ttling with the
gods against the giants, and of such other incidents as the State had
judged worthy to figure beside her exploits. Athena was, among her many
functions, also the goddess of weaving and other feminine arts, and as
such had a shrine on the Acropolis, where she was worshipped under the
title of Athena Ergane. Within this precinct were statues to Lysippe,
Timostrata, and Aristomache, maidens thus honored because of their skill
in womanly occupations.

For the origin of the Panathenaea--the greatest of Athenian festivals--we
must go back to the heroic days of Athens when King Erechtheus dedicated
on the Acropolis the archaic wooden statue of Athena, reputed to have
fallen from heaven, and established the custom of offering to the image
once a year a new mantle, embroidered by noble maidens of the city.
Later, Theseus united the various tribes under one rule, with the
Acropolis as its centre, A festival to celebrate this event was united
with the festival to Athena, and the enlarged festival was known as the
Panathenaea, symbolizing the union and political power of Athens and the
sovereignty of the goddess. Pisistratus increased the splendor of this
festival, and, in the golden days of Athens after the Persian War,
Pericles added to its pomp and magnificence. He erected on the Acropolis
an imposing temple to the goddess, the Parthenon, and placed within it
her image of gold and ivory. The worship of Athena and the political
supremacy of Athens now became synonymous. Her festival was the highest
expression of the ideals of Athens in its greatest epoch. The greater
Panathenaae was Athens in its glory, possessed of an overflowing
treasury, supreme among the States of Greece, the exponent of poetry and
art and beauty.

There was great rejoicing when the sacred peplus was at length completed
by the maidens, and there arrived the season of the festival, which was
to culminate on Athena's birthday, the twenty-seventh of the month
Boedromion, which corresponded nearly to our September. The earlier days
were spent in gymnastic games, horse and chariot races, and contests in
music and poetry. On the fifth and last day occurred the most brilliant
feature of the entire festival, the solemn procession which attended the
delivery of the sacred peplus to the priestess of Athena that she might
place it around the wooden image of the goddess. So important was this
procession that Phidias selected it as the theme to be portray