The Great Panathenaia was a festival that happened every four years. The festival was in honour of Athena and it lasted 8 days. The Great Panathenaia was a social and political as well as a religious festival.
The Great Panathenaia was mainly a religious festival as the whole point of it was to honour the goddess Athena who was the patron goddess of Athens. The reason for holding the festival was to celebrate Athena’s birthday which was roughly sometime in mid-June. Athena was honoured in many ways, one of which is the presentation of the peplos to the statue of Athena. The peplos was a large new robe which was saffron yellow and purple in colour and into it was woven scenes depicting the myth of the Olympians’ victory over the Giants with Zeus and Athena at the forefront. The peplos was absolutely magnificent and it took a team of young women 9 months to weave it. The peplos was ship-carted over to the Parthenon and presented to the statue of Athena. The peplos was a very important religious icon because it was made with the intention of pleasing Athena, this was obviously very important to the Athenians because they believed that if they failed to please Athena then they would be punished severely for their actions. There was also a large sacrifice made to Athena, the hecatomb which was the sacrifice of at least a hundred oxen. This was a very big gesture of devotion to Athena because in Greece it was very difficult to raise cattle and to manage to collect one hundred oxen for one city was a very difficult task yet the Greeks still did it because they wanted to please the patron goddess of their city. Also all of the victories from the sporting events and other contests were in honour of Athena, this shows us how even in competitions the Greeks remembered Athena and worshiped her because the origin of the competitions was the intention to honour Athena and