Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals

by J. C. Lawson

Now if, as I have supposed, the doctrine of the marriage of men with their gods was the cardinal doctrine of the mysteries (for the other doctrine of bodily survival is merely preliminary and subordinate to this), and if some dramatic representation was given as a means of instilling into men’s minds the hope of attaining to that summit of bliss, it is not difficult to see what an opening the mysteries gave to their opponents for the charges which were actually brought. The ultimate bliss promised to the initiated was in general terms said to consist in ‘being god-beloved and dwelling with the gods,’ and this phrase, we are supposing, signified to the initiated themselves an assurance that their gods would admit them even to wedlock with them in the future life. It required then no great ingenuity in the way of misrepresentation for Clement, if he had but an inkling of the secret doctrine, to denounce the heathen and their beliefs in that opprobrious phrase, ‘Such are the doctrines of gods that commit fornication with you.’ This champion of Christianity knew no chivalry, gave no quarter, disdained no weapon, held no method of attack too base or insidious, if only he could wound and crush his heathen foes. It was his part to pervert, to degrade, to blaspheme their whole religion; and that which they held most sacred was marked out for his most virulent scorn. Naturally to those who drew near with pure and reverent minds the mysteries wore a very different aspect. That which Clement misnamed lust, they felt to be love; where he saw only degradation, they recognised a wonderful condescension of their gods. For in the words of that religion which Clement preached ‘to the pure all things are pure’; and it was purification which the initiated sought by abstinence and ablution during the first part of the Eleusinian festival before they were admitted to their holy of holies.

Indeed if we would understand at all the spirit in which the ancient Greeks approached the celebration of the mysteries, we should do well to turn our attention for a little to the modern Greek celebration of Holy Week and Easter; for this is, so to speak, the Christian counterpart of the old mysteries, and seems to owe much to them. It so happens that Easter falls in the same period of the year as did the great Eleusinian festival—the period when the re-awakening of the earth from its winter sleep suggests to man his own re-awakening from the sleep of death; and it is probable that the Church turned this coincidence in time to good account by making her own festival a substitute for the festival of Demeter or other kindred rites, and even by modelling her own services after the pagan pattern; for it would seem that the Church, when once her early struggles had secured her a firm position, exchanged hostility for conciliation, and sought to absorb rather than to oust paganism. Her complaisance is clearly seen in the ceremonies of Good Friday and Easter; for, with all her severe repression of the use of idols (whose place however is well supplied by the pictures which are called icons), she has permitted the use of a sculptured figure at this one festival, and even down to this day Christ is represented in some localities[1443] in effigy; and it can hardly be doubted that the purpose of this concession was to make the Christian festival as dramatic and attractive as the pagan mysteries celebrated at the same season. Again the absorption of pagan ideas is well illustrated by the belief still prevalent among the peasants that the Easter festival, like the cult of Demeter, has an important bearing upon the growth of the crops. A story in point was told to me by one who had travelled in Greece[1444]. Happening to be in some village of Eubœa during Holy Week, he had been struck by the emotion which the Good Friday services evoked; and observing on the next day the same general air of gloom and despondency, he questioned an old woman about it; whereupon she replied, ‘Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year.’

In other details too there is a close correspondence between the pagan and the Christian festivals. As a period of abstinence was required of the mystae, so during Lent and still more strictly during Holy Week the Greek peasants keep a fast which certainly predisposes them to hysterical emotion during the services; and en revanche, just as the initiated are said to have indulged themselves too freely when the mysteries were over, so the modern peasants, when the announcement of the Resurrection has been made, disperse in haste to feast upon their Easter lamb, and while it is still a-cooking experience the inevitable effects of plentiful wine on an empty stomach. Again, just as the rites of Eleusis were nocturnal, so the chief services of Holy Week are those of the Friday night and the Saturday night; and it may be that the torch-light processions which close the services on those two nights are related to the δᾳδουχία of Eleusis. But these are minor details; it is in the actual services of Good Friday and Easter that the most striking resemblance to the Eleusinian mysteries is found, and the spirit in which the worshippers approach may still be the same now as then. Let me briefly describe the festival as I saw it in the island of Santorini, or, to give it the old name which has revived in modern times, Thera.

The Lenten fast was drawing to a close when I arrived. For the first week it is strictly observed, meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, and even olive-oil being prohibited, so that the ordinary diet is reduced to bread and water, to which is sometimes added a nauseous soup made from dried cuttle-fish or octopus; for these along with shellfish are not reckoned to be animal food, as being bloodless. During the next four weeks some relaxation is allowed; but no one with any pretensions to piety would even then partake of fish, meat, or eggs; the last-mentioned are stored up until Easter and then, being dyed red, are either eaten or—more wisely—offered to visitors. Then comes ‘the Great Week’ (ἡ μεγάλη ἑβδομάδα), and with it the same strict regulations come into force as during the first week of Lent. It was not hard to perceive that for most of the villagers the fast had been a real and painful abstinence. Work had almost ceased; for there was little energy left. Leisure was not enjoyed; for there was little spirit even for chatting. Everywhere white, sharp-featured faces told of real hunger; and the silence was most often broken by an outburst of irritability. In a few days time I could understand it; for I too perforce fasted; and I must own that a daily diet of dry bread for déjeuner and of dry bread and octopus soup for dinner soon changed my outlook upon life. Little wonder then if these folk after six weeks of such treatment were nervous and excitable.

Such was the condition of body and mind in which they attended the long service of Good Friday night. Service I have said, but drama were a more fitting word, a funeral-drama. At the top of the nave, just below the chancel-step, stood a bier and upon it lay the figure of the Christ, all too death-like in the dim light. The congregation gaze upon him, reverently hushed, while the priests’ voices rise in prayer and chant as it were in lamentation for the dead God lying there in state. Hour after hour passes. The women have kissed the dead form, and are gone. The moment has come for carrying the Christ out to burial. The procession moves forward—in front, the priests with candles and torches and, guarded by them, the open bier borne shoulder-high—behind, a reverent, bare-headed crowd. The night is dark and gusty. It rains, and the rugged, tortuous alleys of the town are slippery. It is late, but none are sleeping. Unheeding of wind and rain, the women kneel at open door or window, praying, swinging censers, sprinkling perfume on the passing bier. Slowly, haltingly, led by the dirge of priests, now in darkness, now lighted by the torches’ flare and intermittent beams from cottage doorways, groping at corners, stumbling in ill-paved by-ways, the mourners follow their God to his grave. The circuit of the town is done. All have taken their last look upon the dead. The sepulchre is reached—a vault beneath the church from which the funeral started. The priests alone enter with the bier. There is a pause. The crowd waits. The silence is deep as the darkness, only broken here and there by a deep-drawn sigh. Is it the last depth of anguish, or is it well-nigh relief that the long strain is over? The priests return. In silence the crowd have waited, in silence they disperse. It is finished.

But there is a sequel on the morrow. Soon after dark on Easter-eve the same weary yet excited faces may be seen gathered in the church. But there is a change too; there is a feeling abroad of anxiety, of expectancy. Hours must yet pass ere midnight, and not till then is there hope of the announcement, ‘Christ is risen!’ The suspense seems long. To-night there is restlessness rather than silence. Some go to and fro between the church and their homes; others join discordantly in the chants and misplace the responses; anything to cheat the long hours of waiting. Midnight draws near; from hand to hand are passed the tapers and candles which shall light the joyful procession, if only the longed-for announcement be made. What is happening there now behind those curtains which veil the chancel from the expectant throng? Midnight strikes. The curtains are drawn back. Yes, there is the bier, borne but yesternight to the grave. It is empty. That is only the shroud upon it. The words of the priest ring out true, ‘Christ is risen!’ And there behind the chancel, see, a second veil is drawn back. There in the sanctuary, on the altar-steps, bright with a blaze of light stands erect the figure of the Christ who, so short and yet so long a while ago, was borne lifeless to the tomb. A miracle, a miracle! Quickly from the priest’s lighted candle the flame is passed. In a moment the dim building is illumined by a lighted taper in every hand. A procession forms, a joyful procession now. Everywhere are light and glad voices and the embraces of friends, crying aloud the news ‘Christ is risen’ and answering ‘He is risen indeed.’ In every home the lamb is prepared with haste, the wine flows freely; in the streets is the flash of torches, the din of fire-arms, and all the exuberance of simple joy. The fast is over; the dead has been restored to life before men’s eyes; well may they rejoice even to ecstasy. For have they not felt the ecstasy of sorrow? This was no tableau on which they looked, no drama in which they played a part. It was all true, all real. The figure on the bier was indeed the dead Christ; the figure on the altar-steps was indeed the risen Christ. In these simple folk religion has transcended reason; they have reached the heights of spiritual exaltation; they have seen and felt as minds more calm and rational can never see nor feel.

And the ancient Greeks, had not they too the gift of ecstasy, the faculty to soar above facts on the wings of imagination? When the drama of Demeter and Kore was played before the eyes of the initiated at Eleusis, were not they too uplifted in mind until amid the magic of night they were no longer spectators of a drama but themselves had a share in Demeter’s sorrow and wandering and joy? For the pagan story is not unlike the Christian story in its power to move both tears and gladness. As now men mourn beside the bier of Christ, so in old time may men have shared Demeter’s mourning for her child who though divine had suffered the lot of men and passed away to the House of Hades. As now men rejoice when they behold the risen Christ, so in old time may men have shared Demeter’s joy when her child returned from beneath the earth, proving that there is life beyond the grave. But the old story taught more than this. Not only did Kore live in the lower world, but her passing thither was not death but wedding. Therefore just as now the resurrection of Christ, who though divine is the representative of mankind, is held to be an earnest of man’s resurrection, so the wedded life of Kore in the nether world may have been to the initiated an assurance of the same bliss to be vouchsafed to them hereafter.

What was there then in this drama of Demeter and Kore at which the Christian writers could take offence or cavil? We do not of course know in what detail the story was represented; but the pivot on which the whole plot turned was necessarily the rape of Kore. Now it appears that in the play the part of Aïdoneus was taken by an hierophant and the part of Kore by a priestess; and it was the alleged indecency resulting therefrom which the fathers of the Church most severely censured. Asterius, after defending the Christians from the charge of worshipping saints as if they had been not human but divine, seeks to turn the tables on his pagan opponents by accusing them of deifying Demeter and Kore, whom he evidently regards as having once been human figures in mythology. Then he continues, ‘Is not Eleusis the scene of the descent into darkness, and of the solemn acts of intercourse between the hierophant and the priestess, alone together? Are not the torches extinguished, and does not the large, the numberless assembly of common people believe that their salvation lies in that which is being done by the two in the darkness[1445]?’ Again it was objected against the Valentinians by Tertullian that they copied ‘the whoredoms of Eleusis[1446],’ and from another authority we learn that part of the ceremonies of these heretics consisted in ‘preparing a nuptial chamber’ and celebrating ‘a spiritual marriage[1447].’ These two statements, read in conjunction, form a strong corroboration of the information given by Asterius; and we are bound to conclude that the scene of the rape of Kore was represented at Eleusis by the descent of the priest and priestess who played the chief parts into a dark nuptial chamber.

Now it is easy enough to suppose, as Sainte-Croix suggests[1448], that public morals were safeguarded by assigning the chief rôles in the drama to persons of advanced age, or, as one ancient author states[1449], by temporarily and partially paralysing the hierophant with a small dose of hemlock. Whether each of the initiated was at any time conducted through the same ritual is uncertain. In the formulary of the Eleusinian rites, as recorded by Clement of Alexandria—‘I fasted; I drank the sacred potion (κυκεῶνα); I took out of the chest; having wrought (ἐργασάμενος) I put back into the basket and from the basket into the chest[1450]’—the expression ‘having wrought’ has been taken to be an euphemism denoting the same mystic union as between hierophant and priestess[1451]. If this view is correct, it would imply no doubt that full initiation required the candidate to go through the whole ritual in person; in this case it must be presumed that some precaution such as the dose of hemlock was taken in the interests of morality.

But the mere fact that a scene of rape should form any part of a religious rite, was to the Christians a stumbling-block. This was their insurmountable objection to the mysteries, and they were only too prone to exaggerate a ceremony, which with reverent and delicate treatment need have been in no way morally deleterious, into a sensual and noxious orgy. The story, how Demeter’s beautiful and innocent daughter was suddenly carried off from the meadow where she was gathering flowers into the depths of the dark under-world, spoke to them only of the violence and lust of her ravisher Aïdoneus. But the legend might bear another complexion. Kore, as representative of mankind or at least of the initiated among mankind, suffers what seems the most cruel lot, a sudden departure from this life in the midst of youth and beauty and spring-time; and Demeter searches for her awhile in vain, and mourns for her as men mourn their dead. Yet afterward it is found that there is no cruelty in Kore’s lot, for she is the honoured bride of the king of that world to which she was borne away; and Demeter is comforted, for her child is not dead nor lost to her, but is allowed to return in living form to visit her. What then must have been the ‘happier hopes’ held out to those who had looked on the great drama of Eleusis? What was meant by that prospect of being ‘god-beloved and sharing the life of gods’? How came it that the assembly of the initiated believed their salvation to lie in the union of Hades and Persephone, represented in the persons of hierophant and priestess, in the subterranean nuptial-chamber? What was the bearing of the legend dramatically enacted upon these hopes and prospects and beliefs? Surely it taught that not only was there physical life beyond death, but a life of wedded happiness with the gods.