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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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