Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Pleasure and Leisure 269
the end of the campaigning season in early winter. Thukydides
describes it as follows:
Three days before the ceremony the bones of the fallen are brought and
put in a tent which has been erected, and people make whatever offerings
they wish to their own dead. Then there is a funeral procession in which
coffins of cypress wood are carried on wagons. There is one coffin for each
tribe, which contains the bones of members of that tribe. One empty bier
is decorated and carried in the procession. This is for the missing, whose
bodies could not be recovered. Everyone who wishes, both citizens and
foreigners, can join the procession, and the women who are related to the
dead make their laments at the tomb. When the bones have been laid in
the earth a man chosen for his intellectual gifts and general reputation
makes an appropriate speech in praise of the dead and after the speech
everyone departs. (2.34)
Other festivals in honor of the dead include the third day of the
Anthesteria, known as the Chytroi, or Pots, which was so named
because pots of porridge were offered on that day. Chytroi, in other
words, was the Athenian equivalent to All Souls’ Day, when the
souls of the dead left their graves and wandered abroad. To counter
their noxious presence, people would chew buckthorn and smear
the doors of their houses with pitch. The dead were also celebrated
at the Genesia and Nemeseia. The Genesia was in origin a private ritual
celebrated on the birthday of the deceased, though under Solon
it became a national festival. The Nemeseia (derived from nemesis,
meaning vengeance) took place at night and was intended to placate
those who had come to a violent end.
The Panathenaia
The most prestigious Athenian festival was the Panathenaia or
All-Athenian Festival, held annually on the birthday of Athene, the
city’s patron goddess. Once every four years, the festival was celebrated
with special grandeur. This occasion is the subject of the
great frieze that ran around the outer wall of the Parthenon. The
procession assembled outside the city at the Dipylon Gate and proceeded
through the Agora along the ceremonial Panathenaic Way
in the direction of the Acropolis, its final destination.
Groups representing the entire population of Athens participated,
the largest of which was a military contingent. On the Parthenon
frieze, this takes the form of a cavalcade of naked horsemen. Young
girls carried baskets containing barley meal to sprinkle on the