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283 On the Attic Dumysia. 283 €(p€povTo^ TO cevTepov ev dypoh^ 6 eirl A^p^auo Xeyo/uevo^y ore ^evoL ov Trapijaav AOrjvr/ai* yeiimc^v yap Xolttov rjv* Both these scholia afford very strong ground for suspecting that their authors knew very little more on the subject than they might have collected from Aristophanes himself. In the first the words tu A. X. were evidently a distinct ex- planation^ and perhaps suggested the following remark, which sounds very much like the vague guess of a man who had heard something about a temple of Bacchus^ which he sup- posed to be somewhere out of the city, but which he was unable to describe more accurately than by saying that it was in the country. The second passage too gives us no information which we might not have drawn from the play, and it is expressed so as to leave it at least very doubtful whether the writer knew of the existence of more than two Dionysia. He can only be defended on the supposition, that he meant to speak of no festivals but such as were celebrated with dramatic exhibitions. But he gives no proofs of learning such as might entitle him to so favourable a construction. Such testimonies can scarcely be thought to outweigh those above quoted from Hesychius, the Rhetorical Lexicon, and the Scholiasts on jEschines and Plato, who appear to have drawn their statements from the same author, but from one who was well informed, and who wrote not incidentally, but professedly on the subject. III. If the time at which the L en sea were celebrated is less distinctly marked by the testimonies of the ancients than could have been desired, the place of the festival at least is clearly and, almost without exception, uniformly described. Hesychius (according to a slight and unquestion- able correction of Ruhnken) writes : 'Evri Ar]vai(p dyoou' ecmv ev T(p acFTei Arjvaiou irepifiokov eyov jueyav^ kqI ev avTio Afjvaiov Aiovvaov epov^ ev (o aTrereXovvro o aywves AOrjvaicov^ Trplv TO Oearpov oLKO^ofXfjOrjvai. So the author of the Ety- mologicum Magnum : 'EttI Arjvaio)' irepifioXo^ tl^ ^eya^ AOrjurjaiv, ev co iepov Aiovvaov ArjvaLOv^ koi tov^ aycova^ rjyov Tovs (TKrjvLKov^* And Photius : Arjvaiov TrepipoXos ^eya^ AdtjVYjdiv^ ev to Tov<$ dyvova^ rjyov irpo tov to OeaTpov oiko^ ^OfxrjOfji'aiy 6vo/(jiMi(ovTes eirl Af]vaup' eari ce ev avTco Kai lepov Aiovvaov- From these passages we learn, that the