When the people in lots
With their sanctified Pots
Came reeling around my shrine.’
The excavations which have brought to light the ancient sanctuary of the Limnae were not undertaken solely, or even chiefly, with that object. Rather the intention was to settle, if possible, other and wider topographical questions: where lay the ancient road to the Acropolis, where the ancient agora, and where the city well, Kallirrhoë. Yet, to some, who awaited with an almost breathless impatience the result of these excavations, their great hope was that the precinct of the Limnae might be found; that they might know where in imagination to picture the ancient rites of the Anthesteria and the marriage of the Queen and those earliest dramatic contests from which sprang tragedy and comedy. The wider results of the excavations will be noted in connection with the Enneakrounos; for the moment it is the narrower, intenser issue of the Limnae that alone concerns us.
So far our only topographical clues have been two. (1) Thucydides has told us that the sanctuary in the Marshes with the other sanctuaries he mentions was ‘towards’ the ancient city; we have fixed the Pythion at the North-West corner of the Acropolis, and as his account seems to be moving westwards, we expect the Dionysiac sanctuary to be West of that point. (2) We know also ([p. 87]) that the ancient orchestra was near the Areopagus. We look for a site for the Dionysia which shall combine these two directions. If that site is also a possible Marsh, so much the better; and here indeed, in the hollow between the Pnyx, Areopagus, and Acropolis, water is caught and confined; but for artificial drainage, here marsh-land must be. This, by practical experience, the excavators soon had reason to know.
Fig. 24.
A portion of the results of the excavations begun by the German Archaeological Institute in 1887[209] and lasting for upwards of ten years is to be seen on the plans in Figs. [24] and [35]. The enlarged plan of a portion of the excavations ([Fig. 24]) for the moment alone concerns us. The first substantial discovery that rewarded the excavators was the finding of the ancient road. It followed, as Professor Dörpfeld had always predicted it would, the lie of the modern road. Roads being strictly conditioned by the law of least resistance do not lightly alter their course. The present carriage road to the Acropolis is a little less devious in its windings than the ancient one, that is all ([Fig. 35]).
