Una fiaccola per Pan. Un riesame delle testimonianze sulle lampadedromie nell’Atene classica

Abstract

Herodotus refers that, after the battle of Marathon, the Athenians introduced the cult of the Arcadic god Pan and started celebrating the new religion with an annual «lampas», commemorating the victory over the Persians. After examination of the ancient sources providing information about Athenian torch-races, I try to demonstrate the final dependence of the grammatical tradition about the catalogue of three Athenian lampadedromiai (in part. Harp. λ 3 Keaney; Phot. γ 22, λ 64, 66 Theodoridis) from one source (Polemo of Ilius) and the dependence of any information about the «lampas» in honour of Pan from Herodotus’ account. The «lampas» for Pan may be better considered not an agonistic event, since the only torch-races as tribal competitions in classical Athens (until Epicrates’ reform) were those in honour of Athena, Hephaistos and Prometheus. Further arguments are discussed about the form of the competition as a relay-race.