But this, though much, is not all. The orator goes on to tell us why the law was written up in this particular sanctuary. ‘And the reason why they set it up in the most ancient sanctuary of Dionysos and the most holy, in the Marshes, is that not many people may read what is written. For it is opened once only in each year, on the 12th of the month Anthesterion[197].’ Finally, having sufficiently raised our curiosity, he bids the clerk read the actual oath administered by this pure Bride to her attendants, administered before they touch the sacred things, and taken on the baskets at the altar. The clerk is to read it that all present may realize how venerable and holy and ancient the accustomed rite was. The oath of the attendants was as follows: ‘I fast and am clean and abstinent from all things that make unclean and from intercourse with man, and I will celebrate the Theoinia and the Iobakcheia to Dionysos in accordance with ancestral usage and at the appointed times.’
We shall meet again the precinct, the altar, the stele, the oath; for the present it is all-important to note that the precinct In-the-Marshes was open but once a year, and that on the 12th of Anthesterion. It is impossible, therefore, that this precinct could be identical with the precinct near the theatre on the South slope[198], as this must have been open for the Greater Dionysia, celebrated in the month Elaphebolion (March-April).
The precinct In-the-Marshes has been sought and found; but before we tell the story of its finding, in order that we may realize what clue was in the hands of the excavators, it is necessary to say a word as to the time and place of the festivals of Dionysos at Athens.
Thucydides himself tells us that the Dionysiac festivals were two, an earlier and a later. His use of the comparative—‘Dionysos-in-the-Marshes,’ he says, ‘to whom is celebrated the more ancient Dionysiac Festival,’—makes it clear that, to his mind, there were two and only two. The later festival, the Greater Dionysia, was celebrated in the precinct of Dionysos Eleuthereus; the time, we noted before, was the month Elaphebolion.
The ‘more ancient Dionysiac Festival’ is of course a purely informal descriptive title. But it happens that we know the official title of the two Athenian festivals, the earlier and the later[199].
1. The later festival, that in the present theatre, was called in laws and official inscriptions ‘the (Dionysia) in the town’ (τὰ ἐν ἄστει), or ‘the town Dionysia’ (ἀστικὰ Διονύσια).
2. The more ancient festival was called either ‘the Dionysia at the Lenaion’ (τὰ ἐπὶ Ληναίῳ Διονύσια), or ‘the (dramatic) contest at the Lenaion’ (ὁ ἐπὶ Ληναίῳ ἀγών), or, more simply, ‘the Lenaia’ (τὰ Λήναια).
We have got two festivals, an earlier and a later, the earlier called officially ‘Lenaia,’ or ‘the dramatic contest at the Lenaion’; but were there two theatres also, an earlier and a later? Yes. Pollux[200] tells us there was a Dionysiac theatre and a ‘Lenaic’ one—just the very word we wanted. And to clinch the whole argument we find that the ‘Lenaic’ one was the earlier. Hesychius[201], explaining the phrase, ‘the dramatic contest at the Lenaion,’ says, ‘there is in the city the Lenaion with a large enclosure, and in it a sanctuary of Dionysos Lenaios. In this (i.e. presumably the enclosure) the dramatic contests of the Athenians took place, before the theatre was built.’
This ‘theatre,’ where the plays were performed before the theatre of Eleuthereus was built, was no very grand affair; its seats, it would seem, were called ‘scaffoldings’ (ἴκρια). Photius[202] in explaining the word ikria says, ‘the (structure) in the agora from which they watched the Dionysiac contests before the theatre in the precinct of Dionysos was built.’