CHAPTER VI

THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

The cult of the dead, thus pursued in unhampered freedom, preserved and encouraged certain ideas of the life of the soul after death; of the soul as a conscious and powerful being which though separated from the body has not been parted for ever from the scene of its earthly existence. To the Greeks such ideas had become strange and unfamiliar--strange, at least, to the Ionian Greeks of the Homeric age.

But from such a cult no dogmatic or distinctly outlined picture of the life of the departed soul could have been deduced, nor ever was deduced. Everything in this connexion dealt with the relation of the dead to the living. Families by means of sacrifice and religious acts sought to nourish the souls of their own dead. But the cult was in itself chiefly precautionary (apotropaic) in character, and as a consequence men preferred rather to avoid investigation into the nature and condition of the dead themselves, except in so far as they came into the life of the living.

This is the point at which the cult of the souls and belief in the existence of souls stopped short among many of the so-called "savage" peoples who have no history. Nor can there be much doubt that it had reached this stage of development in Greece, too, before the time of Homer; though temporarily overshadowed, it continued to exist for it was rooted firmly in the united life of the family and its traditional practices.

Such traditional beliefs, however, left the nature of the disembodied soul vague and undefined; they viewed it purely from the standpoint of the living and almost entirely in its relations with this world; and resting on such foundations it is not very surprising if they yielded unresistingly and sank into insignificance once the feeling of the influence exercised by the dead upon the living began to weaken, or if anything happened to cause the decline or discredit of the cult of the dead. When the living withdrew their support and reverence from the departed soul the latter ceased to present any clear picture to the minds of men--it became a mere evanescent shadow--unsubstantial--little more than nothing. This is what {218} happened in the period of Ionic culture, in which Homer lived.

The poetry of that period, however, had of its own accord given rise to aspirations after a fuller and more definite picture of the long, unbounded future in the life to come. These aspirations had been given shape in the pictures of the _translation_ of individual mortals to Elysium and the Islands of the Blest.

Such things, however, were, and continued to be, matters of poetry, not of religious faith. Even the poetical fancy dealt with the marvellous past and with exceptional heroes chosen out long ago by the special favour of the gods; such favour was not extended to include the living generations of men. The desire, once it was awakened, for a more hopeful prospect of the life to come beyond the grave and for something more than the mere negative existence of the ancestors worshipped in family cults, must look to other sources for its satisfaction. Such desires began to be felt by many, but their originating source and the secret forces that set them going must remain for us hidden behind the obscurity that lies over the most important period of Greek development, the eighth and seventh centuries. Nor does it help us very much when historians try to stop the gaps of our knowledge with platitudes or the barren offspring of their own imagination. The existence of such desires and their growing strength is shown by the fact that they were able to create for themselves a means of satisfaction (a peculiarly limited satisfaction it is true) in a direction that immediately occurs to everyone as soon as the subject of future blessedness or belief in immortality among the Greeks is mentioned--the Eleusinian Mysteries.

§ 2

Wherever the cult of the gods of the earth and the lower world, and

## particularly of Demeter and her daughter, was at its height it was

not difficult for hopes of a better fate in the kingdom of souls below the earth, where those deities ruled, to become attached to

## participation in their cult. The tendency to connect closely such

hopes with the worship of these gods may have existed in many different localities. In Eleusis alone, however (and in the cults, mostly of later origin, affiliated to Eleusis), we see this connexion carried out as a fully organized institution. We can follow at least in general outline the gradual advance of the Eleusinian religious organization. The Homeric _Hymn to Demeter_ tells us the origin {219} of the cult according to the national legends of Eleusis. In the country of the Eleusinians the divine daughter of Demeter, after being carried down to the lower world by Aïdoneus, came up once more to the light of day, and was restored to her mother. Before ascending to Olympos and the company of the other immortals, in accordance with the wish of Zeus, Demeter fulfilled her promise, and when the Eleusinians had erected a temple to her outside the city, over the spring Kallichoros, she founded the sacred worship whereby men should do honour to her in the future. She herself instructed the princes of the land "in the performance of the cult and taught them her sacred _Orgia_", which respect for the goddess does not allow them to communicate to others.[1\6] This primitive Eleusinian cult of Demeter, then, is the religious service of a close corporation. Knowledge of the holy ritual, carrying with it the priesthood of the two goddesses is confined to the descendants of the four Eleusinian princes to whom Demeter once gave her ordinances as an inheritance. The cult is therefore a "secret" one: not more so, indeed, than a great many cult-societies of Greece, participation in which was strictly forbidden to all unauthorized persons.[2\6] It differs from them, however, in the solemn promise which is made to the participants in its worship. "Blessed is the man who has beheld these holy acts; but he that is uninitiated and has no share in the holy ceremonies shall not enjoy a like fate after his death, in the gloomy darkness of Hades." To those who share in the Eleusinian worship a privileged fate is promised after death; but even in his lifetime, we read further on,[3\6] he is highly blessed whom the two goddesses love: they send him Ploutos, the giver of good things, to be a beloved partner of his hearth and home. On the other hand, whosoever honours not Korê, the queen of the lower world, with gifts and sacrifice, shall do penance everlastingly (368 ff.).

The narrow circle of those to whom such a tremendous promise was made began to be extended after the time when Eleusis was united with Athens (which may have taken place some time in the seventh century), and when the Eleusinian worship was raised to the position of an official cult of the Athenian state. Nor was it Attica alone, but the whole of Greece which became interested in the Eleusinian festival, when Athens became the chief centre of Greek life. A solemn "truce of God" was proclaimed which assured the peaceful and undisturbed performance of the sacred ritual, and distinguished the Eleusinia, like the great games and Fairs of Olympia, the Isthmus, etc., as a Pan-Hellenic festival. At {220} the height of Athenian power (about 440)[4\6] a decree of the people was passed which required the yearly offering of first fruits of the fields to the Eleusinian temple from Athenian citizens and allies, and invited similar offerings from _all_ Greek states. The decree could appeal in so doing to ancient and ancestral custom, and to an utterance of the Delphic god who had authorized these things.[5\6] The inner history of the development of the Eleusinian festival is a matter of some obscurity. The holy rites continued to be performed at Eleusis; Eleusinian noble families still took part[6\6] in the worship of the goddesses, which was yet directed by the Athenian government. On the other hand, a good deal must have been altered in the course of time. The popular decree mentioned above acquaints us with the names of two triads, each composed of two divine personages and a Hero, who were worshipped at Eleusis at that time. Demeter and Korê occur together with Triptolemos, and also "the god, the goddess, and Eubouleus".[7\6] The Homeric hymn gives no hint of the very important position here (and in innumerable other accounts, as well as pictorial representations) attributed to Triptolemos, nor of the other addition to the Eleusinian group of divinities. It is evident that in the course of years many different local figures and modes of worship have been added to and fused with the old cult of the two goddesses; and that in these local figures we have always the one type of chthonic godhead expressing itself anew in ever varied and differentiated forms. Their number is not exhausted by the six already mentioned.[8\6] The most important addition to the Eleusinian circle of deities was Iakchos, the son of Zeus (Chthonios) and Persephone. This god was himself an underworld deity, quite distinct from that Dionysos, with whom other Athenian cults confused him, and with whom he was in fact commonly identified.[9\6] It is a very probable supposition that this god, who soon came to be regarded as the central figure of the group of deities worshipped at Eleusis,[10\6] was the contribution of Athens to that circle: his temple was situated in Athens not Eleusis;[11\6] in the Athenian suburb Agrai the "Little Mysteries" were celebrated in his honour in the spring as a sort of prelude to the greater festival. At the Eleusinia itself, the sacred procession, in which the picture of the youthful god was borne from Athens to Eleusis, formed the link between the part of the festival already performed at Athens and that still to take place at Eleusis. The introduction of Iakchos into the festival of Eleusis did not merely make an external addition to the group of divinities that already shared in it; it added {221} an act[12\6] to the sacred story, the representation of which was the goal and summit of the festival; and thereby in all probability enriched it internally in meaning and substance. It is, indeed, quite impossible for us even to hazard a guess as to the exact meaning and essence of the change which came over the festival thus enlarged in the course of time. We can, however, be sure of this much; there is no ground at all for entertaining the commonly held view that it was the private mysteries of Orphic conventicles which exercised such a transforming influence on the public mysteries of the Athenian state. Those who are not content with solemn and mysterious jargon about "Orphics" and the like, but keep clearly in mind the well-known and quite distinctive features of the Orphic doctrine about gods and the souls of men, will easily recognize that everything points to the unlikelihood of even a single one of these having entered the circle of ideas current at Eleusis.[13\6] They could only have shattered such ideas to pieces.

If the festival, then, grew of its own accord in inward meaning and outward circumstance, the circle of those who came to take part in it grew as well. Originally this festival, so rich in promised blessings, admitted only the citizens of Eleusis, perhaps only the members of certain noble Eleusinian families--and may have appeared to its members an even greater privilege through this very exclusiveness. In this respect it changed completely, admission to it was thrown open to all Greeks--not merely Athenians, but every Greek without distinction of race or country, whether man or woman, was welcomed at Eleusis (and even hetairai, who were still excluded, e.g. from the Demeter-festival of the Athenian women; to say nothing of children and slaves).[14\6] The generosity of Athens--such was the glorious boast--wished the unexampled salvation which this festival promised to its worshippers to be made accessible to all Greeks.[15\6] What contrast to the exclusive cult-unions into which a man had to be born in order, as citizen of a state, member of a _phratria_, clan, or family, to participate in the advantages they offered! The society of the Eleusinian mystery-festival, once just as exclusive as the rest, had thrown open its doors so widely that this almost unconditional freedom of access became its principle and distinguishing characteristic. The attraction of membership was even heightened by the fact that just by his own unhampered free will and choice the individual could enter the great society through the mediation of one of the two families to whom the highest priesthood of the festival {222} was committed.[16\5] The only condition made was ritual purity, and murderers, for whom this was an impossibility--as it was even for those who were only accused of the shedding of blood--were as such excluded from the mysteries: as, indeed, they were from all the religious ceremonies of the state.[17\6]

Religious purification of the worshippers preceded and accompanied the holding of the festival; to many of the believers it may have appeared that the whole festival itself was principally a great purification and religious dedication of unusual solemnity, by which the members ("the Pure"[18\6] as they called themselves) were made worthy of the favour of the goddesses.

§ 3

As to the actual details of what went on at the long-drawn-out festival itself our knowledge hardly extends beyond the most external circumstances, and is even so most incomplete. A few notices in late and often untrustworthy writers give us a very inadequate picture of what took place inside the great temple of initiation and of the essential Mystery. The secret which was committed[19\6] to the Mystai and Epoptai has been well kept. Considering the enormous number of worshippers indiscriminately admitted to the festival, this would, indeed, have been a real miracle, if the secret to be kept had taken the form of dogma expressed in concept and words and capable of being communicated verbally to others. Since the labours of Lobeck, however, drastically reducing to order the confusion of opinions on this subject, no reasonable person believes that this was the case. It was difficult to let out the "secret" for there was essentially no secret to let out. Profanation could only come through actions, through "the Mysteries being acted",[20\6] as they were in the year 415 in the house of Poulytion. The Mystery was a dramatic performance, or, more strictly, a religious Pantomime, accompanied by sacred songs[21\6] and formal speeches; a representation, as Christian authors let us see, of the Rape of Korê, the wanderings of Demeter, and the final reunion of the goddesses. This in itself would not have made the mysteries remarkable; a similar dramatic reproduction of the circumstances attending the life of a god, which had led to the foundation of the festival in question, was a very widespread cult-practice in Greece; it was part of the festivals of Zeus, Here, Apollo, Artemis, Dionysos, and, above all, of other festivals in honour of Demeter herself. But the Eleusinia was distinguished from all other such festivals, even from the equally secret festivals of Demeter known as the Thesmophoria and the Haloa, by reason {223} of the hopes which it inspired in the minds of the initiated. The Hymn to Demeter tells us that the pious worshipper of the Goddess at Eleusis might hope for riches upon earth and a better fate after death. Later authorities also speak of the success in this life which initiation at Eleusis gave good ground for expecting. But far more emphatic are the statements, made by innumerable witnesses from Pindar and Sophokles onwards, that only they who have been initiated into these mysteries may entertain a joyful expectation of the life to come. To them only is it granted to have real "life" in Hades; nothing but evil awaits others in that place.[22\6]

It was these promises of a blessed immortality that for centuries drew so many worshippers to the Eleusinian festival. Nowhere else could such promises be obtained with such distinctness and assurance. The injunction commanding secrecy must obviously have referred to quite other matters; it cannot have applied to this, the greatest boon anticipated from initiation at Eleusis. Everyone speaks out aloud and without restraint about it. At the same time, all our information is so completely at one on the point and so free from doubt or uncertainty that we must perforce believe that the performances that were to be preserved so secret were, in reality, for the believers the source of an assurance which was not held as the mere probable conjecture of individuals, but as fixed and certain truth beyond question or need of interpretation.

How this was brought about certainly remains obscure. Since the discrediting of "symbolism" in the sense made familiar by Creuzer or Schelling, many of our modern mythologists and historians of religion have been all the more eager to assert that the performances at the Eleusinian mysteries were in reality the true and mystic celebration of the Greek "Religion of Nature" as discovered by themselves. Demeter, in this view, would be the earth; Korê-Persephone, her daughter, the seed of corn; the Rape and Return of Korê would mean the sowing of the seed in the earth and the rise of the young grain from beneath the soil; or, in a more general sense, "the yearly decay and renewal of vegetation." In some way or other the Mystai must have had revealed to them the real meaning of the "nature-symbolism" hidden in the mystical performances. Witnessing these performances they are supposed to have learnt that the fate of the seed of corn, represented by Persephone, its disappearance beneath the earth and eventual rebirth, is an image of the fate of the human soul, which also disappears that it may {224} live again. This, then, must be the real content of the holy Mystery.

It remains, however, first and foremost, to be proved that the Greeks[23\6] themselves would have regarded such symbolistic mummery, in which the phenomena and processes of nature appear under the guise of anthropomorphic gods, as religious at all, or would have recognized their own religion in such things. Still further--admitting for the sake of argument the possibility of such an interpretation--the identification of Korê with the seed of corn and its fate leads at once, if we try to get beyond the vaguest generalities, to intolerable absurdity. It is difficult to see, however (and this would be the main point at issue), how such an analogy between the soul and the grain of seed could have led to a faith in immortality that was not to be had, it would seem, in a more direct fashion. What possible effect could have been produced by such a far-fetched and arbitrary parallel between the phenomena of two such wholely different provinces of existence? If a reasonably plausible deduction was to be made from the visible and unmistakable (the condition of the grain) to the invisible and unknown (the condition of the soul) surely the first and simplest requisite would be that a real causal connexion between the two should be plainly demonstrated. These may seem dull and pedantic considerations where the sublimest forebodings of the heart are concerned; but I should not have supposed that it would have been so easy to tempt the Greeks with vague surmises from the path of logic and lucidity, or that such surmises would have afforded them such extremity of "bliss".

Lastly, the analogy, even if it proved anything, is false. It would only hold if the soul, like the grain, after a temporary disappearance below the earth, were promised a new life upon the earth--if a _palingenesia_ in fact were promised. That this, however, was not a belief supported by the officially conducted mysteries of Athens, is admitted on all hands.

Equally untenable is the view that the dramatic presentation at the mysteries of the Rape and Return of Korê (regarded this time as a divine personage, not as the personified grain of corn) was intended to inspire hopes of an analogous fate for the human soul, by virtue of a mystic unification of the life of man with the life of the godhead to whom he swears allegiance.[24\6] Even so the hope based upon the typical fate of Korê could only have led to a hope for the palingenesia of mankind in general, not (what was and always remained the real belief of Eleusis) to the hope of a specially {225} favoured after-life for the Mystai in the kingdom below the world. Indeed, we must not look to the Eleusinian mysteries for the ecstatic exaltation of the soul to the recognition of its own godhead--though such exaltation was the motive force and the essential core of Greek _mysticism_, as of all mysticism and mystic religion. From the mysteries of Eleusis, however, it remained far removed; the belief there fostered, with its absolute division and distinction between the divine and the human, never transgressed the bounds of popular Greek religion, over whose portals stood the universally prescriptive words: ~he\n andrô=n, he\n theô=n ge/nos~--"the race of men is one, and the race of gods is another." Nor was Eleusis any exception to this rule; the mysteries did not point the way to mysticism.

§ 4

Inquiry is on the wrong track when a deeper meaning is sought for in the mimic presentation of the sacred myth at Eleusis whereby the human soul was to obtain the blessed hope of immortality. The conviction that the human soul was immortal in its own right, by reason of its own nature, was not a conviction that was obtained at Eleusis. That is why we may dismiss such fanciful analogies as those between the human soul and the seed of corn or the goddess of the earth's life. Such analogies, if they proved anything, would prove at most the complete indestructibility, in spite of all vicissitude, of the life of the human soul--of every human soul. But this was not Eleusinian doctrine. The continued conscious existence of the soul after its separation from the body was not a doctrine but a presupposition of Eleusis; and it could be thus presupposed because it was the basic idea of the popular and widespread cult offered to the souls of the departed.[25\6] The advantage obtained by the initiated at Eleusis was that a livelier and fuller _content_ was given to the bare existence of the disembodied soul, which was all that the current worship of the souls essentially contemplated. We are assured that only the initiated at Eleusis will have a real "life" after death; that evil will be the fate of "the others".[26\6] Not _that_ the soul, relieved of the presence of the body, will live hereafter, but _how_ it will live was what Eleusis taught men. With the calm assurance common to all close and confined religious associations, the Eleusinian society divided mankind into two classes: the "Pure", that is those who had been initiated at Eleusis, and the innumerable multitude of the uninitiated. Only for the members in {226} communion with the mystery of Eleusis was salvation assured. Salvation was theirs as a reversionary right, but salvation such as theirs was a privilege and could only be obtained by participation in the bounteous festival of the Athenian State and in its ceremonial. Centuries of large-minded tolerance in admitting to the mysteries extended this privilege to an immense number of Greeks (and of Romans, too, in later times). But the prospect of a blessed hereafter never became a matter of course; not as man, not even as a virtuous and pious man did such a privilege come to anyone. It was granted solely to the member of the Eleusinian religious society and the participator in the divine service of the goddesses.[27\6]

What were the means employed to impress this hope--this certain expectation rather--of a blessed hereafter in Hades upon the Mystai? We must frankly admit that we cannot, unfortunately, say anything definite in answer to this question. Only to the suggestion that these hopes were grounded upon _symbolic_ representations of any kind may we give a decided denial. And yet this is the generally accepted opinion. "Symbols" there may have been, as an assistance to the dramatic or pantomimic representation of the Rape and Return of Korê;[28\6] but hardly in any other sense than that of typical _condensations_--the part being put for the whole, or the whole understood in the part--of scenes impossible to represent in their entirety. It is true that with the lapse of centuries, and in the absence of any official written interpretation of the inner meaning and intention of the ritual many of these symbols became unintelligible--a disadvantage which belonged to all other departments of Greek religion as well. As soon as independent reflexion on matters of religion began to arise, many sorts of allegorical or symbolical interpretations began to be applied to the details of the performances at the mysteries. Does it follow from this that the mysteries of the Earth divinities, as some are inclined to believe, bore a symbolical or allegorical character from the outset, and differed in this respect from all other Greek worship of the gods?[29\6] Similar interpretations were applied by philosophers or would-be philosophers to the fables of the gods in Homeric or popular mythology; the mysteries did not by any means hold a peculiar position in the minds of connoisseurs of myth-interpretation in antiquity. If a "deeper meaning" was attached by preference to the performances at Eleusis, that only shows that much in these performances was no longer understood, or in its real meaning no longer satisfied the spirit of the philosophic centuries. But it shows also that for this {227} festival of unexampled splendour, where night and the injunction of secrecy awakened awed expectancy,[30\6] performed according to an archaic ritual of ever-increasing perfection and attended by the whole of Greece, an unusual sympathy was felt. It offered something to the eye and the ear which was attractive to all men, and they exerted themselves to find a satisfactory meaning in its sights and sounds. Finally, it is likely enough that the "meaning" which they themselves had arbitrarily bestowed upon them was what made the mysteries specially attractive to many. To this extent it is legitimate to say that symbolism was a real and historical factor in the constitution of the mysteries.

Even supposing, however, that much in the presentation of this mystic festival was consciously ordered and disposed by the founders of it with a view to symbolic interpretation, and consequently to the possibility of an ever-increasing idealization of its significance, yet this cannot have extended to the hopes of a blessed immortality revealed to the Mystai. Symbolist or allegorizing modes of interpretation must always have been the private concern of individuals and therefore liable to much uncertainty and variety.[31\6] Our authorities, however, from the most diverse periods, speak with far too great distinctness and unanimity about the blessed hereafter vouchsafed to the initiated in the mysteries, for it to be credible that this can have been the outcome of any interpretation of complexities, or of any metaphorical application of the hopes derived from events in the life of the gods to a quite different province, the life of the human soul. What every witness speaks of in the plainest and simplest language without any special "mystery"--the hope of future blessedness--must have been offered to the participants in the mysteries in the most unequivocal fashion. It is natural, above all, to suppose that the exhibition of the "mystic drama" included

## particularly the final scene as it is sketched in the 2nd Homeric

Hymn: the foundation of the Eleusinian festival by the goddess herself--what had once been revealed to the little city-community must have been proclaimed to the great company of those admitted to the common festival of Eleusis:[32\6] the highest reward of

## participation in this unparalleled act of worship is what the

Homeric Hymn distinctly puts forth as such--the peculiar favour of the gods of the lower world and a future life of blessedness within their kingdom. The statues of the goddesses were seen radiantly illuminated;[33\6] at this festival of grace in remembrance of their trials, their happiness, and their beneficent acts, they {228} themselves--as it seemed to the faithful believer--were invisibly present. What further need of warrant was there for the promises of future blessedness?

§ 5

In spite of many extravagant statements from antiquity, we have no means of estimating how widely participation in the Eleusinian mysteries (whether of those celebrated at Eleusis itself or in the numerous associated festivals) was extended in Greece. Still, it is probable that large numbers, not from Athens alone but from the whole of Greece, sought eagerly to enter the state of grace vouchsafed to the worshippers at Eleusis. In this way the more lively conception of the state of the soul in the hereafter may have gradually become the common property of Greek imagination.

On the whole, we must be on our guard against attributing too great an importance to these mysteries. There can hardly have been any question of moral influence--the ancients themselves in their most exaggerated eulogies of the mysteries and their greatness, say almost nothing of this.[34\6] Nor is it easy to see what part of the mysteries could have served as a vehicle of moral influence.[35\6] Distinct dogma in the religious sense was never provided by the mysteries any more than by other worships of the gods in Greece. Nor was there anything exclusive about the cult of the mysteries; side by side with that cult and after it the Mystai took part in other worships of the gods, according to the usages prevailing in their own homes. The great festival when it was over left no sting behind in the hearts of the initiated. No requirement of a new manner of life, no new and peculiar condition of conscience was theirs on its account; no strange revaluation of values, contradicting the general opinions of the time, was learnt there. There was a total absence of that which (if we rightly understand the word) gives to the doctrines of sectarian religion their force and persuasiveness--_paradox_. Even the prospect of future bliss opened to the initiated did not divert them from the normal tenor of their existence. It was a genial prospect; not a compelling demand drawing all things to itself and turning men away from ordinary life. The light that fell from beyond was not so blinding that it made all things on this earth seem dark and mean. If in the decadence of Greek culture--and even among the people of Homer--ideas hostile to this life made their appearance and in many places acquired weight and influence; if some men began to think death superior {229} to life, and this life, of which alone we can be assured, as merely a preparation, a land of passage to a higher life in the world invisible--for all this the mysteries were not responsible. It was not they, nor the feelings and surmises awakened by their pictures and performances, that dulled the beauty of this earth for the enthusiasts "intoxicated with other-worldliness", or made them strangers to the instincts of life and sanity prevailing in older and unspoiled ages of Greek life.

NOTES TO