Panathenaea: Or, A Singular Book on the Twin Festival of Minerva

CAPVT VIII.

The equestrian contest was held on the first day. I observe this in Plato, Republic, Book 1. He says that the day before he had gone down to the Piraeus to watch the Bendidéa festival of the goddess Bendis. Here are the words: "I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pray to the goddess, and at the same time I wanted to watch the festival." And not long after, he adds: "There will be a torch race in the evening on horseback for the goddess." I have already said above that these lesser Panathenaea began the day after the Bendidéa; therefore, it is clear that the first contest was equestrian. Plutarch mentions it in his Life of Phocion: "He allowed his son, who wished to compete, to perform as an apobates a rider who leaps off and onto a moving chariot, not desiring the victory itself, but so that by taking care and training his body, he might become a better man." And Xenophon in his Symposium: "For there was a horse race at the Great Panathenaea." Likewise Athenaeus, Book IV: "At any rate, when he won with horses at the Panathenaea," etc. And it was also a torch race. Plato, in the passage already cited: "There will be a torch race in the evening on horseback for the goddess." That there was a contest with torches at the Panathenaea, just as at the Prometheia and the Hephaestia, is taught by the Scholiast of Aristophanes in the Frogs: "The torch contest was held third at Athens: according to the Prometheia, the Hephaestia, and the Panathenaea." And