Session 2

 

Speakers:

 

- Dr Eva Stehle ( Professor of Classics, University of Maryland) : Athena and the Akropolis in Cult and Drama

 

Abstract:

 

In recent scholarship Athena is described as having “multifarious” aspects and combining “antithetical” qualities. The most obvious opposition is between her female and male sides, but other antitheses that define her in art and literature fall on the male side, in connection with war, politics, and crafts (e.g., horsemanship and metal working). She was the patron of weaving, but the peplos that women wove as an offering for her represented her doing battle. In visual depictions that do stress her female nature, which often take the form of votive offerings, she could adopt any of several identities: parthenos, mother-goddess, kourotrophos. Even in these images, however, she sometimes wears a helmet and/or an aegis. Helmet and aegis identify her as Athena, so one might want to dismiss their significance. Yet she is sometimes shown as having set her helmet aside or displaced her aegis, which means that each functioned as an active sign of her warlike character. Thus Athena was portrayed in art as retaining her identification with the male side even in situations that required her female qualities to be operative. As for drama, she famously asserts in Aeschylus ′ Eumenides 737–738: "I approve the male in all things, except marriage for myself, with my whole heart and am emphatically on the side of the father." Women prominently served her on the Akropolis, and many dedicated offerings to her there, but their perspective is to a large extent lacking in artistic and literary works.

 

It is therefore startling when two late-fifth-century plays –Aristophanes′ Lysistrata of 411 and Euripides′ Ion of about. 410–treat Athena as standing on the side of the woman and depict the Akropolis as female space. This paper focuses on the treatment of helmet and aegis respectively in these plays as signs of the new alliance between Athena and women and on the correspondingly new portrayal of the Akropolis. Lysistrata represents the Akropolis as fostering female citizen sexuality and links the helmet with birth-giving in a city at peace. Ion connects the Akropolis and the Gorgon and snakes that protect Erichthonios/Ion with Athenian renewal of autochthony through the female. It thereby reverses Eumenides′ alignment of Athena with the male. Each play promotes an Athens-centered view of the global political realm, but presents it as a product of Athena's alliance with women. Both playwrights were able to think through new ideological representations of Athens by drawing on Athena′s strong cultic connection with women on the Akropolis.

 

Dr. Eva Stehle teaches ancient Greek language, literature, and religion at the University of Maryland, having received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati with a strong component of archaeological study, including excavation at Ayia Irini on Keos. She has worked extensively on ancient women and on the performance of poetic texts, both of which interests are reflected in her book Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece (Princeton University Press, 1997). She is now finishing a book on women′s religious ritual, which she began while holding a resident fellowship at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. In it she uses a performance approach and investigates women′s influence on major innovations in Greek religion and culture, including the Eleusinian Mysteries and Attic tragedy. She has written numerous articles on ancient literature that increasingly incorporate material culture such as vase painting, inscriptions, and costume and masks in drama into her study of performance. She also gives frequent talks; a particularly gratifying recent invitation was to speak at the XIII Meeting on Ancient Drama, held in July 2007 at the European Cultural Center at Delphi, where she gave a paper on Euripides′ Bacchae.

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-Dr. Andreas Scholl (Director, Antikensammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Germany) : The Acropolis Votive Offerings from the 8th to the Early 6th Century B.C. and the Formation of the Athenian City-State

 

Abstract:

 

This presentation focuses on the votive offerings from the Athenian Akropolis in the Geometric and early Archaic Periods. The discussion starts with the oldest preserved dedications from the middle of the Geometric Period and terminates with the description of a radical change in Athenian votive practice in the early sixth century. The paper presents a short overview of the most important types of votive offerings known from the Geometric and early Archaic Akropolis. A brief attempt is made to link these observations with the few facts known about the historical situation of Athens and mainland Greece in the eighth and seventh centuries. It becomes evident that the Akropolis had come to be the central sanctuary of the emerging Athenian polis as early as the second half of the eighth century and was able to consolidate that position in the course of the seventh century. A full account may be found in Dr. Scholl′s recent article “Anathemata ton Archaion. Die Akropolisvotive aus dem 8. bis frühen 6. Jahrhundert v. Chr. und die Staatswerdung Athens” (JdI 121, 2006, 1-173 Abb. 1–55). Dr.

 

Andreas Scholl is Director of the Antikensammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Collection of Classical Antiquities, Berlin State Museums, Prussian Cultural Heritage). After studying classical archaeology and ancient and medieval history in Münster and London, he took his PhD. from Münster University in 1989 with a dissertation on the small-scale tomb reliefs (Bildfeldstelen) from classical Athens and Attica, for which he was awarded the annual travel grant by the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. Afterwards he worked as an assistant professor at the universities of Münster, Cologne, and Bonn. In 1998 he received his habilitation from Bonn University with a work on the geometric and archaic votive offerings from the Athenian Acropolis. In 2000 he became curator of the sculpture collection at the Antikensammlung Berlin, taking over as director in July 2004. He is an honorary professor at the Free University Berlin and member of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI).

 

Session 3

 

Speakers:

 

- Dr Susan I. Rotroff (Professor in Humanities and Chair, Department of Classics, Washington University), Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn: Women Worshiping on the Panathenaic Way

 

Abstract:

 

The Panathenaic Way was the major artery in ancient Athens, leading from the boundary of the city to the center of worship on the Akropolis. This paper examines the evidence for women′s ritual activities along its length, particularly in the stretch between the Dipylon and the northwest corner of the Agora. At the elite end of the scale, the Panathenaic Way saw the highly public performance of the kanephoroi, who carried the sacred equipment to the Akropolis for the sacrifice to Athena. At the other end of the social scale were the women–weavers, barmaids, and perhaps prostitutes–who worked in Building Z, near the Sacred Gate. Links between objects discovered there and at two sites on the lower Panathenaic Way–the altar tentatively identified as that of Aphrodite Ourania, and the abaton at the junction of the Panathenaic Way and the western road of the agora (the so-called Crossroads Enclosure)–suggest that these women too made their way along the street for the purposes of ritual activity.

 

Dr. Susan I. Rotroff received her PhD in Classical Archaeology at Princeton University in 1976. Since that time she has taught at Mount Allison University in Canada, Hunter College in New York, and Washington University in Saint Louis, where she is the Jarvis Thurston and Mona van Duyn Professor in the Humanities. Since 1970 she has been associated with excavations at the Athenian Agora and has published three volumes on the Hellenistic pottery found there, as well as a Hesperia Supplement on fifth-century pottery from a public dining room at the northwest corner of the Agora (co-authored with John Oakley). She has also worked on ceramics elsewhere in Greece (Samothrace, the Southern Euboia Exploration Project, Mycenae, Stymphaleia, Mytilene) and Turkey (Troy, Sardis). Her main interest is in the reconstruction of ancient activities and behavior on the basis of ceramic evidence.

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-Dr. Olga Palagia (Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of Athens, Greece): The Three Graces at the Panathenaia

 

Abstract:

 

A set of fragmentary reliefs found on the Athenian Akropolis represent the Three Graces alongside an arrhephoros carrying a peg with warp for the Panathenaic peplos or weaving at the loom; some reliefs employ the Three Graces as background figures in scenes that involve Nike. On the basis of this visual evidence, it will be argued that the cult of the Graces on the Akropolis was associated with the weaving of Athena′s peplos and with prize-giving at the Panathenaic games.

 

Dr. Olga Palagia, is Professor of Classical Archaeology in the University of Athens. She received her BA in History and Archaeology from Athens University and her DPhil in Classical Archaeology from Oxford University. She worked at the Akropolis Museum from 1978 to 1981 and has been teaching at Athens University since 1981. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London, an Honorary Member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London), and a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute and of the Archaeological Institute of America. Dr. Palagia is a member of the Committee for the Restoration of the Akropolis Monuments. Her books include Euphranor (Leiden, 1980) and The Pediments of the Parthenon (Leiden, 1993, reprinted 1998). She edited Greek Offerings in Honour of John Boardman (Oxford, 1997); Greek Sculpture: Function, Materials and Techniques in the Archaic and Classical Periods (Cambridge, 2006);and Art in Athens during the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, 2009). She co-edited Sculpture from Arcadia and Laconia (Oxford, 1993), The Archaeology of Athens and Attica under the Democracy (Oxford, 1994), Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture (Cambridge, 1996), Athenian Potters and Painters I (Oxford, 1997) and II (Oxford, 2009), Regional Schools in Hellenistic Sculpture (Oxford, 1998), The Macedonians in Athens 322–229 B.C. (Oxford, 2003), Ludwig Ross und Griechenland (Rahden, 2005), and The Panathenaic Games (Oxford, 2007).

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- Dr. Carol L. Lawton (Professor of Art History and Ottilia Bueger, Professor of Classical Studies, Lawrence University) : Women and Ritual in Attic Votive Reliefs

 

Abstract:

 

Much recent scholarship, including the research supporting the exhibition Worshiping Women, has demonstrated the inadequacy of the old idea that the Athenian patriarchy required its respectable women to lead lives of complete seclusion in the house, seldom or never venturing into public. This talk will explore the evidence for women′s religious activity provided by a particular class of artifact, Attic votive reliefs. Many Attic votive reliefs depict scenes of family prayer and preparations for sacrifice in which women play conspicuous roles. The scenes are frequently set in sanctuaries and appear to document the role of women in religious rituals that indeed took place outside the home but that did not place them in the kind of publicly scrutinized official space of the major public festivals. The reliefs offer evidence for women as dedicators and perhaps as the initiators of the prayers and sacrifices they depict. The reliefs also illustrate religious behavior that is particular to women, such as kneeling, and they occasionally reveal the concerns that led to the rituals and the dedications.

 

Dr. Carol L. Lawton is the author of Attic Document Reliefs: Art and Politics in Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1995), Marbleworkers in the Athenian Agora (American School of Classical Studies, 2006), and articles on Athenian document and votive reliefs. She is currently working on the publication of the votive reliefs from the excavations of the Athenian Agora, research that has been supported by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Kress Foundation. She has been a Whitehead Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and is currently Professor of Art History and Ottilia Buerger Professor of Classical Studies at Lawrence University, where she teaches a seminar on women in Classical antiquity.

 

Session 4

 

Speakers:

 

- Dr, Vasiliki Machaira (Archaeologist-Researcher, Research Center for Antiquity, Academy of Athens, Greece): Aphrodite on the Sacred Way and in The City of Athens: Her Companions and Her Attributes

Abstract:

With the publication of the Sanctuary of Aphrodite on the Sacred Way, we had the good fortune of being able to find the dedications from the Sanctuary in the storerooms of the National Archaeological Museum and to attribute a good number of them. The monumental topography, the sacred dedications, and the inscriptions have made it possible to understand for the first time the morphology of the cult: What can the attributes reveal, what other divinities are honored together with the main divinity worshiped in the cult, and what is her essential nature? With these tangible finds, moreover, we will be able to search for parallels and differences with other sanctuaries of Aphrodite and/or other deities whose cults show similarities and correlations. On the basis of the existing evidence, it may be possible to learn what sort of public frequented all these sanctuaries: men or women, citizens of a higher or a lower social order, slaves or freedmen.

Dr. Vasiliki Machaira was born in Athens, Greece, and studied at the University of Athens, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of History and Archaeology. Dr. Machaira graduated in 1977 and continued her post-graduate studies in Paris, University Paris I - Panthéon Sorbonne, with a scholarship from the French government. She submitted her PhD thesis in 1985. She was a Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship) for the academic year 2003--2004. For more than ten years, Dr. Machaira has been responsible for the Greek Documentation Center of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC) and since 1996 she has been working as a researcher at the Academy of Athens with special interest in sculpture, iconography, sanctuaries, and cult. Her main project is the Hellenistic sculpture of Rhodes. Dr. Machaira has written the following books: Les Groupes statuaires d′Aphrodite et d′Éros: Étude stylistique des types et de la relation entre les deux divinités pendant l’époque hellénistique (Athens University, 1993) and Το ιερó Αφροδíτης και Eρωτος στην Ιερα Οδó (Archaeological Society at Athens, 2008).

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- Dr. Sarah Iles Johnston (Professor of Greek and Latin and Director, Center for the Study of Religion, The Ohio State University) :Demeter and Her Worshipers

Abstract:

This paper takes as a starting point two festivals of Demeter that were celebrated in Attica, the Proerosia and the Haloa. In each case, it has generally been understood that agricultural welfare is the festival's primary focus, but here the presenter will explore the extent to which two other concerns-human fertility and the mysteries performed at Eleusis-made themselves felt in each case, sometimes subtly. In the course of this exploration, it will be argued that methodologically, we need to appreciate more keenly the multivalence of these and most other ancient festivals, which served diverse groups of the population.  The key to understanding festivals lies not in seeking a way in which their interests can be harmonized into a more or less coherent whole, but rather in allowing their disparate interests to co-exist.

 

Dr. Sarah Iles Johnston is Professor of Greek and Latin and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Ohio State University. She is the author of Ancient Greek Divination (London, 2008), the coauthor, with Fritz Graf, of Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (London, 2007), the author of Restless Dead (Berkeley 1999) and Hekate Soteira (Oxford 1990); the editor of Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Cambridge, Mass., 2004); the co-editor (with Peter Struck) of Mantike: Studies in Ancient Divination (Leiden 2005) and (with James Clauss) of Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art (Princeton 1997)as well as the author of many articles.  She is currently completing a book on Greek myth.