Photius, while explaining the ‘scaffolding,’ gives us incidentally a priceless piece of information. This early theatre was in the agora. But then, to raise a time-honoured question, to which we shall later ([p. 132]) return, where is the agora? This question for the present we must not pursue. But the ancient theatre consisted of more than ‘scaffolding’ for seats. It had what was the central, initial, cardinal feature of every Greek theatre, its dancing place, its orchestra; and we know approximately where this orchestra was. A lexicographer[203], explaining the word orchestra, says, ‘a conspicuous place for a public festival, where are the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton.’
The agora, conducted by successive theorists, has made the complete tour of the Acropolis, but the statues of the Tyrant-Slayers cannot break loose from the Areopagus,—beneath which ‘not far’ from the temple of Ares, Pausanias[204] saw them. The statues, according to Timaeus, were at the site of the ancient orchestra[205], from the scaffolding of which ‘in the agora’ the more ancient festival (the Lenaia) was witnessed. Here then, somewhere near the Areopagus, we must seek the sanctuary of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes.
The Lenaia, though more ancient than the ‘city Dionysia’ was no obscure festival. Plato[206], in the Protagoras, mentions a comedy which Pherecrates had brought out at the Lenaia, and it can never be forgotten that for the Lenaia, in 405 B.C., Aristophanes wrote the Frogs[207]. The chorus of Frogs[208] assuredly remember that their home is in the Limnae. There they were wont to croak and chant at the Anthesteria, on the third day of which festival, the Chytroi or Pots, came the ‘Pot Contests,’ probably the earliest dramatic performances that Athens saw.
‘O brood of the mere, the spring,
Gather together and sing
From the depths of your throat
By the side of the boat
Co-äx, as we move in a ring;
As in Limnae we sang the divine
Nyseïan Giver of Wine,