THE LONG INSCRIPTION describing the festival of the Sarapieia at Tanagra has been described by Sifakis with justice as "our most interesting case."1 Sifakis was using the original edition of the full text published by Christou2 in 1956, after its missing portion had been found. Almost immediately corrections were offered.3 The second sand third) version of the standard work on the dramatic festivals of Athens disappointingly says only that: "Some of the figures must be wrongly read; otherwise we should have reproduced it here" [=1968, repeated 1988]. All of the figures had been correctly read in 1966 by Calvet and Roesch,5 who had also identified the errors of the mason. As a result one can observe that, contrary to Christou's suspicion, the complex accounting for the expenses of the festival is accurate. Gossage6 has made it probable by a critical study of the prosopography of the artists listed that the inscription dates from before rather than after the sack of Athens by Sulla. Of the festival itself we know little more. The inscription is a unique witness to Hellenistic dramatic festivals, and in what follows an attempt is made to bring out some of the considerable problems it poses for the history of the theatre.