ELEUSIS
“That torch-lit strand whereon the Goddesses reverèd foster
mystic rites and dread for mortal men whose lips the ministrant
Eumolpidæ have locked in golden silence.”
SOPHOCLES, _Œdipus Coloneus_.
“Go thou to Attica,
Fail not to see those great nights of Demeter,
Mystical, holy.
There thou shalt win thee a mind that is care-free
Even while living,
And when thou joinest that major assembly
Light shall thy heart be.”
CRINAGORAS, _Greek Anthology_.
Eleusis, like Delphi, was a centre of Greek religious life, but its
Panhellenism was of a later date and a direct consequence of the power
of Athens within whose territory it lay. Although the worship of
nature’s productivity, under the form of Demeter losing her daughter
Persephone within the earth and recovering her again, was indigenous
among the early Pelasgic dwellers in Eleusis, and although upon this
native cult were grafted religious beliefs and practices imported from
Thrace, it is yet true that the Eleusinian Mysteries waxed famous only
as Athens waxed great. Once established by the most powerful city of
Greece as its highest expression of religious feeling, they drew to
their modest birthplace in the recurring Septembers of many centuries
the pious and the curious from all Greek lands. The right of initiation,
originally open only to citizens of Attica, was extended to all Greeks
and later to their Roman conquerors. In this repudiation of “barbarians”
Eleusis resembled Olympia rather than Delphi, where Persian or Scyth or
African might consult Apollo.
But these three centres of Panhellenic life alike present a history
which begins in the dim age of mythology and ends, several centuries
after the beginning of our era, in the final clash of Christianity with
Paganism. Perhaps the history of Eleusis best deserves the name of
“sacred.” Playing no appreciable part in secular events, the town was
repeatedly the scene of religious events which were of unequalled
spiritual importance. Here an early nature cult, sister to savage rites
in many parts of the world, became not only a beautified worship of the
physical universe but also an expression of a hope in immortality. “The
fable of Kore (the Daughter) is as much the image of the destiny of man
after death as it is that of the reproduction of vegetative life by
means of the seed committed to the earth.”[20]
Footnote 20:
See articles by François Lenormant in the _Contemporary Review_, 1880.
Except for the proximity of Eleusis to Athens there was nothing in the
physical qualities of the town to make the Eleusinian mysteries greater
than any others. Its loveliness befitted rather than promoted the
worship of the Earth Goddesses. Their story clung also to the seaward
looking ledges of “steep Cnidos,” where was found the noble statue of
Demeter that is now in the British Museum, and to the blossoming fields
of Sicilian Enna. The Corn-Mother had her shrines on Bœotian farms and
in the mountain caverns of Arcadia, and in more than one locality her
worship was as mysterious and secret as the processes of nature. And yet
the religious genius of Athens could have had no more exquisite stage
than Eleusis for its larger operations. Sheltered by hills, washed by
the sea and commanding a goodly plain, it is still, even in its poverty,
one of the fairest places in Greece. The Thriasian plain, in the
southwestern portion of which, on a low hill, lies the town, is
separated from the plain of Athens by the long ridge of Mount Ægaleus
and from the plain of Megara by the chain of hills that ends in the twin
peaks of the Kerata, or “Horns,” familiar objects in the westward view
from the Acropolis of Athens. The mountains of Salamis also seem to
contribute to the girdling of Eleusis, so near do they rise across the
curving and almost landlocked bay. Empurpled by shadows, the mountains
and the sea are like the deep blue robe of the mourning Demeter. Subdued
to the delicate and luminous tint of the sky they seem like the veil
within whose folds gleamed the cornlike yellow of her hair. Near the
sea, close around Eleusis, there are still fertile grain fields to
recall that—
“Here first the fruitful corn upreared its bristling ears.”
The historical development of the Eleusinian mysteries naturally
followed the general development of Greek religious thought. To the
primitive duality of Demeter and Persephone was added Dionysus, lord of
the elements, when he had once been accepted by the Athens of
Pisistratus. At Eleusis he appeared as the child Iacchus. Later, under
the influences of the strange school of thought known as “Orphic,” at
once mystical and gross, this multiple god became Zagreus, through whose
savage death man, otherwise destined to be forever brute, came to
partake of the divine nature. But in all periods the mysteries “were
founded on the adoration of nature, its forces and phenomena, conceived
rather than observed, interpreted by the imagination and not by reason,
transformed into divine figures and histories by a kind of theological
poetry which went off into pantheism on the one side and into
anthropomorphism on the other.”
In this theological poetry the position of power was held by the long
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, although it antedates the presence of Iacchus
at Eleusis and at least overlooks the importance of Triptolemus, the
young prince of the city, to whom the Earth-Mother gave the first
seed-corn and the commission to teach the art of husbandry throughout
the world. The representation of this act was left for fifth century
sculpture, if we may so interpret the beautiful relief discovered at
Eleusis and preserved in the National Museum. Nor is there more than
casual mention of Eumolpus, the legendary first priest and the eponymous
ancestor of the priestly family in Athens which was charged with the
care of Demeter’s worship. But the Hymn told flawlessly the central
story of Demeter and Persephone: the ravishment of Persephone by Hades
as she was picking roses and crocuses, violets and irises and the
marvelous narcissus which the earth bore to be her snare; the grief of
Demeter as she heard the mountain peaks and the deep sea echo her
child’s cry, her wandering search, her unrecognised sojourn at fragrant
Eleusis in the courteous household of the king, and her retarding of the
fruits of the earth; the reunion of mother and daughter for two thirds
of the year, and the sending up once more of the grain from the rich
fields and the burgeoning of the leaves and flowers; and, finally, the
command of the Goddess that the people of Eleusis should build her a
great temple and an altar below the town and the steep wall, above the
spring Callichorus on the jutting rock.
Homer himself had not known this story. Hesiod had lacked the Ionic gift
to tell it. Euripides, in a later generation, was led astray by his
strain of Orphic imagination which needed the roar of rivers and the
thunder of the sea, the wail of flutes and the clatter of the tambourine
to mark the frenzy of a suffering godhead. The Greeks as a people
preferred a story in which nature perishes and blooms again, in which
grief and love fight with death, while the dignity of life is
unassailed, and the beauty of hills and sea, flowers and welling springs
irradiates its tragedies.
Only the external facts concerning the celebrations are open to us. The
secrets of the two successive initiations, one preparatory to the other,
were so jealously hidden by the ancient initiates that the keenest
scholarship has not been able to discover them in literature or in art.
Alcibiades, idolized as he was, could not secure acquittal from the
suspicion of having parodied the mysteries. Silence was enjoined by
religion, enforced by law. This reserve about holy things, which has
appealed to some moderns as the “chief lesson and culminating grace
derived from Eleusis,” was proclaimed not only as a necessary condition
but also as an integral part of initiation, “imitating,” as Strabo
expressed it, “the nature of the godhead which is forever eluding our
senses.” Knowledge of the outward events of the festival has been
painstakingly gathered from passages in Athenian literature, a few
inscriptions, the excavated ruins, vases and other works of art, and
from the controversial literature, both Christian and pagan, of the
early centuries of our era.
The “Mysteries” lasted nine days, the time of Demeter’s wanderings.
Prior to them the youths—ephebi—of Athens went to Eleusis and brought
thence certain sacred objects which were to be used in the later
procession. On the 15th of Boedromion, or September, near the time of
sowing, the “mystæ,” who in the early spring month of Anthesterion, the
season of planting, had participated in the Lesser Mysteries in a suburb
of Athens, were assembled at the Stoa Pœcile to listen to sundry
proclamations. The following day was one of purification. The cry went
out, “seawards, O mystæ,” and every candidate washed himself and his
sacrificial pig in the bay near Eleusis, following the Greek feeling
that the sea purges from the evils of earth. For two more days
sacrifices were carried on at Athens. And then on the 19th or the 20th
came the great procession to escort the image of the child Iacchus,
myrtle-crowned and carrying in his hand a torch, back to his Eleusinian
home. The day was a public holiday. Great crowds gathered along the
Sacred Way to watch the long line of ephebi, mystics, priests and
officials, who, wearing myrtle and bearing torches, left the Dipylon
Gate early in the morning and reached the precinct at Eleusis after
nightfall, when the mysterious shadows were dispelled only by the yellow
glare of thousands upon thousands of torches and by the lights that
streamed from the sacred buildings.
The modern highroad follows very nearly the Sacred Way. Few travellers
now brave the heat and dust of an Attic September, but in some “month of
flowers” gain their impressions of the beauty of the road, which still
leads over the Cephisus, past gray-green olive groves, up through the
pine-clad pass of Mount Ægaleus, and down again to wind closely beside
the curved shore of the sea. In antiquity the Sacred Way was lined with
tombs and temples and shrines. Moderns are detained only by the lovely
mediæval Convent of Daphne, at the top of the pass, but the ancient
procession lingered not only at the Temple of Apollo which occupied this
spot, but at many other sacred stations, to offer sacrifices, sing
hymns, and engage in dances, solemn or joyous or wild. This was the
reason for leaving Athens so early to cover only thirteen miles before
another sunrise. The last part of the way followed the “torchlit strand”
by night. The “voices of the night,” the moving feet of the multitude
owned Iacchus as lord, with whom the stars also danced, the stars whose
breath is fire. And to the stars of Sophocles Euripides added the
elemental joy of moon and sea:—
“When the stars of the ether of Zeus lead out,
And the moon glides on as the dancers’ queen,
And the daughters of Nereus join the rout
Adown the sea or along the swirl
Of the rivers eternal that rush and whirl—
The ether, the moon, and the streams and the sea
They dance to honour Persephone,
The maiden crowned with the golden sheen,
And Demeter the Mother—ah, Dread is she!”
[Illustration: OLIVE TREES ON THE WAY TO ELEUSIS]
The singing of the vast throngs, breaking out at sunrise, changing its
themes in fresh enthusiasms through the long day and swelling by night
into triumphant volume, must have been unforgettable. Herodotus relates
that in the gloomy time when Athens was abandoned, and its plain laid
waste by Xerxes, even a Medizing exile was haunted by its ghostly
echoes. Dicæus of Athens chanced to be in the Thriasian plain with
Demaratus of Sparta, and saw a cloud of dust advancing from Eleusis,
such as a host of thirty thousand men might raise. As he was wondering
who the men could possibly be, a sound reached his ear and he thought
that he recognised the mystic hymn of Iacchus. Even as they looked, the
dust became a cloud and sailed away to Salamis, making for the station
of the Grecian fleet. This was a sign to the Athenian that the gods of
Eleusis would destroy the fleet of Xerxes. To us an echo of the singing
comes through the serious lyrics in the “Frogs” of Aristophanes. At the
portals of Hades a band of mystics sing over again the processional
hymns they had often sung on earth, beginning with the sunrise summons
to Iacchus to leave his Athenian shrine:—
“O Iacchus, O Iacchus,
Morning star that shinest nightly,
Lo, the mead is blazing brightly,
Age forgets its years and sadness,
Aged knees curvet for gladness,
Lift thy flashing torches o’er us,
Marshal all thy blameless train,
Lead, O lead the way before us; lead the lovely youthful Chorus
To the marshy flowery plain.”[21]
Footnote 21:
Translated by Rogers.
The days at Eleusis were probably only pauses between the “great nights”
of the worship of Demeter. The nightly proceedings seem to have
consisted of three elements. The first was an imitation of Demeter’s
wanderings. The initiates went up and down the shore by the sea, their
restless torches appearing from a distance like great “swarms of
fireflies.” They sat too upon the Joyless Rock, and by meditation
endeavoured to enter into the passion of the Goddess. The second element
was some sacrament of food and drink in commemoration of the fact that
Demeter was finally persuaded by the merry Iambe to break her fast.
Finally came a series of dramatic representations in the great Hall of
Initiation, by means of which the divine story was unfolded.
It would be a mistake to suppose that if we knew more details about
these celebrations we should understand more clearly the influence that
they exerted on the minds and spirits of the celebrants. In the
mysteries, we are assured by Aristotle, the initiates did not learn
anything precisely, but received impressions, were put into a certain
frame of mind for which they had been prepared. The value of subtle
influences like these can never be apprehended save by those who have
been subjected to them. In no age, under no sanction, have men been able
to create sacred rites, whether secret or open, that could not be
construed as mummery, not only by those of a different age but even by
contemporaries who stood outside the circle of the elect. Were every
“secret” of the Eleusinian Mysteries to be recovered, we should still be
uninitiated into their higher wisdom. We should still be thrown back, as
we are at present, upon a vicarious sympathy with those who have borne
witness to the quickening of their spirits in the Eleusinian nights.
Fortunately this testimony comes from a few of the most gifted among the
Greeks. The often quoted statement of Cicero, that initiation taught men
not only to live happily but to die with a fairer hope, only repeats
what was said by his literary master, Isocrates: “Those who have
participated in the mysteries possess sweeter hopes about death and
about the whole of life.” Strangely enough, Æschylus, who was born in
Eleusis and whose plays in later times were acted there because of their
religious character, seems never to have been initiated. But Pindar and
Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes harboured personal hopes that
those who knew the mysteries were “blessed” in the hour of death and in
the life to come. In the “Frogs” the dead mystics end their song in
solemn peace:—
“O happy mystic chorus,
The blessed sunshine o’er us
On us alone is smiling,
In its soft sweet light;
On us who strive forever
With holy, pure endeavour
Alike by friend and stranger
To guide our steps aright.”[22]
Footnote 22:
Translated by Rogers.
The impulse that was derived from Eleusis to lead the earthly life
aright must have had as many different results as there were
temperaments among the initiates. Andocides, merchant and orator,
reminded the Athenian judges that they had contemplated the sacred rites
in order that they might punish the guilty and save the innocent. Plato
felt that he whose memory of initiation was still fresh and who at
Eleusis had been the spectator of “many glories in the other world” must
see in every beautiful face or form that he encountered an imitation of
divine or absolute beauty toward which his spirit would go out in
reverential love.
The excavated remains of ancient Eleusis consist of ground foundations
or even fainter traces of buildings and porticoes dating from the
“Mycenæan” period to the age of the Antonines. Pisistratus, Cimon,
Pericles and Hadrian have left fragmentary records in stone of their
interest in this religious centre. The Temple of the Mysteries, which
was a great hall rather than a sanctuary, saw many changes in the course
of the centuries. The older structure of Pisistratus’s day, destroyed by
the Persians, was replaced by Pericles, perhaps according to plans by
Ictinus. Left unfinished by him, it was added to by Greek and Roman
until its boastful splendour aroused the anger of the Gothic monks who
came south with Alaric and compassed its final ruin.
Homelier memories centre in the Spring of Fair Dances (Callichorus), now
identified. Here, Pausanias tells us, “the Eleusinian women first danced
and sang in honour of the goddess,” decked perhaps like the Doric
maidens whose worship of the same goddess charmed the eyes of Alcman:—
“We came to great Demeter’s fane, we nine,
All maidens, all in goodly raiment clad;
In goodly raiment clad, with necklace bright
Of carven ivory, a radiant gleam.”
A fortunate dream prevented Pausanias from relating to the uninitiated
what he saw within the sacred precinct. In unpoisoned content,
therefore, lured by the beauty of the “white spring” which Callimachus,
the Alexandrian, included among Demeter’s gifts, the modern traveller
may sit on the temple steps and abandon thought, even as many an ancient
mystic in the autumnal days between the holy nights must have mounted to
some place of outlook whence he could watch the deep blue sea break into
foam delicate and white as the face of Persephone.
The mysteries ended on the 24th, with a public festival. At Athens games
were held, called the Eleusinia, offering as a prize a measure of barley
reaped from the field of Rharos close to the walls of Eleusis where the
first seed corn had fructified. In later times, with the general
increase of holidays, this festival was prolonged, but in the greatest
days of Athens the procession of mystics returned to the city on the
25th, with ceremonies of farewell to Persephone now leaving her mother
to return to her gloomy lord, like summer nearing the embrace of winter;
and with some final ritual, performed, it may be, at the Dipylon Gate
rather than at Eleusis, of prayer to sky and earth that the one might
impregnate and the other bear. On the curb of a sacred well before the
city gate has been found the very ancient formula, not yet outlived by
the generations of men who live upon the fruits of the earth.
The day of return gave one last opportunity for a public
demonstration—this time of hilarity. Justified by the quips and cranks
of Iambe, the initiates yielded to the impulse which in the natural man
follows close upon exaltation. At the bridge over the Cephisus the
people of the city, wearing masks, met the procession, and a carnival of
scurrilous wit ensued, which was a savoury memory to Aristophanes’s
mystics in the world of shadows. To us the recollection may bring a
sudden distrust of the sympathy with the past which, within the
unfretted silence of Eleusis, seemed completely to possess us. Like the
spectators in the comedy we get a whiff of pork. The light of the
torches reveals the vulgarities of a revelling crowd. The cymbals of the
priests, clashed only at this spot, drown the voices “of no tone.” Is
it, after all, true, as the early Christians believed, that orgies, not
prayers, have busied these men and women?
But with the crossing of the bridge the mood vanishes. The western sun
is once more adorning the Athenian Acropolis. Not only Pindar and Plato
faced this hill with a new reverence after their Eleusinian nights, but
many a simpler man and woman must have come home comforted and hopeful
to take up old burdens on the morrow. If, viewed by a Plato from the
heights of “true philosophy,” thousands who came from Eleusis were still
blind, or only partially aware of the meaning of life and death, this
was but the Greek manifestation of a universal fact: “Many are the
thyrsus-bearers but few are the mystics.”