THE SANCTUARIES THAT ARE OUTSIDE THE CITADEL.
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
And is there there a place called the Long Rocks?
_Cre._ Why ask this? Oh the memory thou hast touched.
_Ion._ The Pythian honours it and the Pythian fires.
_Cre._ Honours it! he honours it! Curse the day I saw it.
_Ion._ What is it? You hate the haunts the god loves best.
_Cre._ Nothing. Those caves could tell a tale of shame.
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]:
‘A citadel there is in Hellas famed,
Called after Pallas of the golden spear,
And, where the northern rocks ’neath Pallas’ hill
Are called the Long Rocks, Phoebus there by force
Did wed Creousa.’
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
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).
[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
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?
[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
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 _in_side.
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 Xuthos strove and helped them with the sword
And had Creousa, guerdon of his aid,
No home-born hero he, but son of Zeus
And Aiolos, Achaean.
And again[180], when Ion questions his unknown mother as to her husband:
_Ion._ And what Athenian took thee for his wife?
_Cre._ No citizen: an alien from another land.
_Ion._ Who? For a well-born man he needs had been.
_Cre._ Xuthos, of Zeus and Aiolos the offspring he.
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:
O seats of Pan and rock hard by
To where the hollow Long Rocks lie
Where, before Pallas’ temple-bound
Aglauros’ daughters three go round
Upon their grassy dancing-ground
To nimble reedy staves.
Where thou O Pan art piping found
Within thy shepherd caves.
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.
‘O brood of the mere, the spring,
Gather together and sing
From the depths of your throat
By the side of the boat
Co-äx, as we move in a ring;
As in Limnae we sang the divine
Nyseïan Giver of Wine,
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.
[Illustration: 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).
[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
Just below where the ancient road passes down from the West shoulder of
the Acropolis, and at a level much higher than that of the road itself,
the excavators came on a building of Roman date and indifferent masonry,
which proved to be a large hall, with two rows of columns dividing it
into a central nave and two aisles. To the East the hall was furnished
with a quadrangular apse. Within this apse was found an altar[210]
decorated with scenes from the worship of Dionysos, a goat being dragged
to the altar, a Satyr, a Maenad, and the like. This altar would in itself
rouse the suspicion that we are in a sanctuary dedicated to Dionysos, but
fortunately we are not left to evidence so precarious.
Of far greater interest than the altar, and indeed for our purpose of
supreme importance, was another discovery. In the apse, with the altar
mentioned and other altars, was found the drum of a column (Fig. 25),
which had once stood in the great hall; columns just like it are still
standing, so that it belongs without doubt to the building. On it is
an inscription[211], divided into two columns and 167 lines in length,
which from its style may be dated about the third century A.D. Above the
inscription, in a relief in pediment form containing Dionysiac symbols,
two panthers stand heraldically, one to either side of a _cantharus_;
above is the head of a bull. Inscriptions arranged in this fashion on
columns are not unusual in the third century A.D.[212]
The inscription contains the statutes of a _thiasos_, or club of persons
calling themselves Iobakchoi, who met in a place—the hall where the
inscription was set up—called the Bakcheion. This is our quadrangular
building marked _Bakcheion_ on the plan (Fig. 24). The rules, which are
given in great detail, are very interesting, but for the present one
thing only concerns us—the name of the thiasos, the Iobakchoi. Iobakchos
was a title of Dionysos, a title probably derived from a cry uttered in
his worship, and, we remember (p. 85) with sudden delight, the _Gerarae_,
the attendants of the Queen, promised in their oath to celebrate, in
accordance with ancestral usage, the Iobakcheia.
But the building, and even the traces of an earlier structure that
preceded it[213], are of late date; we are on the spot, and yet so far
the sanctuary in the Marshes eludes us. But not for long. Digging deeper
down, to the level of the ancient road, the excavators came on another
and an earlier structure, the triangular precinct marked on the plan, and
here at last evidence was found that settled for ever the site of the
sanctuary of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes.
* * * * *
The sanctuary, for such we shall immediately see it was, is of triangular
shape, and lies substantially lower than the roads by which it is
bounded. The sides of the triangle face approximately, North, East and
South-West. The precinct is surrounded by an ancient polygonal wall, a
portion of which from the South end of the South-West side is shown
in Fig. 26. The material is throughout blue calcareous stone, but the
masonry is by no means of uniform excellence or of the same date. At
various periods the wall must have undergone repairs. The space enclosed
is about 560 square metres. Owing to the fact that the precinct lay
deeper than the surrounding roads, sometimes to the extent of two metres,
the wall is supported in places by buttresses, only one of which is of
good Greek masonry; the rest seem to have been added shortly before the
ancient precinct fell into disuse.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
A notable point about this precinct wall is that there is no trace of any
large entrance-gate. We expect a gate at the South-West side, where the
precinct is skirted by the main road. Here the wall is well preserved,
but there is no trace of any possible gate. The only feasible place is at
the South end of the East wall, where there seems to have been a break,
and towards this point, as we shall see, the small temple is orientated.
Here, then, and in all probability here only, was there access to the
precinct.
At the North-West corner the excavators came on a structure so far
unique in the history of discoveries. They found a walled-in floor 4·70
m. by 2·80. This floor is carefully paved with a mixture of pebbles,
stone, and cement, and _is inclined to one corner_ at an angle of 0·25
m. At this lowest point there is a hole through the wall enclosing the
floor, and outside, let into the pavement, is a large vessel, 0·50 m.
in diameter, quadrangular above, round below. They had found, beyond
all possible doubt, what they had never dared to hope they might find,
an ancient Greek _wine-press_ or _lenos_, and at the finding of that
wine-press fled the last lingering misgiving. In Fig. 27 is a view[214]
of the wine-press, which shows clearly how it lies just in the corner
of the triangular precinct, with its South-West wall (in the front of
the picture) abutting on the Panathenaic way. The stucco floor of the
wine-press comes out in dead white. In the background can be seen, to the
right, the North aisle of the rectangular Bakcheion, and, to the left,
the foot of the Areopagus rock.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
The wine-press, which is shown in section in Fig. 28, had, like the
precinct, had a long history. It had been rebuilt more than once. The
paved floors of two successive structures are clearly visible. The upper
one is smaller than the lower, and, of course, of later date. It is,
however, below the level of the Bakcheion, and must have been underground
when the Bakcheion was built. The lower wine-press is at the same level
as the _Lesche_, on the opposite side of the road, which is known to be
of the 4th century B.C. Under this 4th century wine-press is a pavement
which must have belonged to a third, yet earlier structure. It may be
noted that these wine-presses are in every respect exactly similar to
those in use among the Greeks to-day. The wine-press within the precinct
is not the only one that came to light; scattered about near at hand were
several others. Two can be seen on the plan in Fig. 35. It was indeed a
place of wine-presses, a _Lenaion_.
[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.]
The wine-press in itself would mark the precinct as belonging to
Dionysos, but there was more evidence forthcoming. In the centre of the
precinct is the foundation in poros stone of a large altar, 3·10 metres
square (Fig. 29). In this foundation there once were four holes; three
of them remain, and the fourth may be safely supplied. These holes are
evidently intended for the supports on which the actual altar-table
rested. Such altar-tables are familiar in vase-paintings, and seem
to have been in use specially in the cult of Dionysos; they held the
wine-jars offered to the god, and baskets of fruit such as those on which
the attendants of the Queen took their oath (p. 85). Moreover, the actual
altar-slab of just such a table has been found in Attica, and it bears
an inscription to Dionysos Auloneus[215]. Yet another important point
remains. On the West step of the altar foundation a long groove is sunk
in the stone. Its purpose is obvious. Both on the Acropolis and elsewhere
in sacred precincts such grooves are found, and they served to contain
the bases of _stelae_, on which decrees, dedications, and the like were
inscribed. Is it not at least possible that we have here not only the
altar on which the Queen took her oath, but the groove in which was
set up the very stele on which it was inscribed, the stele which stood
‘alongside of the altar’ (παρὰ τὸν βωμόν)?
We have, then, a precinct secluded from the main road; within it, open to
the air, a great altar. But inside this precinct not a single inscription
nor any sort of votive offering has come to light. In a precinct so
important this at first sight seems strange. The explanation lies to
hand. Votive offerings are meant to be seen, meant to show forth the
piety of the worshipper as well as the glory of the god. Was it worth
while to dedicate an offering in a precinct that was open but for one
day in the whole year? Apparently not. This was essentially a ‘mystery’
sanctuary, with no touch of the museum.
* * * * *
In the sanctuary of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes we expect not only precinct
and altar but an actual temple, the existence of which we know, not from
Thucydides, but from the scholiast[216] on the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes.
Commenting on the word ‘marsh’ he says, ‘a sacred place of Dionysos, in
which there is a dwelling and a temple of the god.’ Callimachus in the
_Hekale_ says,
‘To him, Limnaios, do they keep the feast
With choral dances.’
The ‘dwelling’ may be some building that contained the wine-press; the
temple happily has been found, and its position in relation to the
precinct is strange and significant.
The foundations of the temple came to light in the South corner of the
precinct. It is of small size (3·96 by 3·40 m.), and consists of a
quadrangular cella and a narrow pronaos. From its small size it seems
unlikely that the pronaos had any columns. The masonry is very ancient.
The walls are polygonal, and the blocks of calcareous stone of which they
are made are on the South-West side unusually large. In the foundations
of the side-walls a few _poros_ blocks occur. There are no steps serving
as foundation to either cella or pronaos. From this Professor Dörpfeld
concludes that in all probability this temple is earlier than the temple
of Dionysos Eleuthereus, close to the _skenè_ of the theatre. The temple
of Eleuthereus belonged to the time of Peisistratos; it is more carefully
built than the one newly discovered, and it has one step. Early though
the newly discovered building undoubtedly is, it was preceded by a yet
earlier structure, the walls of which, marked on the plan, lie beneath
its foundations.
Quite exceptional is the relation of the temple to the precinct. It does
not lie in the middle, and is, moreover, separated from the inner part of
the precinct by a wall and a door that could be closed. This separating
wall is however apparently later than the temple, which possibly at
one time stood free within the precinct. The separating wall is only
explicable on ritual grounds. It made it possible for the temple to be
accessible all the year round, whereas the precinct, save for one day in
the year, was closed.
* * * * *
Are we to give to the ancient sanctuary the name _Lenaion_? To the
sanctuary itself probably not. The meaning of _Lenaion_, it would
seem, is not ‘sanctuary of the god Lenaios,’ but rather ‘place of the
wine-press.’ It is noticeable that writers who could themselves have
seen the sanctuary never call it _Lenaion_. Thucydides[217], the writer
of the oration _against Neaera_[218], be he Demosthenes or Apollodorus,
and again Phanodemus[219], as quoted by Athenaeus, all speak of it as
the sanctuary of _Dionysos-in-the-Marshes_. Isaeus[220] calls it the
Dionysion-in-the-Marshes. On the other hand, when contemporary authors
speak of the dramatic contest which was held not in honour of Dionysos
Eleuthereus but at the older Dionysia, they speak of the contest as _at_
or _on_ the Lenaion, never as _in-the-Marshes_. The natural conclusion
is that the name _Lenaion_ is applicable to the place where the contests
actually took place, namely to the ancient Orchestra and perhaps its
immediate neighbourhood. The district of the wine-presses naturally had
its dancing place, and that dancing place was called the Lenaion. To this
day the peasants of Greece use for their festival-dances the village
threshing-floor.
* * * * *
In the theatre of Eleuthereus Dr Dörpfeld[221] has given back to us
the old orchestra. He has shown us deep down below the successive
Graeco-Roman and Roman stages the old circular orchestra built of
polygonal masonry (Fig. 16). On this old orchestra, with only wooden
seats for the spectators, were acted, we now know, the dramas of
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, nay tradition[222] even says, and we
have no cause to doubt its veracity, that Thespis was the first (in 586
B.C.) to exhibit a play in the ‘city’ contest (ἐν ἄστει).
But ancient though it was, before it, as we have seen, came the orchestra
in the Limnae. Dr Dörpfeld had hoped that his excavations would give back
this orchestra too; this hope has not been fulfilled. Traces have been
found of a circular structure on the South slope of the Areopagus and are
marked on the plan (Fig. 46), but they are of uncertain date, and, if
they mark the site of any ancient building, it is probably that of the
Odeion of Agrippa. The old orchestra lay at the North-West corner of the
Areopagos.
* * * * *
Tradition records the beginning of the contests ‘in the city,’ i.e. in
the theatre of Eleuthereus, but the beginnings of the other festivals,
the Lenaia and the Chytroi, held in the Limnae, are lost in the mists
before. The two are in all probability but different names for the same
festival, or rather the Chytroi is the whole ceremony of the third day
of the Anthesteria and Lenaia the name given to the dramatic part of the
ceremonies. But though we do not know the beginning, and though, as will
presently be seen, the ‘Pot-Contests’ went back in all probability to a
time before the coming of Dionysos, we have hints as to how the end came,
how the splendour and convenience of the great theatre of Eleuthereus
gradually obscured and absorbed the primitive contests of the orchestra
in the Limnae.
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.]
If after leaving the precinct of Dionysos in-the-Marshes we follow the
main road for about 35 metres, we come on a precinct (Fig. 30) of much
smaller size and of quadrangular shape, which abuts on the road and along
the North side of which a narrow foot-path leads up to the Acropolis. The
precinct-walls are of hard blue calcareous stone from the Acropolis and
neighbouring hills, and the masonry is good polygonal. The entrance-gate
(A), which has been rebuilt in Roman times, is at the North-West corner.
A little to the East of the middle of the precinct, and manifestly of
great importance, is a well (B). The natural supply of this well was
reinforced by a conduit-pipe, which leads direct into it from the great
water-course of Peisistratos, which will later (p. 119) be described.
Near the well are remains of a small hero-chapel, and within this was
found the lower part of a marble sacrificial table (C), decorated with
two snakes. The masonry of the precinct wall, the well, and the shrine
all point to a date at the time of Peisistratos. Even before the limits
of this precinct were fairly made out the excavators came upon a number
of fragments of votive offerings of a familiar type. Such are reliefs
representing parts of the human body, breasts and the like, votive
snakes, and reliefs representing worshippers approaching a god of the
usual Asklepios type. Conspicuous among these was a fine well-preserved
relief (Fig. 31), depicting a man holding a huge leg, very clearly
marked with a varicose vein, exactly where, doctors say, a varicose
vein should be. The inscription[232] above the figure is unfortunately
so effaced that no facts emerge save that the dedicator, the man who
holds the leg, was the son of a certain Lysimachos, and was of the
deme Acharnae. The style of the letters and of the sculpture dates the
monument as of about the first half of the 4th century B.C. It was clear
enough that the excavators had come on the precinct of a god of healing,
and a few decades ago the precinct would have been labelled without more
ado as ‘sacred to Asklepios.’ We should then have been left with the
curious problem, Why had Asklepios two precincts, one on the South, one
on the West? We know that Asklepios made his triumphant entry into the
great precinct on the South slope in 421 B.C.; if he had had a precinct
on the West slope since the days of Peisistratos, why did he leave it?
[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.]
But now-a-days in the matter of ascription we proceed more cautiously.
We know that votive-reliefs of the ‘Asklepios’ type are offered to
almost any local hero, that local heroes anywhere and everywhere are
hero-healers[233]. Hence local hero-healers were gradually absorbed and
effaced by the most successful of their number, Asklepios. In literature
we hear little of the hero-cult of an Amphiaraos, but his local shrine
went on down to late days at Oropus. Fortunately in our precinct we have
inscriptions that leave us no doubt. On a stele[234] (Fig. 32) found
there we have an inscription as follows: ‘Mnesiptolemè on behalf of
Dikaiophanes dedicated (this) to Asklepios Amynos.’
At first we seem no further; we have the familiar Asklepios
worshipped under the title of Amynos, Protector, Defender. A second
inscription[235], however, makes it certain that _Amynos_ is not merely
an adjective attached to Asklepios, but the cultus title of a person
separate from Asklepios. This inscription, of the latter half of the 4th
century B.C., is in honour of certain persons who had been benefactors of
the _thiasos_ (ὀργεῶνες) of _Amynos and of Asklepios and of Dexion_. We
know who Dexion was; he was Sophocles, heroized, and he, the mortal, came
last on the list. Sophocles had a shrine apart, or it may be a separate
shrine within the larger one. The same inscription[236] goes on to order
that the honorary decree was to be ‘engraved on two stone stelae, and
these to be set up, the one in the sanctuary of Dexion, the other in that
of Amynos and Asklepios.’
Sophocles[237] though, to us, he is first in remembrance, comes last in
ritual precedence; Amynos is first. The history of the little shrine is
instructive. Not later than Peisistratos, and how much earlier we do not
know, the worship was set up of a local hero with the title Protector,
_Amynos_. At some time or other, perhaps shortly after the pestilence at
Athens, which the local Protector had been powerless to avert, it was
thought well to call in a greater Healer-Hero, Asklepios, who meanwhile
had attained in the Peloponnesos to enormous prestige. The experiment was
tried carefully and quietly in the little precinct. Amynos kept his own
precedence. No one’s feelings are hurt; the snake of the Peloponnesos is
merely affiliated to the local Athenian hero-snake, the same offerings
are due to both, the _pelanoi_, the votive limbs. But the new-comer is
too strong; Asklepios waxes, Amynos wanes—into an adjective. Asklepios
outgrows the little precinct and betakes himself to a new and grander
sanctuary on the South slope.
The precinct and worship of Amynos, though it has no mention in
literature, is preserved to us perhaps through its association with the
dominant worship of Asklepios; but Amynos was probably only one among
many heroes who had their chapels and their family worships scattered
along the main road of the city where countless little buildings remain
unidentified (Fig. 35). If the supposition suggested above (p. 99) be
correct these local heroes must have had choral dances about their
tombs, those choral dances affiliated by the late-comer Dionysos, and
ultimately leading to the development of the drama. At the festival of
the Anthesteria these local ghosts would be summoned from their tombs on
the day of the Pithoigia; on the day of the Chytroi they would be fed and
their descendants would hold a wake with revels and dancings.
* * * * *
_The Sanctuary of the Semnae Theai or Venerable Goddesses._ The site of
this sanctuary is practically certain. Euripides[238] in the _Electra_
makes the Erinyes, when they are about to become Semnae, descend into a
chasm of the earth near to the Areopagos. Near to the Areopagos there is
one chasm and one only, that is the deep fissure on the North-East side,
the spot where tradition has long placed the cave of the Semnae[239].
A cave they needed, for they were under-world goddesses. Their ritual
I have discussed in detail elsewhere[240]; here it need only be noted
that it was of great antiquity and had all the characteristic marks of a
chthonic cult. As under-world goddesses the Venerable Ones bore the title
also of _Arai_, Imprecations; they were for cursing as well as blessing;
the hill it is now generally acknowledged took its name from them rather
than from the war-god Ares. Orestes it will be remembered[241] came
to the Areopagos to be purified from his mother’s blood, and he found
the people celebrating the Choes; he found them, if our topography be
correct, close by, in the precinct of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes.
* * * * *
_The Sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos._ Harpocration[242] in explaining
the title _Pandemos_ tells us that Apollodorus in the sixth book of his
treatise _About the Gods_ said that this was ‘the name given at Athens
to the goddess whose worship had been established somewhere near the
ancient agora.’ His conjecture that the goddess was called Pandemos
because all the people collected in the agora need not detain us, but
the topographical statement coming from an author who knew his subject
like Apollodorus, is important. We have to seek the sanctuary of Pandemos
somewhere on or close to the West slope of the Acropolis, somewhere near
the great square which as we shall see (p. 131) stood in front of the
ancient well-house and formed the ancient agora.
Pausanias[243] mentions the worship of Aphrodite Pandemos in a sentence
of the most tantalizing vagueness. After leaving the Asklepieion he
notes a temple of Themis and in front of it a monument to Hippolytus.
He then tells at length the story of Phaedra and next goes on ‘When
Theseus united the various Athenian demes into one people he introduced
the worship of Aphrodite Pandemos and Peitho. The old images were not
there in my time, but those I saw were the work of no obscure artists.’
Immediately after he passes to the sanctuary of Ge Kourotrophos and
Demeter Chloe and then straight to the citadel.
Of the actual sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos not a trace has been
found. From the account of Pausanias coupled with that of Harpocration
we should expect it to be somewhere below the sanctuary of Ge and above
the fountain Enneakrounos, near which was the ancient agora, and of
course outside the Pelargikon. When the West slope of the Acropolis
was excavated[244] in the upper layers of earth about 40 statuettes of
Aphrodite were found, and these must have belonged to the sanctuary.
Inscriptions[245] relating to her worship were found built into a
mediaeval fortification wall near Beule’s Gate. These, as not being
_in situ_, cannot be used as topographical evidence, but they give us
important information as to the character of the worship of Pandemos.
The first[246] of these inscriptions (Fig. 33) dates about the beginning
of the fifth century B.C. ‘[...]dorus dedicated me to Aphrodite a gift
of first fruits, Lady do thou grant him abundance of good things. But
they who unrighteously say false things and....’ Unfortunately here the
inscription breaks off so the scandal will remain for ever a secret.
Aphrodite, it is to be noted, is prayed to as a giver of increase. She
does not seem yet to have got her title of Pandemos, but as this occurs
in the two other inscriptions found with this one, and they probably all
three came from the same sanctuary, this Aphrodite is almost certainly
she who became Pandemos.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.]
[Illustration: FIG. 34.]
The second inscription (Fig. 34), dating about the middle of the 4th
century B.C., is carved on an architrave adorned with a frieze of doves
carrying a fillet. The architrave is broken midway. Only the left-hand
half is represented in the figure. This inscription[247] again is partly
metrical, forming an elegiac couplet.
‘This for thee, O great and holy Pandemos Aphr[odite,
We adorn with gifts, our statues.’
Beneath in prose and in smaller letters come the names of the dedicators.
Pandemos is here quite plainly the official title of the goddess.
The third and latest inscription[248] is carved on a stele of Hymettus
marble. It is exactly dated (283 B.C.) by the archon’s name, the elder
Euthios. It records a decree made while a woman called Hegesipyle was
priestess. The decree, which is too long to be here quoted in full,
ordains that the _astynomoi_ should at the time of the procession in
honour of Aphrodite Pandemos ‘provide a dove for the purification of the
temple, should have the altars anointed, should give a coat of pitch to
the roof and wash the statues and prepare a purple robe.’
Aphrodite Pandemos was a ‘great and holy goddess,’ giver of increase. She
was no private divinity of the courtesan; the second inscription tells
us that she was worshipped by a married woman, who is her priestess. It
is literature and not ritual that has cast a slur on the title Pandemos;
the state honoured both her and Ourania alike ‘according to ancestral
custom.’ Plato[249] in his beautiful reckless way will have it that
because there are two Loves there are two Goddesses, ‘the elder one
having no mother, who is the Heavenly Aphrodite, the daughter of Ouranos;
to her we give the title Ourania, the younger, who is the daughter of
Zeus and Dione, and her we call “Of-all-the-People,” Pandemos.’
The real truth was that Aphrodite came to the Greeks from the East and
like most Semitic divinities she was not only a duality but a trinity.
When Pausanias[250] was at Thebes he saw the images of this ancient
Oriental trinity and he knew whence they had come. ‘There are wooden
images of Aphrodite at Thebes so ancient that it is said they were
dedicated by Harmonia and that they were made out of the wooden
figure-heads of the ships of Cadmus. One of them is called Heavenly,
another Of-all-the-People, and the third the Turner-Away.’ The threefold
Aphrodite came from the Semitic East bearing three Semitic titles: she
was the Queen of Heaven[251], she was the Lady of all the People, Ourania
and Pandemos, what the third title was which the Greeks translated into
Apostrophia we do not know; as already noted it took slight hold. At
Megalopolis[252] we see how the third title of the trinity faded. There
close to the house where was an image of Ammon made like a Herm and
with the horns of a ram, there—significant conjunction—was a sanctuary
of Aphrodite in ruins, with the front part only left and it had three
images, ‘one named Ourania the other Pandemos, _the third had no
particular name_.’ So it was that the Greeks lost the trinity and kept,
all they needed, the duality.
The Greeks themselves always knew quite well whence came their Heavenly
Aphrodite, she of Paphos, and she of Kythera. Herodotus[253] is
explicit. He is telling how some of the Scythians in their passage
through Palestine from Egypt pillaged the sanctuary of Aphrodite
Ourania at Ascalon. ‘This sanctuary,’ he says, ‘I found on enquiry is
the most ancient of all those that are dedicated to this goddess, for
the sanctuary in Cyprus had its origin from thence, as the Cyprians
themselves say, and that in Kythera was founded by Phenicians who came
from this part of Syria.’ Pausanias[254] says ‘the first to worship
Ourania were the Assyrians, next to them were the dwellers in Paphos of
Cyprus, and the Phenicians of Ascalon in Palestine. And the inhabitants
of Kythera learnt the worship from the Phenicians.’
The Oriental origin[255] of Ourania, Queen of Heaven, the armed goddess,
the _Virgo Caelestis_, was patent to all; but Aphrodite in her more human
earthly aspect, as Pandemos, goddess of the people and of all increase,
was so like Kourotrophos, like Demeter, that she might easily be thought
of as indigenous. Yet her ritual betrays her. For the purification of
her sanctuary we have seen there was ordered a dove. Instinctively we
remember that when Mary Virgin[256] went up to the temple of Jerusalem
for her purification she must take with her ‘a pair of turtle-doves
or two young pigeons.’ In the statuettes of Paphos, Aphrodite holds a
dove in her hand; the coins of Salamis in Cyprus are stamped with the
dove[257]. At the Phenician Eryx when the festival of the Anagogia[258]
came round, and Aphrodite Astarte went back to her home in Libya, the
doves went with her, and when they came back at the _Katagogia_, a white
multitude, among them was one with feathers of red gold, and she was
Aphrodite.