Once embarked on the wrong hypothesis that Thucydides lays two propositions before us, and that one of them is that the city lay to the South, the downward road is easy. The four sanctuaries of Thucydides are selected, it is supposed, to prove the second proposition, i.e. that the city is to the South. Four sanctuaries lie ready, only too ready, to hand. We have, South-East of the Acropolis (Fig. 49), a great Olympieion; we know from Pausanias[293] that close by it was a great Pythion, within the Olympieion was a precinct of Ge; and last and most convincing of all, on the South-East slope of the Acropolis is the great Dionysiac theatre, with its precinct and two temples. Truly a little archaeology is a dangerous thing. So obvious, so striking are these identifications, that at the first glance they seem to compel adhesion. But a moment’s thought obliges us to see that, if tempting, these identifications are impossible. From its _position_ the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus might well have been one of those named by Thucydides, because, as already noted (p. 67), while from his words it would be impossible definitely to say whether the sanctuaries are North, South, East, or West, assuredly the theatre and precinct of Dionysos Eleuthereus _are_ ‘towards’ (πρὸς) the ancient city. But, as we have already (p. 83) seen, it is from this familiar precinct, the sanctuary of the later Dionysos Eleuthereus, that Thucydides is expressly differentiating his more ancient precinct; the same is the case with the Olympieion. Thucydides and everyone at Athens knew that this vast temple was begun in the time of Peisistratos; was it likely to be chosen as a sanctuary to show the limits (or even the direction) of the city of Kekrops? [Illustration: FIG. 49.] As regards the Pythion, special stress has been laid on the fact that it—not the sanctuary on the Long Rocks—is called by Pausanias the Pythion; but the explanation is easy and manifest; Pausanias is distinguishing it from the other sanctuary of Apollo near at hand, the Delphinion[294]. Sanctuaries so late as these could not fairly be used to prove even the _direction_ of the city of Kekrops; but, as already shown, it is not direction, but _size_ with which Thucydides is concerned. To give sanctuaries like the Olympieion and Pythion, which lay outside even the city of Themistocles, as evidence of the smallness of an ancient ‘Mycenaean’ city, a Pelasgic fortress, is an absurdity so manifest that statement is refutation. We are brought face to face with the third source of error. 3. _The duplication of certain sanctuaries._