Crowns, Garlands, and Ribbons for Tony Podlecki: Official and Unofficial Victory Rituals at the Athenian Dionysian Festivals

The competitive spirit has long been singled out as a distinctive feature of ancient Greek civilization. The external and public orientation of consciousness and identity is another. It is not surprising, therefore, that scholarship has taken a keen interest in the rituals of public recognition for athletic victories. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been directed to victory rituals for musical and dramatic competitions. Scholars are content to guess that victory rituals for choral and dramatic victors were much the same as for athletic victors even in the case of the relatively well-attested Athenian dramatic festivals. No one has yet collected and sifted through all the evidence. In doing so, I hope to clarify common misconceptions about the time and place at which both official and unofficial rituals for theatrical victories in classical Athens took place. Specifically, I will demonstrate that the official crowning of victors in the theatre was followed (probably immediately as the victor moved to celebrate the epinikia in the main precinct of the Sanctuary of Dionysus) by three of the rituals also attested for athletes: the carrying of the winners on their friends’ shoulders ( periagermos); the showering of the victors with flowers and garlands ( phyllobolia); and the tying of ribbons on the victors’ heads, arms, and legs ( tainiosis).