Part 5

After death, as I have said, the soul awaited in Hades its rebirth, but its stay in Hades, like its life on earth, was a period of reward or punishment: “They who are righteous beneath the rays of the sun, when they die have a gentler lot in a fair meadow by deep-flowing Acheron.... But they who have worked wrong and insolence beneath the rays of the sun are led down beneath Cocytus’s watery plain into chill Tartarus.”[78] So this stay in Hades was a period of punishment and of purification, as life itself was a period of penance. The duration of this intermediate stay in Hades was conceived perhaps as a thousand years. In any case, after due season the soul entered upon a new incarnation, which apparently was determined by the innocence or guilt of its former life. Rebirth was not always into human form, as the Orphic verses show: “Wherefore the changing soul of man, in the cycles of time, passes into various creatures: sometimes it enters a horse, ... again it is a sheep, then a bird dread to see; again it has the form of a dog with heavy voice, or as a chill snake creeps along the ground.”[79] The poet-philosopher Empedocles declared that before his present existence he had been “a youth, a maiden, a bush, a bird, and a fish of the sea.”[80] So the soul was buffeted from birth to death and back to birth again. Of those who had been guilty of most grievous sins Empedocles says: “There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient, eternal decree of the gods sealed with strong oaths: when one in sin stains his hands with murder, or when another joining in strife swears falsely, they become the spirits who have long life as their portion, who are doomed to wander thrice ten thousand seasons far from the blessed, being born in the course of time into all forms of mortal creatures, shifting along life’s hard paths. For the might of the air drives them to the sea and the sea spews them on the ground, and the land bares them to the rays of the bright sun, and the sun throws them in whirls of ether. One receives them from another, but all hate them. Of this number am even I now, an exile from god and a wanderer, for I put my trust in mad strife.”[81] The number of reincarnations was not fixed so far as we know, though apparently ten thousand years was thought to be the limit of the process for the ordinary soul. Probably it was believed that there was no end of rebirths for the wicked, but that they were condemned to their repeated fate forever; or that they were doomed to endless punishment without rebirths.

But you may ask, what was the ultimate fate of the purified soul? To this, too, we can give no complete answer. Apparently the soul, stripped at last of all that was earthly and defiling, was then thought to be first truly free and alive. On Orphic tablets of the fourth century before our era found in southern Italy we read these words of the triumphant soul: “I have escaped from the sorrowful, weary round, I have entered with eager feet the ring desired. I have passed to the bosom of the mistress queen of the lower world.” And it is greeted in answer: “O happy and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of mortal.”[82] Apparently the purified soul left earth and Hades behind. There is no hint of absorption into god; no idea of Nirvana. The spirit of Greek thought required that the individuality of the soul should be retained. No doubt the Orphics conceived of every kind of heaven that was possible, many of them of most materialistic nature. Indeed, Plato reproaches some of them for believing future happiness to be a perpetual drunken round.

For the sinful, torments of a most fearful sort were reserved: not only did they lie in mud and filth, but they were exposed to most terrible creatures who rent their vitals. In short, the Orphic hell was not less awful physically than that of the medieval and later Christian, which in no small part was inherited from the Orphics.

Before we go on to consider other movements of the sixth century, let us summarize briefly the contributions of the Orphics to Greek religious thought. In the first place they definitely shifted man’s look from this world to the world beyond. In Homer, as we have seen, this world offered all for which man could hope; but to the Orphic, as to the devoted sectaries of all redemptive religions, this world was unimportant compared with the next in which he was to realize his fondest desires. Again the Orphics emphasized the duality of man, regarding him as a divine soul imprisoned in a sinful body. They made the divinity of the soul a motive for the religious life, the aim of which was to free the spirit of man from the sin which visits him in the prison-house of the flesh. Thereby they started the tendency to religious asceticism which was to be sharply emphasized by Christianity when a thousand years had past. Their doctrine of the divine nature of the soul they also made the basis of their belief in the soul’s immortality; for if the soul is divine, it must be eternally so. Furthermore, so far as we can know, they introduced the idea of pre-natal sin for which the individual soul must pay the penalty. It needs no argument to show the intrinsic importance of these ideas; as we go on, we shall have occasion to observe their significance in Greek religious thought.

Less valuable in itself, but not less persistent, as we can still see in our own Christian church, was the notion that only the initiates, who by purificatory rites had been received into the sacred association, could hope for salvation. Union with the divine nature and future blessedness were thus made to depend on sacraments rather than on virtue. Indeed, we need not suppose that here any more than in the mysteries at Eleusis there was originally any requirement of a virtuous life. But reason and an awakened ethical sense among the Greeks began early to demand of the initiates compliance with the recognized standards of morality, as the passages already quoted show; and there can be no doubt that in due time most of the various mysteries contributed to the ethical life. Yet the inevitable tendency in the opposite direction made itself felt and there were many Orphic charlatans and quacks who promised salvation to all who would undergo the cheap rites of their initiations.

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We must now glance at a contemporaneous and related movement—I mean Pythagoreanism, which will have sprung into the thoughts of many of you already.

Whether Orphism learned from Pythagoras or Pythagoras from Orphism cannot be determined; but it seems probable that Croton was already an Orphic center when about 530 B.C. Pythagoras of Samos after long travels established there an association which combined in a way hitherto unknown religious and philosophic aims. Pythagoras may have attached himself to some group of Orphics already in existence and have inspired it with his political and philosophic interests. In any case his society, which was opposed to the democratic temper of Croton, became in time important enough to be regarded with suspicion and forced to move to Metapontum; ultimately the members were dispersed carrying their doctrines with them throughout the Greek world.

Our knowledge of the philosophic ideas of Pythagoras himself amounts to little. It is clear that in contrast to the emotional Orphics he was interested in intellectual pursuits, especially in mathematics; more than that we cannot say; our present concern lies rather in the ethical and religious views and practices of the society which he established. This set high store on ethical discipline, following a strict course of life, for the ultimate aim was identical with that of the Orphics—salvation and release from sin. Like them the Pythagoreans also held to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Their rules enjoined simplicity of food, rare use of meat, and abstention from the eating of beans and eggs. But more important was the discipline which was prescribed for the mind and soul. The applicant for admission to the brotherhood was first tested to determine his fitness. The neophyte was bound to silence and obedience. “The master said it” was argument enough for him. The members devoted themselves to reflection, to self-examination, to the pursuit of the truth. Their highest aim was “to follow god.” Although the Pythagoreans fixed their gaze more on this world than the Orphics did, they also were of great religious significance. They emphasized the duality of man, the moral obligation of the individual, and especially the possibility of training and purifying the soul, and so helped to establish a spiritual heritage for later centuries.

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Now I shall invite your attention to a third manifestation of the mystic tendency of this age. Fourteen miles northwest of Athens, between a fertile plain and the sea, lies the ancient town of Eleusis, the center of the most important mysteries in Greece. The story of Demeter is familiar to us all—the goddess whose daughter, Persephone or Kore, was carried off by the god of the lower world. According to the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the mother wandered fasting in search of her daughter over the earth. She came to Eleusis in the guise of an old woman, where she was found by the daughters of the king, Keleos, who took her to their home. There she was kindly received, and was installed as nurse to the infant son of the king. Under her care the child prospered and grew marvellously, for quite secretly Demeter anointed him with ambrosia, breathed upon him, and cherished him in her bosom. By night she hid him “like a brand in the fire ..., for she would have made him free from age and death forever.”

But the queen saw her and cried out in dismay. The goddess was angry, yet none the less promised glory imperishable; she declared herself: “I am the honored Demeter, who am the greatest good and joy to immortals and mortals alike. Come, let all the people build me a mighty temple and hard by it an altar beneath your town and its steep wall, above Callichoros on the jutting spur. But the rites I will myself prescribe, that here ever after you may duly perform them and appease my will.” So the temple and altar to the goddess were built, but she still mourned for her lost daughter. In her sorrow she held back the seedgrain in the ground and all man’s plowing was vain, so that the race of men had nearly perished from the earth if it had not been for Zeus, who interposed and finally restored Persephone to her mother—but not forever. Before she left the house of the dead, Pluto had made her eat a pomegranate seed by which she was bound to return beneath the earth. So she spent two-thirds of each year with her mother on the earth, coming “when the ground blossomed with fragrant flowers,” but returning to the lord of the dead when the flowers faded and the grass withered before the coming of winter. Zeus then summoned Demeter to join the immortal gods on Olympus; but before she went, “she quickly sent up the grain from the fertile ground, and all the broad earth was heavy with leaves and with flowers. And the goddess went and taught the kings who deal out justice, Triptolemus and Diocles the charioteer, mighty Eumolpus, and Keleos, leader of the people. To them she showed the manner of her rites and to them all her mysteries, holy, which none may transgress or enquire into or make known. For a great curse of the gods restrains men’s speech. Happy is he whoever of men dwelling on this earth has seen these things! But he who is uninitiate in these holy rites, who has no share in them, never hath equal lot in death in the shadowy gloom.” So says the Homeric hymn to Demeter, which was composed, according to the general opinion of scholars, in the seventh century before our era.

Thus we see that before this hymn was written the myth was fully developed at Eleusis. There Demeter, Kore, and Pluto had their place, and with them were associated certain heroic personages. A temple and altar to the two goddesses already existed, and mysteries were celebrated which gave to those who might see them and share in them the warrant of a better lot in death than that for which the uninitiate might hope. The date at which the mysteries were established cannot be determined. This is no place for the speculations of the learned in detail, but they seem to have existed as early as the eighth century, and indeed they probably go back to a much remoter antiquity; yet there is no mention of them in Homer or Hesiod. In their earliest form they evidently consisted of certain religious ceremonies connected with agriculture by which the dead grain was called to life in the spring. The grain and the earth from which it sprang were worshipped as the corn-mother, Demeter, and then by a development natural in such religions the goddess was doubled and Kore, the maiden, came into existence beside Demeter. In the cult of these goddesses various rites had developed—fasting, purifications, and night vigils; a myth grew up to explain the ritual and the relation of the two goddesses, with whom a god of the dead was early associated; so something like the story in the Homeric hymn came into being. The agricultural festival was gradually transformed into one of profound meaning, by partaking in which one gained an assurance of future happiness. The wonderful miracle of reviving vegetation, of the grain which dies in the ground and springs anew to life, has often served as the warrant of man’s longing for a revival of his own life, as an assurance of his hope of immortality. So gods and goddesses of agriculture or of vegetation, which grows and dies and grows again, have become for men the lords of life and death, as we have already seen in the case of Dionysus.

The English word mystery is somewhat misleading in such a connection. A mystery in the Greek sense is a secret ritual to which only those may be admitted who have first been prepared by some rites of purification or probation. Such, for example, is the Christian Eucharist to which the Greek word μυστήριον was freely applied. After the proper ritual of initiation, through which the neophyte is guided by one previously initiate and expert, he may take part in the secret performances, which are thought to confer some special power or to bring him into close and privileged relation to divinity.

Originally the festival at Eleusis belonged to a noble Eleusinian family, or possibly to two families. In the seventh century Eleusis was incorporated with Attica; an Eleusinion, a shrine to Demeter of Eleusis, was built near the city; and the privilege of sharing in the festival was apparently given to all Athenians. The mysteries were especially fostered in the sixth century by the tyrant Pisistratus, who built a new hall of initiation which was destroyed by the Persians during their great invasion. Under Pisistratus the mysteries may have been opened to the whole Hellenic world. In the fifth century the broad formula of admission was: “Whoever has pure hands and speaks our tongue.” Eleusis shared in the glory of Athens’ greatest period, and even in the time of Athenian weakness and decay the mysteries retained much of their ancient prestige. Many Romans, including some of the imperial house, were initiated, and the popularity of Eleusis continued as late as the third and fourth centuries. Julian the Apostate in his youth was here initiated. In 364 A.D. the Emperor Valentinian I forbade all nocturnal festivals, including that at Eleusis, but when the pro-consul of Achaea declared that the people could not live without the mysteries, he relaxed his prohibition so far as they were concerned. Thirty-two years later Alaric destroyed the sanctuary, and its long history, which began before history, seemed closed. Yet Eleusis was true to Demeter, for in spite of the iconoclastic tendencies of the Greek Church, the inhabitants continued to worship as St. Demetra a mutilated ancient statue of the goddess, until in 1801 the Englishmen Clarke and Cripps carried it off to its present resting-place in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.

The mysteries were under the general charge of the King Archon and his assistants at Athens, but the officials proper continued to be drawn from the two sacred families of the Eumolpidae and Ceryces. From the former was selected the highest official, the hierophant, who held office for life. He alone had the right to show or to explain the secret objects and ceremonies. The next three priests were taken from the Ceryces, and like the hierophant were chosen for life; they were the torch-bearer, dadouchos, who carried the sacred torch at sacrifices and purifications, the altar-priest, and the sacred herald, hieroceryx. Besides these four high officials we know of a considerable number of lesser priests and priestesses, heralds, and secular officers who do not concern us now.

The would-be initiate applied to someone belonging to either of the sacred Eleusinian families to act as mystagogue and lead him through the preliminary purification, which seems to have been essentially identical with that employed to purify any unclean person; this done, the mystagogue duly presented the novice to the officials and recommended him as a proper person to be initiated. There were two degrees of the secret rites: in the first the novices were initiated and became mystae; in the second they advanced to be epoptae, those to whom were made special revelations not vouchsafed to the mystae.

Each year there were two celebrations of the mysteries, one at Agrae, a suburb of Athens, in the month Anthesterion, which corresponds roughly to our February-March, and the greater celebration at Eleusis in Boëdromion, our September. The initiate was ordinarily obliged to take

## part in the lesser celebration before he could be admitted at Eleusis.

The great festival lasted eight or nine days, from the fifteenth to the twenty-second or twenty-third of the month Boëdromion. On the first day the participants assembled before the Painted Porch in Athens to listen to the formal proclamation, in which the officials ordered all unclean persons and all foreigners to withdraw, and enjoined secrecy on all who were to share in the festival. The sixteenth was a day of purification when the participants washed in the sea; the seventeenth and eighteenth were spent as holidays at Athens, during which various sacrifices were made; so that it was not until the nineteenth that the festal procession started for Eleusis, carrying the image of Iacchos, a form of the infant Dionysus. Although the Sacred Way is less than fourteen miles in length, so many stops were made at shrines that Eleusis was not reached until evening. The ceremonies there continued three days and nights. There were sacrifices and offerings to many divinities. In memory of Demeter’s hunt for her daughter the devotees roamed the shore by night carrying lighted torches; and finally like the goddess, they broke their fast by drinking a holy potion of meal and water. The consummation of the festival was the celebration in the Great Hall, where some three thousand might find place on the seats which rose in banks on all four sides. There were two sorts of representations—one for the mystae, who were witnessing the festival for the first time, and the other for those who were more expert, the epoptae. What went on in the Hall we do not know; we can, however, conjecture in general the nature of the celebrations. They consisted of “things done,” δρώμενα, and “things said,” λεγόμενα. The former may well refer to some kind of mystery play, or of tableaux, in which incidents from the myth were represented, such for example as the rape and the recovery of Kore, the mourning of Demeter, the birth of the child Iacchos, and so forth. In fact Clement of Alexandria tells us: “Deo and Kore became persons in a mystic drama, and Eleusis with its torch-bearer celebrates the wandering, the abduction, and the sorrow.”[83] From this and other notices we may conclude that some simple mystery play was acted or tableaux vivants presented before the eyes of the company. In any case there was nothing elaborate. Sacred objects were doubtless exhibited, and apparently handled by some of the spectators. The formula: “I fasted, I drank the potion, I took it from the chest and having tasted I put it away in the basket and from the basket into the chest”[84] gives a hint of certain sacraments, but we cannot now clearly determine their nature. There was no preaching or exhortation. At most the “things said” were a simple ritual, or explanation of the objects exhibited. There may have been music and singing. On the last day of the festival two jars were filled with water and set up, one to the east and the other to the west of the great hall. Then these were overturned with the words, ὓε κύε, “rain,” “conceive.”[85] Here we have a bit of ancient agricultural ritual, of magic, intended to secure abundant rains and the prosperity of the crops. A similar rite was the solemn exhibition of an ear of grain as a symbol of the initiates’ hope.[86]

We inevitably inquire as to what the nature of the teaching of these mysteries was. As a matter of fact, there was probably little if any instruction given. Life beyond the grave was certainly taken for granted. The mystic ritual consisted of only certain simple symbolical ceremonies and representations which each initiate might interpret according to his own impressions. The spectators were put into a certain frame of mind; the celebration touched their emotions and not their intellects. So Aristotle says: “The initiates are not to learn anything, but they are to be affected and put into a certain frame of mind.”[87] This we can understand from the effect of a Christian Mass, which, full of the richest meaning to the devout Catholic, to another may seem of no significance.