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. * * * * *