Adown the sea or along the swirl
Of the rivers eternal that rush and whirl—
The ether, the moon, and the streams and the sea
They dance to honour Persephone,
The maiden crowned with the golden sheen,
And Demeter the Mother—ah, Dread is she!”
OLIVE TREES ON THE WAY TO ELEUSIS
The singing of the vast throngs, breaking out at sunrise, changing its themes in fresh enthusiasms through the long day and swelling by night into triumphant volume, must have been unforgettable. Herodotus relates that in the gloomy time when Athens was abandoned, and its plain laid waste by Xerxes, even a Medizing exile was haunted by its ghostly echoes. Dicæus of Athens chanced to be in the Thriasian plain with Demaratus of Sparta, and saw a cloud of dust advancing from Eleusis, such as a host of thirty thousand men might raise. As he was wondering who the men could possibly be, a sound reached his ear and he thought that he recognised the mystic hymn of Iacchus. Even as they looked, the dust became a cloud and sailed away to Salamis, making for the station of the Grecian fleet. This was a sign to the Athenian that the gods of Eleusis would destroy the fleet of Xerxes. To us an echo of the singing comes through the serious lyrics in the “Frogs” of Aristophanes. At the portals of Hades a band of mystics sing over again the processional hymns they had often sung on earth, beginning with the sunrise summons to Iacchus to leave his Athenian shrine:—
“O Iacchus, O Iacchus,