External image
Inscription naming the Panathenaic Way, from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens

The name "Panathenaic Way"^[a] is known from an inscription, dating to the fourth century BCE,^[c] in the northern wall of the Acropolis near the Klepsydra fountain.^[5] Laura Ficuciello suggests that this name probably referred exclusively to the parts of the Way within the city boundaries, between the Dipylon Gate and the Acropolis.^[6] In the fourth century CE, the rhetorician Himerios used the term dromos ('track') to refer to the section between the Academy,^[7] around 3 kilometres (2 mi) outside the boundary of the city,^[8] and the Agora, the civic and commercial centre of Athens.^[7] The name is otherwise unattested in ancient sources, though it has become commonly used in modern scholarship.^[9]

The Panathenaic Way is among the oldest known routeways in Athens; it may be the only one with evidence of use in the Neolithic period (c. 7000 – c. 3200 BCE),^[10] and is one of few with identifiable surfaces from the Middle Helladic and Late Helladic periods of the Bronze Age (c. 2000 – c. 1600 BCE and c. 1600 – c. 1050 BCE respectively).^[11] The formalisation of the Way is traditionally dated to 566 BCE, and connected with the inauguration or reorganisation of the annual Panathenaia festival.^[12] Two wells near the Eleusinion sanctuary, north of the Acropolis, were closed around 575 BCE: this has been associated with the expropriation of private buildings in the area for the establishment of a processional route.^[13] Excavations in the northwest corner of the Agora found levelled ground, interpreted as the preparatory stage of road-building, dating to the sixth century BCE, though the earliest evidence of an actual surface dated to no earlier than 475 BCE. A packed road surface dating to the second half of the fifth century BCE was found in the same area.^[14]

The route followed by the Way originated at the Academy and passed through the Demosion Sema (public cemetery) outside the city limits.^[15] There is no evidence of a constructed surface on the sections outside the city until the fifth century BCE, though it is possible that the bedrock in this area was levelled to serve as a road surface.^[13] Most of the road was constructed with a hard pebble surface, with retaining walls and steps built in the part that climbs the Acropolis.^[16]

The road entered the city in the northwest. Its course originally followed the south bank of the Eridanos river, passing through the Sacred Gate, but moved northeast around 500 BCE, perhaps linked to the construction of the Stoa Basileios and the canalisation of the Eridanos.^[17] After the construction in 480/79 BCE^[d] of the Themistoklean Wall, the earliest securely attested perimeter wall of Athens,^[19] the Way entered the city at the Dipylon Gate.^[20] By the late fifth century BCE, it continued southeast through the inner areas of the Kerameikos towards the Agora.^[21] At the northwest corner of the Agora, immediately next to the Stoa Basileios, it was crossed by the Eridanos river; the river was probably crossed by means of a bridge from the earliest times, and was canalised and covered by the Roman period.^[22] From the Agora, the Way reached the Eleusinion before turning southeast to the Klepsydra and ascending the Acropolis via the Propylaia on its western side,^[21] approximately 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) from the gate.^[23] The overall route has a rise of 94 metres (308 ft) in elevation, though this increases sharply towards the end: between the Dipylon and the City Eleusinion it rises by 38.7 metres (127 ft) over a distance of 760 metres (830 yd), while between the City Eleusinion and the Acropolis it rises by 55.3 metres (181 ft) in 249 metres (272 yd).^[16]

The precise route taken across the Agora by the Way in the fifth century BCE and earlier is not definitively known: it may not have been fixed until the fourth or second century BCE.^[24] John McK. Camp has suggested that the need for a space for festive activities along the route of the Panathenaic Way may have been a major factor in the establishment of the Agora as a large open square.^[25] There is no evidence of wheel ruts in the fifth-century BCE layers of the Panathenaic Way immediately outside the northwest corner of the Agora, and it has therefore been suggested that wheeled traffic was forbidden from using the route to enter the Agora from this direction until the fourth century BCE.^[26] After this, the Way became a major route for traffic coming to the Agora from the hinterland of Attica.^[27] During the classical period (c. 500 – c. 300 BCE),^[28] it was 10 metres (11 yd) wide at its narrowest (between the Agora and the Acropolis),^[29] considerably larger than the Athenian average of 3.5 to 4.5 metres (11 to 15 ft).^[30] Its widest section in this period was 20 metres (66 ft) wide, as the road entered the Agora from the northwest.^[29] This unusual width was to accommodate ritual events, such as the annual Epitaphia, in which those Athenians and allies who had fallen in battle in that year were publicly buried in the Demosion Sema.^[31]

Photograph (left) and drawing of an Athenian coin of the 2nd century CE, showing the ascent of the Panathenaic Way up the Acropolis^[32]

Shortly after 394 BCE, when the Eridanos was straightened, the Panathenaic Way was linked to the adjacent Sacred Way by means of a cross street and a bridge over the river, a short distance outside the Dipylon near the Tritopatreion sanctuary.^[33] As with other roads connected to the city gates, the Way was repaired and widened, perhaps indicating that it was more formally defined, in the later fourth century BCE.^[30] By the Hellenistic period (323–86 BCE),^[34] it was around 29 metres (95 ft) wide immediately before the Agora and 39 to 40 metres (128 to 131 ft) at its widest point outside the Dipylon.^[35] During this period, a stone gutter was constructed along its southeast side.^[36]

The section of the Panathenaic Way between the southeast of the Agora and the Acropolis was paved,^[37] which was unusual for Athenian streets, in the first century CE.^[38] This paving was made up of reused blocks from earlier structures, some of poros stone and some of marble from a building of the Periclean period (c. 460–429 BCE).^[39] It preserves wheel ruts made by traffic moving along it.^[27] In late antiquity (that is, around the third to the sixth centuries CE), the road was repeatedly graded to level its course across the Agora; evidence of these operations is preserved in a drain used until the 580s, which was partly removed during them.^[40] The western edge of the Way across the Agora deteriorated along with the area's drainage system, becoming largely undifferentiated from its surroundings. In the same period, the road was redirected to the west in the Agora's southwest corner to avoid the Post-Herulian Wall, itself constructed around 287 CE.^[41] At least part of the Panathenaic Way was still in use by the 6th–7th centuries CE, near the northwest corner of the Agora, though this road had been substantially narrowed by the construction of houses during the same period.^[42] Traffic on the Way declined substantially following the Slavic invasion of Greece in the 580s; after this, parts of the road became covered in silt, and its drainage systems, established in the classical period, ceased to function.^[43]

Outside the walls in the Kerameikos, the Panathenaic Way was lined with tombs, including the public tombs erected for the Athenian war dead and the Tomb of the Lacedaemonians erected in honour of the Spartan soldiers killed supporting the Athenian democratic uprising against the Thirty Tyrants in 404/3 BCE.^[44] It also passed the Round Bath, a public bathhouse constructed in the fifth century BCE.^[45] Within the walls, buildings along the Way included the Pompeion (lit. 'Building for Processions'), constructed around 400 BCE immediately adjacent to the Dipylon Gate. This was the origin-point for festive processions, including that of the Great Panathenaia, in which a robe (peplos) intended for a statue of the goddess Athena on the Acropolis would be conveyed along the Way.^[46][e]

At some point after the Persian Wars (that is, from 479 BCE), probably during the time of Kimon (d. 450 BCE), a terracotta pipeline was constructed underground along the Panathenaic Way between the Dipylon and the Agora.^[42] From the Hellenistic period onwards, the same section was lined with shops and stoas (porticoes);^[49] the second-century CE traveller Pausanias reported additionally seeing religious sanctuaries and a gymnasium alongside it.^[50] Some of these stoas, constructed prior to the mid 1st century CE, were built using the remains of buildings destroyed during the sack of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 86 BCE.^[51]

The Panathenaic Way passed the Altar of the Twelve Gods at the northwest corner of the Agora; the monument is aligned on a slightly different axis to the road, suggesting that it was originally built along the route that preceded it.^[12] Immediately outside the altar, a line of limestone bases, dating approximately to the middle of the fifth century BCE, crossed the Panathenaic Way. On excavation in 1972, these were believed to have been used to insert starting-posts for runners in events during the Great Panathenaia.^[52] Further excavation in 2010–2012 revealed a second identical 12 metres (39 ft) to the south, and additional postholes forming the additional sides of a square enclosure approximately 12 by 15 metres (39 by 49 ft) in area.^[53] John McK. Camp suggests that the enclosure, which apparently blocked the Panathenaic Way, was the perischoinisma, a roped-off area described by the Roman-period author Plutarch as being in the same location.^[54] He suggests that it was used to control access into the main Agora square.^[55]

A statue commemorating Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the killers of the tyrant Hipparchos, stood alongside the Way in the centre of the Agora.^[56] The first version, sculpted in bronze by Antenor,^[57] was erected around the turn of the fifth century and taken during the destruction of Athens by the invading Persian forces in 480–479 BCE; it was replaced around 477 by one by Kritios and Nesiotes.^[58] The original statue was returned to Athens at some point after Alexander the Great captured the Persian capital of Susa in 330 BCE, and may have been displayed alongside Kritias and Nesiotes's version.^[59] During the early Hellenistic period (specifically, from at least 314/3 BCE), it was forbidden to erect any other monuments in its vicinity, though this prohibition ceased to be observed by 293/2 BCE.^[60]

Between 98 and 102 CE, the Library of Pantainos was built facing onto the Panathenaic Way, close to the Stoa of Attalos in the Agora.^[61] Around 280 CE, part of the Post-Herulian Wall was constructed along the section of the Way between the Agora and the Acropolis.^[62] Remodelling of the section between the Dipylon and the Agora took place in the fourth century CE, probably connected with the revival of the Panathenaia festival in the middle of the century; the Pompeion, destroyed in Sulla's sack of 86 BCE and subsequently built over with a storage building in the Antonine period (138 –192 CE), was reconstructed with a ceremonial gate as a starting-point for processions.^[63] The buildings in this area were badly damaged in the sack of 396 CE, conducted by forces of the Visigothic king Alaric I.^[64]

As a processional route, the Panathenaic Way replaced an older route which entered the Acropolis from the south-east, perhaps passing through an agora to the north or east of the rock, before ascending the Acropolis from the south. The route was changed to enter the Acropolis from the west at some point between c. 550 and c. 514 BCE.^[f][67]

Parts of the Way may have been used for athletic events from the sixth century BCE,^[68] and there is evidence of post-holes outside the Dipylon for wooden spectator stands used to watch these events in excavated layers dating to the classical and Hellenistic periods.^[69] During the Great Panathenaia, the Panathenaic Way formed the route run by torch-bearing racers (an event known as the lampadedromia) between altars in the Academy and the Acropolis.^[70] Another torch-race was carried out during the Epitaphia, between the altar of Prometheus in the Academy and the Dipylon Gate.^[69] From at least 182/1 BCE, and probably long beforehand,^[71] equestrian races were held during the Panathenaia along the processional route of the Panathenaic Way, a section about 770 yards (700 m) long between the Dipylon Gate and the City Eleusinion.^[72] In 170/69 BCE and for around two decades afterwards, twelve races were held there in each festival, including the apobates,^[71] which involved dismounting and remounting a moving chariot while wearing armour:^[73] Julia L. Shear comments that the steepness and narrowness of parts of the road created a high risk of "broken ankles, wrecked vehicles, or worse".^[71] The section of the Way in the Agora was used to erect monuments celebrating the victors in these equestrian competitions.^[74]

The Panathenaic Way was also a processional route at other festivals. During the City Dionysia, a procession carrying a statue of the festival's patron god, Dionysos, entered the city via the Dipylon Gate and proceeded to the City Eleusinion, before turning onto the Street of the Tripods to the east of the Acropolis,^[75] eventually ending up in the Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus on the Acropolis's south slope.^[76] A cavalry procession during the festival of Olympian Zeus followed the same route, ending at the Temple of Olympian Zeus southeast of the Acropolis. Initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries followed the route in reverse, from the City Eleusinion to the Sacred Gate adjacent to the Dipylon,^[75] from which they followed the Sacred Way to Eleusis.^[77]