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.’