CHAPTER VII.

THE UNION OF GODS AND MEN.

The similitude of death with sleep is an idea of ancient date and of

wide distribution, which for many of mankind, whatever be the creed

professed, has mitigated the fears or lightened the uncertainties which

attach to the cessation of this life. Adopted by the founder of the

Christian religion as an illustration of the doctrine that men ‘shall

rise again with their bodies,’ the thought has become a part of the

heritage of Christendom, and in our own language the word ‘cemetery’

bears testimony to it. But the idea had been evolved by pagan thought

long centuries before the dawn of Christianity, and probably enough by

the thinkers and poets of many nations independently one of another. In

the oldest literature of Greece we meet with the thought already fully

developed and evidently familiar. ‘To sleep an iron slumber[1358]’ is

already in Homeric language a simple and natural synonym for ‘to die’;

and so too we are told that in the far off golden age men ‘died as it

were overborne by sleep[1359].’ And in yet plainer terms, where Death

and Sleep are personified, they are spoken of as twin brethren[1360],

the children of Night[1361]. This conception seems too to have been a

favourite in art[1362], and provided one of the scenes on the renowned

chest of Cypselus[1363].

When we turn to the folk-songs of the present day, we cannot of course

hope to find the imagery of Death and Sleep pourtrayed as infants

sleeping in the lap of Night, nor indeed, so far as I know, are they

even described as brothers; for the personification of them by the

modern peasants is rare. But the old resemblance between them is still

recognised, and, quite apart from Christian influence, the thought

finds natural expression in those largely pagan improvisations of

mourning in which the name of Charon is to be heard more frequently

than the name of God. It will suffice to quote but one stanza from one

of the most simple and touching of these funeral-songs:

δὲν εἶν’ πεθαμένη,

τὴν ὄψι τηρᾶτε,

κοιμᾶται, κοιμᾶται,

εἰς ὕπνο βαθύ[1364].

Not dead lies the maiden,

Doubt not, but behold her,

’Tis sleep doth enfold her

In slumber profound.

Now this idea, born in some long-forgotten pagan age, fostered by Homer

and Hesiod and no less tenderly by the Christian Church, familiar

to every Greek mind for full three thousand years, harmonizes well

with the belief that body as well as soul survives death. Beyond

the superficial resemblance in the inert figures of the dead man

laid out for burial and of one who sleeps soundly, there was another

and profounder resemblance in the manner of their waking to fresh

activity, the one in this world, the other in the under-world. Homer,

with his belief that the soul alone, survives, notes only the first

resemblance. The twofold property of laying men to sleep and of raising

them therefrom resided fitly in the wand of Hermes the escorter of the

dead; but though he escorted men’s souls to the house of Hades and

might at will summon their souls thence[1365], there is no suggestion

of a bodily awakening from the sleep of death. But Virgil, even in his

close imitation of Homer, adds to the Homeric description of Hermes’

wand one phrase of his own. ‘Therewith doth he summon forth from Orcus

the pale spirits of the dead, and others doth he send down to gloomy

Tartarus; therewith he giveth sleep and taketh it away’--so far does

Virgil follow Homer, but he adds--‘and unsealeth men’s eyes from

death[1366].’ The Homeric picture is enriched by a new thought, foreign

to the Achaean religion but proper to that other belief which inspired

Pindar’s description of the future life, the thought that after death

and dissolution, men’s eyes should open upon a brighter world and a

life of renewed bodily activity.

Such was the thought with which the pagans of ancient Greece had

comforted themselves long before Christianity availed itself of the

same imagery. But the Hellenic religion went yet further, and found in

this thought not only peace and contentment but vivid joy. The sleep

of death was the means whereby men should attain to closer communion

with their gods. The grave was a bed, but a bed of delight rather than

of rest, a bridal bed. They should not sleep alone, but in the very

embrace of the gods to whom in this life they had striven to draw nigh.

The darkness of the tomb was but the wedding-night. Full union in the

other world should be the consummation of partial communion in this.

The marriage of men with their gods was the ideal to which Greek piety

dared aspire.

Such an ideal may well seem bold even to the verge of impious

presumption. But Greek religion, even in its highest developments,

was the natural and spontaneous expression of the beliefs and hopes

of a whole people; it differed from all the great religions of the

modern world in having no founder. Great teachers no doubt arose, as

Orpheus or Pythagoras, who influenced the course of religious thought;

but they were not the founders of new religions. The old self-grown

faiths of the people were the stocks upon which they grafted, as it

would seem, even their new doctrines; they founded schools indeed,

but schools which did not sever themselves from the received religion

and become sects. The Orphic mysteries differed so little from the

old Pelasgian mysteries of Eleusis that Orpheus was sometimes even

reputed to be their founder too; yet, as we shall see, the Eleusinian

rites were merely one presentment of a conception common to the whole

Greek people. If then this ideal of marriage between men and gods

in the future life was no invented or imported doctrine, but simply

the highest development of purely popular aspirations towards close

communion with the gods, its audacity is less surprising. From time

immemorial down to this day[1367] Greece has had its popular stories of

nuptial union even in this life between gods and mortal women, between

goddesses and mortal men; and educated Greeks, who could not credit

such occurrences in their own times, might well believe that a joy,

which had been granted to the brave men and fair women of a former and

better age even during their life-time upon earth, was still reserved

for the righteous in the world to come. Pausanias tells us with a

wonderful simplicity that in his time owing to the increase of iniquity

in all the world no one was changed from a man into a god, and that the

wrath of the gods against the unrighteous was laid up against the time

when they should quit this earth[1368]. If then there was believed to

be a postponement of punishment for those who offended the gods, there

might well be a reservation of blessedness for those who pleased them.

It would have imposed no strain upon the faith of such as Pausanias to

look forward to the enjoyment in a future life of the same bliss as

had been enjoyed in old time upon earth by men ‘who by reason of their

uprightness and piety sat at the same hospitable board as gods, and

whom the gods openly visited with honour for their goodness even as

they visited the wicked with their displeasure[1369],’ men who, as many

an old legend told, had shared not the board only but even the bed of

deities.

This curious Greek conception of death as a form of marriage was

first borne in upon me by the funeral-dirges of the modern peasants.

Examples may be found in any collection of Greek folk-songs. The actual

expression of the thought varies considerably, but it would probably be

hard to find in Greece any professional mourner in whose elaborations

the idea did not occupy an important place. It is utilised with

equal frequency in regard to persons of either sex, whether married

or unmarried at the time of death. The two following specimens from

Passow’s collection are fairly representative.

‘Ah me! ah me! the hours of youth and days all past and over,

Haply shall they return again, those hours of youth regretted?’

‘Nay when the crow dons plumage white, when crow to dove is changèd,

Then only shall they come again, those hours of youth lamented.’

‘Oh fare ye well, high mountain-tops and fir-trees rich in shadow,

For I must go to marry me, to take a wife unto me;

The black earth for my wife I take, the tombstone as her mother

And yonder little pebbles all her brethren and her sisters[1370].’

Here evidently we have the funeral-dirge of an old man, and, as

is usual in these poems, a large part of the words are put into

his mouth. In this fragment the first two lines are the dead man’s

complaint, the next two are an answer returned to him, and then again

he takes up his parable. The second example which I will give is from

a lamentation for a young girl. The first few lines are addressed by

the father and mother to their dead child, and with a quaint directness

contrast the gloom of the lower world with the simple joys of a

peasant’s life here above; while the last three lines are an answer put

into the dead girl’s mouth.

‘Dear child, there where thou purposest to hie thee down, in Hades,

There, sure, no cock doth ever crow, nor hen is heard a-clucking,

There is no spring of water found, nor grass in meadows growing.

Art hungered? nought thou tastest there; athirst? there nought thou drinkest;

Would’st lay thee down and take thy rest? of sleep no fill thou takest.

Then stay, dear child, in thine own house, stay then with thine own kindred.’

‘Nay, I may not, dear father mine and mother deep-beloved,

Yesterday was my marriage-day, late yestere’en my wedding,

Hades I for my husband have, the tomb for my new mother[1371].’

In this dirge, it may be noticed, there is no complaint on the part of

the dead girl; the lamentation and the gloomy description of Hades are

assigned to her parents. And indeed her reply is, I think, intended

to be by way of consolation. It is true that she does not deny their

cheerless prognostications nor attempt to paint a brighter picture of

the nether world, but she represents her death as no greater breaking

of old ties than is marriage; at an actual marriage indeed the same

kind of distressful presages are chanted by the girl’s companions, and

even the bride herself is bound by propriety to exhibit a sullen and

regretful demeanour. Very true of Greek marriages and of Greek funerals

is the proverb, μηδ’ ἀπὸ τὴ λύπη λείπουν γέλια μηδ’ ἀπὸ τὴ χαρὰ τὰ

κλάμματα[1372], ‘Mourning hath its mirth and joy its tears.’ But the

consolatory tone is far more pronounced in some other passages from

the same collection. A good example is found in the message which a

_Klepht_--one of those patriot-outlaws who struggled against Turkish

domination--is made to send, as he lies dying, to his mother:

‘Go, tell ye now my mother dear, my mother sore-afflicted,

Ne’er to await me home again, ne’er to abide my coming;

Yet tell her not that I am slain, tell her not I am fallen;

Nay, tell her then that I am wed--wed in these wilds so weary.

The black earth for my wife I took, the hard rock my bride’s mother,

And all the little pebbles here I took for my new kindred[1373].’

The feeling displayed in these lines (which are credited by Passow

to the town of Livadia (Λεβαδεία) in Boeotia) finds closely similar

expression in a recently-published Macedonian folk-song. The latter

however is not a mere copy of the former. Its metre is different,

and further it is a folk-song of the romantic order, whereas the

lines which I have quoted belong to an historical ballad. A youth is

lowered by his brothers, so runs the story, into a well to get water

for them, but the well proves to be haunted by a snake-like monster

(στοιχειό[1374]) from whom they try in vain to rescue him. In this

plight he cries to them:

‘Oh leave me, brothers, leave me, go ye on your way,

And say not to my mother dear that I am dead,

But tell her, brothers, tell her how that I am wed;

The black earth for my wife I took, the tombstone my bride’s mother,

And all these little blades of grass her brethren and her sisters[1375].’

Even more remarkable in its total absence of grief is a fragment

given by Passow under the title of ‘the Wedding in Hades.’ The

lamentation--for technically at least the poem falls into the class

of ‘dirges’--is sung by a mother for her son, and she speaks of her

own mother, who is already dead and in the nether world, as making

preparation for the boy’s wedding in Hades.

‘My mother maketh glad to-day, she maketh my son’s wedding,

She goeth for water to the springs, for snow unto the mountains,

To fruit-wives in their garden-plots for apples and for quinces.

“Ye springs,” she saith, “give water cool, and give me snow, ye mountains,

Ye fruit-wives in your garden-plots, give apples and give quinces.

For unto me a dear one comes down from the world above us;

Not from a strange land cometh he, nor from among strange people,

He is the child of mine own child, right dear and deep-beloved.”[1376]’

From these passages and from many others conceived in the same spirit

it will readily be seen that the thought of death as a kind of

marriage, however mystical it may seem to us, is familiar to the modern

Greek peasants. Nor has that thought become crystallised into a set

form of words to be repeated without heed or understanding of their

meaning. The very variety of treatment given to the idea proves that

we are not dealing with a mere traditional expression or unmeaning

commonplace, but with a vital belief still capable of stirring the

ballad-maker’s imagination. Further it is this thought which almost

alone strikes a note of cheerfulness and of hope in the popular dirges.

The usual picture of the lower world is nothing but gloom and despair.

It is a place of darkness on which the sun never shines, a place of ice

and snow, and full of cob-webs. There are no churches there with bright

golden icons; no quoits for the young men to throw; no looms for the

women to ply. Hunger is not appeased, thirst not quenched, and sleep

is denied. All is mourning and regret for the warm stirring life of

the upper world, and anxious fears for wife or children left behind.

Happy those who are allowed even to taste of the river of death, and to

forget their homes and orphaned little ones. Thus with strange medley

of ancient and modern is the dirge-singer wont to describe that lower

world to which all the dead without distinction go. Yet even into these

dirges, which--in order to excite the mourners to wilder displays of

grief--purposely emphasize the gloomiest aspects of death, there is

allowed to enter the one cheering thought that the departed for whom

lamentation is made is not dead nor yet fallen on eternal sleep, but

wedded in a new world; and it is worthy of notice that it is with this

thought that many of the dirges end, as if this one consolation and

hope were designed to assuage the pangs of sorrow which the first part

of the dirge had excited.

Thus a brief study of the modern Greek dirges reveals to us the curious

fact that a mystic conception of death is widely prevalent among the

simple-minded peasants of Greece, and that, with all their _naïveté_

in pourtraying the horrors of the lower world, it is from a recondite

doctrine that they draw consolation. How came they to be the stewards

of a doctrine so strange, so remote from the primitive simplicity of

their ordinary life?

Once more we must look back to a pre-Christian antiquity, and seek

again in Greek Tragedy the evidence of popular belief. Just as

Aeschylus above all others has preserved to us the awful doctrine of

future retribution for the deadly sin of blood-guilt, so from Sophocles

we may learn the more comfortable doctrine that death, while it

involves a parting from friends in this upper world, is also the means

of drawing nearer, in an union as it were of wedlock, to the denizens

of the lower world. The _locus classicus_ for this conception is the

_Antigone_. Throughout the latter part of that play, when once the

doom of Antigone has been pronounced, the thought of her death as a

wedding, and of the rock-hewn tomb where she is to be immured as a

bridal-chamber, finds repeated and emphatic expression.

Of course it may be said that Antigone was the promised bride of

Haemon, and that the poet in speaking of her tomb as a bridal-chamber

was seeking to accentuate the pathetic contrast between her hopes

and her destiny. That is true; but perhaps it is not the whole

truth; perhaps Sophocles rather utilised the evident pathos of the

situation for the purpose of covert allusion to doctrines which were

in themselves unspeakable, such as Herodotus would have passed over

with the words εὔστομα κείσθω. For we must not forget that the majority

of an Athenian audience, initiated as they naturally would be in the

Eleusinian mysteries, were familiar with religious teachings of which

none might make explicit mention in the pages of literature open to the

profane, but at which a poet might well hint in words which beneath

their superficial meaning hid a truth intelligible to such as had ears

to hear. Aeschylus indeed had once ventured too far in his allusions

to the mysteries[1377]; but there is no improbability, or rather there

is on that account an increased probability, in the supposition that a

discreet and veiled allusion to unspeakable doctrines was permitted to

the Tragic poet. Let us turn to the actual passages of the _Antigone_.

The first suggestion of the thought comes ironically enough, though

it is but a faint suggestion, from the lips of Creon, who to Ismene’s

exclamation, “Wilt thou indeed bereave thine own son of her?” retorts

“’Tis Hades’ part to arrest this wedding[1378].” The thought is

taken up later by the Chorus, who, after their hymn in honour of

unconquerable Love, revert to words of pity for the woman there before

them, and tell how they can no longer check the founts of tears, when

they behold Antigone drawing near to ‘the bed-chamber where all must

sleep’ (τὸν παγκοίταν θάλαμον)[1379]. Here the expression of the idea

is becoming plainer, and it is no accident that the word θάλαμος, so

commonly used of the bride-chamber, is here selected. But yet clearer

words are to follow; for Antigone herself, in response to these words

of compassion from the Chorus, interprets more boldly that at which

they hint. ‘Me doth Hades, with whom all must sleep, bear off yet

alive to Acheron’s shore, me that have had no part in wedlock, whose

name hath never rung forth in bridal hymn, but ’tis Acheron I shall

wed[1380].’

Nor does this clear pronouncement stand alone; thrice more, as the play

advances, the same thought is echoed in unmistakeable tones. First

comes the opening of that half impassioned, half sophistic, speech

of Antigone, from which some critics would delete her argumentative

estimate of a brother’s claims as against those of a husband; but

the removal of those lines would still leave intact that outburst,

‘Oh tomb, oh bride-chamber, oh cavernous abode of everlasting

durance[1381].’ And then again in the speech of the messenger, who

bears tidings of the fate of both Antigone and her lover, the same

thought is pressed upon us with double insistence. First he tells how,

having given Polynices his full rites of burial, they turned to go next

‘unto the vaulted chamber where on couch of rock the maiden should be

wed with Hades’ (πρὸς λιθόστρωτον κόρης νυμφεῖον Ἅιδου κοῖλον), and

from afar is heard the voice of loud lament beside ‘the bridal chamber

unhallowed by funeral rites’ (ἀκτέριστον ἀμφὶ παστάδα[1382]). And

later in the same narrative, when we have heard how that voice of loud

lament was stilled, Haemon is pictured as lying dead in Antigone’s dead

embrace, having won his bridal’s fulfilment only in Hades’ house (τὰ

νυμφικὰ τέλη λαχὼν δείλαιος ἐν γ’ Ἅιδου δόμοις)[1383].

The reiteration of a single thought through all this series of passages

is most remarkable. What does it mean? Did Sophocles intend merely to

enhance the tragedy of Antigone’s doom by constant comparison of that

which might have been with that which was? Or did each phrase in which

the thoughts of marriage and of death were blended contain a further

and a subtler appeal to his hearers’ emotions? Did each phrase strike

also a note which set vibrating in his listeners’ hearts responsive

chords of mystic hope?

For my part, as I draw near the end of these studies in Greek

religion, I find it more and more difficult to set down as mere casual

coincidences the close resemblances between Greece in the past and

Greece in the present. I have found a belief in the supernatural beings

of Ancient Greece still swaying the minds of the modern peasants; I

have seen the customs of antiquity repeated alike in the small acts

of every-day life and in the ceremonies of its greater events; I have

heard the same thoughts expressed in almost the same turns of phrase

as in ancient literature; I have traced the popular conceptions of

the present day concerning the relations of body and soul, and their

existence after death, back to native pre-Christian sources. Have I

then not a right, am I not bound, to abjure coincidence and to claim

for the past and the present real identity? When I find in Sophocles

the same thought, almost the same words, which may be gathered to-day

from the lips of any unlettered lament-maker the whole Greek world

over, I am compelled by my conviction of the continuity of all things

Greek to believe that Sophocles adapted to his own use a thought which

in his time even as now was uttered in many a funeral-dirge, and that

while the phrases of the _Antigone_ gained in his hands a new lustre

from the pathos of their setting, they themselves were not new nor the

invention of Sophocles’ genius, but an old heritage of the Greek race.

Maybe it was that same thought which gave birth to the strange and but

partially known legend of the death of Hymenaeus himself in the first

moment of his wedded delight[1384]; maybe it was in the same spirit

that Prometheus foretold how Zeus himself should make such a marriage

as should cast him down from his throne of tyranny and he be no more

seen, in fulfilment of the curse uttered by Cronos when he was cast

down into the unseen world[1385].

But, it may be said, the forebodings of Prometheus are generally

taken to refer to a future marriage with Thetis, not with death; and

Pindar’s reference to Hymenaeus is vague and fragmentary; and the lines

of Sophocles’ _Antigone_ have plenty of human pathos, without reading

into them any religious doctrine; let your contention at least have

the support of sober prose which shows its meaning on the surface. So

be it. Artemidorus in his hand-book to the interpretation of dreams

claims as a recognised religious principle the correlation of marriage

and death. To dream of the one is commonly a prognostication of the

other. But let us hear his own words. “If an unmarried man dream of

death, it foretells his marriage; for both alike, marriage and death,

have universally been held by mankind to be ‘fulfilments’ (τέλη); and

they are constantly indicated by one another; for the which reason also

if sick men dream of marriage, it is a foreboding of death[1386].” And

again: ‘if a sick person dream of sexual intercourse with a god or

goddess ..., it is a sign of death; for it is then, when the soul is

near leaving the body which it inhabits, that it foresees union and

intercourse with the gods[1387].’ And yet once more: ‘since indeed

marriage is akin to death and is indicated by dreaming of death, I

thought it well to touch upon it here. If a sick man dreams of marrying

a maiden, it is a sign of his death; for all the accompaniments of

marriage are exactly the same as those of death[1388].’ The gist of

these passages is unmistakeable; in clear and straightforward terms

is enunciated the principle that death and marriage are so intimately

associated that to dream of the one may portend the happening of the

other. Here is the doctrine which we sought to elicit from the poetry

of Sophocles and from the dirges of modern peasants, stated in plain

prosaic language. Death is akin to marriage, and, as death approaches,

men’s souls foresee a wedded union with gods.

But Artemidorus does not merely vouch for the existence of this mystic

doctrine; he suggests also, to those who will weigh his words, that

the doctrine was generally recognised and widely-spread: ‘for all the

accompaniments of marriage,’ he says, ‘are exactly the same as those

of death.’ What were these accompaniments? Seemingly Artemidorus had

in mind certain customs which he had enumerated a little earlier,

namely ‘an escort of friends, both men and women, and garlands and

scents and unguents and an inventory of goods[1389]’ (i.e. either the

marriage settlement or the last will and testament). It is then owing

to this similarity between marriage-customs and funeral-customs that

‘if a sick man dreams of marrying a maiden, it is a sign of death.’ But

previously we heard that if a sick person dreamt of commerce with a

god or goddess, it was a sign of death, because, as death approached,

the soul foresaw union and intercourse with the gods. How far do these

statements agree? In both cases the interpretation of the dream is

the same--to dream of marriage forebodes death--while the reasons for

that interpretation are differently given according as the partner

in the dreamt-of union is divine or human. But, though differently

given, these reasons are not mutually inconsistent. In the one case the

reason assigned is an idea--the idea that by death men were admitted

to wedded union with their gods. In the other case the reason assigned

is a custom--the custom of giving to the dead rites similar to the

marriage-rites. In effect then the two reasons assigned are one and the

same in spirit; for the ‘custom’ is merely the practical expression of

the ‘idea’; it was because men believed that the dead attained to a

wedded union with their gods, that they made the funeral-rites resemble

the rites of marriage. And clearly this custom of assimilating the

accompaniments of death to those of marriage could never have been

general, as Artemidorus suggests, unless the belief, on which that

custom was founded, had also been generally received and widely spread.

It will be worth while then to institute an enquiry into the customs

generally observed both in ancient and modern times at weddings and at

funerals. Our comparison of ancient literature with modern folk-songs,

illumined by the statements of Artemidorus, has established the fact

that death and marriage were very intimately associated in thought

by some of the ancient writers as they are by many of the modern

peasants. Custom will be found to tell the same tale, and will prove

how generally accepted was this idea. For in point after point which

Artemidorus does not mention in his brief enumeration--and without

reckoning, as he does, such purely business matters as the inventory

of goods--we shall find that the ceremonies incidental to a funeral

have now, and had in old time, a curiously close resemblance to the

ceremonies incidental to marriage; and, so finding, we may be confident

that they were informed by a general and wide-spread belief that to die

was but to marry into Hades’ house. Let us review them briefly and in

order[1390].

The first ceremony in both functions alike was, and is, a solemn

ablution. Before a Greek wedding both bride and bridegroom have always

been required to bathe themselves, usually in water specially fetched

from some holy spring. At Athens in old time, according to Thucydides,

the spring frequented for this purpose was Callirrhoë[1391]; and

similarly the Thebans had resort to the Ismenus[1392], the maidens

of the Troad to the Scamander[1393], and the inhabitants of other

districts to some spring or river of local repute[1394]. And at

the present day in Athens it is still from Callirrhoë (when there

is any water there) that the poorer classes fill the bridal bath;

while many a village has its own sacred well or fountain (ἅγι̯ασμα)

to which recourse is regularly had for this same purpose. And this

wedding-ablution, common, as it would thus appear, to the Greeks of

all ages, has its counterpart in the funeral-ablution, a ceremony

likewise observed in all ages. Thus Sophocles makes Antigone speak of

having washed with her own hands the dead bodies of father, mother,

and brother[1395]; and Lucian in a mocking tone refers to the same

practice as general in his day[1396]. At the present day the same rite

is practically universal in Greece. In some places, and most notably in

Crete, special magnificence is given to the ceremony by the use of warm

wine instead of water; in others, as Macedonia[1397], the custom has

dwindled away, and all that remains of it is a perfunctory moistening

of the dead man’s face with a piece of cotton-wool soaked in wine. But

in general the old custom remains unchanged. Thus we see that from

ancient times down to the present day a ceremony of ablution has held a

place in the preliminaries alike of a marriage and of a funeral.

Again in this matter of washing there is one detail of special

interest. The water for the bridal bath was in old times fetched by a

boy or girl[1398] closely related to the bride or the bridegroom, and

the λουτροφόρος, as the bearer was called, is still an important figure

in the wedding ceremonial of the present day. Nowadays, so far as I

know, the bearer is always a boy, and further it is essential that both

his parents be still living. The λουτροφόρος therefore has always been

closely associated with the marriage-rite. But in antiquity the same

water-bearer appears in another connexion. ‘It was customary,’ we hear,

‘to fetch water (λουτροφορεῖν) also for those who died unmarried, and

that the figure of a water-bearer (λουτροφόρον) should be set up over

their tomb. The figure was that of a boy with a pitcher[1399].’ Here we

have a clear case of the importation of a ceremony closely connected

with marriage into the funeral-rites of the unmarried. How are we

to explain this custom? On what religious conception was it based?

Clearly, it seems,--in view of that constant association of death

and marriage which we have observed in ancient literature and modern

folk-song--no other interpretation can well be maintained than that,

for those who died unwed, death itself was the first and only marriage

which they experienced, and that to such, ere they were laid in Hades’

nuptial-chamber, there ought to be given those same rites which were

held to be a fitting preparation for entrance into the estate of

wedlock in this world[1400].

The ceremonial ablutions being concluded, there came next the rites of

anointing and arraying whether for marriage or for burial. As regards

the cosmetics, we might feel well assured, even without the direct

testimony of Aristophanes[1401], that they were freely used in ancient

weddings; and I myself have experienced a sense of suffocation from the

same cause at weddings in modern Greece. Similarly at ancient funerals

the original purpose of the _lecythi_ was without doubt to contain the

choice perfumes for the anointing of the dead[1402]; and the custom

of anointing is still well known. Then again in the matter of dress,

the colour usually considered correct[1403] both for marriage and

for burial was white, and, even if this cannot be said to have been

universally the case, at any rate there was, and there still continues

to be, no less pomp and ornament in the dress of the dead body[1404]

than in the array of bride and bridegroom.

In this connexion too we may notice the use of the actual bridal-dress

in the funerals of betrothed girls and of young wives. That

this practice was known in antiquity is proved by a passage of

Chariton[1405], in which the heroine of his story, Callirrhoë, whose

first adventure, soon after her wedding, consists in being carried out

to burial while unconscious but not dead, is described as ‘dressed in

bridal array’; and exactly the same custom may be witnessed in Greece

to-day[1406]. In fact not only may the person of the dead be seen

dressed as for a wedding, but in the folk-songs we hear of the tomb

itself being adorned like the home to which the bride should have been

led.

‘Came her lover to her bedside, stooped him down, and met her kiss;

Low and faint to his ear only, whispered she, her message this:

“When I pass away, my lover, deck thou out my tomb for me,

As thou would’st have decked the home where wedded I should dwell with thee[1407].”’

Yet another point of coincidence between the ceremonial of marriage

and of funeral is the wearing of a crown. In ancient times ‘chaplets,’

says Becker[1408], ‘were certainly worn both by bride and bridegroom,’

and in modern usage they are as essential to the marriage ceremony as

the wedding-rings. At a certain point in the service, it is the duty

of the best man, assisted by the chief bridesmaid, to keep exchanging

the rings from the hands of the bride and bridegroom, and in like

manner to exchange the crowns which they wear from the head of one to

the head of the other; and as the rings are always worn afterwards,

so the two crowns are carefully preserved and hung up together in the

new home. Equally well-established is the use of garlands in ancient

funerals[1409], and, if not quite universal at the present day[1410],

they are at any rate commonly employed in the funerals of women and

children. In Macedonia it is actually the bridal crown which is worn

for burial by anyone who was betrothed or newly married[1411].

Worthy of notice too is the not uncommon spectacle of an apple,

quince[1412], or pomegranate laid among the flowers with which the bier

is adorned; for all these three fruits have their special significance

in relation to marriage. The classical custom of throwing an apple into

a girl’s lap as a sign of love is a method of wooing still known to the

rustic swain. It is not indeed regarded as a highly respectable method,

but perhaps neither in old times was it so; for then, as now, the more

well-conducted youths seem to have had their wooing, if such it may be

called, carried on through the agency of an elderly lady (in ancient

Greek προμνήστρια, in modern προξενήτρια) whose negotiations were

chiefly addressed to the parents on either side, and whose conversation

smacked more of dowry than of love. The quince and the pomegranate

however are employed without any offence to propriety. The former is in

some districts the food of which the newly-married pair are required to

partake together at their first entry into their new home; and it is

hoped that the sweetness of the fruit will so temper their lips that

nothing but sweet words will ever be addressed by the one to the other.

To the open-minded observer it might appear that acidity rather than

sweetness was the chief characteristic of the quince, and that, if the

qualities of the fruit are found to affect the tones of those who eat

it, they would be better advised, as is the custom in some villages,

to substitute for the quince a well-sugared cake or a dish of honey.

But the pomegranate is far more commonly used than the quince, and in

a variety of ways. Sometimes the bride and bridegroom eat together of

it; elsewhere the bridegroom proffers it to the bride as his first gift

on her entrance to their home, and she alone eats of it; or again she

may be required to hurl it down and scatter its seeds over the floor.

The second of these methods of using the pomegranate at marriage is, it

will be remembered, of venerable antiquity; it was a seed of this fruit

which Hades gave to Persephone to eat, that when she visited again the

upper world she might not remain there all her days with reverend,

dark-robed Demeter, but return to her home in the nether world[1413];

and similarly at the Argive Heraeum, the bride of Zeus was represented

by Polyclitus holding in one of her hands the fruit of the pomegranate,

concerning which, says Pausanias, there is a mystic story not to be

divulged[1414]. Here again then is found the same close association of

death and marriage. The three fruits, apple, quince, and pomegranate,

each of which possesses a special use and purport in the preliminaries

or the actual ceremony of marriage, are also the fruits most commonly

laid upon the bier, in token, as it must appear, that death is but a

marriage into the unseen world. In the light of such customs we can

read with fuller understanding that simple and yet mystic dirge, ‘The

Wedding in Hades’:

‘My mother maketh glad to-day, she maketh my son’s wedding,

She goeth for water to the springs, for snow unto the mountains,

To fruit-wives in their garden-plots for apples and for quinces...[1415].’

Thus in point after point the rites of marriage and the rites of death

among Greeks both past and present have been found to coincide; and

the number of these points of coincidence is too large to admit of

their being referred to accident; design is evident. We are bound to

suppose either that marriage-ceremonies were deliberately transferred

to the funeral-rite, or that funeral-ceremonies were deliberately

transferred to the marriage-rite. Which supposition shall we prefer?

There can be no real question. It is impossible to conceive of a people

so cynical or so distempered as to darken the wedding-day with grim

reminders of death. But to transfer some of the usages of marriage to

the funeral-scene was to infuse one ray of hope where all else was

sorrow and darkness, to teach that, though the dead and the mourners

might grieve for their parting, yet by that parting from the old home

the dead was to enter upon a new life, a life of wedded happiness, in

the unseen world. For indeed if there were no such intention as this,

what was the meaning of the λουτροφόρος set up over the grave of the

unmarried, what the purpose of adorning the dead with wedding-garment

and wedding-crown? These two acts at least are no accidents; they

reveal a studied purpose of assimilating the usages of death to the

usages of marriage; and if that purpose underlay two of the customs

enumerated, there is good warrant for the belief that in all the

coincidences between marriage-rites and funeral-rites the same thought

was operating--that very thought which has been found to be the common

property of the Greek race, from one of the masters of ancient tragedy

down to the humblest peasant of our day. Custom past and present,

ancient literature, modern folk-song, all agree in their presentment of

death as a marriage into the house of Hades.

On this popular and withal recondite conception of death were founded,

I believe, the highest religious aspirations of the ancient Greeks.

Such as had served their gods piously and purely in this life might

hope to win a closer union, as of wedlock, with those gods in the life

hereafter. To them there could be neither blasphemy nor presumption

in their hope; for to pious believers the fabled experience of their

own ancestors in this life was a warrant for aspiring themselves to

the same bliss at least hereafter; what had been, might be again.

Nay, more; not only was the belief that the highest bliss of the

hereafter consisted in the marriage of men with their gods free

from all reproach of impiety, but it was the logical development of

two religious sentiments which we have already reviewed--the desire

for close communion between gods and men, and the belief that men

after death and dissolution would still enjoy, like their gods,

corporeal existence. A previous chapter has been devoted to a detailed

examination of the means whereby men in their daily life sought to

maintain communication with the powers above them--oracles from which

all might enquire and win inspired response; interpretation of the

flight and cries of birds that were the messengers of heaven; reading

of the signs written by the finger of some god on the flesh of the

victim presented to him; divination from sight and sound and dream;

sacrifice whereby some message of prayer might be sent with speed and

safety to the god who had power to fulfil it. And in general it will,

I think, be admitted that the main tendency of Greek religious thought

was to draw gods and men nearer together, alike by an anthropomorphic

conception of the gods and by an apotheosis of human beauty; that it

was to subserve this end that Art became the handmaid of Religion, and

strove to express the divine in terms of the human, to discover in man

the potentialities of godhead. All religious hope and ambition and

effort turned upon communion with the gods. How then in the next world

should hope be fulfilled, ambition satisfied, effort rewarded? What

should be the glorious consummation? Marriage was the closest communion

between mortals in this world; marriage, so sang the poets, bound

gods together in closest communion. Men’s aspirations for communion

with their gods could find no final satisfaction save in marriage. To

the few, we may suppose--men of refined and reflective mind, capable

of imagining spiritual joys--this marriage of men and gods was but a

mystic, figurative expression for the union of man’s soul with the soul

of God, a thought as chastened and innocent of all sensuous connotation

as the thought of many a woman who in a later era, withdrawn from the

world, has comforted her loneliness with the hope of being the bride

of Christ. But the many, I suspect, flinched not before a bold and

literal interpretation of the thought, and, believing that, when death

and physical dissolution were past, body as well as soul survived in

another world, dared dream that having passed the gates of mortality

into the demesne of the immortals they should be wedded, body and soul,

in true wedlock with those deities who by veiled communion with them

in this world had prepared them for sight and touch and full fruition

hereafter.

But, it will be asked, where in all Greek literature can we find a

statement, where even a hint, of this strange doctrine? Nowhere a

statement; often a hint; for these were things not to be divulged to

the profane. To those alone who were initiated into the Mysteries was

the doctrine revealed, and even to them, it may be, in parables only

whose inner meaning each must probe for himself.

There have of course been those who have made light of the mysteries

of the old Greek religion, and have seen in them nothing but the

impositions of a close hierarchy playing upon the ignorance and

credulity and fear of the common-folk. But when we consider the

veneration in which the more famous mysteries were held for many

centuries, when we remember that Eleusis was respected and left

inviolate not only by the Lacedaemonians and other Greek peoples when

they invaded Attic territory, but even by the Persians who had dared

to devastate the Acropolis, and in later times by the yet ruder Celts,

then it is easier to believe that we are dealing with a great religious

institution based upon solid principles and vital doctrines which

deserved a wide-spread and long-continued reverence from mankind, than

that it was all the elaborate and empty hoax of a crafty priesthood.

Nor again does the view which makes Demeter simply a corn-goddess

and the Eleusinian mysteries a portentous harvest-thanksgiving--and

that apparently somewhat premature--require any long or serious

consideration. Corn indeed was one of the blessings given by Demeter

to this upper world of living men; perhaps in the very earliest ages

of her worship this was the sum total of the boons which men sought of

her; doubtless even in her fully-developed mysteries a part of men’s

thanks were still for the garnered harvest of the last year and for

the promise which the green fields gave of her bounty once more to be

renewed; for even in the nineteenth century of the Christian era her

statue amid the ruins of Eleusis was still associated by the peasants

with agriculture, and the removal of it, they apprehended, would cause

a failure of the crops[1416]. But in old time this was not all. To

speak of Demeter as a mere personification of cereals is to advocate

a partial truth little better than the cynical falsehood which makes

her only the stalking-horse of designing priests. For what said men

of light and learning among the ancients[1417], men who knew the whole

truth and the whole Spirit of her worship? ‘Thrice happy they of men

that have looked upon these rites ere they go to Hades’ house; for they

alone there have true life, the rest have nought there but ill[1418].’

So Sophocles, in language clearly recalling that of the so-called

Homeric hymn[1419] to Demeter; and in harmony with him Pindar: ‘Happy

he that hath seen those rites ere he go beneath the earth; he knoweth

life’s consummation, he knoweth its god-given source[1420].’ And

surely such consummation of life should be in that paradise, where

‘mid meadows red with roses lieth the space before the city’s gates,

all hazy with frankincense and laden with golden fruits,’ where ‘the

glorious sun sheds his light while night is here[1421]’; for to this

belief even Aristophanes subscribes, neither daring nor wishing to

make mock of the blessed ones who in the other world have part in the

god-beloved festival, and wend their way with song and dance through

the holy circle of the goddess, a lawn bright with flowers, meadows

where roses richly blossom--on whom alone in their night-long worship

the sun yet shines and a gracious light, for that they have learnt the

mysteries and dealt righteously with all men[1422].

Here then are the three great masters of lyric poetry, of tragedy,

and of comedy in substantial agreement; and the hopes which they hold

out are not the mere exuberance of poetic fancy, for sober prose

affirms the same beliefs. What says Isocrates? ‘Demeter ... being

graciously minded towards our forefathers because of their services

to her, services of which none but the initiated may hear, gave us

the greatest of all gifts, first, those fruits of the earth which

saved us from living the life of beasts, and secondly, that rite which

makes happier the hopes of those that participate therein concerning

both the end of life and their whole existence; and our city proved

herself not only god-beloved but also loving toward mankind, in that,

having become mistress of such blessings, she grudged them not to

the rest of the world, but gave to all men a share in that she had

received[1423].’ Of this passage Lobeck[1424] was disposed to make

light, and that for the reason that Isocrates in another passage[1425],

with less orthodoxy perhaps and more charity, in speaking of the

pious and upright in general, employs part of the same phrase which

in the passage before us he applies to the initiated only. All good

men, he says, have happier hopes ‘concerning their whole existence’;

virtue, that is, may expect a reward, vice a punishment, either here

or hereafter. Are these fair grounds on which to condemn his reference

to the mysteries as a meaningless common-place? If any comment is to

be made upon this repetition of a well-known phrase, would it not be

fairer to note that in reference to the mysteries he speaks of men’s

happier hopes not only generally--‘concerning their whole existence’

(περὶ τοῦ σύμπαντος αἰῶνος) but also specifically--‘concerning the end

of life’ (περὶ τῆς τοῦ βίου τελευτῆς), and thus echoes the words of

Pindar above quoted, ‘he knoweth the consummation of life’ (οἶδεν μὲν

βιότου τελευτάν)? Nor is there any dearth of other authorities to prove

that it was after death that the hopes of the initiated should ‘be

emptied in delight.’ Let us hear Aristides. ‘Nay, but the benefit of

the (Eleusinian) festival is not merely the cheerfulness of the moment

and the freedom and respite from all previous troubles, but also the

possession of happier hopes concerning the end, hopes that our life

hereafter will be the better, and that we shall not lie in darkness and

in filth--the fate that is believed to await the uninitiated[1426].’

Such seem to have been the general terms in which the benefits of the

mysteries might be recommended to the profane. The same ideas, almost

the same phrases, occur again and again. Witness the well-known story

of Diogenes the Cynic, who, when urged by a young man to get himself

initiated, answered, ‘It is strange, my young friend, if you fancy

that by virtue of this rite the publicans will share with the gods

the good things of Hades’ house, while Agesilaus and Epaminondas lie

in filth[1427].’ Or again let us read the advice of Crinagoras to his

friend: ‘Set thy foot on Cecropian soil, that thou may’st behold those

nights of Demeter’s great mysteries, which shall free thee from care

among the living, and, when thou goest where most are gone, shall make

thy heart lighter[1428].’ And with equal seriousness Cicero, who in

his ideal state would forbid all nocturnal rites as tending towards

excesses, would except the Eleusinian mysteries, not only because of

their humanising and cheering influence upon men’s life in this world

but also because they furnish better hopes in death[1429].

Such are the most important passages bearing upon the religious as

opposed to the temporal and agricultural aspects of Demeter’s worship,

such the general terms in which the blessings flowing therefrom were

overtly described by men who knew the details of the covert doctrine.

The information contained in them amounts to this: the initiated

received in the mysteries a hope, a pledge, perhaps a foretaste, of the

future bliss reserved for them only; the profane should lie in filth

and outer darkness; the blessed should dwell in pleasant meadows, and

the sun should shine bright upon them; they should be god-beloved, and

should share with the gods the good things of the next world.

Now obviously these vague and general promises are conceived in the

tone and the spirit of that popular religion which had sprung from

the very heart of the Hellenic folk. The pleasant meadows where the

initiated should dwell are none other than that place which appears

once as the asphodel mead, anon as the islands of the blessed or as

part of the under-world, and is now named Paradise. The light which

illumines even the night-time of the blessed is the necessary contrast

to the murky gloom of a nether abode, conceived almost in the spirit of

Homer, where the profane must lie as in a slough. And finally the close

communion of the blessed with gods who love them is the consummation of

those hopes which the whole Hellenic people entertained, and of those

efforts which the whole Hellenic people put forth, to attain to close

intercourse in this life with the gods whom they worshipped. Clearly

then the general promises, whose inner mysteries were revealed only to

the initiated, were based upon the old ideals, the innate beliefs, the

traditional hopes, in a word, the natural and spontaneous religion of

the Hellenic race.

And, as at Eleusis, so probably in other mysteries. In a famous

passage Theo Smyrnaeus[1430] compares the successive steps to be taken

in the study of philosophy with the several stages of initiation in

mysteries, and Lobeck[1431] in his examination of the passage has

shown that the reference is not to the mysteries of Eleusis, or at any

rate not to them only. It is probable enough that Theo was speaking of

mysteries in general, both public and private, in most of which there

were, doubtless, several grades of initiation, and he may even have

selected the details of his illustration (for it is an analogy only,

not an argument, in which he is engaged) from different rites. Yet for

his fifth and final stage of initiation, beyond even ‘open vision’

(ἐποπτεία) and ‘exposition’ (δᾳδουχία or ἰεροφαντία), he names that

bliss which is the outcome of the earlier stages, the bliss of being

god-beloved and sharing the life of gods (ἡ κατὰ τὸ θεοφιλὲς καὶ θεοῖς

συνδιαιτὸν εὐδαιμονία).

The recurrence of the word θεοφιλής in the above passages, whether in

reference to the Eleusinian or to other mysteries, cannot but excite

attention; and we shall not I think go far astray if we take the last

phrase of Theo Smyrnaeus, ‘the bliss of being god-beloved and sharing

the life of gods,’ as an epitome of the somewhat vague and general

promises held out to the profane as an inducement to initiation. This

was the fulfilment of those ‘happier hopes’--to use another recurrent

phrase--of which the initiated might only speak in guarded fashion.

The exact interpretation of this phrase, as we shall have reason

to believe when we consider the separate rites in detail, was the

great mystic secret. But of that more anon; for the present let us

suppose that the general assurances openly given concerning both the

Eleusinian and other mysteries are fairly summed up in the promise ‘of

being god-beloved and of sharing the life of gods.’ Such a promise

appealed to those innate hopes of the whole Greek race which manifested

themselves in their constant striving after close intercourse and

communion with their gods; in other words, the happier hopes concerning

the hereafter, which the mysteries sought to appropriate and to reserve

to the initiated alone, had for their basis the natural religion of the

Hellenic folk.

To admit this is necessarily to admit the validity of Lobeck’s

refutation of those critics who have sought to father on the

mysteries, usually on those of Eleusis, doctrines and ideas foreign

to, or even incompatible with, popular Greek religion--pantheism, the

emanation of the human soul from the soul of God, the transmigration

of souls, the Platonic theory of ideas, the unity of God omnipotent

and omniscient[1432], and such-like religious products of different

ages and different climes. For if we were to accept the view that the

teaching of the mysteries was a thing apart from the ordinary trend and

tenor of the popular religion, then we should be compelled to regard

those general promises of future bliss (which were in truth, as we have

just seen, based upon popular religion) as a fraudulent bait designed

to entice men away from their old beliefs and to ensnare them in dogma

and priestcraft; and if any would impute fraud, there awaits them the

task of convicting Pindar, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Isocrates, and

others who wrote of that which they knew, of conspiracy to deceive.

But while the promises held forth by the Eleusinian and other

mysteries, and therefore also the doctrines which elucidated those

vague promises, were a product of the popular religion, those doctrines

themselves were not a matter of popular knowledge. The very fact of

initiation, the death-penalty inflicted upon the profane who by any

means penetrated to the scene of the mysteries, the wild indignation

excited in Athens by a charge of mocking the mystic rites, the

scrupulous privacy observed in investigating that charge before a court

composed of the initiated only--all these are proofs that Eleusis was

the school of secret beliefs and hopes held in deep veneration by those

to whom the knowledge of them was vouchsafed. Secret doctrines existed;

that which had sprung from the beliefs of the many had become the

property of the few. How can this be explained?

The explanation is not difficult. The worship of Demeter and possibly

many other rites which were afterwards called ‘mysteries’ were the most

holy part of the religion of the Pelasgians; and when the Achaeans, a

people of strange tongue and strange religion, came among them, the

Pelasgians would not admit them to a knowledge of their rites but

thenceforth performed those rites in secrecy. This is proved by two

facts. First, the rites which at Eleusis, in Samothrace, and among the

Cicones in Thrace, the country of Orpheus, were imparted as mysteries

to the initiated only, were in Crete open to all and there was no

obligation to secrecy concerning them[1433]. Secondly, at Eleusis at

any rate the purity required of candidates for initiation was not

only physical and spiritual, as secured by ablution and abstinence,

but also linguistic; it was necessary καθαρεύειν τῇ φωνῇ[1434], to

speak the Greek language purely. These two facts taken together solve

the difficulty. Before the coming of the Achaeans the whole Pelasgian

population whether of the Greek mainland or of such an island as Crete

celebrated the rites of Demeter openly. In Crete, where no Achaeans

penetrated, the old custom naturally continued unchanged. On the

mainland the influx of a people of strange tongue and strange religion

necessitated secrecy in the native rites, lest the presence of men

who knew not Demeter should profane her worship; the right of entry

therefore at her festivals was decided by the simplest test of Achaean

or Pelasgian nationality, the test of speech; and in later times, when

the Achaeans had acquired the Pelasgian speech[1435], the customs

thus established were not abolished; the rites of Demeter remained

‘mysteries’ to be conducted in secret, and the Shibboleth was still

exacted.

Since then we may not seek in the teachings of the mysteries anything

alien from the spirit of the popular religion, the scope of our enquiry

is more limited and its course more clear. The secret to be discovered

is something which had been evolved from the popular religion, some

intensification and higher development of those hopes and beliefs,

yearnings and strivings, which have continuously marked the religious

life of the Greek folk. Now the mass of the Greek people have always

hoped and believed, as their care for the dead has constantly shown,

that beyond death and dissolution lay a life in which body and soul

should be re-united and restored to their old activity; the mysteries

might well confirm the initiated in that expectation and picture to

them the happy habitations where they should dwell. Again the mass of

the Greek people have always yearned and striven by manifold means in

this life for close communion with their gods; the mysteries might

well be a sacrament which afforded to the initiated both a means and

a pledge of enjoying in the next world, to which body as well as soul

should pass, the closest of all communion with their gods, the union of

wedlock.

Let it then be supposed that the two main ideas of the mysteries,

whether expounded in speech or represented in ritual, were

these--bodily survival after death, and marriage of men with gods;

what would have been the natural attitude of Christians towards these

doctrines? For it is in the light of the charges brought by early

Christian writers against the mysteries that such a supposition must

first be examined. The doctrine of the immortality of the body as well

as of the soul was evidently little exposed to Christian attacks; and

it may have been because the Christian doctrine of the resurrection

had much in common with the old Greek doctrine, that St Paul found

among his audience on the Areopagus some who did not mock, but said ‘We

will hear thee again of this matter.’ But with the further doctrine

of marriage between men and gods Christianity could have no sympathy,

but would inevitably regard it as offensive both in theology and in

morality, as implying the existence of a plurality of gods, and as

savouring of that sensuality, which above all other sin the apostle to

the Gentiles set himself to combat.

And it is in fact upon these two points that the mass of the

accusations brought by early Christian writers against Greek paganism

hinge and hang. These were the points at which Greek religion seemed

to its assailants most readily vulnerable, and against which they

sought to use as weapons the very language of paganism itself. Just as

Clement of Alexandria[1436] seeks to prove out of the mouth of Homer,

who speaks of the gods in general as δαίμονες[1437], that the Greek

gods are confessedly mere _demons_ (for the word δαίμων had seemingly

deteriorated in meaning), that is to say, abominable and unclean

spirits, enemies of the one true God, so too the words ἄρρητος and

ἀπόρρητος, used by the pagans of their ‘unspeakable’ mysteries, were

misinterpreted by the Christians with one consent and became a handle

for convicting the old religion of ‘unnameable’ impurities.

With the question of polytheism however we are not further concerned;

whether the Hellenic gods were true gods, as their worshippers held, or

devils, as Clement thought, or non-existent, as many will think to-day,

matters not; all that we need to know in this respect is known, namely,

that the mysteries, like the popular religion, acknowledged a plurality

of gods; for in the Eleusinian drama alone several gods played a part.

It is rather the frequent and violent charges of impurity which call

for investigation.

A few examples will suffice for the present. A comprehensive

denunciation is that of Eusebius, who charges the pagans with

celebrating, ‘in chant and hymn and story and in the unnameable rites

of the mysteries, adulteries and yet baser lusts, and incestuous unions

of mother with son, brother with sister[1438].’ And again he says, ‘In

every city rites and mysteries of gods are taught, in harmony with

the mythical stories of old time, so that even now in these rites,

as well as in hymns and odes to the gods, men can hear of marriages

of the gods, and of their procreation of children, and of dirges for

death, and of drunken excesses, and of wanderings, and of passionate

love or anger[1439].’ Equally outspoken is Clement of Alexandria

in his ‘Exhortation to the heathen.’ Some specific statements in

that work concerning the mysteries of several gods, though they

support the general charges of impurity, may be postponed for later

examination. It will be enough here to adduce the phrases in which,

after denouncing those who, whether in the mysteries of the temples

or the paintings with which their own houses were adorned, loved to

look upon the lusts of gods (he risks even the word πασχητιασμοί), and

‘regarded incontinence as piety,’ Clement reaches the climax of his

invective:--‘Such are your models of voluptuousness, such your creeds

of lust, such the doctrines of gods who commit fornication with you;

for, as the Athenian orator says, what a man wishes, that he also

believes[1440].’ This brutal directness of Clement is however hardly

more effective than the elegant innuendo of Synesius in dealing with

the same subject. Commenting on the secrecy of the nocturnal rites, he

describes them as celebrated at ‘times and places competent to conceal

ἀρρητουργίαν ἔνθεον[1441]’--a phrase which I despair of rendering, for

the ‘unspeakable acts’ to which ‘divine frenzy’ led, are those which

are either too holy or too infamous to be named.

These few typical passages amply demonstrate that alike by insinuation

and by open accusation the Christian writers conspired to brand the

mysteries with the infamy of deeds unnameable. What is the explanation

of this organised campaign of calumny?

Some have supposed that the Christian writers in general confused

the public and the private mysteries, and that, aware of the license

which characterized the latter, they included all in one condemnation.

But this explanation appears at any rate inadequate. We have seen

how Cicero distinguished sharply between the Eleusinian mysteries,

in which he had participated and for which he felt reverence, and

other nocturnal rites which gave shelter to all manner of excess. It

is difficult therefore to suppose that in later times the Christian

writers should all have fallen unwittingly into the error of confusing

all mysteries together; and no less difficult to imagine that, if

they recognised how far removed were the most respected of the public

mysteries from the baser private orgies, they should have deliberately

exposed themselves to the charge of ignorance of the subject concerning

which they presumed to preach. Clement of Alexandria was too shrewd a

disputant so to stultify himself.

Nor again is it a sufficient explanation to say that the strain and

excitement of such mysteries as those of Eleusis were responsible

for a certain amount of subsequent indiscretion. Let it be granted

that many of those who had witnessed the solemn rites were guilty

afterwards of drunkenness and licentiousness[1442]; yet these would

be no grounds for convicting the mysteries themselves of impurity;

to so perverted a charge the heathen might well have answered that

rioting and drunkenness had not been unknown at the Christians’ most

solemn service; and indeed the same argument could up to this day

be used against the Greek celebration of Easter. No; the charges of

impurity were brought against the mysteries themselves, not against the

incidental misdoings of some who had witnessed them. It must have been

either the doctrines taught or the dramatic representations by means

of which they were taught that furnished the Christian writers with a

handle for accusation.

Now if, as I have supposed, the doctrine of the marriage of men with

their gods was the cardinal doctrine of the mysteries (for the other

doctrine of bodily survival is merely preliminary and subordinate to

this), and if some dramatic representation was given as a means of

instilling into men’s minds the hope of attaining to that summit of

bliss, it is not difficult to see what an opening the mysteries gave

to their opponents for the charges which were actually brought. The

ultimate bliss promised to the initiated was in general terms said to

consist in ‘being god-beloved and dwelling with the gods,’ and this

phrase, we are supposing, signified to the initiated themselves an

assurance that their gods would admit them even to wedlock with them

in the future life. It required then no great ingenuity in the way of

misrepresentation for Clement, if he had but an inkling of the secret

doctrine, to denounce the heathen and their beliefs in that opprobrious

phrase, ‘Such are the doctrines of gods that commit fornication with

you.’ This champion of Christianity knew no chivalry, gave no quarter,

disdained no weapon, held no method of attack too base or insidious,

if only he could wound and crush his heathen foes. It was his part to

pervert, to degrade, to blaspheme their whole religion; and that which

they held most sacred was marked out for his most virulent scorn.

Naturally to those who drew near with pure and reverent minds the

mysteries wore a very different aspect. That which Clement misnamed

lust, they felt to be love; where he saw only degradation, they

recognised a wonderful condescension of their gods. For in the words of

that religion which Clement preached ‘to the pure all things are pure’;

and it was purification which the initiated sought by abstinence and

ablution during the first part of the Eleusinian festival before they

were admitted to their holy of holies.

Indeed if we would understand at all the spirit in which the ancient

Greeks approached the celebration of the mysteries, we should do well

to turn our attention for a little to the modern Greek celebration

of Holy Week and Easter; for this is, so to speak, the Christian

counterpart of the old mysteries, and seems to owe much to them. It

so happens that Easter falls in the same period of the year as did

the great Eleusinian festival--the period when the re-awakening of

the earth from its winter sleep suggests to man his own re-awakening

from the sleep of death; and it is probable that the Church turned

this coincidence in time to good account by making her own festival a

substitute for the festival of Demeter or other kindred rites, and even

by modelling her own services after the pagan pattern; for it would

seem that the Church, when once her early struggles had secured her

a firm position, exchanged hostility for conciliation, and sought to

absorb rather than to oust paganism. Her complaisance is clearly seen

in the ceremonies of Good Friday and Easter; for, with all her severe

repression of the use of idols (whose place however is well supplied

by the pictures which are called icons), she has permitted the use of

a sculptured figure at this one festival, and even down to this day

Christ is represented in some localities[1443] in effigy; and it can

hardly be doubted that the purpose of this concession was to make the

Christian festival as dramatic and attractive as the pagan mysteries

celebrated at the same season. Again the absorption of pagan ideas is

well illustrated by the belief still prevalent among the peasants that

the Easter festival, like the cult of Demeter, has an important bearing

upon the growth of the crops. A story in point was told to me by one

who had travelled in Greece[1444]. Happening to be in some village of

Eubœa during Holy Week, he had been struck by the emotion which the

Good Friday services evoked; and observing on the next day the same

general air of gloom and despondency, he questioned an old woman about

it; whereupon she replied, ‘Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does

not rise to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year.’

In other details too there is a close correspondence between the pagan

and the Christian festivals. As a period of abstinence was required

of the _mystae_, so during Lent and still more strictly during Holy

Week the Greek peasants keep a fast which certainly predisposes them

to hysterical emotion during the services; and _en revanche_, just as

the initiated are said to have indulged themselves too freely when the

mysteries were over, so the modern peasants, when the announcement of

the Resurrection has been made, disperse in haste to feast upon their

Easter lamb, and while it is still a-cooking experience the inevitable

effects of plentiful wine on an empty stomach. Again, just as the rites

of Eleusis were nocturnal, so the chief services of Holy Week are those

of the Friday night and the Saturday night; and it may be that the

torch-light processions which close the services on those two nights

are related to the δᾳδουχία of Eleusis. But these are minor details;

it is in the actual services of Good Friday and Easter that the most

striking resemblance to the Eleusinian mysteries is found, and the

spirit in which the worshippers approach may still be the same now as

then. Let me briefly describe the festival as I saw it in the island

of Santorini, or, to give it the old name which has revived in modern

times, Thera.

The Lenten fast was drawing to a close when I arrived. For the first

week it is strictly observed, meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, and

even olive-oil being prohibited, so that the ordinary diet is reduced

to bread and water, to which is sometimes added a nauseous soup made

from dried cuttle-fish or octopus; for these along with shellfish

are not reckoned to be animal food, as being bloodless. During the

next four weeks some relaxation is allowed; but no one with any

pretensions to piety would even then partake of fish, meat, or eggs;

the last-mentioned are stored up until Easter and then, being dyed

red, are either eaten or--more wisely--offered to visitors. Then comes

‘the Great Week’ (ἡ μεγάλη ἑβδομάδα), and with it the same strict

regulations come into force as during the first week of Lent. It was

not hard to perceive that for most of the villagers the fast had been

a real and painful abstinence. Work had almost ceased; for there was

little energy left. Leisure was not enjoyed; for there was little

spirit even for chatting. Everywhere white, sharp-featured faces told

of real hunger; and the silence was most often broken by an outburst

of irritability. In a few days time I could understand it; for I too

perforce fasted; and I must own that a daily diet of dry bread for

_déjeuner_ and of dry bread and octopus soup for dinner soon changed my

outlook upon life. Little wonder then if these folk after six weeks of

such treatment were nervous and excitable.

Such was the condition of body and mind in which they attended the

long service of Good Friday night. Service I have said, but drama

were a more fitting word, a funeral-drama. At the top of the nave,

just below the chancel-step, stood a bier and upon it lay the figure

of the Christ, all too death-like in the dim light. The congregation

gaze upon him, reverently hushed, while the priests’ voices rise in

prayer and chant as it were in lamentation for the dead God lying

there in state. Hour after hour passes. The women have kissed the

dead form, and are gone. The moment has come for carrying the Christ

out to burial. The procession moves forward--in front, the priests

with candles and torches and, guarded by them, the open bier borne

shoulder-high--behind, a reverent, bare-headed crowd. The night is

dark and gusty. It rains, and the rugged, tortuous alleys of the town

are slippery. It is late, but none are sleeping. Unheeding of wind

and rain, the women kneel at open door or window, praying, swinging

censers, sprinkling perfume on the passing bier. Slowly, haltingly, led

by the dirge of priests, now in darkness, now lighted by the torches’

flare and intermittent beams from cottage doorways, groping at corners,

stumbling in ill-paved by-ways, the mourners follow their God to his

grave. The circuit of the town is done. All have taken their last look

upon the dead. The sepulchre is reached--a vault beneath the church

from which the funeral started. The priests alone enter with the bier.

There is a pause. The crowd waits. The silence is deep as the darkness,

only broken here and there by a deep-drawn sigh. Is it the last depth

of anguish, or is it well-nigh relief that the long strain is over?

The priests return. In silence the crowd have waited, in silence they

disperse. It is finished.

But there is a sequel on the morrow. Soon after dark on Easter-eve

the same weary yet excited faces may be seen gathered in the church.

But there is a change too; there is a feeling abroad of anxiety, of

expectancy. Hours must yet pass ere midnight, and not till then is

there hope of the announcement, ‘Christ is risen!’ The suspense seems

long. To-night there is restlessness rather than silence. Some go to

and fro between the church and their homes; others join discordantly

in the chants and misplace the responses; anything to cheat the long

hours of waiting. Midnight draws near; from hand to hand are passed

the tapers and candles which shall light the joyful procession, if

only the longed-for announcement be made. What is happening there now

behind those curtains which veil the chancel from the expectant throng?

Midnight strikes. The curtains are drawn back. Yes, there is the

bier, borne but yesternight to the grave. It is empty. That is only

the shroud upon it. The words of the priest ring out true, ‘Christ is

risen!’ And there behind the chancel, see, a second veil is drawn back.

There in the sanctuary, on the altar-steps, bright with a blaze of

light stands erect the figure of the Christ who, so short and yet so

long a while ago, was borne lifeless to the tomb. A miracle, a miracle!

Quickly from the priest’s lighted candle the flame is passed. In a

moment the dim building is illumined by a lighted taper in every hand.

A procession forms, a joyful procession now. Everywhere are light and

glad voices and the embraces of friends, crying aloud the news ‘Christ

is risen’ and answering ‘He is risen indeed.’ In every home the lamb is

prepared with haste, the wine flows freely; in the streets is the flash

of torches, the din of fire-arms, and all the exuberance of simple

joy. The fast is over; the dead has been restored to life before men’s

eyes; well may they rejoice even to ecstasy. For have they not felt the

ecstasy of sorrow? This was no tableau on which they looked, no drama

in which they played a part. It was all true, all real. The figure on

the bier was indeed the dead Christ; the figure on the altar-steps was

indeed the risen Christ. In these simple folk religion has transcended

reason; they have reached the heights of spiritual exaltation; they

have seen and felt as minds more calm and rational can never see nor

feel.

And the ancient Greeks, had not they too the gift of ecstasy, the

faculty to soar above facts on the wings of imagination? When the drama

of Demeter and Kore was played before the eyes of the initiated at

Eleusis, were not they too uplifted in mind until amid the magic of

night they were no longer spectators of a drama but themselves had a

share in Demeter’s sorrow and wandering and joy? For the pagan story

is not unlike the Christian story in its power to move both tears and

gladness. As now men mourn beside the bier of Christ, so in old time

may men have shared Demeter’s mourning for her child who though divine

had suffered the lot of men and passed away to the House of Hades. As

now men rejoice when they behold the risen Christ, so in old time may

men have shared Demeter’s joy when her child returned from beneath the

earth, proving that there is life beyond the grave. But the old story

taught more than this. Not only did Kore live in the lower world, but

her passing thither was not death but wedding. Therefore just as now

the resurrection of Christ, who though divine is the representative of

mankind, is held to be an earnest of man’s resurrection, so the wedded

life of Kore in the nether world may have been to the initiated an

assurance of the same bliss to be vouchsafed to them hereafter.

What was there then in this drama of Demeter and Kore at which the

Christian writers could take offence or cavil? We do not of course

know in what detail the story was represented; but the pivot on which

the whole plot turned was necessarily the rape of Kore. Now it appears

that in the play the part of Aïdoneus was taken by an hierophant and

the part of Kore by a priestess; and it was the alleged indecency

resulting therefrom which the fathers of the Church most severely

censured. Asterius, after defending the Christians from the charge of

worshipping saints as if they had been not human but divine, seeks to

turn the tables on his pagan opponents by accusing them of deifying

Demeter and Kore, whom he evidently regards as having once been human

figures in mythology. Then he continues, ‘Is not Eleusis the scene

of the descent into darkness, and of the solemn acts of intercourse

between the hierophant and the priestess, alone together? Are not the

torches extinguished, and does not the large, the numberless assembly

of common people believe that their salvation lies in that which is

being done by the two in the darkness[1445]?’ Again it was objected

against the Valentinians by Tertullian that they copied ‘the whoredoms

of Eleusis[1446],’ and from another authority we learn that part of the

ceremonies of these heretics consisted in ‘preparing a nuptial chamber’

and celebrating ‘a spiritual marriage[1447].’ These two statements,

read in conjunction, form a strong corroboration of the information

given by Asterius; and we are bound to conclude that the scene of the

rape of Kore was represented at Eleusis by the descent of the priest

and priestess who played the chief parts into a dark nuptial chamber.

Now it is easy enough to suppose, as Sainte-Croix suggests[1448],

that public morals were safeguarded by assigning the chief _rôles_

in the drama to persons of advanced age, or, as one ancient author

states[1449], by temporarily and partially paralysing the hierophant

with a small dose of hemlock. Whether each of the initiated was at any

time conducted through the same ritual is uncertain. In the formulary

of the Eleusinian rites, as recorded by Clement of Alexandria--‘I

fasted; I drank the sacred potion (κυκεῶνα); I took out of the chest;

having wrought (ἐργασάμενος) I put back into the basket and from the

basket into the chest[1450]’--the expression ‘having wrought’ has been

taken to be an euphemism denoting the same mystic union as between

hierophant and priestess[1451]. If this view is correct, it would imply

no doubt that full initiation required the candidate to go through the

whole ritual in person; in this case it must be presumed that some

precaution such as the dose of hemlock was taken in the interests of

morality.

But the mere fact that a scene of rape should form any part of a

religious rite, was to the Christians a stumbling-block. This was their

insurmountable objection to the mysteries, and they were only too prone

to exaggerate a ceremony, which with reverent and delicate treatment

need have been in no way morally deleterious, into a sensual and

noxious orgy. The story, how Demeter’s beautiful and innocent daughter

was suddenly carried off from the meadow where she was gathering

flowers into the depths of the dark under-world, spoke to them only

of the violence and lust of her ravisher Aïdoneus. But the legend

might bear another complexion. Kore, as representative of mankind or

at least of the initiated among mankind, suffers what seems the most

cruel lot, a sudden departure from this life in the midst of youth and

beauty and spring-time; and Demeter searches for her awhile in vain,

and mourns for her as men mourn their dead. Yet afterward it is found

that there is no cruelty in Kore’s lot, for she is the honoured bride

of the king of that world to which she was borne away; and Demeter is

comforted, for her child is not dead nor lost to her, but is allowed

to return in living form to visit her. What then must have been the

‘happier hopes’ held out to those who had looked on the great drama

of Eleusis? What was meant by that prospect of being ‘god-beloved

and sharing the life of gods’? How came it that the assembly of the

initiated believed their salvation to lie in the union of Hades and

Persephone, represented in the persons of hierophant and priestess, in

the subterranean nuptial-chamber? What was the bearing of the legend

dramatically enacted upon these hopes and prospects and beliefs? Surely

it taught that not only was there physical life beyond death, but a

life of wedded happiness with the gods.

And the same doctrine seems to be the _motif_ of many other popular

legends and of mysteries founded thereon; its settings and its

harmonies may be different, but the essential melody is the same. At

Eleusis Demeter’s daughter was the representative of mankind, for she

went down to the house of Hades as is the lot of men. But Crete had

another legend wherein Demeter was the representative deity with whom

mankind might hope for union. Was it not told how Iasion even in this

life found such favour in the goddess’ eyes that she was ‘wed with

him in sweet love mid the fresh-turned furrows of the fat land of

Crete[1452]’? And happiness such as was granted to him here was laid

up for all the initiated hereafter; else would there be no meaning in

those lines, ‘Blessed, methinks, is the lot of him that sleeps, and

tosses not, nor turns, even Endymion; and, dearest maiden, blessed I

call Iasion, whom such things befell, as ye that be profane shall never

come to know[1453].’ Surely that which is withheld from the profane is

by implication reserved to the sanctified, and to them it is promised

that they shall know by their own experience hereafter the bliss which

Iasion even here obtained. It was, I think, in this spirit and this

belief that the Athenians in old time called their dead Δημητρεῖοι

‘Demeter’s folk[1454]’; for the popular belief in the condescension

of the Mistress, great and reverend goddess though she was, was so

firmly rooted, it would seem, that even to this day the folk-stories,

as we have seen, still tell how the ‘Mistress of the earth and of the

sea,’ she whom men still call Despoina and reverence for her love

of righteousness and for her stern punishment of iniquity, has yet

admitted brave heroes to her embrace in the mountain-cavern where, as

of old in Arcady, she still dwells[1455].

Nor did the cults of Demeter and Kore monopolise these hopes and

beliefs. In the religious drama of Aphrodite and Adonis, in the

Sabazian mysteries, in the holiest rites of Dionysus, in the wild

worship of Cybele, the same thought seems ever to recur. It matters

little whether these gods and their rites were foreign or Hellenic in

origin. If they were not native, at least they were soon naturalised,

and that for the simple reason that they satisfied the religious

cravings of the Greek race. The essential spirit of their worship,

whatever the accidents of form and expression, was the spirit of the

old Pelasgian worship of Demeter; and therefore, though Dionysus may

have been an immigrant from northern barbarous peoples, the Greeks did

not hesitate to give him room and honour beside Demeter in the very

sanctuary of Eleusis. Similar, we may well believe, was the lot of

other foreign gods and rites. Whencesoever derived, they owed their

reception in Greece to the fact that their character appealed to

certain native religious instincts of the Greek folk. Once transplanted

to Hellenic soil, they were soon completely Hellenized; those elements

which were foreign or distasteful to Greek religion were quickly

eradicated or of themselves faded into oblivion, while all that

accorded with the Hellenic spirit throve into fuller perfection; for

the character of a deity and of a cult depends ultimately upon the

character of the worshippers.

It is fair therefore to treat of Aphrodite as of a genuinely Greek

deity; for, though she may have entered Greece from Eastern lands,

doubtless long before the Homeric age her worship no less than her

personality was permeated with the spirit of genuinely Greek religion.

Too well known to need re-telling here is the story of how--to use the

words of Theocritus once more--‘the beautiful Cytherea was brought by

Adonis, as he pastured his flock upon the mountain-side, so far beyond

the verge of frenzy, that not even in his death doth she put him from

her bosom[1456].’ Such was the plot of one of the most famous religious

dramas of old time. And what was its moral for those who had ears to

hear? Surely that the beloved of the gods may hope for wedlock with

them in death.

It was certainly in this sense that Clement of Alexandria understood

certain other mysteries of Aphrodite, though, needless to say, he

puts upon them the most obscene construction. After relating in

terms unnecessarily disgusting the legend of how by the very act of

Uranus’ self-mutilation the sea became pregnant and gave birth from

among its foam to the goddess Aphrodite, he states that ‘in the rites

which celebrate this voluptuousness of the sea, as a token of the

goddess’ birth there are handed to those that are being initiated

into the lore of adultery (τοῖς μυουμένοις τὴν τέχνην τὴν μοιχικήν)

a lump of salt and a phallus; and they for their part present her

with a coin, as if they were her lovers and she their mistress (ὡς

ἑταίρας ἐρασταί)[1457].’ Thus Clement; but those who are willing

to see in the mysteries of the Greek religion something more than

organised sensuality will do well to reflect whether that which

Clement calls ‘being initiated into the lore of adultery’ was not

really an initiation into those hopes of marriage with the gods of

which we have already found evidence in the popular religion, and

whether the goddess’ symbolic acceptance of her worshippers as lovers

does not fit in exactly with that bold conception of man’s future

bliss. The symbolism indeed, if Clement’s statement is accurate, was

crude and even repellent, but its significance is clear; and those

who approached these mysteries of Aphrodite in reverent mood need not

have been repelled by that which modern taste would account indecent

in the ritual. Greek feeling never erred on the side of prudery; men

were familiar with the _Hermae_ erected in the streets and with the

symbolism of the _phallus_ in religious ceremonies, and tolerated

the publication of literature--be it the comedy of Aristophanes or

Clement’s own exhortation to the heathen--which neither as a source of

amusement nor of instruction would be tolerated now.

The particular mysteries to which Clement alludes in this passage

seem to have been concerned with the story of Aphrodite’s birth, and

though it is difficult to conjecture how that story can have been made

to illustrate and to inculcate the doctrine of the marriage of men

and gods, the information given by Clement with respect to the ritual

makes it clear that such was their object. But in that other rite of

the same goddess, that namely which celebrated the story of Adonis,

the whole _motif_ of the drama was the continuance of Aphrodite’s love

for him after his death, a love so strong that it prevailed upon the

gods of the lower world to let him return for half of every year to

the upper world and the arms of his mistress. Here, though expressed

in different imagery, is the same doctrine as that which underlay the

drama of Eleusis. Here again is an illustration, or rather, for those

who were capable of religious ecstasy, a proof, of the doctrine that

the dead yet lived, and in that life were both in body and in soul one

with their gods. For ‘thrice-beloved Adonis who even in Acheron is

beloved[1458]’ was the type and forerunner of all those who had part in

his mysteries.

In another version this legend of Adonis is brought into even closer

relation with the Eleusinian mysteries by the introduction of

Persephone[1459]. To her is assigned the part of a rival to Aphrodite,

and being equally enamoured of the beautiful Adonis she is glad of his

death whereby he is torn from the arms of Aphrodite in the upper world,

and enters the chamber of the nether world where her love in turn may

have its will; but in the end Aphrodite descends to the house of Hades,

and a compact is arranged between the two goddesses by which each in

turn may possess Adonis for half the year. This version of the story is

cruder, but its teaching is obviously the same--Adonis, the favourite

of heaven in this life, and the precursor of all who by initiation in

the mysteries win heaven’s favour, survives in the lower world with

both body and soul unimpaired by death, and is admitted to wedlock with

the great goddess of the dead.

The same doctrine again seems to have been the basis of certain

mystic rites associated with Dionysus. From the speech against Neaera

attributed to Demosthenes we learn that at Athens there was annually

celebrated a marriage between the wife of the chief magistrate

(ἄρχων βασιλεύς) and Dionysus. The solemnity was reckoned among

things ‘unspeakable’; foreigners were not permitted to see or to

hear anything of it; and even Athenian citizens, it seems, might not

enter the innermost sanctuary in which the union of Dionysus with the

‘queen’ (βασίλιννα) was celebrated[1460]. There were however present

and assisting in some way fourteen priestesses (γεραραί), dedicated to

the service of the god and bound by special vows of chastity. These

priestesses, we are told, corresponded in number to the altars of

Dionysus[1461], and they were appointed by the archon whose wife was

wed with Dionysus[1462]. There our actual knowledge of the facts ends;

but there is material enough on which to base a rational surmise. The

correspondence between the number of priestesses bound by vows of

purity and the number of the altars suggests that in this custom is to

be sought a relic of human sacrifice. The selection of the priestesses

by the magistrate who held the title of ‘king’ suggests that in bygone

times it had been the duty of the king, as being also chief priest, to

select fourteen virgins who should be sacrificed on Dionysus’ altars

and thereby sent to him as wives. Subsequently maybe, as humanity

gradually mitigated the wilder rites of religion, the number of victims

was reduced to one; and later still the human sacrifice was altogether

abolished, and, instead of sending to Dionysus his wife by the road

of death, the still pious but now more humane worshippers of the god

contented themselves with a symbolic marriage between him and the wife

of their chief magistrate.

The conception of human sacrifice as a means of sending a messenger

from this world to some power above, which receives clear expression in

that modern story from Santorini which I have narrated in an earlier

chapter[1463], was, I have there argued, known also to the ancient

Greeks; and the same means of communication may equally well have been

employed for the despatch of a human wife to some god. Plutarch appears

to have been actually familiar with this idea. In a passage in which

he is attempting to vindicate the purity and goodness of the gods and,

it must be added withal, their aloofness from human affairs, he claims

that all the religious rites and means of communion are concerned, not

with the great gods (θεοί), but with lesser deities (δαίμονες) who

are of varying character, some good, others evil, and that the rites

also vary accordingly. “As regards the mysteries,” he says, “wherein

are given the greatest manifestations or representations (ἐμφάσεις καὶ

διαφάσεις) of the truth concerning ‘daemons,’ let my lips be reverently

sealed, as Herodotus has it”; but the wilder orgies of religion, he

argues, are to be set down as a means of appeasing evil ‘daemons’ and

of averting their wrath; the human sacrifices of old time, for example,

were not demanded nor accepted by gods, but were performed to satisfy

either the vindictive anger of cruel and tormenting ‘daemons,’ or in

some cases “the wild and despotic passions (ἔρωτας) of ‘daemons’ who

could not and would not have carnal intercourse with carnal beings.

Just as Heracles besieged Oechalia to win a girl, so these strong and

violent ‘daemons,’ demanding a human soul that is shut up within a

body, and being unable to have bodily intercourse therewith, bring

pestilences and famines upon cities and stir up wars and tumults,

until they get and enjoy the object of their love.” And reversely,

he continues, some ‘daemons’ have punished with death men who have

forced their love upon them; and he refers to the story of a man who

violated a nymph and was found afterwards with his head severed from

his body[1464]. The whole passage betrays clearly enough what was the

popular belief which Plutarch here set himself so to explain as to

safeguard the goodness of the gods; but perhaps the end of it is the

most significant of all. Plutarch forgets that a nymph, if she is a

‘daemon,’ is by his own hypothesis incapable of bodily intercourse; in

this case then his attempted explanation is not even logically sound,

and his conception of a purely spiritual ‘daemon’ is a failure; but at

the same time, save for this invention, he is following the popular

belief of both ancient and modern Greece that carnal intercourse

between man and nymph is possible but is fraught with grave peril to

the man[1465]. It is impossible then to doubt that in the earlier part

of the passage he was explaining away a popular belief by means of

the same hypothesis. He himself would hold that spiritual ‘daemons’

demanded human sacrifice because they lusted after a soul or spirit

confined out of their reach in a body until death severed it therefrom;

but the popular belief, which he is at pains to emend, was that

corporeal gods demanded human sacrifice because they lusted after the

person who, by death, would be sent, body and soul, to be wed with them.

There is good reason then to suppose that in old time death may have

been even inflicted as the means of effecting wedlock between men and

gods; and that the mystic rite of union between Dionysus and the wife

of the Athenian magistrate was based on the same fundamental idea as

the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone or of Aphrodite. Though in this

instance, when once human sacrifice had been given up, all suggestion

of death was, so far as we know, removed from the solemnity, yet the

repetition year by year of a ceremony of marriage between the god and

a mortal woman representing his worshippers might still keep bright

in their minds those ‘happier hopes’ of the like bliss laid up for

themselves hereafter.

This particular rite escaped the notice, or at any rate the malice,

of Clement; but Dionysus does not for all that go unscathed. Clement

fastens upon a legend concerning him, which, however widely ancient

Greek feeling in the matter of sex differed from modern, cannot but

have seemed to some of the ancients[1466] themselves to be a reproach

and stain upon the honour of their god. The story of Dionysus and

Prosymnus, as told by Clement[1467], must be taken as read. But those

who will investigate it for themselves will see that the same idea of

death being followed by close intercourse with the gods is present

there also. That this was the inner meaning of the peculiarly offensive

story is shown by a curious comment of Heraclitus upon it, which

Clement quotes--ωὐτὸς δε Ἀίδης καὶ Διόνυσος[1468], ‘Hades and Dionysus

are one’; whence it follows that union with Dionysus is a synonym for

that ‘marriage with Hades’ which elsewhere, in both ancient and modern

times, is a common presentment of death.

Again in the Sabazian mysteries, which some connect with Dionysus and

others with Zeus, the little that is known of the ritual favours the

view that here also the _motif_ was the marriage of the deity with his

worshippers. According to Clement[1469], the subject-matter of these

mysteries was a story that Zeus, having become by Demeter the father

of Persephone, seduced in turn his own daughter, having as a means to

that end transformed himself into a snake. That story, it may safely be

said, is presented by Clement in its worst light; but the statement,

that in the ritual the deity was represented by a snake, obtains some

corroboration from Theophrastus, who says of the superstitious man,

that if he see a red snake in his house he will invoke Sabazius[1470].

Now the token of these mysteries for those who were being initiated

in them was, according to Clement[1471] again, ‘the god pressed to

the bosom’ (ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός); which phrase he explains by saying

that the god was represented as a snake, which was passed under the

clothing and drawn over the bosom of the initiated ‘as a proof of the

incontinence of Zeus.’ Clearly then the act of initiation was the

symbolic wedding of the worshipper with the deity worshipped; and it is

probable that the union which was symbolized in this life was expected

to be realised in the next.

Finally in the orgiastic worship of Cybele the same religious doctrine

is revealed. Here to Attis seems to be assigned the same part as to

Adonis in the mysteries of Aphrodite. He is the beloved of the goddess;

he is lost and mourned for as dead; he is restored again from the

grave to the goddess who loved him. And in all this he appears to be

the representative of all Cybele’s worshippers; for the ritual of

initiation into her rites, if once again we may avail ourselves of

Clement’s statements, is strongly imbued with the idea of marriage

between the goddess and her worshipper. The several acts or stages of

initiation are summarised in four phrases: ‘I ate out of the drum; I

drank out of the cymbal; I carried the sacred vessel; I entered privily

the bed-chamber--ἐκ τυμπάνου ἔφαγον· ἐκ κυμβάλου ἔπιον· ἐκερνοφόρησα·

ὑπὸ τὸν παστὸν ὑπέδυν[1472]. In the passage from which these phrases

are culled there appears to be a certain confusion between the rites

of Cybele and those of Demeter; but the fact that Clement shortly

afterwards gives another formulary of Demeter’s ritual is sufficient

proof that he meant this present formulary, as indeed the mention of

kettle-drum and cymbal[1473] suggests, to apply to the mysteries of

Cybele[1474]. It appears then that the final act or stage of initiation

consisted in the secret admission of the worshipper to the bed-chamber

of the goddess. Such ritual can have borne only one interpretation. It

clearly constituted a promise of wedded union between the initiated

and their deity. Viewed in this light even the emasculation of the

priests of Cybele may more readily be understood; it may have been the

consecration of their virility to the service of the goddess, a final

and convincing pledge of celibacy in this life, in return for which

they aspired to be blest by wedlock with their goddess hereafter.

The mention of the goddess’ bed-chamber in the above passage is of

considerable interest. The παστός (or παστάς) in relation to a temple

meant the same thing as it often meant in relation to an ordinary

house, an inner room or recess screened off, and in particular a

bridal chamber. Such provision for the physical comfort of the deity

was probably not rare. Pausanias tells us that on the right of

the vestibule in the Argive Heraeum there was a couch (κλίνη) for

Hera[1475], and he seems to speak of it as if it were a common enough

piece of temple furniture. So too at Phlya in Attica, where were held

the very ancient mystic rites ‘of her who is called the Great,’ there

was a bridal chamber (παστάς), where, it has rightly been argued, there

‘must have been enacted a mimetic marriage[1476].’ Again Clement of

Alexandria speaks of a παστός of Athena in the Parthenon, and makes

it quite clear by the story which he relates that he understood the

word in the sense of bed-chamber. The story is also for other reasons

worth recalling, because it shows how the religious conception of

marriage between men and gods was readily extended to the worship of

other deities than those whose mysteries we have sought to unravel,

and at the same time furnishes the only case known to me in which

that mystic belief was prostituted to the base uses of flattery. The

occasion was the reception accorded by the Athenians to Demetrius

Poliorcetes. Not content with hailing him as a god in name, they went

so far in their mean-spirited subjection as to set up a temple, at

the place where he dismounted from his horse on entering their city,

to Demetrius the Descender (Καταιβάτης)[1477], while on every side

altars were erected to him. But their grossest piece of flattery was

a master-piece of grotesque impiety, and met with a fitting reward. A

marriage was arranged between him (the most notorious profligate of his

age) and Athena. ‘He however,’ we are told, ‘disdained the goddess,

being unable to embrace the statue, but took with him to the Acropolis

the courtesan Lamia, and polluted the bed-chamber of Athena, exhibiting

to the old virgin the postures of the young courtesan[1478].’ Even that

contemptuous response to the Athenians’ flattery did not abash them,

but, finding that he did not favour their acknowledged deity, they

determined to deify his acknowledged favourite, and erected a temple to

Lamia Aphrodite[1479].

But such travesties of holy things were rare; and this one notorious

case excited the contempt alike of the man[1480] to whom the flattery

was paid and of all posterity--a contempt which teaches, hardly less

clearly than the indignation excited a century earlier by the supposed

profanation of the mysteries, in what reverence and high esteem the

idea of marriage between men and gods was generally held.

Even Lucian, in whom reverence was a less pronounced characteristic

than humour, condemns seriously enough a parody of the mysteries

of Eleusis which occurred in his own day; and his account of it at

the same time shows once more that the marriage of men and gods was

the very essence of the mysteries. The impostor Alexander, he says,

instituted rites with carrying of torches (δᾳδουχία) and exposition

of the sacred ceremonies (ἱεροφαντία) lasting for three days. “On

the first there was a proclamation, as at Athens, as follows: ‘If

any atheist, Christian, or Epicurean hath come to spy upon the holy

rites, let him begone, and let the faithful be initiated with heaven’s

blessing.’ Then first of all there was an expulsion of intruders.

Alexander himself led the way, crying ‘Out with Christians,’ and the

whole multitude shouted in answer ‘Out with Epicureans.’ Then was

enacted the story of Leto in child-bed and the birth of Apollo, and his

marriage with Coronis and the birth of Asclepius; and on the second day

the manifestation of Glycon and the god’s birth[1481]. And on the third

day was the wedding of Podalirius and Alexander’s mother; this was

called the Torch-day, for torches were burnt. And finally there was the

love of Selene and Alexander, and the birth of his daughter now married

to Rutilianus[1482]. Our Endymion-Alexander was now torch-bearer and

exponent of the rites. And he lay as it were sleeping in the view of

all, and there came down to him from the roof--as it were Selene from

heaven--a certain Rutilia, a very beautiful woman, the wife of one of

Caesar’s household-officers, who was really in love with Alexander

and was loved by him, and she kissed the rascal’s eyes and embraced

him in the view of all, and, if there had not been so many torches,

worse would perhaps have followed (τάχα ἄν τι καὶ τῶν ὑπὸ κόλπου

ἐπράττετο)[1483].”

The inferences which may be drawn from this narrative are, first, that

the mysteries in general, while reproducing in some dramatic form the

whole story of the deities concerned, culminated in the representation

of a mystic marriage between men and gods; (the birth of a child was

also represented or announced in this parody, as we know that it

was at Eleusis[1484], but it had, I am inclined to think, no mystic

significance otherwise than as proof of the consummation of that

marriage;) and, secondly, that the wild charges of indecency brought by

early Christian writers against the mysteries are baseless; for Lucian

condemns a much lesser license in this parody than that which they

attributed to the genuine rites.

Thus our examination of the mysteries, so far as they are known to us,

tends to prove that the doctrines revealed in them to the initiated

were simply a development of certain vaguer popular ideas which have

been prevalent among the Greek folk from the classical age down to our

own day. The people entertained hopes that this physical life would

continue in a similar form after death; the mysteries gave definite

assurance of that immortality by exhibiting to the initiated Persephone

or Adonis or Attis restored from the lower world in bodily form; and

though that exhibition was in fact merely a dramatic representation,

yet to the eyes of religious ecstasy it seemed just as much a living

reality as does the risen Christ in the modern celebration of Easter.

The people again were wont to think and to speak of death as a marriage

into the lower world; the mysteries showed to the initiated certain

representatives of mankind who by death, or even in life, had been

admitted to the felicity of wedlock with deities, and thereby confirmed

the faithful in their happier hopes of being in like manner themselves

god-beloved and of sharing the life of gods.

Since then there is good reason to believe that this was in effect the

secret teaching of the mysteries, it would naturally be expected that

human marriage should have been reckoned as it were a foretaste of

that union with the divine which was promised hereafter, and also that

death should have been counted the hour of its approaching fulfilment;

in other words, if my view of the mysteries is correct, it would

almost inevitably follow that the mysteries should have been brought

into close association both with weddings and with funerals. This

expectation is confirmed by the facts.

An ordinary wedding was treated as something akin to initiation into

the mysteries. An inscription of Cos[1485], relating to the appointment

of priestesses of Demeter, mentions among other duties certain services

on the occasion of weddings; and the brides, who are the recipients

of these services, are divided into two classes, αἱ τελεύμεναι and αἱ

ἐπινυμφευόμεναι, the maidens who, are being ‘initiated,’ and the widows

who are being married again; a woman’s first marriage in fact is called

by a religious document her initiation, and Demeter’s priestesses

are charged therewith. Nor was this usage or idea confined to Cos;

Plutarch speaks of services rendered by the priestess of Demeter in

the solemnisation of matrimony as part of an ‘ancestral rite[1486]’;

while the term τέλος was commonly used both of the mystic rites and of

marriage, and τέλειοι might denote the newly-wed[1487].

The same thought seems also to have inspired another custom

associated with marriage. The newly-wed, we hear, sometimes attended

a representation of the marriage of Zeus and Hera[1488], an ἱερὸς

γάμος which formed the subject of mystic drama or legend all over

Greece[1489]. The widely extended cults of Hera under the titles of

Maiden (παρθένος or παῖς) and of Bride (τελεία or νυμφευομένη) appear

to have been closely interwoven; indeed for a full appreciation of the

Greek conception of the goddess they must be treated as complementary.

They are well interpreted by Farnell. Rejecting the theory of physical

symbolism, he suggests ‘a more human explanation. Hera was essentially

the goddess of women, and the life of women was reflected in her;

their maidenhood and marriage were solemnised by the cults of Hera

Παρθένος and Hera Τελεία or Νυμφευομένη, and the very rare worship of

Hera Χήρα might allude to the not infrequent custom of divorce and

separation[1490].’ With, Hera the Widow we are not here concerned,

but only with the higher conceptions of Zeus and Hera as expressed in

the representation of the ‘sacred marriage’; the bride and bridegroom

who looked upon that saw in it, we may be sure, not a symbolical

representation of the seasons and the productive powers of the earth,

but rather the divine prototype of human marriage. It reminded them

that deities, like mortals, were married and given in marriage, and it

imparted to their wedding a sacramental character, making it at once a

foretaste and a gage of that close communion with the gods which, when

death the dividing line between mortals and immortals should once be

passed, awaited the blessed among mankind.

Other small points too suggest the same trend of thought. The

preliminaries of a wedding often comprised a sacrifice to Zeus

Teleios and Hera Teleia[1491], and were called προτέλεια being the

‘preliminaries of initiation’ into that mystery, of which the

sacred marriage, enacted before the now wedded pair, was the full

revelation[1492]. Again these preliminaries always included the

solemn ablution[1493] of which I have spoken above, and in this

resembled the preparations for admittance to the mysteries. Moreover

an instance is recorded in which this ablution was itself invested

with the significance of a wedding between the human and the divine.

The maidens of the Troad before marriage were wont to unrobe and bathe

themselves in the Scamander; and the prayer which they made to the

river-god, whose bed they entered, was, ‘Receive thou, Scamander, my

virginity[1494].’ Finally the first night on which the wedded pair came

together was known as the ‘mystic night’ (νὺξ μυστική)[1495], a term

not a little suggestive of the great night of Demeter’s mysteries when

to the eyes of the initiated was displayed the secret proof and promise

of wedlock between men and gods hereafter. In short the ceremonies

of a wedding by one means or another proclaimed it to be a form of

initiation, and the estate of marriage was to the Greeks, as our

prayer-book calls it, ‘an excellent mystery.’

Hence naturally followed the belief that the unmarried and the

uninitiated shared the same fate in the future life. One conception

of the punishment of the uninitiated was, according to Plato[1496],

that they should carry water in a sieve to a broken jar; and this, as

is well known, was also the lot of the Danaids in the nether world.

Commenting on these facts Dr Frazer says, ‘It is possible that the

original reason why the Danaids were believed to be condemned to this

punishment in hell was not so much that they murdered, as that they did

not marry, the sons of Aegyptus. According to one tradition indeed they

afterwards married other husbands (Paus. III. 12. 2); but according

to another legend they were murdered by Lynceus, apparently before

marriage (Schol. on Euripides, _Hecuba_, 886). They may therefore have

been chosen as types of unmarried women, and their punishment need

not have been peculiar to them but may have been the one supposed to

await all unmarried persons in the nether world[1497].’ A passage of

Lucian, which appears to have been overlooked in this connexion[1498],

converts the view of the Danaids which Dr Frazer considers possible

into a practical certainty. The passage in point forms the conclusion

of that dialogue in which Poseidon with the aid of Triton plots and

carries out the rape of Amymone, the Danaid. She has just been seized

and is protesting against her abduction and threatening to call her

father, when Triton intervenes: ‘Keep quiet, Amymone,’ he says, ‘it

is Poseidon.’ And the girl rejoins, ‘Oh, Poseidon you call him, do

you?’ and then turning to her ravisher, ‘What do you mean, sirrah, by

handling me so roughly, and dragging me down into the sea? I shall

go under and be drowned, miserable girl.’ And Poseidon answers, ‘Do

not be frightened, you shall come to no harm; no, I will strike the

rock here, near where the waves break, with my trident, and will let

a spring burst up which shall bear your name, and you yourself shall

be blessed and, unlike your sisters, shall not carry water when you

are dead (καὶ σὺ εὐδαίμων ἔσῃ καὶ μόνη τῶν ἀδελφῶν οὐχ ὑδροφορήσεις

ἀποθανοῦσα)[1499].’ The whole point of Poseidon’s answer clearly

depends upon the existence of a well-known belief that the Danaids were

punished hereafter for remaining unmarried and that the punishment took

the form of vainly fetching water for that bridal bath which was a

necessary preliminary to a wedding; Amymone shall have a very thorough

bridal bath, and the spring that bears her name shall be a monument

of it, while she herself shall be ‘blessed’ by wedlock with Poseidon;

thus shall she escape the fate of the unmarried. Clearly then there was

no distinction between the uninitiated and the unmarried; both alike

were doomed vainly to fetch water for those ablutions which preceded

initiation into the mysteries or into matrimony; and once again the

conception of marriage as a mystic and sacramental rite akin to the

rites of Eleusis is clearly revealed.

It may further be noted here that this idea of the punishment of the

unmarried completely explains the custom, on which I have already

touched, of erecting a water-pitcher (λουτροφόρος) over the grave of

unmarried persons. This intimated, according to Eustathius[1500], that

the person there buried had never taken the bath which both bride and

bridegroom were wont to take before marriage. But this must not be

taken to mean that the water-pitcher was erected as a symbol of the

punishment which the dead person was supposed to be undergoing; this

was not an idea which his relatives and friends, even if they had held

it, would have wished to blazon abroad. One might as soon expect to

find depicted on a modern tombstone the worm that dieth not and the

fire that is not quenched. No; the water-pitcher was not a symbol, it

was an instrument; for my part I have little faith in the existence

of any symbols in popular religion which are not in origin at least

instruments; and the purpose to which this instrument was put was to

supply the dead person with that wedding-bath which he had not taken

in life, and without which he would vainly strive in the under-world

to prepare himself for divine wedlock. The water-pitcher was not

commemorative, but preventive, of future punishment. Its erection was

not a warning to the living, but a service to the dead.

Thus then the evidence for the intimate association of the mysteries,

or of the main idea which runs through them, with human weddings is

complete and, I hope, convincing; and the custom of the water-pitcher,

which concludes it, fitly introduces at the same time the evidence

for the association of the same idea with funerals. This is equally

plentiful. The vague conception of death as a wedding, which as I have

shown was elaborated in the mysteries, has of course already been

exemplified in all those passages of ancient literature and modern

folk-songs which I have adduced, and I have found in it also the motive

for the assimilation of funeral-customs to the customs of marriage.

But the evidence that the actual doctrines of the mysteries, in which

more definite expression was given to that vague idea, were closely

associated with death and funeral-custom is to be found rather in

epitaphs and sepulchral monuments.

The tone of the epitaphs may be sufficiently illustrated by a single

couplet:

Οὐκ ἐπιδὼν νύμφεια λέχη κατέβην τὸν ἄφυκτον

Γόργιππος ξανθῆς Φερσεφόνης θάλαμον[1501].

‘I, Gorgippus, lived not to look upon a bridal bed ere I went down

to the chamber of bright-haired Persephone which none may escape.’

There is naturally here a note of lament, as befits any epitaph, and

more especially that of one who dies young and unmarried; but none

the less there is an anticipation--justified, we may think, if we

will, by some ceremony of bridal ablution performed for the dead man

by his friends--that his death is a wedding with the goddess of the

under-world; and indeed the phrase Φερσεφόνης θάλαμος, ‘the bridal

chamber of Persephone,’ recurs with some frequency in this class of

epitaphs[1502].

Considered collectively, such epitaphs would suggest a distinctly

offensive conception of Persephone; but in each taken separately, as

it was composed, it will be allowed, I think, that if there is supreme

audacity, there is equal sublimity. It is just these qualities which

give pungency to a blasphemous parody of such epitaphs, in which the

wit of Ausonius exposes the worst possible aspect of a religious

conception which to the pure-minded was wholly pure. My apology for

quoting lines which I will not translate must be the fact that a

caricature is often no less instructive than a true portrait. The mock

epitaph concludes as follows:

Sed neque functorum socius miscebere vulgo

Nec metues Stygios flebilis umbra lacus:

Verum aut Persephonae Cinyreius ibis Adonis,

Aut Jovis Elysii tu catamitus eris[1503].

Ausonius in jest bears an unpleasant resemblance to Clement in earnest;

both perverted to their uttermost a doctrine which commanded nothing

but reverence from faithful participants in the mysteries.

Akin to these epitaphs are certain tablets which recently have been

fully discussed by Miss Jane Harrison[1504], and have been shown to

be of Orphic origin. They were buried with the dead, and for this

reason were more outspoken in their references to the mystic doctrines

than was permissible in epitaphs exposed to the vulgar gaze. The most

complete of these tablets is one which was found near Sybaris, and,

with the exception of the last sentence of all, the inscription is in

hexameter verse. Miss Harrison, to whose work I am wholly indebted for

this valuable evidence, translates as follows[1505]:

‘Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below,

Eukles and Eubouleus and the other Gods immortal.

For I also avow me that I am of your blessed race,

But Fate laid me low and the other Gods immortal

... starflung thunderbolt.

I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel.

I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired.

I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld.

I have passed with eager feet from the Circle desired.

Happy and Blessed One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal.

A kid I have fallen into milk.’

The gist of the document which the dead man takes with him is then

briefly this. He claims to have been pure originally and of the same

race as his gods; but as a man he was mortal and exposed to death,

and in this respect differed from his gods. He states however that he

has performed certain ritual acts which entitle him to be re-admitted

to the pure fellowship of the gods now that death is passed. And the

answer comes, ‘Thou shalt be God instead of mortal.’

Now here I wish to consider one only of these ritual acts--that one of

which the meaning is clearest--Δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας

βασιλείας, which means, if I may give my own rendering, ‘I was admitted

to the embrace of Despoina, Queen of the under-world.’ The phrase

is one which repeats the idea which we have already seen expressed

in the formulary of Cybele’s rites, ὑπὸ τὸν παστὸν ὑπέδυν[1506], ‘I

was privily admitted to the bridal chamber,’ and in the token of the

Sabazian mysteries, ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός[1507], ‘the god pressed to

the bosom’; and Lucian’s final phrase in his account of Alexander’s

mock-mysteries shows a kindred phrase, τὰ ὑπὸ κόλπου[1508], as an

euphemism of the same kind[1509]. The Orphic therefore no less than

others based his claim to future happiness on the fact that he had

performed a ritual act, of the nature of a sacrament, which constituted

a pledge that the wedlock between him and his goddess foreshadowed here

should be consummated hereafter.

Even more abundant evidence is furnished by sepulchral monuments;

and in support of my views I cannot do better than quote two high

authorities who coincide in their verdict upon the meaning of the

scenes represented. In reference to those scenes ‘in which death

is conceived in the guise of a marriage’ Furtwängler writes: ‘The

monuments belonging to this class are extraordinarily numerous, and

exhibit very different methods of treating the idea which they carry

out. A relief upon a sarcophagus from the Villa Borghese shows the God

of the dead in the act of carrying down the fair Kore to be his bride

in the lower world. Above the steeds of his chariot, which are already

disappearing into the depths of the earth, flies Eros as guide. The

bride however appears to be going only under compulsion and after some

struggle; the look of the bridegroom expresses sternness rather than

gentleness; and the mother who sits with face averted seems to exclude

all thoughts of the daughter’s return. Only in the torches which the

guide carries in his hand, in the snakes which are looking upward, and

in the observant attitude of Hecate, can a suggestion of the return be

found.

‘On another sarcophagus--from Nazzara--which represents the same

marriage-journey, Eros is not merely the guide of the steeds, but aids

the bridegroom in carrying off Kore, so that in this case the struggle

with death takes purely the form of a struggle with love. At the same

time the mother is driving along with her chariot, thereby signifying

the renewal of life, which is yet more clearly betokened in the

ploughman and the sower at her side.

‘In a yet gentler spirit we see the same journey conceived in a

vase-painting from lower Italy. Here there is a look of gentleness

on Hades’ face; the bride accompanies him gladly, and even takes an

affectionate farewell of her mother, who appears to acquiesce in her

departure. In this case too Eros is flying above the horses, and is

turned towards the lovers, while in front of him there flies a dove,

the bird sacred to the goddess of love. Hecate with torches guides the

steeds; near at hand waits Hermes to escort the procession; and above

the whole scene the stars are shining, as if to indicate the new life

in the region of death.

‘In another form, exalted to a yet higher holiness, the same marriage

is repeated in the sphere of Dionysus-worship. Thus on a cameo in the

Vatican, Dionysus is represented driving with his bride, Ariadne, in

a brightly-decked triumphal car. Holy rapture is manifested on the

features of both, and on top of the chariot stands a Cupid directing

it. Dionysus is arrayed in the doe-skin, and holds in his left hand

a _thyrsus_, in his right a goblet; Ariadne is carrying ears of corn

and poppy-heads, and has her hair wreathed with vine-leaves. The car

is drawn by Centaurs of both sexes, with torches, drinking-horns,

and musical instruments. The idea which underlies this scene is the

reproduction of Life out of Death; Hades has issued forth again for

a new marriage-bond with Kore in the realm of light, appearing now

rejuvenated in the form of Dionysus, just as his bride assumes the form

of Ariadne, and because the power of death is broken behind him, his

car likewise becomes a triumphal car.

‘Just as the marriage of Zeus in the realm of light became a type for

men in this life, so the marriage of Hades, or of Dionysus representing

him, developed into a similar prototype for the dead. Since that which

is true of Death bears directly upon the actual dead, it was quite

natural that gradually the process of death came to be considered in

general as a wedding with the deities of death. With this conception

too harmonize those wedding-scenes which are so common and conspicuous

on funeral monuments, as well as the often-recurring scenes from the

joyous cycle of Dionysus-myths[1510].’

Two brief comments may be made upon this passage. First, Furtwängler

clearly recognises in Dionysus a mere substitute for Hades, and thus

confirms my interpretation of the strange legend concerning Dionysus

and Prosymnus[1511]. We noticed that the somewhat obscure observation

of Heraclitus (as quoted by Clement) upon that story contained the

words ‘Dionysus and Hades are one and the same’; and we now see that

in art too the same identification was made, and that the marriage of

a mortal with Dionysus was used to typify the future marriage of the

dead with their gods. The reason for this identification seems simply

to be that the cults in which the two gods figured, although differing

in outward form, were felt to express one and the same idea--namely the

conception of death as a form of marriage; and the tendency to identify

in such cases was carried so far that the god Dionysus was even, we are

told, identified with the mortal Adonis[1512], presumably because the

worship of each, as I have shown above, turned upon this one cardinal

doctrine.

Secondly, Furtwängler points out that the marriage of Zeus and Hera

represented for living men the same doctrine as the marriage of Hades

and Persephone (or of Dionysus and Ariadne) represented for the dead.

The truth of this is well illustrated by the close resemblance between

Aristophanes’ picture of Hera’s wedding and those funeral monuments

and vases which Furtwängler describes; for there too ‘golden-winged

Eros held firm the reins, and drave the wedding-car of Zeus and blessed

Hera[1513].’ In other words, this Olympian marriage was only one among

several mystic marriages which all conveyed, though in diverse form,

the same lesson, that marriage was the perfection of divine life no

less than of human life, and therefore that hereafter when men, or at

any rate the blessed and initiated among men, should come to dwell with

their gods, no bond of communion between gods and men could be perfect

short of the marriage-bond.

It was natural enough that the drama of Hera’s wedding with Zeus should

most often have been chosen to be played at an ordinary wedding,

because it would not obtrude thoughts of death upon a joyous event

with such insistence as most of the other religious legends which

reposed upon the same fundamental doctrine; but sometimes, we know, it

was the priestesses of Demeter who officiated at wedding-ceremonies,

and in those cases it cannot be doubted that it was Persephone and not

Hera who was the divine prototype of the bride, and the thought that

her wedding was a wedding with the god of death could not have been

excluded. At funerals, on the other hand, the story of Zeus and Hera

which was preferred at weddings owing to its less obvious allusion to

death, would for that same reason have found less favour than those

other marriage-legends in which the identity of death with marriage

was more clearly enunciated; and of these, owing to the exceptional

reverence in which the Eleusinian mysteries were held, the story of

Persephone seems to have been among the most frequent. Yet in the

picture drawn by Aristophanes at which we have just glanced, for one

subtle touch which suggests the connexion of Hera’s wedding with human

weddings, there is another subtle touch which suggests its relation

with human death. The first is an epithet applied to Eros who drove the

wedding-car--the epithet ἀμφιθαλής, used of one who has both parents

living[1514]. The allusion to human weddings is clear. It was no doubt

imperative in old time, as it still is, in Greece, that anyone who

attended upon a bride or bridegroom, as for instance the bearer of

water for the bridal bath, should have both parents living; and the

use of the same term in reference to Eros, the attendant upon Zeus

and Hera, marks the intimate connexion between the divine marriage

and the marriage of living men and women. But another epithet in the

passage conveys no less clear an allusion to the marriage of those,

whom men call dead, with their deities. Hera is named εὐδαίμων, a word

which, meaning ‘favoured by God,’ may seem strangely applied to one

who herself was divine[1515]. But it was selected by Aristophanes for

a good reason; by the word εὐδαιμονία was commonly denoted that future

bliss which the initiated believed to consist in wedlock with their

deities. Like θεοφιλής, ‘god-beloved,’ the term εὐδαίμων, ‘blessed,’

was, so to speak, a catch-word of the mysteries[1516]; and the

application of it to Hera in Aristophanes’ ode brings the legend of

Hera’s marriage into rank with those other wedding-stories whose actual

plot hinged upon the identity of death and marriage. Thus though one

legend might be more appropriate in its externals to one occasion, and

another legend to another occasion, the ultimate and fundamental idea

of them all was single and the same.

This view is boldly championed by the second authority whom I proposed

to quote upon the subject of mystic marriage-scenes depicted on

funeral-monuments. ‘The idea,’ says Lenormant, ‘of mystic union

in death is frequently indicated in the scenes represented upon

_sarcophagi_ and painted vases. But for the most part the idea is

expressed there only in an allusive manner, which depends upon the

identification which this marriage-scene established between the dead

person and the deity, by means of such subjects as the carrying off

of Cephalus by Aurora, or Orithyia by Boreas, or the love-story of

Aphrodite and Adonis[1517].’ ‘Thus,’ he explains, ‘a girl carried

off (by death) from her parents was simply a bride betrothed to the

infernal god, and was identified with Demeter’s maiden daughter, the

victim of the passion and violence of Hades; a young man cut off by an

early fate figured as the beautiful Adonis, snatched away by Persephone

from the love of Aphrodite, and brought, in spite of himself, to the

bed of the queen of the lower world[1518].’ The identification which

Lenormant sees in these several instances is an identification, I

suppose, not of personalities but of destinies. The popular religion

of ancient Greece shows little trace of any pantheistic view which

would have contemplated the absorption of the personality of the dead

man or woman into that of any god or goddess. Indeed the very number

of the personally distinct deities with whom, on such an hypothesis,

the dead would have been identified, as well as that continuance of

sexual difference in the future life which is postulated by the very

doctrine before us, precludes all thought of personal identification.

Rather it is the future destiny of the dead person which was identified

with the destiny of the deity or hero whose marriage was represented on

sarcophagus or _cippus_ or commemorative vase[1519]. The lot of Kore or

Ariadne or Orithyia prefigured the lot of mortal women hereafter; the

fortunes of Adonis or Cephalus typified those of mortal men; and all

the marriage-scenes alike, whatever the differences of presentation,

revealed the hope and the promise of wedlock hereafter between mankind

and their deities.

But Lenormant mentions one vase-painting[1520] in which this

fundamental doctrine is taught not by parables of mythology, but more

overtly and directly. The scene depicted is the marriage of a youth,

whose name, Polyetes, is in pathetic contrast with his short span of

years spent upon earth, with a goddess Eudaemonia (or ‘Bliss’) in the

lower world. In this deity Lenormant sees ‘the infernal goddess under

an euphemistic name.’ Nor could any more significant name have been

used. It has already been pointed out that εὐδαιμονία was a term much

favoured by the initiated in the mysteries, and was openly used by them

to denote that future bliss which secretly was understood to consist in

divine wedlock. Hence the scene upon this vase would at once suggest to

those who were familiar with the doctrines of the mysteries, that the

youth, being presumably of the number of the initiated, had found in

death the realisation of his happy hopes and had entered into blissful

union with the goddess of the lower world.

* * * * *

To sum up briefly: we have seen alike in the literature of ancient

Greece and in the folk-songs of modern Greece that death has commonly

been conceived by the Hellenic race in the guise of a wedding; a review

of marriage-customs and funeral-customs both ancient and modern has

re-affirmed the constant association of death and marriage, and has

shown how deep-rooted in the minds of the common people that idea must

have been which produced a deliberate assimilation of funeral-rites

to the ceremonies of marriage. Next we investigated the connexion

of the mysteries with the popular religion, and saw reason to hold

that, far from being subversive of it or alien to it, they inculcated

doctrines which were wholly evolved from vaguer popular ideas always

current in Greece. Finally we traced in many of those legends, on which

the dramatic representations of the mysteries are known to have been

based, a common _motif_, the idea that death is the entrance for men

into a blissful estate of wedded union with their deities. And this

religious ideal not only satisfies the condition of agreement with,

and evolution from, those popular views in which death figured somewhat

vaguely as a form of wedding, but also proves to be the natural and

necessary outcome of two religious sentiments with which earlier

chapters have dealt; first, the ardent desire for close communion with

the gods, and secondly, the belief that men’s bodies as well as their

souls survived death and dissolution; for if the body by means of its

disintegration rejoined the soul in the nether world, and the human

entity was then complete, enjoying the same substantial existence,

the same physical no less than mental powers, which it had enjoyed in

the upper world, and which the immortal gods enjoyed uninterrupted by

death, then, since the same rite of marriage was the consummation both

of divine life and of human life, men’s yearning for close communion

with their gods required for its ideal and perfect satisfaction the

full union of wedlock; and the sacrament which assured men of this

consummation was the highest development of the whole Greek religion,

the mysteries.

Such a sacrament and such aspirations might well have offended even

those Christians of early days, if such there were, who were willing to

deal sympathetically with paganism; that those who were its declared

enemies, and were ready to use against it the weapons of perversion and

vituperation, found in this conception a vulnerable point, is readily

understood. It is true indeed that in the very idea which they most

vilified there was a certain curious analogy between the new religion

and the old. Just as paganism allowed to each man or woman individually

the hope of becoming the bridegroom or the bride of one of their many

deities, so Christianity represented the Church, the whole body of the

faithful collectively, as the bride of its sole deity. But the analogy

is superficial only. The bond of feeling which united the Church with

God was very differently conceived from that which drew together the

pagans and their deities. The chastened ‘charity’ (ἀγάπη) of the

Christians had little in common with the passionate love (ἔρως) with

which the Greeks of old time had dared look upon their gods. Theirs

was the Love that ‘held firm the reins and drave the wedding-car of

Zeus and blessed Hera[1521]’; the Love that hovered above the steeds

of Hades and changed for Persephone the road of death into a road to

bliss; the Love whom ‘no immortal may escape nor any of mankind whose

life passeth it as a day, but whoso hath him is as one mad[1522]’; and

the only true consummation of such love was wedlock.

This conception necessarily implied the equality of men with their gods

in the future life; and that future equality was sometimes represented

as no more than a return to that which was in the beginning. ‘One is

the race of men with the race of gods; for one is the mother that gave

to both our breath; yet are they sundered by powers wholly diverse, in

that mankind is as naught, but heaven is builded of brass that abideth

ever unshaken[1523].’ So sang Pindar of the past and of the present;

but the Orphic tablet which has been already quoted carries on the

thought into the future:

‘Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below,

Eukles and Eubouleus and the other Gods immortal.

For I also avow me that I am of your blessed race,

But Fate laid me low....’

So far with Pindar. But the dead man’s claims do not end there: ‘I was

admitted to the embrace of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld’; already

had he received a foretaste of that divine wedlock which implied

equality with the gods; and so there comes the answer, ‘Happy and

Blessed One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal.’

This idea commended itself even to thinkers who did not believe in

bodily survival after death. Plato, in the _Phaedo_, where above all

things is taught the perishable nature of the body and the immortality

of the soul alone, yet avails himself of the belief that the pure among

mankind shall attain even to godhead hereafter. To him the pure are

not the initiated indeed, but the earnest strivers after wisdom. In

his theory of retributive metempsychosis he surmises that those who

have followed the lusts of the flesh shall hereafter enter the ranks of

asses and other lustful beasts; that those who have wrought violence

shall enter the ranks of wolves and hawks and kites; that those who

have practised what is popularly accounted virtue, but without true

understanding, shall enter the ranks of harmless and social creatures,

bees, wasps, and ants, or even the ranks of men once more. ‘But

into the ranks of gods none may enter without having followed after

wisdom and so departing hence wholly pure--none save the lover of

knowledge[1524].’ What precise meaning Plato attached to his phrase

‘to enter the ranks’ (εἰς γένος ἐνδύεσθαι or ἀφικνεῖσθαι), to which

he adheres throughout the passage, is a question which agitated the

Neoplatonists[1525] somewhat needlessly. The phrase is intended either

literally throughout or allegorically throughout. If it be allegorical,

the meaning must be that all human souls shall enter again into human

bodies, but that they shall start this new phase of existence with the

qualities of lust, violence, respectability, or real virtue and purity,

acquired in the previous life--merely resembling, as nearly as men may,

asses, wolves, bees, or gods. Now as regards the first three classes,

this allegorical interpretation, if a little forced, is feasible

enough; but what of the fourth class? Shall the soul which has attained

purity, the very negation of fleshliness in Plato’s view, suffer

re-incarnation and struggle once more against the flesh? Surely the

allegorical explanation is at once condemned. The phrase was intended

literally[1526]. Plato signified the re-incarnation of the lustful,

the violent, and the merely respectable, in the forms of animals of

like character, and he signified--I must not say the re-incarnation,

for Plato’s gods were spiritual and not carnal--but the regeneration

of the pure in the form of gods. And in the same spirit Plutarch too

contemplated the possibility of some men’s souls becoming first heroes,

and from heroes rising to the rank of ‘daemons,’ and from ‘daemons’

coming to share, albeit but rarely, in real godhead[1527].

Thus even the highest aspirations of the most spiritually-minded of

pagan thinkers owed much to the purely popular religion. The Orphic

tablet links up the popular conception of death as a wedding with the

Platonic conception of the deification of the soul. ‘I was admitted to

the embrace of Despoina, Queen of the underworld’: ‘Happy and Blessed

One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal.’

But if Plato, even in his conception of a purely spiritual life

hereafter, owed something to the popular religion, he drew upon it

far more freely in his conception of Love. In the _Symposium_ one

speech after another culminates in the assertion of that belief which

found its highest expression in the mysteries. ‘So then I say,’ says

Phaedrus, ‘that Love is the most venerable of the gods, the most

worthy of honour, the most powerful to grant virtue and blessedness

unto mankind both in life and after death[1528].’ And in the same tone

too Eryximachus: ‘He it is that wields the mightiest power and is

the source for us of all blessedness and of our power to have loving

fellowship both with one another and with the gods that are stronger

than we[1529].’ And finally Aristophanes: It is Love, ‘who in this

present life gives us most joys by drawing like unto like, and for our

hereafter displays hopes most high, if we for our part display piety

towards the gods, that he will restore us to our erstwhile nature and

will heal us and will make us happy and blessed[1530].’

This is not Platonic philosophy but popular religion. Phrase after

phrase reveals the origin of this conception of Love. The hopes most

high were the hopes held forth by the mysteries; the blessedness and

the loving fellowship with gods were the fulfilment of those hopes.

In such language did men ever hint at the joys to which their mystic

sacraments gave access. And Plato here ventures yet further. The author

of those high hopes, the founder of that blessedness, he proclaims, is

none other than Love--Love that appealed not to the soul only of the

initiated, but to the whole man, both soul and body--Love that meant

not only the yearning after wisdom and holiness and spiritual equality

with the gods, but that same passion which drew together man and woman,

god and goddess--the passion of mankind for their deities, fed in this

life by manifold means of communion and even by sacramental union,

satisfied hereafter in the full fruition of wedded bliss.

FOOTNOTES:

[1358] _Il._ XI. 241.

[1359] Hes. _W. and D._ 116.

[1360] e.g. Hom. _Il._ XVI. 454 and 672; XIV. 231.

[1361] Hes. _Theog._ 212, 756.

[1362] See Preller, _Griech. Myth._ I. 690 ff.

[1363] Paus. V. 18. 1. Cf. III. 18. 1.

[1364] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ CCCXCVI.

[1365] Hom. _Od._ XXIV. 1.

[1366] Virg. _Aen._ IV. 242 ff.

[1367] See above, pp. 96 ff. and pp. 134 ff.

[1368] Paus. VIII. 2. 5.

[1369] Paus. _ibid._ § 4.

[1370] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 364.

[1371] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 374.

[1372] The word χαρὰ, (‘joy’), as I have pointed out elsewhere, is

indeed often used technically of marriage.

[1373] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 38 (ll. 13-18) and also nos. 65, 152,

180.

[1374] See above, pp. 255 ff.

[1375] Abbott, _Macedon. Folklore_, p. 255.

[1376] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 370. The phrase κάνει χαρὰ, which I

have inadequately rendered as ‘maketh glad,’ is technically used of

marriage. See above, p. 127.

[1377] For authorities see Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ I. pp. 76 ff.

[1378] Soph. _Antig._ 574-5. I do not know how much stress may be laid

on the repetition of the pronoun ὅδε in these two lines (viz. στερήσεις

τῆσδε and τούσδε τοὺς γάμους); but the lines follow closely on that

in which Creon bids Ismene speak no more of Antigone as ἥδε, and an

ironical stress might well be laid by Creon on the word τούσδε as he

uses it, which would suggest to his audience its antithesis τοὺς ἐκεὶ

γάμους.

[1379] Soph. _Antig._ 804-5.

[1380] _ibid._ 810-16.

[1381] _ibid._ 891-2.

[1382] _ibid._ 1203-7.

[1383] _ibid._ 1240-1.

[1384] Pindar, _Fragm._ 139 (Bergk).

[1385] Aesch. _Prom._ 940 ff.

[1386] _Oneirocr._ II. 49. The word τέλη denotes here not merely a

‘rite,’ but a ‘consummation’ by which a man becomes τέλειος. See below,

p. 591.

[1387] _ibid._ I. 80. To translate the passage more fully is not

convenient; I append the original: θεῷ δὲ ἢ θεᾷ μιγῆναι ἢ ὑπὸ θεοῦ

περανθῆναι νοσοῦντι μὲν θάνατον σημαίνει· τότε γὰρ ἡ ψυχὴ τὰς τῶν θεῶν

συνόδους τε καὶ μίξεις μαντεύεται, ὅταν ἐγγὺς ᾖ τοῦ καταλιπεῖν τὸ σῶμα

ᾧ ἐνοικεῖ.

[1388] _ibid._ II. 65.

[1389] _Oneirocr._ II. 49.

[1390] The majority of the references to ancient usage given below are

borrowed from Becker’s _Charicles_.

[1391] Thuc. II. 15.

[1392] Eur. _Phoen._ 347.

[1393] Aeschines, _Epist._ X. p. 680.

[1394] Cf. Pollux, III. 43.

[1395] Soph. _Antig._ 901.

[1396] _De Luctu_, 11.

[1397] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 193.

[1398] For a discussion of this point see Becker, _Charicles_ pp. 483-4.

[1399] Harpocrat. s.v. λουτροφόρος. ἔθος δὲ ἦν καὶ τοῖς ἀγάμοις

ἀποθανοῦσι λουτροφορεῖν, καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ μνῆμα ἐφίστασθαι. τοῦτο δὲ ἦν παῖς

ὑδρίαν ἔχων. The same words are repeated by Photius and Suidas. With

ἐφίστασθαι it appears necessary to supply λουτροφόρον. Cf. Pollux VIII.

66 τῶν δ’ ἀγάμων λουτροφόρος τῷ μνήματι ἐφίστατο, κόρη ἀγγεῖον ἔχουσα

ὑδροφόρον.... For other references see Becker, _Charicles_ p. 484. This

information, as regards the emblem used, is held to be incorrect. The

λουτροφόρος was not a boy bearing a pitcher, but the pitcher itself.

See Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. V. p. 388.

[1400] For this view see Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. V. p. 389. ‘It may

be suggested that originally the custom of placing a water-pitcher on

the grave of unmarried persons ... may have been meant to help them to

obtain in another world the happiness they had missed in this. In fact

it may have been part of a ceremony designed to provide the dead maiden

or bachelor with a spouse in the spirit land. Such ceremonies have

been observed in various parts of the world by peoples, who, like the

Greeks, esteemed it a great misfortune to die unmarried.’

[1401] _Plut._ 529.

[1402] Cf. Lucian, _de Luctu_ 11.

[1403] For a discussion of the point in relation to funerals see

Becker, _Charicles_ pp. 385 f. and in relation to marriage pp. 486 f.

[1404] Lucian, _de Luctu_ 11.

[1405] I. 6.

[1406] Cf. Passow, _Popul. Carm. Graec. Recent._ no. 415, and

Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. p. 153, who describes a dead woman,

whose funeral he witnessed, as ‘parée à la Gréque de ses habits de

nôces.’

[1407] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ 378.

[1408] _Charicles_ p. 487.

[1409] Lucian, _de Luctu_ 11. Aristoph. _Lysist._ 602 etc.

[1410] The influence of the Church was against the use of garlands in

early times and perhaps suppressed it in some districts. Cf. Minucius,

p. 109 ‘Nec mortuos coronamus. Ergo vos (the heathen) in hoc magis

miror, quemadmodum tribuatis exanimi aut [non] sentienti facem aut

non sentienti coronam: cum et beatus non egeat, et miser non gaudeat

floribus.’ The first _non_ is clearly to be deleted.

[1411] Cf. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 193.

[1412] Cf. _ibid._ p. 197.

[1413] Hom. _Hymn. in Demet._ 372 ff. Hence the pomegranate was treated

as ‘an accursed thing’ in the worship of Demeter at Lycosura, Paus.

VIII. 37. 7.

[1414] Paus. II. 17. 4.

[1415] See above, p. 548.

[1416] See above, p. 80.

[1417] The following references are in the main taken from Lobeck,

_Aglaophamus_.

[1418] Soph. _Fragm._ 719 (Dind.).

[1419] Hom. _Hymn. ad Cer._ 480 ff.

[1420] Pind. _Fragm._ 137 (Bergk).

[1421] Id. _Fragm._ 129. See above, p. 518.

[1422] Aristoph. _Ranae_ 440-459.

[1423] Isocr. _Paneg._ p. 46.

[1424] _Aglaoph._ I. p. 70.

[1425] περὶ εἰρήνης, p. 166.

[1426] Aristid. _Eleusin._ 259 (454).

[1427] Julian. _Or._ VII. 238. The same story in similar words recurs

in Diog. Laert. VI. 39 and Plut. _de Aud. Poet._ II. p. 21 F.

[1428] Crinagoras, _Ep._ XXX.

[1429] Cic. _de Leg._ II. § 36.

[1430] _Mathem._ I. p. 18, ed. Buller.

[1431] _Aglaoph._ I. pp. 39 f.

[1432] See Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ I. pp. 6 ff.

[1433] Diodorus, v. 77. Cf. Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of

Greek Religion_, p. 567.

[1434] For references on this point, see Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, I. 14

ff.

[1435] For the evidence that the Achaeans adopted the language of the

Pelasgians, and not _vice versâ_, see Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_,

vol. I. p. 631 ff.

[1436] _Protrept._ § 55.

[1437] Hom. _Il._ I. 221 f.

[1438] Euseb. _Demonstr. Evang._ V. 1, 268 E.

[1439] _Praep. Evang._ XV. 1, 788 C.

[1440] Προτρεπτ. § 61.

[1441] Synes. _de Prov._ II. 124 B.

[1442] Cf. Artemid. _Oneirocr._ Bk III. cap. 61.

[1443] In Thera, as I myself witnessed, and until recently at Delphi.

Greeks with whom I have spoken of this custom have often seen or heard

of it somewhere.

[1444] I regret that my notes contain no mention of my informant’s

name. I must apologise to him for the omission.

[1445] Asterius, _Encom. in SS. Martyr._ in Migne, _Patrolog.

Graeco-Lat._ vol. XL. p. 324.

[1446] _Adv. Valentin._ cap. I.

[1447] Eusebius, _Hist. Eccles._ IV. 11. Cf. Sainte-Croix, _Recherches

sur les Mystères_, 2nd ed., I. p. 366.

[1448] _loc. cit._

[1449] [Origen] _Philosophumena_, p. 115 (ed. Miller), p. 170 (ed.

Cruice). Cf. Miss J. Harrison, _Proleg. to Study of Gk Relig._ p. 549.

[1450] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ II. 18.

[1451] Dieterich, _Eine Mithras-Liturgie_, p. 125, cited by Miss J.

Harrison, _Proleg. to Study of Gk Relig._ p. 155, note 3.

[1452] Hesiod, _Theog._ 970 f. Cf. Hom. _Od._ V. 125.

[1453] Theocr. _Id._ III. 49 ff. (A. Lang’s translation).

[1454] Plutarch, _de fac. in orb. lun._ 28, cited by Miss Harrison,

_Proleg. to Study of Gk Relig._ p. 267.

[1455] See above, pp. 91 f. and 96 ff.

[1456] Theocr. _Id._ III. 46 ff.

[1457] _Protrept._ § 14.

[1458] Theocr. _Id._ XV. 86.

[1459] _Orph. Hymn._ LVI.; Bion, _Id._ I. 5. 54; Lucian, _Dial. deor._

XI. 1; Macrob. _Saturn._ I. 21; Procop. _in Esai._ XVIII. p. 258. Cf.

Lenormant, _Monogr. de la voie sacrée éleusin._, where many other

references are given.

[1460] Dem. Κατὰ Νεαίρας, pp. 1369-1371 _et passim_. Cf. Arist. Ἀθην.

Πολ. 3.

[1461] _Etymol. Mag._ 227. 36.

[1462] Hesych. s.v. γεραραί.

[1463] See above, pp. 339 ff.

[1464] Plutarch, _de defectu orac._ cap. 14 (p. 417).

[1465] See above, p. 139.

[1466] Not so, however, to Artemidorus. Cf. _Oneirocr._ I. 80.

[1467] _Protrept._ § 34.

[1468] _l. c._

[1469] _Protrept._ § 16.

[1470] Theophr. _Char._ 28 (ed. Jebb).

[1471] _l. c._

[1472] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ II. 15.

[1473] The cymbal certainly belonged to Demeter also (see Miss

Harrison, _op. cit._ p. 562) but not, I think, the kettle-drum.

[1474] Psellus (_Quaenam sunt Graecorum opiniones de daemonibus_, 3,

ed. Migne) refers the formulary to the rites of Demeter and Kore. But

I cannot agree with Miss J. Harrison (_Prolegomena to the Study of

Greek Religion_, p. 569) as to the importance of Psellus’ testimony

in any respect. He appears to me to give no more than a _résumé_ of

information derived from Clement’s _Protreptica_, misunderstood and

even more confused.

[1475] Paus. II. 17. 3.

[1476] Miss J. Harrison, _op. cit._ p. 536, commenting on

_Philosophumena_, ed. Cruice, v. 3.

[1477] A title under which both Zeus and Hermes were known; see

Aristoph. _Pax_, 42, and Schol. _ibid._ 649.

[1478] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ § 54.

[1479] Athen. VI. p. 253 A. Shortly afterwards he quotes a song (253

D) in which it is the name of Demeter which is coupled with that of

Demetrius.

[1480] Athen. VI. 253 A, and 261 B.

[1481] Glycon was Alexander’s new god, a re-incarnation of Asclepius,

born in the form of a snake out of an egg discovered by Alexander.

[1482] A superstitious old Roman entrapped by Alexander.

[1483] Lucian, _Alexander seu Pseudomantis_, cap. 38-39 (II. 244 ff.).

[1484] See Miss J. Harrison, _op. cit._ pp. 549 ff.

[1485] Paton, _Inscr. of Cos_, 386, cited by Rouse, _Greek Votive

Offerings_, p. 246.

[1486] Plutarch, _Conjug. Praec. ad init._

[1487] Schol. _ad Soph. Antig._ 1241.

[1488] Photius, _Lex. Rhet._ Vol. II. p. 670 (ed. Porson), cited by

Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, I. p. 245.

[1489] For the chief references, see Farnell, _loc. cit._

[1490] Farnell, _op. cit._ p. 191.

[1491] Diod. Sic. V. 73; Pollux III. 38. Cf. Farnell, _op. cit._ p. 246.

[1492] Pollux, _l. c._ ταύτῃ (τῇ Ἤρᾳ) τοῖς προτελείοις προὐτέλουν τὰς

κόρας.

[1493] Cf. Plutarch, _Amator. Narrat._ 1, where the girls of Haliartus

are said to have bathed themselves in the spring Cissoessa immediately

before making the sacrifices just mentioned, and evidently as part of

the same ritual.

[1494] [Aeschines] _Epist._ 10, p. 680.

[1495] Chariton IV. 4.

[1496] _Gorgias_, p. 493 B.

[1497] Frazer, _ad Pausan._ X. 31. 9 (vol. V. p. 389).

[1498] I cannot pretend to have gone into the whole literature of the

subject, but I find no reference to this passage either in Dr Frazer’s

_Pausanias_, _l. c._, or in Miss Harrison’s _Proleg. to Study of Gk

Relig._ pp. 614 ff., where the same topic is fully discussed.

[1499] Lucian, _Dial. Marin._ 6. 3.

[1500] Eustath. _ad Hom. Il._ XXIII. 141.

[1501] _Anthol. Pal._ VII. 507.

[1502] For other examples see Lenormant, _Monographie de la voie sacrée

éleusinienne_, pp. 50 f., where also the above example is quoted.

[1503] Auson. _Epitaph._ no. 33.

[1504] _Prolegomena to Study of Gk Religion_, pp. 573 ff.

[1505] _op. cit._ p. 586; Kaibel, _C.I.G.I.S._, 641.

[1506] See above, p. 586.

[1507] See above, p. 586.

[1508] See above, p. 589.