Since the archaic age the Academy was a milestone in the ideology of Athenian polis. The gymnasium was the main place of education for citizens: here the young people not only learned the cardinal principles of culture and physical exercise, but were trained to social life, throwing the foundations of their future participation in the functioning of the polis. For this reason, a pantheon of divinities was selected ad hoc to oversee the different areas of politai training. Eros, Herakles, Hermes, the Muses, Prometheus and Hephaestus are attested at the Academy, for the most part since the VIth century b.C. They operated in the shadow of an Athena Polias specially transplanted from the Acropolis to guard the sacred olive trees, the moriai from which the oil given as a prize to the winners of Panathenaic games was drawn. On this ideological background it is not difficult to understand why the Demosion Sema, the cemetery reserved for fallen war dead, was placed along the road linking the Academy with the Acropolis: a gallery of anonymous heroes who died on the battlefield in service to Athens accompanied the young people direct to the gymnasium in their usual routes.The paper intends explore the narrow links existing between the Academy and the Demosion Sema.[Daniela Marchiandi,University of Torino]
