PANATHENÆA, in Grecian antiquity an ancient Athenian festival, in honour of Minerva the protectress of Athens, and called Athenaëa. There were two festivals under this denomination, the greater and the lesser. The greater panathenæa were exhibited every five years; the lesser every three, or, according to some writers, annually. Though the celebration of neither, at first, employed more than one day; yet in after-times they were protracted for the space of many days, and solemnized with greater preparations and magnificence than at their first institution.

Prizes were established there for three different kinds of combat: the first consisted of foot and horse races; the second, of athletic exercises; and the third, of poetical and musical contests. These last are said to have been instituted by Pericles. Singers of the first class, accompanied by performers on the flute and cithara, exercised their talents here, upon subject prescribed by the directors of these exhibitions. And while the Athenian state was free and independent, the noble and generous actions of Harmodius and Aristogiton, who had opposed the power of the Pisistratides, and of Aristeobulus, who had delivered the Athenians from the oppression of the thirty tyrants imposed upon them by the Lacedæmonians, were celebrated in these songs.