The Telestrion or Hall of Initiation, sometimes called "The Mystic Temple," was surrounded on all sides by steps, which presumably served as seats for the initiated while the sacred dramas and processions took place on the floor of the hall. These steps were partly built in and partly cut in the solid rock; in later times they appear to have been covered with marble. There were two doors on each side of the hall with the exception of the north-west, where the entrance was cut out of the solid rock, a rock terrace at a higher level adjoining it. This was probably the station of those not yet admitted to full initiation. The roof of the hall was carried by rows of columns which were more than once renewed. The Hall itself did not accommodate more than four thousand people. The building was perhaps more accurately described by Aristophanes, who called it: "The House that welcomed the Mystæ," and he carefully distinguished it from the Temple of Demeter. It was not the dwelling-place of any god, and it, therefore, did not contain any holy image. It was built for the celebration of a definite ritual, and the Eleusinian Hall of Initiation was therefore the only known church of antiquity, if by that term we mean the meeting-place of the congregation.
Mr. James Christie, in his work on Greek Vases, contends that the phantasmal scenes in the Mysteries were shown by transparencies, such as are yet used by the Chinese, Javanese, and Hindus.
V
THEIR MYSTICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Life, as we know it, was looked upon by the ancient philosophers as death. Plato considered the body as the sepulchre of the soul, and in the Cratylus acquiesces in the doctrine of Orpheus that the soul is punished through its union with the body. Empedocles, lamenting his connection with this corporeal world, pathetically exclaimed:—
For this I weep, for this indulge my woe,
That e'er my soul such novel realms should know.
He also calls this material abode, or the realms of generation,
a joyless region,
Where slaughter, rage, and countless ills reside.
Philolaus, the celebrated Pythagorean, wrote: "The ancient theologists and priests testify that the soul is united with the body for the sake of suffering punishment, and that it is buried in the body as in a sepulchre"; while Pythagoras himself said: "Whatever we see when awake is death, and when asleep a dream."