Footnote 166:[ (return) ] II. 15.
Footnote 167:[ (return) ] BOECKII Vom Unterschied der Lena., Anthest. und Dion. s. 52.
Footnote 168:[ (return) ] 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 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, η επι Ληναίω πομπή 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 η επι Ληναίω πομπή. 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 ο επι Ληναίω αγων 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 [171] the 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:[ (return) ] Mid. 10.
Footnote 170:[ (return) ] SUIDAS, εκ των αμαξων σώωμματα.
Footnote 171:[ (return) ] ATHENÆUS, IV. p. 130.
Footnote 172:[ (return) ] Ibid. III. 129.