We have already seen that an orchestra was first established in the agora. Timæus adds [190] that this was a conspicuous place where were the statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton, which we know to have stood in the agora.
The scholiast to the De Corona of Demosthenes [191] says that the "hieron" of Calamites, an eponymous hero, was close to the Lenaeum. Hesychius words this statement differently, saying that [the statue of] the hero himself was near the Lenaeum. We know that the statues of eponymous heroes were set up in the agora. Here again the new Aristotle manuscript comes to our support, telling us (Pol. c. 3) that the nine archons did not occupy the same building, but that the Basileus had the Bucoleum, near the Prytaneum, and that the meeting and marriage of the Basileus' wife with Dionysus still took place there in his time. That the Bucoleum must be on the agora, and that the marriage took place in Limnaean-Lenaean territory, have long been accepted. The location of the Limnae to the northwest at the Acropolis must thus be considered as settled.
Dr. Dörpfeld maintains that the ancient orchestra and the later Agrippeum theatre near by, mentioned by Philostratus, [192] lay in the depression between the Pnyx and the Hill of the Nymphs, but considerably above the foot of the declivity.
Footnote 190:[ (return) ] TIM. Lex. Plat.
Footnote 191:[ (return) ] DEMOS, de Corona, 129, scholium.
Footnote 192:[ (return) ] PHILOSTRATUS, Vit. Soph., p. 247.
From the passage of the Neaera quoted above we know that the old orchestra could not have been in the sacred precinct of Dionysus Limnaeus, for this was opened but once in every year, on the 12th of Anthesterio, [193] while the Chytri and therefore ό επι Ληναίω αγών were held on the following day. This involves too that the Pithoigia as well as the "contests at the Lenaeum" could not have been celebrated in the sanctuary εν Λίμναις, though portions of each of these divisions of the Anthesteria were held in the Lenaeum, which contained the Limnaea hieron.
Footnote 193:[ (return) ] See also THUCYDIDES above.
The Lenaeum must lie εν Λίμναις, and therefore on the low ground. A passage in Isæus (8. 35) is authority that the sanctuary of Dionysus εν Λίμναις was εν αστει; i.e., within the Themistoclean walls. So we have it located within narrow limits, somewhere in the space bounded on the east by the eastern limit of the agora in Ceramicus, south by the Areopagus, west by the Pnyx and the Hill of the Nymphs, and north by the Dipylum.
From the neighborhood of the Dionysiac foundations and allusions mentioned by Pausanias immediately upon entering the city, we may be justified in locating this ancient cult of Dionysus εν Λίμναις still more exactly, and placing it somewhere on or at the foot of the southwestern slope of Colonus Agoraeus. More precise evidence of its site we may obtain from future excavation: though as this region lay outside the Byzantine city-walls, the ruins may have been more or less completely swept away.