On the right are the remains of a temple of Aphrodité. The Island of Salamis is on the left—middle distance—looking over the Bay of Eleusis.
regarding them) felt it necessary to combat the idea that they embodied the essential truths of Christianity.
After Eleusis was incorporated with Attica the Mysteries were celebrated with a pomp and splendour unknown in any other religious service in the Hellenic world—music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and dancing being all laid under tribute for the purpose of rendering them attractive and imposing. To heighten the expectations and deepen the impressions of the worshippers there was a preliminary initiation into the Lesser Mysteries in February at Agræ, a suburb of Athens, before the chief celebration in autumn at Eleusis; and a year had to elapse after participation in the latter before one could be admitted to full communion. On the first day there was a great assembly at Athens; next day they bathed in the sea; the third day they offered sacrifice; the fourth day they marched in procession along the Sacred Way to Eleusis, which they reached at sunset. During the night they wandered about the shore with torches, looking for the lost Persephone. At length they were admitted in a state of excitement, intensified by their long fast, into a brilliantly lighted hall called the Telesterium, which has been recently excavated. In this hall the strange events which had for some days absorbed their attention were dramatically exhibited before them on two nights, amid profound silence, the divinities concerned being personally represented in appropriate costume. Certain sacred relics which Demeter had shown to the daughters of Celeus were produced, to be handled and kissed by the worshippers, who repeated the solemn formula of initiation. Everything was fitted to awaken feelings of reverence and awe, and the whole celebration seems to have held a similar place in the religion of the Greeks to what the Mass has among Roman Catholics, the Communion among Protestants, and the Easter Eve ceremonial among the members of the Greek Church. While the sorrows of bereavement, the pangs of inevitable death, and the mysterious gloom of the underworld could hardly fail to be impressed on the minds of the celebrants, the return of Persephone to her mother in spring seems to have inspired a hope of immortality, for we are told that the culminating point in the service in the Telesterium was the mowing down of a ripe ear of corn. It requires no stretch of imagination to believe that it conveyed to the devout worshipper something of the thought which Jesus Christ expressed on the eve of His death to certain Greeks who came desiring to see Him, when He said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The same thought is echoed by St. Paul in writing to the Corinthians on the subject of the Resurrection, when he says, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” This view of the Mysteries is confirmed by the statement made by Cicero, who had himself been initiated, that they taught men “not only to live happily but also to die with a fairer hope.”
Like all symbolic rites, however, they depended for
