So extensive a programme required at least two days: in one inscription a torch-race is inserted in the middle of the programme, perhaps as marking the close of the first day. The popularity of the Panathenaea in the second century is proved by the number of distinguished competitors. Besides the sons of King Attalus mentioned already, we find Mastanabas, the son of King Mastanassus, King Antiochus, the son of Antiochus Epiphanes, and Ptolemaeus, king of Egypt, who competed as an Athenian citizen of the Ptolemaid tribe. There are numerous victors from Argos, and the lists include the names of several women. In one list alone we find two victories won by women, or perhaps by the same woman from Argos, and a third won by a woman of Alexandria.
Besides these individual competitions, there seems to have been a cavalry competition between tribes, which took place in the hippodrome, though we do not know on what day. This ἀνθιππασία[412] was a sort of sham-fight between two squadrons, each consisting of the cavalry of five tribes under the command of a hipparchos. Xenophon describes the sight with enthusiasm. They pursued one another in turn, charged, passed through each other’s lines, wheeled round, and charging down the whole length of the hippodrome came to a sudden halt, front to front. It seems that prizes were given to the tribe which performed best, or perhaps to their officers.
The day after the horse-races was occupied by a series of competitions between companies or tribes, in which the local and religious character of the festival is yet more clearly manifest. First came the Pyrrhic chorus, an event which took place at the lesser Panathenaea as well as the great.[413] Our inscription enumerates three prizes: one for boys, one for youths, one for men. Each prize is an ox of the value of 100 drachmae, which furnished the victors with a victim for sacrifice and provision for a feast. The composition of the Pyrrhic chorus is known to us from a relief on the basis of a statue set up by Atarbus to commemorate the victories gained at the Panathenaea by a cyclic chorus, and a Pyrrhic chorus that he had provided in the archonship of Cephisodorus, _i.e._ either 366 or 323 B.C.[414] On one side is represented the Pyrrhic chorus (Fig. 35): it consists of eight youths linked, and armed with helmets and shields, who move in rhythmic dance under the direction of a trainer, robed in a long mantle and holding in his hand a scroll. The whole Pyrrhic chorus of boys, youths, and men must therefore have numbered twenty-four. Whether they competed as a single chorus or as three is uncertain. On the other side of the relief we see a cyclic chorus, also consisting of eight youths, but clothed in long mantles wrapt close about them, and revolving apparently in a circle. Next came two competitions between tribes, for which the prize again is the sacrificial ox, destined perhaps to be led in the procession of the morrow. The first competition is for εὐανδρία, which in the fourth century seems to mean merely “good looks.” In the Panathenaic procession certain old men were selected for their beauty to carry the sacred olive branches. Each tribe chose certain representatives, and this competition was apparently intended to decide which tribe should provide these “handsome old men.”[415] The nature of the second competition is not stated in the inscription, but as the next line refers to the torch-race, it is probable that this too was a competition for good looks, to decide which tribe should take part in the evening’s torch-race. The torch-race at the Panathenaea was an individual competition, in which the winner received a hydria valued at 30 drachmae.