[1509] I am forced by these considerations to dissent from Miss Harrison’s view as expressed op. cit. p. 594, ‘Here the symbolism seems to be of birth rather than of marriage,’ and again ‘this rite of birth or adoption ...’: and indeed this view seems hardly to tally with that which she suggests later (p. 600), “Burial itself may well have been to them (the Pythagoreans) as to Antigone a mystic marriage: ‘I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld.’”
[1510] Furtwängler, Die Idee des Todes, p. 293.
[1512] Plutarch, Sympos. IV. 5. 3.
[1513] Aristoph. Aves, 1737.
[1514] Cf. Schol. ad Aristoph. l. c.
[1515] This, I am aware, is not an unique case. Plato applies the same epithet to the gods as a whole, but above all to Eros, clearly, I think, with something of the same significance. See Plato, Sympos. § 21, p. 195 A.
[1516] Cf. Theo Smyrnaeus, Math. I. 18; Aristid. Eleusin. p. 415; Plato, Phaedrus, p. 48.
[1517] Lenormant, Monographie de la voie sacrée éleusinienne, p. 54.
[1518] l. c.