This chapter is the first of two chapters examining the identities created at the Great Panathenaia. It asks what identities were created for Athenian men. For these men, the processes were particularly complex, and they had to take part in a variety of different aspects of the festival. The more often a man participated, the more complex his identities became. A man could also have further identities as a member of specific subgroups of Athenian men: as a member of the cavalry, as benefactor of the city, as a member of a genos, a (Kleisthenic) deme and a (Kleisthenic) tribe. Different aspects of a man’s overall identity would have been salient at different moments in the festival and depended on how exactly any individual man participated. Especially in the games during the classical and Hellenistic periods, the definition of what it meant to be an Athenian male mapped quite closely on to a very political and Aristotelian understanding of citizenship. Consequently, the identities of Athenian men were particularly sensitive to political change in the city, and they quickly reflected developments in other areas of the city’s life.

The family was the basis of the Athenian polis, both structurally and conceptually. This chapter supports and investigates that claim by engaging with evidence from three different perspectives: law, drama, and funerary monuments.

Building directly on the linguistic elements and the language theory discussed in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 deals with the second level of lexis by focusing on the ἀρχὴ τῆς λέξεως (the foundation of lexis), i.e. Aristotle’s remarks regarding individuals’ use of linguistic elements as determined by sociolinguistic factors. The chapter has three sections, each of which examines Aristotle’s claims within lexis in a different social context.