By In the Greek, panathenaic is a word that means “athens in the sky.” It is a reference to the Athenian gods (Eros, Ares, and Aphrodite) who are frequently depicted in the sky.
So here we have the sky as the backdrop to one of the most celebrated literary works ever written. There are actually two panathenaic poets named Horace and Virgil. The story of Horace’s epic poem, the “Ode to Horace,” is told in the first section of Horace’s “Epistles.
