High Priestess of Athena Polias
The High Priestess of Athena Polias was the High Priestess of the Goddess Athena Polias, the protective city deity of Ancient Athens, on the temple of Parthenon at Acropolis of Athens. It was the highest religious office in Ancient Athens, and its official enjoyed great prestige and played an official role which was otherwise uncommon in Ancient Athens. Several occasions is mentioned when she made her influence known in historical events of importance, and she is known to have influenced offices by recommendation.
She supervised the city cult of Athena, and was the chief of the lesser officials, such as the plyntrides, arrephoroi and kanephoroi. She was the high priest of one of the three cults of the Acropolis of Athens: the other two were the High Priest of Poseidon-Erecheteusand the Priestess of Athena Nike.
The most known individual official of this position was Lysimache I.
The office could not have survived the ban of all non-Christian priesthoods during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire.
See also
- High Priestess of Demeter
References
- The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and Archaeology
- Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece
- Garland, Robert, Religion and the Greeks, Bristol Classical Press, London, 1994