To judge from the evidence of the surviving deme calendars, many of the Attic demes held local celebrations of Athena’s great city festivals. At Thorikos there was a sacrifice for the Plynteria, and at Erchia a sacrifice to Kourotro-phos (Nurturer of Youths), Athena Polias, Aglauros, Zeus Polieus, Poseidon, and Pandrosos fell on 3 Skirophorion, the same day the arrhephoroi carried their secret objects for the goddess.15 In the coastal deme of Phaleron, the Salaminioi, an extended family with strong ties to the nearby island of Salamis and its cult of Athena Skiras, maintained a sanctuary of the goddess. This Attic sanctuary of Athena Skiras played a role in the vintage festival of the Oschophoria and Athena herself, in association with the hero Skiros, received the clan’s offering of a pregnant sheep in the winter month of Maimakterion.16
The little-known cult of Athena Pallenis (of Pallene) is important for the light it sheds on the process by which the cults of Attica were absorbed into the larger system of the Athenian polis during the eighth and seventh centuries, and their continuing relations. Athenaeus (6.234f-235a) preserves the rather mangled texts of a dedication and a sacred law pertaining to this Athena Pallenis. From them we learn that several of the inland demes, including Pallene, were gathered into a league centered on the worship of Athena. No later than the seventh century, this cult was brought under the supervision of the state in the person of the archcin basileus (the King Archon, who had inherited the original king’s religious authority). He selected a group of officials known as archontes (rulers), who in turn designated parasitoi (fellow diners) from each member deme. The parasites and archons, the social elite of their communities, enjoyed a yearly banquet funded by the goddess in a building maintained for this purpose. Like several gods whose sanctuaries were located outside the urban area of Athens, Athena Pallenis possessed considerable wealth and her sanctuary easily financed the annual feast. A fine fifth-century temple in the agora, moved from its original site in the Roman period and previously assigned to Ares, is now thought to be the shrine of Athena Pallenis.17
World History
