Part 8

[Footnote 150: I have translated [Greek: ierô] by precinct. This is liable to the objection that [Greek: ieron] may also mean temple; and [Greek: anoigetai] "is opened" of the passage may naturally be applied to the opening of a temple. But "hieron" often refers to a sacred precinct, and there is nothing to prevent the verb in question from being used of a "hieron" in this sense. If we consult the passages in which this particular precinct is mentioned we find, in those quoted from Photius and the _Etymologicum Magnum_, that the Lenaeum contains a hieron of the Lenaean Dionysus. This might be either temple or precinct. In the citation from Bekker's _Anecdota_ the Lenaeum is the hieron at which were held the theatrical contests. This implies that the hieron was a precinct of some size. The Scholiast to _Achar._ 202 makes the Lenaeum the hieron of the Lenaean Dionysus. Here "hieron" is certainly a precinct. Hesych. [Greek: epi Lenaiô agôn] renders this still more distinct by saying that the Lenaeum contained the hieron of the Lenaean Dionysus, in which the theatrical contests were held. But Demosthenes in the _Neaera_ declares that the decree was engraved on a stone stele. It was the custom to set up such inscriptions in the open air. This stele was also beside the altar. There were indeed often altars in the Greek temple, but the chief altar (bômos of the passage) was in the open air. Furthermore, if the decree had been placed in the small temple, the designation "alongside the altar" would have been superfluous. But in the larger precinct such a particular location was necessary. Nor can it be urged, in view of the secret rites in connection with the marriage of the King Archon's wife to Dionysus on the 12th of Anthesterio, that hieron must mean temple; since the new Aristotle manuscript tells us that this ceremony took place in the Bucoleum.]

The stele being then visible to the public on but one day of the year it follows that the entire precinct of Dionysus [Greek: Page 66 en Limnais] must have been closed during the remainder of the year. This could not be unless we grant that, in the time of Demosthenes at least, the Lenaea and the Megala Dionysia were held in different precincts, and that the Lenaea and Anthesteria were one and the same festival.

Pausanias tells us[151] that the xoanon brought from Eleutherae was in one of the two temples in the theatre-precinct, while the other contained the chryselephantine statue of Alcamenes. We know, both from the method of construction and from literary notices, that these two temples were in existence in the time of Demosthenes. Pausanias says[152] that on fixed days every year, the statue of the god was borne to a little temple of Dionysus near the Academy. Pausanias' use of the plural in [Greek: tetagmenais emerais] is excellent authority that the temple of the xoanon was opened at least on more than one day of every year.

From all these considerations it seems to be impossible that the precinct of the older temple by the extant theatre and the sanctuary [Greek: en Limnais] could be the same. The suggestion that the gold and ivory statue of Alcamenes could have been the one borne in procession at the time of the Greater Dionysia is, of course, untenable from the delicate construction of such figures. The massive base on which it stood shows, too, that its size was considerable. The image borne in procession was clearly the xoanon which was brought by Pegasus from Eleutherae.

Wilamowitz calls attention[153] to another fact. In classic times the contests of the Lenaea are [Greek: Dionysia ta epi Lenaiô], and the victories are [Greek: vikai Levaikai]; the Megala Dionysia are always [Greek: ta te estei], and the victories here [Greek: nikai astikai]. These words certainly imply a distinction of place. How early these expressions may have been used, we learn from the account of Thespis. Suidas[154] is authority that Thespis first exhibited a play in 536 B.C.; and the Parian Marble records[155] that he was the first to exhibit a drama and to receive the tragic prize [Greek: en astei].

[Footnote 151: I. 20. 3.]

[Footnote 152: I. 29. 2.]

[Footnote 153: _Die Bühne des Aeschylos_.]

[Footnote 154: _v. Thespis_.]

[Footnote 155: _C.I.G._, II. 2374.]

Page 67 But it has also been contended that Limnae and Lemaeum do not refer to the same locality. It is clear from what has been said, however, that the Lenaea and the Greater Dionysia must have been held in different localities. So if Limnae and the Lenaeum do not refer at least to the same region, there must have been three separate sanctuaries of Dionysus; for no one will claim that the Greater Dionysia can have been held in the Limnae if the Lenaea were not celebrated there. But as we have seen, Hesychius ([Greek: en Limnai]) declares that the Lenaea were held [Greek: en Limanis]. The scholiast to Aristophanes says[156] that the Chytri were a festival of Dionysus Lenaeus; so the Chytri as well as the Lenaea must have been celebrated in the Lenaeum. Athenæus in the story of Orestes and Pandion speaks[157] of the temenus [Greek: en Limnais] in connection with the Choes. In Suidas ([Greek: choes]), however, we learn that either Limnaeus or Lenaeus could be used in referring to the same Dionysus. Such positive testimony for the identity of the Lenaeum and the sanctuary in the Limnae, cannot be rejected.

[Footnote 156: _Acharnians_ 960.]

[Footnote 157: X, 437 d.]

We have still more convincing testimony that in the great period of the drama the two annual contests at which dramas were brought out were held in different places, in the record of the time when the wooden theatre [Greek: en Limnais] was finally given up, and [Greek: o epi Lemnaiô] became a thing of the past. The change comes exactly when we should look for it, when the existing theatre had been splendidly rebuilt by Lycurgus. The passage is in Plutarch, where he says[158] that this orator also introduced a law that the contest of the comedians at the Chytri should take place in the theatre, and that the victor should be reckoned [Greek: es astin], as had not been done before. He further implies that the contest at the Chytri had fallen into disuse, for he adds that Lycurgus thus restored an agon that had been omitted. This last authority, however, concerns a contest at the Chytri, the Anthesteria, and is only one of many passages which tend to show that [Greek: o epi Lemnaiô] was held at this festival. The most weighty testimony for making the Lenaea an independent festival, even in Page 68 historic times, is given by Proclus in a scholium to Hesiod.[159] He quotes from Plutarch the statement that there was no month Lenaeo among the Boeotians. He adds that this month was the Attic Gamelio in which the Lenaea were held. Hesychius makes the same citation from Plutarch[160] as to a non-existence of a Boeotian month Lenaeo, and continues: "But some say that this month is the (Boeotian) Hermaio, and this is true, for the Athenians [held] in this month ([Greek: en auto]) the festival of the Lenaea." The great similarity of the two passages renders it very probable that both were drawn from the same sources. The omission of Gamelio by Hesychius, by referring the [en autô] back to Lenaeo, makes him authority that the Lenaea were held in that month. This, in turn implies that Proclus may have inserted Gamelio in order to bring the statement into relation with the Attic months of his own day. In the authorities referring to this month is a suggestion of several facts and a curious struggle to account for them. Proclus cites Plutarch to the effect that there was no month Lenaeo among the Boeotians, but, being probably misled by the very passage in Hesiod for which he has quoted Plutarch, he adds[161] that they had such a month. He goes on to state that the month is so called from the Lenaea, or from the Ambrosia. Moschopulus,[162] Tzetzes,[163] and the Etymologicum Magnum[164] repeat this last statement. An inscription[165] referring to a crowning of Bacchus on the 18th of Gamelio may refer to the same festival. Tzetzes alone is responsible for the statement that the _Pithoigia_ came in this month. Through Proclus and Hesychius we are assured of the belief that there was once an Attic month Lenaeo. Proclus, Hesychius and Moschopulus tell us that the Lenaea were at some period held in this month; while Proclus, Moschopulus, Tzetzes, and the inscription assure us that there was another festival of Dionysus in this month; and the first three of these authorities name this festival Ambrosia. A tradition running Page 69 with such persistency through so many authors affords a strong presumption that there once existed an Attic month Lenaeo, and that the Lenaea were celebrated in that month.

[Footnote 158: [Plut.] _Vit._ 10 _Or._: LYCURG. _Orat._ VII. 1. 10 p. 841. 1549: _Ptoclus_ to Hesiod, Op. 504.]

[Footnote 160: HESYCHIUS, [Greek: Lenaiôn men].]

[Footnote 161: PROCLUS, To Hesiod Op. 504.]

[Footnote 162: MOSCHPUL., [Greek: kata ton mena ton Lenaiôna].]

[Footnote 163: TZETZES, [Greek: mena de Lenaiôn].]

[Footnote 164: Et. Mag., [Greek: Lenaiôna].]

[Footnote 165: _C.I.G._, I. 523. [Greek: I'ameliônos kittôseis Dionyson thi].]

Thucydides tells us[166] that the Ionian Athenians carried the festival Anthesteria with them from Athens, and that they continued until his day to celebrate it. The Anthesteria are thus older than the Ionic migration, which took place under the sons of Codrus.[167] The story of Pandion and Orestes from Apollodorus places the establishment of the Choes in the time of this mythical Athenian king. The first and third months of the Ionic year[168] are the same as those of the Attic. There can hardly be a doubt, then, that their second month, Lenaeo, was also carried with the emigrants from the parent city, where at that time it obtained.

[Footnote 166: II. 15.]

[Footnote 167: BOECKII _Vom Unterschied der Lena._, _Anthest. und Dion._ s. 52.]

[Footnote 168: The entire argument on the question of the month is open to the objection that too much weight is given to such men as Tzetzes and all the tribe of minor scholiasts, whose opportunities for accurate knowledge were, in many respects, vastly inferior to those of scholars of our own day. It is easy indeed to say that their testimony is worth nothing. But where shall we stop? It is urged that the connection of the Lenaea with an Attic month Lenaeo arose from an attempt on the part of the commentators to explain names as they found them. It is said that this conflict of the authorities proves that there never was an Attic Lenaeo. This may be true; and the man who will prove it to be so, and furthermore will give us the accurate history of the Attic and the Ionic calendars, will do a great service to Greek scholarship. But he must have at hand better sources than we possess to-day. Though the later Greek commentators on the classics have made many amusing and stupid blunders, though we need not hesitate to disregard their teaching when it comes into conflict with better authority, or with plain reason, still they have told us that which is true. They often furnish us with all that we know of older and better authors, whose works were their authority. Therefore, unless I have found testimony against them, I have followed their teaching. Both here and elsewhere I give their words for what they are worth; not that I rank Proclus with Thucydides, or the Et. Mag. with Aristophanes,--but from the conviction that so remarkable a concurrence of testimony in so many different writers has not yet been successfully explained away, and could not indeed exist unless their testimony were founded on a basis of fact.]

This gives a time, however remote it may be, when the Athenians still had the month Lenaeo, yet we hear of no festival Lenaea among the Ionian cities. It would thus seem that this had lost its force as an independent festival before the migration.

Gamelio is said to have received its name from the Gamelia, the festival of Zeus and Hera. It is hard to believe that while the Page 70 much more brilliant Lenaea remained in the month, the name should have passed to the always somewhat unimportant Gamelia. What reason could be found for this naming, unless that the Lenaea had first been transferred to the Anthesteria, as all the testimony tends to prove? This supposition gives an easy explanation of the repeated reference to Lenaeo as an Attic month, of the change of the name to Gamelio, and even Tzetzes' association of the Pithoigia with the Lenaea,--an association which arises necessarily, if the Lenaea once formed part of the Anthesteria. The impossibility of transferring in its entirety a festival which has become rooted in the customs of a people, is also seen. That remnant of the Lenaea in Lenaeo, the Ambrosia, survived till quite late in Attic history. It is not difficult, then, to understand why the other references to the Lenaea as a separate festival do not agree as to the month.

A triad of contests is given by Demosthenes[169] where he quotes the law of Evegoras with reference to the Dionysiac festivals: the one in Piræus with its comedies and tragedies, [Greek: e epi Lenaiô] with its tragedies and comedies, and the City Dionysia with the chorus of boys, procession, comedies and tragedies. Here are three different contests in three different places; and the Anthesteria and Lenaea are included under [Greek: e epi Lenaiô pompe]. The purpose of the law was to preserve absolute security and freedom to both person and property on the days of the festivals named. Not even an overdue debt could be collected. In so sweeping a law the Anthesteria could hardly fail to be included; for at no Attic festival was there more absolute liberty and equality. In Suidas[170] we learn that the revellers at the Chytri, going about on carts, jested and made sport of the passers by, and that later they did the same at the Lenaea. Thus he gives another proof of the connection between the two festivals, and shows that [Greek: o epi Lenaiô agôn] became a part of the older Anthesteria after the invention of comedy, and that even then the old custom was kept up. In Athenæus we find[17l] the Page 71 Samian Lynceus sojourning in Athens and commiserated as passing his time listening to the lectures of Theophrastus and seeing the Lenaea and Chytri, in contrast to the lavish Macedonian feasts of his correspondent. The latter in the same connection says[172] that certain men, probably players, who had filled a

## part in Athens at the Chytri, came in to amuse the guests. The

marriage which he is attending then took place after the Chytri. It is not likely, therefore, that in "the Lenaea and Chytri" he is referring to two festivals separated by a month of time. He speaks, rather, of two acts of the same celebration.

[Footnote 169: _Mid._ 10.]

[Footnote 170: SUIDAS, [Greek: ek tôn amaxôn sôômmata].]

[Footnote 171: ATHENÆUS, IV. p. 130.]

[Footnote 172: Ibid. III. 129.]

The frogs in Aristophanes claim the temenus [Greek: Limnais] and speak of their song at the Chytri. The scholiast cites[173] Philochorus, saying that the contests referred to were the [Greek: chutrinoi].

A suspected passage in Diogenes Laertius declares (III 56) that it was the custom to contend with tetralogies at four festivals, the Dionysia, Lenaea, Panathenaea, and Chytri. If the passage is worth anything, it adds new testimony that there were dramatic representations at the Anthesteria. The Menander of Alciphron, also, would hardly exclaim[174] over [Greek: poious chutrous], unless the contest were one in which he, as dramatist, could have a part.

No other of the extant dramas has been so much discussed in connection with the question as the _Acharnians_. Those who hold that the Lenaea and Anthesteria were entirely separate, have affirmed that the play opens on the Pnyx in Athens, that the scene changes to the country-house of Dicaeopolis in Cholleidae, at the season of the country Dionysia in the month Posideo. Later the time of the Lenaea in the month Gamelio is represented. Finally the locality is again Athens at the Anthesteria in Anthesterio. In fact, we are told, the poet has, in the _Acharnians_, shown his true greatness by overleaping all restraints of time and place and giving his fancy free rein. But this is making the _Acharnians_ an isolated example among the Greek plays which have come down to us. Changes of scene are foreign to the nature of the Greek drama, as is acknowledged by A. Miller.[175]

[Footnote 173: _Schol._ ARIST. _Frogs._ 218.]

[Footnote 174: _Alciphron Ep._ II. 3. 11.]

[Footnote 175: _Bühnenalt_., 161.]

That the beginning of the play is on the Pnyx, there is no question. In v. 202, Dicaeopolis declares: "I will go in and Page 72 celebrate the Country Dionysia." This is held to be a statement of the actual time of year represented in this portion of the play, and also to indicate the change of place from Athens to the country. That the country festivals to the wine-god in the different demes were held on different dates, we learn from the fact that companies of actors went out from Athens to make the tour of these provincial festivals.[176] We know, too, that these rural celebrations were under charge of the demarchs.[177] In the passage from the _Acharnians_ just cited, there is no statement that this is the season when the demes were accustomed to hold their annual Bacchic celebrations. Rather, in his joy in his newly concluded peace, the hero declares that he will _now_ hold this festival in honor of the god of the vine. No surprise is felt at this exceptional date,

## particularly as, by his statement below,[178] he has been

prevented for six years from holding the festival at its proper season. This last passage, however, is the strongest authority for a change of place in the action. Certainly, if the reading is correct, in the light of all the remainder of the comedy we should naturally translate: "in the sixth year, having come into my deme, I salute you gladly." But we do no violence to the construction if we say that [Greek: elthô es ton demon] means "going (_forth_) to my deme." Unquestionably up to the end of the first choral ode at v. 236, the action has gone on in Athens. But here, we are told, comes the change of place. In v. 202 Dicaeopolis has declared that he is "going in." What does he enter but his house in the city? At v. 236 the chorus also is in Athens. In v. 237, the voice of Dicaeopolis is heard from within--his _country_ house, it is said; and in v. 238 the chorus is as suddenly before this same house! Such rapid changes might easily take place on a modern stage, but are of a character to excite remark in an ancient theatre. If there was a change here, the second scene must have represented Cholleidae with the three houses of Dicaeopolis, Lamachus, and Euripides; and the three must be in the same deme; for the Bacchic procession of Dicaeopolis appears at v. 241, and is broken up by the chorus at v. 280. As soon as Dicaeopolis, by Page 73 his by-play, has obtained permission to plead his cause, he turns (v. 394) to the house of Euripides to borrow the wardrobe of one of the tragic heroes. Then, when his defense has divided the chorus, the first half call upon the gorgon-helmeted Lamachus (v. 566) to bear them aid, and that warrior appears from his house.

[Footnote 176: HAIGH, _Attic Theatre_, p. 47.]

[Footnote 177: EHMICHEN, _Bühnenwesen_, s. 195.]

[Footnote 178: _Achar._, 266 f.]

Now the common enemy has prevented the celebration of the Country Dionysia for six years. How is it possible, under such circumstances, to conceive of Euripides as composing tragedies in the country? How could the general Lamachus be living out of the city in such a time of danger? Certainly the play itself gives us authority that this scene also is in Athens. At v. 241 Dicaeopolis would go forth with his procession to hold the rural Dionysia in his deme. Prevented from doing so, he is from this on busy with the duties and pleasures of the Choes. His altercation with the chorus and with Lamachus ended, he (v. 623 f.) announces that he will open a market for all Boeotians, Megarians, and Peloponnesians. He sets up (v. 719) the bounds of his markets, and appoints three "himantes" as agoranomi. These officials are suggestive of those busy at the Anthesteria.[179] The first customer, from Megara comes in with: "Hail, agora in _Athens_" (v. 729), and brings for sale pigs suitable for sacrifice at the Mysteries (v. 747 and 764). The Lesser Mysteries came in Anthesterio first after the Anthesteria.

[Footnote 179: MOMMSEN, _Heortologie v. Anthesteria._]

There is no change of place in the course of the action. The scene, the Pnyx with the houses of Dicaeopolis, Lamachus, and Euripides near by, remains the same. There is no indication of a jump in time from Posideo to Gamelio, and again from Gamelio to Anthesterio.

Amid all the preparations for the Anthesteria made in the play, two statements cannot fail to attract attention. In v. 504 f. the poet informs us that this is not the Greater Dionysia, when strangers, tribute-bearers, and allies were present. It is the contest at the Lenaeum. In v. 1150 f. the chorus frees its mind concerning the miserly fashion in which Antimachus treated them at a previous celebration of the Lenaea. Shall we say that the poet, in order to speak of things present before the eyes of Page 74 the Athenians, steps, in these two passages, entirely outside the action of the play? By no means. The poet is dealing with a vital issue. He is fighting against the ruinous war. The power of his genius is shown by the masterly manner in which he uses the moment which was present to his hearers. The victor at the Choes sat among the spectators; the very walls of the theatre had hardly ceased to resound with the din of the carousers. Here, or elsewhere, there is mention of but one [Greek: epi Lenaiô agôn], that is the Lenaea, or the dramatic contest at the Anthesteria.

In fixing the date of the "Dionysia at the Lenaeum," we have the authority of some interesting inscriptions which have been collected in Dittenberger S.I.G. II. 374. They are the record of moneys obtained from the sale of the hides of the victims sacrificed at various festivals of the Attic year. A portion of each of four separate lists has been preserved. In the first and fourth of these, as they stand in Dittenberger, three Dionysiac festivals are mentioned: that at Piraeus, the Dionysia e? aste?, and the Dionysia [Greek: en astei]. The third list ends with the Dionysia in Piræus. The remaining incription mentions two Dionysiac festivals, the one at the Lenaeum, and that e? aste?. The part of the record which should cover the Dionysia at Piræus is wanting. The calendar order of all the festivals mentioned is strictly followed.