Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

It was, we know, the great statesman Lycurgus who, in the 4th century B.C., built the first permanent stone stage in the theatre and made the seats for the spectators as we see them now. So pleased was he, it would seem, with his theatre that he thought it useless and senseless to have plays acted elsewhere. Accordingly in the Lives of the Ten Orators[223] we learn that Lycurgus introduced laws, and among them one about comic writers ‘to hold a performance at the Chytroi, a competitive one, in the theatre,’ and ‘to record the victor as a victor in the city,’ which had formerly not been allowed. He thus revived the performance which had fallen into disuse.

Lycurgus meant well we may be sure, but he was a Butad[224], he ought to have known better than to pluck up an old festival by the roots like that and think to foster it by transplantation. The end was certain; the old precinct, deserted by its festivals, was bit by bit forgotten, overgrown, and at last in part built over by the new Iobakchoi.

The precinct had lost prestige by the time of Pausanias[225]. Had the temple of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes been above ground he would assuredly not have passed it by. Near to where the precinct once was he saw a building, a circular or semi-circular one, which may have been a last Roman reminiscence of the orchestra, and still of note though it did not occupy the same site; he notes ‘a theatre which they call the Odeion.’ It is probable that this was the theatre built by Agrippa and mentioned by Philostratos[226] as ‘the theatre in the Kerameikos, which goes by the name of the Agrippeion.’

Before leaving the sanctuary in-the-Marshes, a word must be said as to the Anthesteria or, as Thucydides calls it, ‘the more ancient Dionysiac Festival.’ I have tried elsewhere[227] to show in detail that the Dionysiac element in the Anthesteria was only a thin upper layer beneath which lay a ritual of immemorial antiquity, which had for its object the promotion of fertility by means of the placation of ghosts or heroes. On the first day, if I am right, the Pithoigia was an Opening not only of wine-jars but of grave-jars; the second, the Choes, was a feast not only of Cups but of Libations (χοαί); the third, the Chytroi, not only a Pot-feast, but a feast of Holes in the ground and of the solemn dismissal of Keres back to the lower world. That the collective name of the whole feast Anthesteria did not primarily mean the festival of those who ‘did the flowers,’ but rather of those who ‘revoked the ghosts[228].’

But in trying to distinguish the two strata, the under stratum of ghosts, the upper of Dionysos, I never doubted that the Pot Contest on the day of the Chytroi belonged to Dionysos. Dionysos and the ‘origin of the drama’ are canonically connected. It has remained, therefore, something of a mystery how Dionysos, late-comer as he was, contrived to possess himself of the ancient ghost-festival and impose his dramatic contests on a ritual substratum apparently so uncongenial. Religions are accommodating enough, but some sort of analogy or possible bridge from one to the other is necessary for affiliation.

The difficulty disappears at once if we accept Professor Ridgeway’s[229] recent theory as to the origin of tragedy. The drama according to him is not ‘Dorian,’ and, save for the one element of the Satyric play, not Dionysiac. It took its rise in mimetic dances at the tombs of local heroes. When Dionysos came to Athens with his Satyr attendants he would find the Pot-Contests as part of the funeral ritual of the Anthesteria. He added to the festival wine and the Satyrs. Small wonder that comedy, as in the Frogs, was at home in the Underworld, and could in all piety parody a funeral[230] on the stage.

Thucydides has given us four examples of sanctuaries outside the polis which are ‘towards that part’ of it, but again, as in the first clause, he seems to feel that if he has spoken the truth it is not the whole truth, so he saves himself from misunderstanding by an additional clause, ‘and other ancient sanctuaries are placed here.’

It would be idle to try and give a complete list of all the sanctuaries that were situated in this particular region, still more idle to decide of what particular sanctuaries Thucydides was thinking. The precinct of Aglauros and the Anakeion on the North side, the sanctuary of the Semnae and the Amyneion on the West, the sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos and that of Themis on the West and South-West are all ‘towards’ the approach. Three out of these, the Amyneion, the sanctuary of the Semnae, and the sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos, are of such interest in themselves and so essential to the forming of a picture of the sanctities of ancient Athens that a word must be said of each.

The Amyneion. The Amyneion, or sanctuary of Amynos[231], is known to us only through monumental evidence, brought to light in the recent excavations. Its discovery is one of the things that make us feel suddenly how much of popular faith we, relying as we must almost wholly on literature, may have utterly lost.