The reader will find the fullest information about these ceremonies in the Eleusinia, forming the first treatise in the work of Lobeck called Aglaophamus; and in the Dissertation called Eleusinia, in K. O. Müller’s Kleine Schriften. vol ii, p. 242, seqq.
[313] Diodor. xiii. 6
[314] We shall find these sacred families hereafter to be the most obstinate in opposing the return of Alkibiadês from banishment (Thucyd. viii, 53).
[315] Thucyd. vi, 53-61.
[316] Plutarch, Alkib. c. 22. Θέσσαλος Κίμωνος Λακιάδης, Ἀλκιβιάδην Κλεινίου Σκαμβωνίδην εἰσήγγειλεν ἀδικεῖν περὶ τὼ θεὼ, τὴν Δήμητρα καὶ τὴν Κόρην, ἀπομιμούμενον τὰ μυστήρια, καὶ δεικνύοντα τοῖς αὐτοῦ ἑταίροις ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ, ἔχοντα στολὴν οἵανπερ ἱεροφάντης ἔχων δεικνύει τὰ ἱερὰ, καὶ ὀνομάζοντα αὐτὸν μὲν ἱεροφάντην, Πολυτίωνα δὲ δᾳδοῦχον, κήρυκα δὲ Θεόδωρον Φηγεέα· τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἑταίρους, μύστας προσαγορεύοντα καὶ ἐπόπτας, παρὰ τὰ νόμιμα καὶ τὰ καθεστηκότα ὑπὸ τ’ Εὐμολπιδῶν καὶ κηρύκων καὶ τῶν ἱερέων τῶν ἐξ Ἐλευσῖνος.
[317] Thucyd. vi, 61.
[318] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 2, 13.
[319] Thucyd. vi. 61; Plutarch, Alkib. c. 22-33; Lysias, Orat. vi, cont. Andokid. sect. 42.
Plutarch says that it would have been easy for Alkibiadês to raise a mutiny in the army at Katana, had he chosen to resist the order for coming home. But this is highly improbable. Considering what his conduct became immediately afterwards, we shall see good reason to believe that he would have taken this step, had it been practicable.
[320] To appreciate fairly the violent emotion raised at Athens by the mutilation of the Hermæ and by the profanation of the mysteries, it is necessary to consider the way in which analogous acts of sacrilege have been viewed in Christian and Catholic penal legislation, even down to the time of the first French Revolution.