Dionysia

I lodged a plaint in the Assembly against him as an offender in connection with the festival, not only for his assault on my person at the Dionysia, but for many other acts of violence during the whole period when I served as chorus-master.

next they shall lay before it the plaints lodged concerning the procession or the contests at the Dionysia, namely such as have not been satisfied.

Evegorus proposed that, on the occasion of the procession in honor of Dionysus in Peiraeus with the comedies and tragedies, the procession at the Lenaeum with the comedies and tragedies, the procession at the City Dionysia with the boys’ contests and the revel and the comedies and tragedies.

It frequently happened that at the performance of the tragedies in the city proclamations were made without authorization of the people, now that this or that man was crowned by his tribe, now that others were crowned by the men of their deme, while other men by the voice of the herald manumitted their household slaves, and made all Hellas their witness;

and that we should do this without waiting for your ambassadors to return, but immediately after the City Dionysia, on the 18th and 19th of the month.

the man who throws in my face the friendship of Alexander, this man Demosthenes, stole away the opportunities of the city by making the motion that the prytanes call an assembly for the eighth day of Elaphebolion, the day of the sacrifice to Asclepius, and the introductory day of the festival —the sacred day—a thing that no man remembers ever to have been done before.

I began by fitting out a training-room in the most suitable part of my house, the same that I had used when Choregus at the Dionysia.

and the Thargelia are from the Dionysia, meaning after the Dionysia.

Yet my father left to each of us, my brother and myself, an estate of forty-five minae merely, on which it is not easy to live, while your fathers were possessed of such wealth that each of them set up a tripod in honor of choregic victories at the Dionysia.

And yet, men of Athens, how do you account for the fact that the Panathenaic festival and the Dionysia are always held at the right date, whether experts or laymen are chosen by lot to manage them, that larger sums are lavished upon them than upon any one of your expeditions, that they are celebrated with bigger crowds and greater splendor than anything else of the kind in the world, whereas your …

The explanation is that at the festivals everything is ordered by statute;

For who does not himself know or has not heard from the tragic poets at the Dionysia of the misfortunes which befell Adrastus at Thebes, how in his desire to restore to power the son of Oedipus, his own son-in-law, he lost a great number of his Argive soldiers in the battle and saw all of his captains slain, though saving his own life in dishonor, and, when he failed to obtain a truce and was unab …