IGII2 3488 Statue commemorating the service of Panarista as arrephoros

Statue commemorating the service of Panarista as arrephoros

IG II² 3488 Date: A little before 103/2 BC

Panarista daughter of Mantias of Marathon; her father and her mother, Theodote daughter of Dositheos [of Myrrhinoutta], and her brothers, Kleomenes and -, dedicated (scil. a statue of her), when she had been arrephoros for (5) Athena Polias [and Pandrosos].^[1]

Previous - IG II² 3464 Next - IG II² 3502

References:

IG II² 3488 (Translated text) (PHI)

Translation by: Stephen Lambert, Feyo Schuddeboom

Monument type: Capital

Inscription type: Statue Base (private)

Findspot: Acropolis (EM 8998)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This is one of a number of Hellenistic and Imperial-period dedications commemorating service as arrephoros. The arrephoroi were "four children elected for their good birth between the ages of 7 and 11. Two of them were chosen to begin the weaving of the sacred peplos and the other matters connected with it." Harp. s. v. arrephorein (the selection of the two seems to have been a responsibility of the basileus, Suid. E 2504). The arrephoroi lodged during their year of service on the Acropolis (their ball-court there is referred to by [Plut.] Lives of the Ten Orators 839 c). In the Classical period their expenses were covered by a liturgy (Lys. 21.5), it is not clear that "good birth" implied anything more than pure citizen descent under Pericles' Citizenship Law, and service as an arrephoros (at the age of 7) was one of the characteristic duties of Athenian women which the chorus of Aristophanes Lysistrata, 638-647, claimed to have performed. In the Hellenistic period arrephoroi perhaps had to be funded by their families and this is reflected in the elite status of individual arrephoroi attested by dedications such as this. This continued through the Imperial period and they are included in a list of prestigious female religious personnel at the end of the second century AD (Agora XVI 341, ll. 35-36).

Two main ritual duties are attested for the arrephoroi. Et. Gen. and Suid. s.v. Chalkeia record that at the Chalkeia, a festival celebrating the arts and crafts (cf. AIO Papers 7 no. 2) on the last day of Pyanopsion [nine months before the Panathenaia], the arrephoroi, together with the priestesses [presumably Athena Polias and perhaps Athena Nike], set up the loom for making the peplos. Second, arrephoroi connotes "carriers of secrets" and at the festival Arrephoria they carried something secret down an underground passage to the sanctuary of Aphrodite in the Gardens [in the lower city; possibly in fact rather the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the north slope of the Acropolis], where it was exchanged for something else secret (according to the Scholia on Lucian p. 276.15-17 Rabe these were models of snakes and male genitals made from dough) which they carried back up and then were replaced by the next year-group of arrephoroi (Paus. 1.27.3). This recalled the myth of the daughters of Kekrops, Aglauros and Herse, who, disobeying Athena, opened a basket given them by Athena, finding inside the baby Erichthonios and snakes. In terror they jumped off the Acropolis to their deaths. Pandrosos was in many versions the third sister, who did not look into the box, and so did not share her sisters' fate (Paus. 1.18.2, cf. Apollod. 3.14.6). She had a shrine on the Acropolis by the Erechtheion.

Shortly after this Panarista also served as one of the (adolescent) maidens who worked the wool for the peplos, see IG II² 1034, 90 and notes to SEG 53.143.

Added: 9 May 2016
Updated: 27 Jun 2024
Feedback

ID: AIO_970