καὶ τὰ ἔξω πρὸς τοῦτο τὸ μέρος τῆς πόλεως μᾶλλον ἵδρυται, τό τε τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Ὀλυμπίου καὶ τὸ Πύθιον καὶ τὸ τῆς Γῆς καὶ τὸ ἐν Λίμναις Διονύσου (ᾧ τὰ ἀρχαιότερα Διονύσια τῇ δωδεκάτῃ ποιεῖται ἐν μηνὶ Ἀνθεστηριῶνι) ὥσπερ καὶ οἱ ἀπ’ Ἀθηναίων Ἴωνες ἔτι καὶ νῦν νομίζουσιν, ἵδρυται δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἱερὰ ταύτῃ ἀρχαῖα.

Thucyd. II. 15.

Let us recapitulate. Thucydides has made a statement as to the city before the days of Theseus.—Before this, what is now the citadel was the city, together with what is below it towards about South. In support of this statement he has adduced one argument. The sanctuaries are in the Citadel itself, those of other deities as well (as the Goddess). He now adduces a second, ‘And those that are outside are placed towards this part of the city more (than elsewhere). Such are the sanctuary of Zeus Olympios, and the Pythion, and the sanctuary of Ge, and that of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes (to whom is celebrated the more ancient Dionysiac Festival on the 12th day in the month Anthesterion, as is also the custom down to the present day with the Ionian descendants of the Athenians); and other ancient sanctuaries also are placed there.’

This second argument we have now to examine:—

By ‘this part of the city’ it is quite clear that Thucydides means that portion of the city of his own day which he has carefully marked out; i.e. the citadel plus something, plus ‘what is below it towards about South’; by this we have seen is meant the upper citadel plus the Pelargikon. This second piece of evidence is, like the first, adduced simply to prove the small limits of the ancient city. But Thucydides has expressed himself somewhat carelessly. Readers who did not know where the sanctuaries adduced as instances were, might and have taken ‘towards this part of the city’ to mean ‘towards about South.’ The proximity of the two phrases and the appearance of a relation between them, if in fact there be no relation is, as Dr Verrall[147] observes, ‘a flaw in composition which would not have been passed by a pupil of Isocrates.’ The carelessness of Thucydides is, however, excusable enough. He assumes that the position of the shrines he instances is known as it was by every Athenian of his day. He also assumes that the main gist of his argument is intelligently remembered, that his readers realize that he is concerned with the character and dimensions not the direction of his ancient city.

All that Thucydides tells us is that the sanctuaries outside the ancient city are ‘towards’ it[148]: strictly speaking he gives us absolutely no information as to whether they are North, South, East or West. But ‘towards’ implies approach, and, if we are told that sanctuaries are ‘towards’ a place, we naturally think of ourselves as going there and as finding these sanctuaries on and about the approach to that place.

As to the direction of the approach to the Acropolis there is happily no manner of doubt. In Thucydides’ own days it was where it now is, due West; in the days before the Persian War, the days when the old sanctuaries grew up towards the approach, it was South-West. We know then roughly where to look for our ‘outside’ sanctuaries; they will be about the entrance West and South-West. We must however remember that the whole ancient entrance with its fortifications, the Enneapylon, covered a far wider area than is occupied by the Propylaea now; it took in the whole West end of the hill and part of the North side, as well as part of the South. The area included to the South was, as we have already seen (p. 34), much larger than that to the North.

The Sanctuary of Zeus Olympios and the Pythion. The two sanctuaries first mentioned, those of Zeus Olympios and of Apollo Pythios, are linked together more closely than by mere topographical juxtaposition. In the Kerameikos Apollo Patroös[149] had a temple close to the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios; down near the Ilissos, Zeus Olympios had his great sanctuary (Fig. 49), and near it Apollo Pythios had a temenos, and here, where Thucydides is speaking of the most ancient foundation of the two gods, father and son, they are manifestly in close conjunction. This is fortunate for our argument. For it happens that, whereas we know the exact site of the earliest Pythion, of this earliest Olympieion there are no certain remains. From the known site of the Pythion and from the close conjunction of the two we can deduce within narrow limits the unknown site of the Olympion.

Possibly at this point, if the reader knows modern Athens, the words ‘the unknown site’ of the Olympion will rouse an instinctive protest. Surely the site of the Olympieion, with its familiar cluster of Corinthian columns, is of all things most certain and familiar. It lies South-East of the Acropolis not far from the Ilissos (see Fig. 49). A moment’s consideration will however show that this Olympieion, though familiar, is irrelevant, nay impossible. It is too remote to be described as towards the ancient city, it is too recent to be accounted an ancient sanctuary. It was, as Thucydides quite well knew, begun by Peisistratos[150].

We begin by fixing the site of the Pythion, happily certain.

Literature alone enables us within narrow limits to do this. In the Ion of Euripides[151] Ion, learning that Creousa comes from Athens, presses her for particulars about that ‘glorious’ city. As a priestling he is naturally interested in all canonical legends, but what he is really eager about is the ancient sacred spot which linked Athens to Delphi. The nursling of Delphi eagerly asks

But this is not what the pious Ion wants and he turns the subject.

The place at Athens dearest to the Pythian, the place his lightnings honour is on the Long Rocks, and there, we may safely assume, was the god’s earliest sanctuary.

The prologue of the same play tells us where the Long Rocks were, namely on the North of the Acropolis. Hermes, who brought Ion to Delphi, speaks[152]:

Nor is it Ion only who knows that this place was honoured by the Pythian fires, it is no mere ‘poetical’ figure. Strabo[153], in speaking of a place called Harma in Boeotia, says we must not confuse this Harma with another Harma near Pyle, a deme in Attica bordering on Tanagra. In connection with this Attic Harma, he adds, the proverb originated ‘When it has lightened through Harma.’ Strabo further goes on to say that this Harma, which is on Mt Parnes, to the North-West of Athens, was watched by certain officials called Pythiasts for three days and nights in each of three successive months; when a flash of lightning was observed a sacrifice was despatched to Delphi. The place whence the observation was taken was the altar of Zeus Astrapaios, Zeus of the Lightning, and this altar was in (or on) the (Acropolis) wall between the Pythion and the Olympion.

Euripides, it is clear, is alluding to this definite ritual which of course would be familiar to Ion. That ritual he clearly conceived of as taking place near the Long Rocks. Near the Long Rocks must therefore have stood the altar of Zeus of the Lightning, on the wall between the Olympieion and the Pythion. Not only the Pythion but the Olympieion must therefore have been close to the Long Rocks. The word used by Strabo for wall (τεῖχος) is strictly a fortification wall, and we should naturally understand it of that portion of the Pelargikon which defends the North-West corner of the citadel and abuts on the Long Rocks (Fig. 2). It is just here, close to the Pelargikon that we should, from the account of Pausanias[154], expect to find Apollo’s ‘best loved’ sanctuary. Pausanias on leaving the Acropolis notes the Pelargikon, or as he calls it Pelasgikon, and immediately after says ‘on the descent not to the lower parts of the city but just below the Propylaea, is a spring of water, and close by a sanctuary of Apollo in a cave; they think that it was here he met Creousa, the daughter of Erechtheus.’

Pausanias says ‘a sanctuary of Apollo in a cave.’ It is the fact that the sanctuary is in a cave that strikes and interests him. He does not call it a Pythion. But by another writer the actual word Pythion is used. Philostratos[155] describes the route taken by the Panathenaic ship thus: starting from the outer Kerameikos it sailed to the Eleusinion, and, having rounded it, it was carried along past the Pelasgikon and came alongside of the Pythion, where it is now moored. The Panathenaic way has been, as will later be seen (p. 131), laid bare; for the moment all that concerns us is that the Pythion is mentioned immediately after the Pelasgikon and was therefore presumably next to it. Philostratos puts what he calls the Pythion in just the place where Pausanias[156] saw his ‘sanctuary in a cave’; the two are identical. Further, any doubts as to where the ship was moored are set at rest by Pausanias himself. He saw the ship and noted its splendour. It stood ‘near the Areopagus.’ The Pythion must have stood at the North-West corner of the Acropolis (Fig. 46).

Even if we relied on literary evidence only we should be quite sure that the Pythion of which Thucydides speaks was somewhere on the Long Rocks, at the North-West end of the Acropolis. Happily however the situation is not left thus vague; the actual cave of Apollo has been found, and thoroughly cleared out, and in it there came to light numerous inscribed votive offerings to the god, which make the ascription certain.

From the lower tower at the North-West corner there have always been clearly visible to any one looking up from below three caves (Fig. 21), a very shallow one immediately over the Klepsydra, and two others nearer together and somewhat deeper separated from the first by a shoulder of rock. On the plan in Fig. 22 these are marked Α, Β and Γ. The question has long been raised which of the three belonged to Apollo and which to Pan. As Pausanias[157] first mentions the sanctuary of Apollo in a cave and then passes on to tell the story of Pheidippides, manifestly à propos of Pan’s cave, it has been usual to connect Α with Apollo and Β and Γ, one or both, with Pan.

But the identification has never been felt to be quite satisfactory. The cave Α is really no cave at all; it is a very shallow niche. It is impossible to imagine it the scene of the story of Creousa. Moreover it bears no traces of any votive offerings having been attached to its wall, nor have any remains of such been found there.

Between cave Α and cave Β there is a connecting stairway α, α′, α″, but it should be carefully noted that Α has no direct communication with the upper part of the Acropolis nor with the Propylaea. The steep staircase that leads down now-a-days from near the monument of Agrippa to the little Church now built over the Klepsydra looks very rocky and primitive, but really only dates from mediaeval or at earliest late Roman times. It was made at the time that the so-called ‘Valerian’ wall was built, which starts from the Klepsydra and reaches to the Stoa of Attalos (Fig. 46, dotted lines).

We pass to cave Β, which formerly was believed to belong to Pan. Recent excavations[158] leave no doubt that it was sacred to Apollo. The back wall and sides of this cave are thickly studded with niches for the most part of oblong shape, but a few are round. About in the middle of the cave is an extra large niche, which looks as if it had contained the image of a god. Many of the niches still show the holes which once held nails for the fixing of votive tablets. As the cave became unduly crowded with offerings they overflowed on to the rock at the left hand.

So far we are sure that cave Β was a sanctuary, but of whom? If Α did not belong to Apollo we should expect that Β, as next in order, was Apollo’s cave. The ground in front of Β has been cleared down to the living rock and the results of this clearance[159] were conclusive. Exactly in front of Β there came to light eleven tablets or pinakes all of similar type, and all bearing inscribed dedications to Apollo, either with the title ‘below the Heights,’ or ‘below the Long Rocks.’ Cave Β is clearly a sanctuary of Apollo.

The votive tablets are all of late Roman date; it is probable however that owing to the small space available, they superseded earlier offerings of the same kind. The type scarcely varies. Specimens are given in Fig. 23. The inscription is surrounded sometimes by an olive wreath and sometimes by a myrtle wreath with characteristic berries. Occasionally the wreath is tied by two snakes. Two inscriptions may serve as a sample of the rest. On No. 1[160] (Fig. 23) is inscribed ‘Good Fortune G(aios) Ioulios Metrodorus a Marathonian having borne the office of Thesmothetes dedicated (this) to Apollo Below-the-Long (Rocks).’ In the second[161] instance (Fig. 23) the dedicator states that he is ‘King’ (Archon), and the dedication is to Apollo ‘below the Heights.’ Clearly the two titles of the god were interchangeable.

These dedications are of capital importance. It is little likely that unless the custom had been of immemorial antiquity the archons would have sought out an obscure cave-sanctuary in which to place their commemorative tablets. Was there not the temple of Apollo Patroös in the Market Place and the splendid Pythion down near the Ilissos?

They chose the cave-sanctuary of Apollo in which to place, at the close of their term of office, their votive tablet because it was in this ancient sanctuary that they had taken their oath of fidelity on their election. At the official scrutiny[162] of candidates for the archonship enquiry was made as to the ancestry of the candidate on both father’s and mother’s side. But it was not enough that he should be a full citizen, he was also solemnly asked whether he had an Apollo Patroös and a Zeus Herkeios and where their sanctuaries were. The Athenians, in so far as they were Ionians, claimed descent through Ion from Apollo and of course through Apollo from Zeus. The sanctuary in the cave was therefore to them of supreme importance. This scrutiny over, the candidates went to a sacred stone near the Stoa Basileios, and there, standing over the cut pieces of the sacrificed victim, they took the oath to rule justly and to take no bribes, and they swore that if any took a bribe he would dedicate at Delphi[163] a gold statue commensurate in value.

The archons had to prove their relation to Apollo Patroös and to dedicate a gold statue if they offended the Pythian god under whose immediate control they stood. Moreover it was not enough that they should swear at the Stoa Basileios. The oath was doubtless older than any Stoa Basileios in the later Market Place. After they had sworn there they had to ‘go up to the Acropolis and there swear the same oath again[164].’ Then and not till then could they enter office. And whither on the Acropolis should they go? Whither but to the cave where a little later they will dedicate their votive tablets, and where still the foundations of an altar stand, the cave of their ancestor Apollo Patroös and Pythios?

Whether the second oath, on the Acropolis, was taken actually in the cave-sanctuary cannot be certainly decided; the votive tablets make it probable and they make quite certain that the cave-sanctuary was officially used by the archons. This fact it is necessary to emphasize. Until these inscriptions were brought to light Apollo’s cave was thought to be of but little importance, curious and primitive but practically negligible. Now that it is clear that the archons selected it as their memorial chapel, such a view is no longer possible. It was a sanctuary not merely of Apollo Below-the-Heights but of the ancestral god, the Apollo Patroös of the archons. Moreover—a fact all important—this Apollo ‘Below-the-Heights’ being Apollo Patroös was also Apollo Pythios. Demosthenes in the de Corona[165], calling to witness his country’s gods, says ‘I call on all the gods and goddesses who hold the land of Attica and on Apollo the Pythian, who is ancestral (πατρῷος) to the state.’ The sanctuary in the cave was a Pythion. Apollo coming as he did to Athens from Pytho was always Pythian whatever additional title he might take, and every sanctuary of his was a Pythion; his most venerable sanctuary was not a temple but a hollowed rock.

The Pythion lies before us securely fixed, primitive, convincing. With the ‘sanctuary of Zeus Olympios’ it is alas! far otherwise. Given that the Pythion is fixed at the North-West corner of the Acropolis, and given that, according to Strabo (see p. 69), it was so near the Olympieion that the place of an altar could be described as ‘between’ them, then it follows that somewhere near to that North-West corner the sanctuary of Zeus Olympios must have lain. We may further say that as Thucydides, it will be seen, notes the various sanctuaries and the city-well in the order from East to West, and begins with the sanctuary of Zeus Olympios, it lay presumably somewhat to the East of the Pythion. To the East of the Pythion, near to the supposed site of the temenos of Aglauros, was found an inscription[166] with a dedication to Zeus, but, as inscriptions are easily moveable, no great importance can be attached to this isolated fact. Of definite monumental evidence for the existence of a sanctuary of Zeus where we seek it, we must frankly own at the outset there is nothing certain[167]. It must stand or fall with the Pythion.

Before examining such literary evidence as exists it is necessary to note clearly that Thucydides mentions not a temple but a sanctuary. The great temple near the Ilissos, begun by Peisistratos[168], and not completed till centuries later by Antiochus Epiphanes and Hadrian, is usually spoken of as a temple (ναός), but we have no grounds whatever for supposing that on or near the Long Rocks there was a temple, but only a sanctuary[169], which may very likely have been merely a precinct with an altar. Such a precinct and altar might easily disappear and leave no trace. This is of importance for the understanding of what follows.

When we come to literary evidence one point is clear. Before Peisistratos began the building of his great temple there existed another and earlier place for the worship of Zeus, and this is spoken of as not a temple but a sanctuary. Pausanias[170], when he visited the great temple, wrote, ‘They say that Deucalion built the old sanctuary of Zeus Olympios, and, as a proof of the sojourn of Deucalion at Athens, point to his tomb, which is not far distant from the present temple.’

It has usually been assumed that this earlier sanctuary was on or near the site of the later temple, but, as Prof. Dörpfeld[171] has pointed out, this is no-wise stated by Pausanias. He only says that there was a tomb of Deucalion, not far from the present temple, and that the existence of this tomb made people attribute to Deucalion the building of the early sanctuary. Where the early sanctuary was he does not say. It should be noted that he is careful to use the word sanctuary, not temple, in speaking of the foundation of Deucalion.

From this it follows, I think, that when we hear of a sanctuary of Zeus Olympios, not a temple, there is a slight presumption in favour of its being the earlier foundation. In the opening scene of the Phaedrus[172] an ‘Olympion,’ i.e. a sanctuary of Zeus, is mentioned. Socrates and Phaedrus meet somewhere, presumably within the city walls, for Socrates is later taxed with never going for a country walk. Socrates says, ‘So it seems Lysias was up in town.’ Phaedrus answers, ‘Yes, he is staying with Epikrates in yonder house, near the Olympion, the one that used to belong to Morychus.’ The favourite haunt of Socrates was the agora; a stroll by the Ilissos was to him a serious and unusual country walk. Our Olympion at the North-West corner of the Acropolis would fit the scene somewhat better than the great temple near the Ilissos; but that is all, the passage proves nothing.

A question more important perhaps than any topographical issue remains. Do we know anything of the nature of the god worshipped in the ancient sanctuary, or of the character of his ritual? The question may seem to some superfluous. Zeus is surely Zeus everywhere and for all time, his cloud-compelling nature and his splendid sacrificial feasts familiar from Homer downwards. But then what of Deucalion? Deucalion is a figure manifestly Oriental, a feeble copy of the archetypal Noah. Why does he institute the worship of our immemorial Indo-European Zeus? Are there two Zeuses?

There were, at least at Athens, two festivals of Zeus. Thucydides[173] himself is witness. He tells us of the trap laid for Kylon in characteristic fashion by the Delphic oracle. Kylon was to seize the Acropolis ‘on the greatest festival of Zeus.’ But this ‘greatest festival’ was alas for him! not of the Zeus he, as an Olympian victor, remembered, but of ‘Zeus Meilichios,’ and—significant fact for us—it, the familiar Diasia, was celebrated ‘outside the city.’ This ‘outside the city’ cannot fail, used as the words are by Thucydides himself, to remind us of our sanctuary, also ‘outside.’

What may be dimly discerned, though certainly no-wise demonstrated, is this. The name Zeus is one of the few divine titles as to which philologists agree that it is Indo-European. But the name Zeus was attached to persons and conceptions many and diverse, and here in Athens it was attached to a divinity of Oriental nature and origin. Meilichios[174] is but the Graecized form of Melek, the ‘King’ best known to us as Moloch, a deity who like the Greek Meilichios loved holocausts, a deity harsh and stern, who could only by a helpless and hopelessly mistaken etymology be called Meilichios the Gentle One. His worship prevailed in the Peiraeus, brought thither probably by Phenician sailors, from his sanctuary there came the familiar reliefs with the great snake as the impersonation of the god. It was this Semitic Melek whom Deucalion brought in his ark. When this Semitic immigration took place it is hard to say. Tradition, as evidenced by the Parian Chronicle[175], placed it in the reign of the shadowy Attic king Kranaos, about 1528 B.C.

The sanctuaries of both Zeus and Apollo are alike outside the ancient city. Zeus had altars on the Acropolis itself; Apollo, great though he was, never forced an entrance there. The fact is surely significant. Herodotus[176], it will be remembered, marks the successive stages of the development of Athens: under Kekrops they were Kekropidai, under Erechtheus they were Athenians, and last, ‘when Ion, son of Xuthos, became their leader, from him they were called Ionians.’ Ion was the first Athenian polemarch[177].

One thing is clear, Ion marks the incoming of a new race, a race with Zeus and Apollo for their gods. From the blend of this new stock with the old autochthonous inhabitants arose the Ionians. Zeus and Apollo were called ‘ancestral’ at Athens because they were ancestral; the new element traced its descent from them, and presumably the affiliation was arranged by Delphi; but Apollo, though his sanctuary was on the hill, never got inside.

Ion had for divine father Apollo, but his real human father was Xuthos. This Xuthos, as immigrant conqueror, marries the king’s daughter Creousa. Xuthos was really a local hero of the deme Potamoi[178], near Prasiae. He came of Achaean stock, and therefore had Zeus for ancestor. Hermes, in the prologue to the Ion[179], is quite clear. There was war between Athens and Euboea:

And again[180], when Ion questions his unknown mother as to her husband:

The tomb of Ion, significant fact, was not at Athens but at Potamoi, and Pausanias[181] saw it there. Well may the sanctuaries of Zeus and Apollo stand together.

To return to the question of topography. That the cave marked Β on the plan is sacred to Apollo admits, in the face of the inscribed votive tablets, of no doubt. But a difficulty yet remains. It was noted in speaking of the cave above the Klepsydra that it was too shallow and too exposed to be a natural scene of the story of Creousa. The same objections, though in a somewhat less degree, apply to the cave marked Β. The difficulty, however, admits of an easy solution.

The excavators proceeded to clear out cave Γ, and here they found nothing, no votive tablets, no altar, no inscriptions. But in carrying on their work further East they came on a fourth cave, of a character quite different from that of Α, Β, or Γ. The fourth cave, Δ, has a very narrow entrance; it communicates by a narrow passage with Δ′ and also with Δ″, but Δ″ has been turned into a small Christian church, of which the pavement and a portion of a brick wall yet remain. Here at Δ we have a cave in the full sense of the word, and here we have in all probability the cave or caves, the ‘seats[182]’ (θακήματα) of Pan.

But, be it remembered, Pan was a late-comer; his worship was introduced after his services at Marathon. In heroic days, the time of the story of Creousa, the Long Rocks were shared by the Pythian god and the daughters of Aglauros. The hollow triple cave marked Δ′, Δ″, Δ‴ was once the property of Apollo, and it saw the birth of Ion; later it was handed over to Pan, and is again, as in the Lysistrata[183], the natural sequestered haunt of lovers. Kinesias, on the Acropolis, points out to Myrrhine that near at hand is the sanctuary of Pan for seclusion, and close by the Klepsydra for purification.

In the countless votive tablets[184] to Pan and the nymphs, the type varies little. We have a cave, an altar: round the altar three nymphs are dancing, usually led by Hermes, and, perched on the side of the cave or looking through a hole, Pan is piping to them. The three nymphs, three daughters of Kekrops, were then dancing on the Long Rocks long before Pan came to pipe to them. Concerned as we are for the present with Apollo and his Pythion, it is only necessary to note that their shrine, the sanctuary of Aglauros, must have been near the cave of Pan, somewhere to the East. Euripides[185] speaks of them as practically one:

Exactly where that sanctuary of Aglauros was excavations have not established. At the point where the cavern is closed by the little modern church, begins a stairway, consisting of seventeen steps (θ-κ-λ-μ-), cut in the rock. These steps manifestly lead up to the steps already known, which lead down, twenty-two in number, from the Erechtheion. This is probably the ‘opening’ (ὄπη) down which the deserting women in the Lysistrata[186] were caught escaping. Still further East is a long narrow subterranean passage, a natural cleft in the rock π-π′, and at the end of this, just above the modern Church of the Seraphim, is supposed to be the sanctuary of Aglauros. Here were found a niche in the rock, the basis of a statue, and some fragments of black-figured vases. Here again there is communication with the Acropolis, but only by a ladder ascending the cliff for about twenty feet at a precipitous point. Moreover the upper part of the stone stairway is of mediaeval date so that it is not likely that the ascent was an ancient one.

The Sanctuary of Ge.—The site of this sanctuary can, within very narrow limits be determined.

Pausanias, in describing the South side of the Acropolis, after passing the Asklepieion, notes the temple of Themis and the monument of Hippolytus. Apropos of this he mentions and probably saw a sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos (p. 105); he then says ‘there is also a sanctuary of Ge Kourotrophos and Demeter Chloe’; immediately afterwards he passes through the Propylaea. The sanctuary of Ge must therefore have been at the South-West corner or due West of the Acropolis, and presumably somewhere along the winding road followed by Pausanias (see Plan, p. 38). From the account of Pausanias[187] we should gather that Ge Kourotrophos, Earth the Nursing-Mother, and Demeter Chloe, Green Demeter had a sanctuary together; perhaps they had by the time of Pausanias, but the considerable number of separate dedications[188] to Demeter Chloe makes it probable that at least in earlier days these precincts, though near, were distinct.

The union of Ge Kourotrophos and Demeter Chloe is not the union of Mother and Maid, it is the union of two Mother-goddesses. Of the two Demeter belongs locally not to Athens but to Eleusis. Ge Kourotrophos is obviously the earlier and strictly local figure. But Demeter of Eleusis, from various causes, political and agricultural, developed to dimensions almost Olympian, and her figure tended everywhere to efface that of the local Earth-Mother, hence we need not be surprised that the number of dedications to Demeter is larger than that of those to Kourotrophos. Kourotrophos appears among the early divinities enumerated by the woman herald in the Thesmophoriazusae[189], and the scholiast, in his comment on the passage, recognizes her antiquity: ‘either Earth or Hestia; it comes to the same thing; they sacrifice to her before Zeus.’ Suidas[190] states that Erichthonios was the first to sacrifice to her on the Acropolis, and instituted the custom that ‘those who were sacrificing to any god should first sacrifice to her.’

The Sanctuary of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes.

The name Dionysos at once carries us in imagination to the famous theatre on the South side of the Acropolis (Fig. 16), and we remember perhaps with some relief that this theatre is, quite as much as the Pythion, ‘towards’ the ancient city; it lies right up against the Acropolis rock. We remember also that Pausanias[191], in his account of the South slope, says ‘the oldest sanctuary of Dionysos is beside the theatre.’ He sees within the precinct there two temples, the foundations of which remain to-day; one of them was named Eleutherian, the other we think may surely have belonged to Dionysos-in-the-Marshes. It is true that the ground about the theatre is anything but marshy now, nor could it ever have been very damp, as it slopes sharply down to the South-East. Still, from an ancient name it is never safe to argue[192]; in-the-marshes may have been a mere popular etymology from a word the meaning of which was wholly lost.

But a moment’s reflection shows that the identification, though tempting, will not do. Thucydides himself (p. 66) seems to warn us; he seems to say, ‘not that precinct which you all know so well and think so much of, not that theatre where year by year you all go, but an earlier and more venerable place, and, that there be no mistake, the place where you go on the 12th day of Anthesterion, and where your ancestors went before they migrated to colonize Asia Minor.’

It is most fortunate that Thucydides has been thus precise, because about this festival on the 12th day of Anthesterion we know from other sources[193] certain important details which may help to the identification of the sanctuary.

The festival celebrated on the 12th of Anthesterion was the Festival of the Choes or Pitchers[194]. On this day, we learn from Athenaeus[195] and others, the people drank new wine, each one by himself, offered some to the god, and brought to the priestess in the sanctuary in the Marshes the wreaths they had worn. On this day took place also a ceremony of great sanctity, the marriage of the god to the wife of the chief archon—the ‘king’ as he was called. The actual marriage took place in a building called the Boukoleion, the exact site of which is not known; but certain preliminary ceremonies were gone through by the Bride in the sanctuary in-the-Marshes. The author of the Oration ‘against Neaera[196]’ tells us that there was a law by which the Bride had to be a full citizen and a virgin when she married the king, she was bound over to perform the ceremonies required of her ‘according to ancestral custom,’ to leave nothing undone, and to introduce no innovations. This law, the orator tells us, was engraved on a stele and set up alongside of the altar in the sanctuary of Dionysos in-the-Marshes, and remained to his day, though the letters were somewhat dim.

But this, though much, is not all. The orator goes on to tell us why the law was written up in this particular sanctuary. ‘And the reason why they set it up in the most ancient sanctuary of Dionysos and the most holy, in the Marshes, is that not many people may read what is written. For it is opened once only in each year, on the 12th of the month Anthesterion[197].’ Finally, having sufficiently raised our curiosity, he bids the clerk read the actual oath administered by this pure Bride to her attendants, administered before they touch the sacred things, and taken on the baskets at the altar. The clerk is to read it that all present may realize how venerable and holy and ancient the accustomed rite was. The oath of the attendants was as follows: ‘I fast and am clean and abstinent from all things that make unclean and from intercourse with man, and I will celebrate the Theoinia and the Iobakcheia to Dionysos in accordance with ancestral usage and at the appointed times.’

We shall meet again the precinct, the altar, the stele, the oath; for the present it is all-important to note that the precinct In-the-Marshes was open but once a year, and that on the 12th of Anthesterion. It is impossible, therefore, that this precinct could be identical with the precinct near the theatre on the South slope[198], as this must have been open for the Greater Dionysia, celebrated in the month Elaphebolion (March-April).

The precinct In-the-Marshes has been sought and found; but before we tell the story of its finding, in order that we may realize what clue was in the hands of the excavators, it is necessary to say a word as to the time and place of the festivals of Dionysos at Athens.

Thucydides himself tells us that the Dionysiac festivals were two, an earlier and a later. His use of the comparative—‘Dionysos-in-the-Marshes,’ he says, ‘to whom is celebrated the more ancient Dionysiac Festival,’—makes it clear that, to his mind, there were two and only two. The later festival, the Greater Dionysia, was celebrated in the precinct of Dionysos Eleuthereus; the time, we noted before, was the month Elaphebolion.

The ‘more ancient Dionysiac Festival’ is of course a purely informal descriptive title. But it happens that we know the official title of the two Athenian festivals, the earlier and the later[199].

1. The later festival, that in the present theatre, was called in laws and official inscriptions ‘the (Dionysia) in the town’ (τὰ ἐν ἄστει), or ‘the town Dionysia’ (ἀστικὰ Διονύσια).

2. The more ancient festival was called either ‘the Dionysia at the Lenaion’ (τὰ ἐπὶ Ληναίῳ Διονύσια), or ‘the (dramatic) contest at the Lenaion’ (ὁ ἐπὶ Ληναίῳ ἀγών), or, more simply, ‘the Lenaia’ (τὰ Λήναια).

We have got two festivals, an earlier and a later, the earlier called officially ‘Lenaia,’ or ‘the dramatic contest at the Lenaion’; but were there two theatres also, an earlier and a later? Yes. Pollux[200] tells us there was a Dionysiac theatre and a ‘Lenaic’ one—just the very word we wanted. And to clinch the whole argument we find that the ‘Lenaic’ one was the earlier. Hesychius[201], explaining the phrase, ‘the dramatic contest at the Lenaion,’ says, ‘there is in the city the Lenaion with a large enclosure, and in it a sanctuary of Dionysos Lenaios. In this (i.e. presumably the enclosure) the dramatic contests of the Athenians took place, before the theatre was built.’

This ‘theatre,’ where the plays were performed before the theatre of Eleuthereus was built, was no very grand affair; its seats, it would seem, were called ‘scaffoldings’ (ἴκρια). Photius[202] in explaining the word ikria says, ‘the (structure) in the agora from which they watched the Dionysiac contests before the theatre in the precinct of Dionysos was built.’

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.