Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks

by Erwin Rohde

§ 2

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

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

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

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