The Panathenaic Way was a major road of classical Athens. It ran for from the Dipylon Gate in the northwest of the city to the Acropolis in its centre. From onwards, it was an important processional route in various festivals, including the Great Panathenaia, the City Dionysia and the initiation ceremony of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The Panathenaic Way is among the oldest known roads in Athens; parts of its surface show evidence of use from the Neolithic period () and during the Middle Helladic and Late Helladic periods of the Bronze Age ( and respectively). It is traditionally considered to have been formalised around 566 BCE, in connection with the inauguration or reorganisation of the Great Panathenaia festival. It passed through the Agora, the civic and commercial centre of the city, and its use in festive activities may have played a role in the establishment of the Agora as a large open space. It was widened to a maximum of by the Hellenistic period (323–86 BCE), and parts were paved in the first century CE. Despite attempts to revive it in the mid fourth century CE, it deteriorated throughout late antiquity () and its use declined substantially after the 580s. At least parts of the route continued in use, albeit narrowed by later construction, in the 6th–7th centuries CE, though the Panathenaic processions along them had stopped by the early fifth century.
Landmarks along the Panathenaic Way included the Pompeion, from which festive processions began the route along it; the Altar of the Twelve Gods; and a monument to the "Tyrannicides", Harmodius and Aristogeiton. It was used for several events during the Great Panathenaia, including a race between torch-bearing runners from the Academy to the Acropolis, equestrian races (from at least 182/1 BCE), and possibly foot races conducted through the Agora. During the City Dionysia, it was used to convey a statue of the festival's patron god, Dionysos, from the Dipylon Gate to the Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus on the Acropolis's south slope. A cavalry procession during the festival of Olympian Zeus followed the same route, ending at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries used the Way to process from the City Eleusinion to the Sacred Gate prior to taking the Sacred Way to Eleusis. Part of the route's course was rediscovered in 1837, and it has been investigated since by the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and the Greek Archaeological Service; sections have also been restored and developed for touristic purposes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Names and date
The name "Panathenaic Way" is known from an inscription, dating to the fourth century BCE, in the northern wall of the Acropolis near the Klepsydra fountain. Laura Ficuciello suggests that this name probably referred exclusively to the parts of the Way within the city boundaries, between the Dipylon Gate and the Acropolis. In the fourth century CE, the rhetorician Himerios used the term () to refer to the section between the Academy, around outside the boundary of the city, and the Agora, the civic and commercial centre of Athens. The name is otherwise unattested in ancient sources, though it has become commonly used in modern scholarship.
The Panathenaic Way is among the oldest known routeways in Athens; it may be the only one with evidence of use in the Neolithic period (), and is one of few with identifiable surfaces from the Middle Helladic and Late Helladic periods of the Bronze Age ( and respectively). The formalisation of the Way is traditionally dated to 566/5 BCE, and connected with the inauguration or reorganisation of the Great Panathenaia festival. Two wells near the Eleusinion sanctuary, north of the Acropolis, were closed around 575 BCE: this has been associated with the expropriation of private buildings in the area for the establishment of a processional route. Excavations in the northwest corner of the Agora found levelled ground, interpreted as the preparatory stage of road-building, dating to the sixth century BCE, though the earliest evidence of an actual surface dated to no earlier than 475 BCE. A packed road surface dating to the second half of the fifth century BCE was found in the same area.
Course The route followed by the Way originated at the Academy and passed through the Demosion Sema (public cemetery) outside the city limits. There is no evidence of a constructed surface on the sections outside the city until the fifth century BCE, though it is possible that the bedrock in this area was levelled to serve as a road surface. Most of the road was constructed with a hard pebble surface, with retaining walls and steps built in the part that climbs the Acropolis.
The road entered the city in the northwest. Its course originally followed the south bank of the Eridanos river, passing through the Sacred Gate, but moved northeast around 500 BCE, perhaps linked to the construction of the Stoa Basileios and the canalisation of the Eridanos. After the hasty construction in the winter of 479/8 BCE of the Themistoklean Wall, the earliest securely attested perimeter wall of Athens, the Way entered the city at the Dipylon Gate. By the late fifth century BCE, it continued southeast through the inner areas of the Kerameikos towards the Agora. At the northwest corner of the Agora, immediately next to the Stoa Basileios, it was crossed by the Eridanos river; the river was probably crossed by means of a bridge from the earliest times, and was canalised and covered by the Roman period. From the Agora, the Way reached the Eleusinion before turning southeast to the Klepsydra and ascending the Acropolis via the Propylaia on its western side, approximately from the gate. The overall route has a rise of in elevation, though this increases sharply towards the end: between the Dipylon and the City Eleusinion it rises by over a distance of , while between the City Eleusinion and the Acropolis it rises by in .
The precise route taken across the Agora by the Way in the fifth century BCE and earlier is not definitively known: it may not have been fixed until the fourth or second century BCE. John McK. Camp has suggested that the need for a space for festive activities along the route of the Panathenaic Way may have been a major factor in the establishment of the Agora as a large open square. There is no evidence of wheel ruts in the fifth-century BCE layers of the Panathenaic Way immediately outside the northwest corner of the Agora, and it has therefore been suggested that wheeled traffic was forbidden from using the route to enter the Agora from this direction until the fourth century BCE. After this, the Way became a major route for traffic coming to the Agora from the hinterland of Attica. During the classical period (), it was wide at its narrowest (between the Agora and the Acropolis), considerably larger than the Athenian average of . Its widest section in this period was wide, as the road entered the Agora from the northwest. This unusual width was to accommodate ritual events, such as the annual Epitaphia, in which those Athenians and allies who had fallen in battle in that year were publicly buried in the Demosion Sema.
Shortly after 394 BCE, when the Eridanos was straightened, the Panathenaic Way was linked to the adjacent Sacred Way by means of a cross street and a bridge over the river, a short distance outside the Dipylon near the Tritopatreion sanctuary. As with other roads connected to the city gates, the Way was repaired and widened, perhaps indicating that it was more formally defined, in the later fourth century BCE. By the Hellenistic period (323–86 BCE), it was around wide immediately before the Agora and at its widest point outside the Dipylon. During this period, a stone gutter was constructed along its southwest side.
The section of the Panathenaic Way between the southeast of the Agora and the Acropolis was paved, which was unusual for Athenian streets, in the first century CE. This paving was made up of reused blocks from earlier structures, some of poros stone and some of marble from a building of the Periclean period (–429 BCE). It preserves wheel ruts made by traffic moving along it. In late antiquity (that is, around the third to the sixth centuries CE), the road was repeatedly graded to level its course across the Agora; evidence of these operations is preserved in a drain used until the 580s, which was partly removed during them. The western edge of the Way across the Agora deteriorated along with the area's drainage system, becoming largely undifferentiated from its surroundings. In the same period, the road was redirected to the west in the Agora's southwest corner to avoid the Post-Herulian Wall, itself constructed around 287 CE. At least part of the Panathenaic Way was still in use by the 6th–7th centuries CE, near the northwest corner of the Agora, though this road had been substantially narrowed by the construction of houses during the same period. Traffic on the Way declined substantially following the Slavic invasion of Greece in the 580s; after this, parts of the road became covered in silt, and its drainage systems, established in the classical period, ceased to function.
Structures and monuments
Outside the walls in the Kerameikos, the Panathenaic Way was lined with tombs, including the public tombs erected for the Athenian war dead and the Tomb of the Lacedaemonians erected in honour of the Spartan soldiers killed supporting the Athenian democratic uprising against the Thirty Tyrants in 404/3 BCE. It also passed the Round Bath, a public bathhouse constructed in the fifth century BCE. Within the walls, buildings along the Way included the Pompeion (), constructed around 400 BCE immediately adjacent to the Dipylon Gate. This was the origin-point for festive processions, including that of the Great Panathenaia, in which a robe () intended for a statue of the goddess Athena on the Acropolis would be conveyed along the Way.
At some point after the Persian Wars (that is, from 479 BCE), probably during the time of Kimon (), a terracotta pipeline was constructed underground along the Panathenaic Way between the Dipylon and the Agora. From the Hellenistic period onwards, the same section was lined with shops and stoas (porticoes); the second-century CE traveller Pausanias reported additionally seeing religious sanctuaries and a gymnasium alongside it. Some of these stoas, constructed prior to the mid 1st century CE, were built using the remains of buildings destroyed during the sack of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 86 BCE.
The Panathenaic Way passed the Altar of the Twelve Gods at the northwest corner of the Agora; the monument is aligned on a slightly different axis to the road, suggesting that it was originally built along the route that preceded it. Immediately outside the altar, a line of limestone bases, dating approximately to the middle of the fifth century BCE, crossed the Panathenaic Way. On excavation in 1972, these were believed to have been used to insert starting-posts for runners in events during the Great Panathenaia. Further excavation in 2010–2012 revealed a second identical line to the south, and additional postholes forming the additional sides of a square enclosure approximately in area. John McK. Camp suggests that the enclosure, which apparently blocked the Panathenaic Way, was the , a roped-off area described by the Roman-period author Plutarch as being in the same location. He suggests that it was used to control access into the main Agora square.