Panathenaia festival

A 5th century BCE mural of the Panathenaia procession

The Panathenaia was a religious festival held in Athens, Greece.

Held every year at the end of July and the beginning of August, the festival grew more grandiose every fourth year, when it was called the Great Panathenaia. The celebrations included athletic games, musical performances and contests, communal feasting, torch relay race, and a procession in which the wheeled ship was paraded through the polis. The festival included the hecatomb, a sacrifice of 100 oxen, at the Altar of Athena on the Akropolis Sanctuary. One key scene of the festival was the offering of a new peplos to the goddess Athena by the arrhephoroi.

The winners of the Panathenaic games were awarded the most expensive Athenian olive oil, considered the purest in the Greek world.

Trivia

• The mural depicting the Panathaneia procession seen in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey was apparently based on parts of the Parthenon Frieze, a high-relief pentelic marble sculpture adorning the Parthenon. In-game, though the mural can be seen in the Parthenon, pieces of it have been used to decorate numerous other temples and buildings as well.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey