Almost all analyses of ancient festivals are no more than probable, ahistorical scripts or templates.
By Dr. Jan N. Bremmer
Visiting Research Scholar
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
New York University
Introduction
The philosopher Democritus once said: ‘A life without festivals is like a road with-out inns’(B 230), but there can be little doubt that of all the Greek festivals it is the Eleusinian Mysteries that most intrigue the modern public.[1] It is the aim here to take a fresh look at this festival at the height of the Athenian empire, the later fifth century BC. In contrast to older studies, the most recent detailed analyses, by Walter Burkert, Fritz Graf and Robert Parker, have given up on the attempt to offer a linear reconstruction of the initiation proper.[2] Yet there is something un-satisfactory in such an approach, as it prevents us from seeing the course of the ritual and appreciating its logic.[3] Ideally, we should reconstruct a linear ‘thick description’ (to use the famous term of the late Clifford Geertz [1926–2006]) of the experience of the average initiate, mystês.[4] We are prevented from doing this because some of the main sources of rather scanty literary information are Christian authors, who often wanted to defame the ritual, and, in some cases, lived six or seven hundred years after Athens’ heyday. Nonetheless, it also seems unnecessary to limit ourselves strictly to pre-Platonic evidence.
Plato’s allusions to the Eleusinian Mysteries had a huge influence,[5] but the Mysteries continued to exist for many centuries, and there is no reason to assume that other ancient authors were merely repeating Plato rather than drawing on their own experiences or those of otherauthors.[6] For these reasons, our account will be ‘thin’ rather than ‘thick’ and tentative rather than assured. In fact, almost all analyses of ancient festivals are no more than probable, ahistorical scripts or templates, because we cannot access the original performances, and must confine ourselves to static outlines of festivals, however unsatisfactory that may be. This is certainly true of the Eleusinian Mysteries: it is highly unlikely that this festival remained unchanged for a whole millennium. Yet our dearth of sources means that we cannot identify many changes in the ritual over the course of this period,[7] although we know that at the end of the fifth century BC there was a considerable Orphic influence, and in Late Antiquity the Mysteries had become allegorised.[8] Our analysis will follow a chronological order and look first at the necessary qualifications of the initiands and their preparations (§1), then at the first degree of initiation, the myêsis(§2), continuing to the highest degree of Eleusinian initiation, the epopteia(§3) and finishing with the aftermath of the initiation and some conclusions (§4).
Qualifications and Preparations for Initiation
Let us start with the identity of the average initiates. Uniquely for Greek festivals, the Mysteries were open to men and women,[9] free and slaves,[10] young and old, Greeks and non-Greeks.[11] Yet not everyone could afford the Mysteries. Prospective initiates first had to complete a whole series of ritual acts, as we know from the Church Father Clement of Alexandria (about AD 200), who relates the following ‘password’ of the initiates: ‘I fasted, I drank the kykeon (like Demeter in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter), I took from the hamper, after working I deposited in the basket and from the basket in the hamper’.[12] It is clear that the meaning of these allusive acts is intentionally left obscure, but they could not have been part of the actual Mysteries because there was no time in the programme for a couple of thousand initiates to perform such acts or to fast in a meaningful way. They will have been performed either at the Lesser Mysteries in the spring,[13] seven months earlier,[14] or, perhaps more likely, at some other time, because the receipts of the Lesser Mysteries in 407/6 were much lower than those of the Greater ones.[15] Prospective initiates will have been introduced into the secret teachings of the Mysteries by so-called mystagogues, friends and acquaintances who were already initiated:[16] Andocides mentions that he initiated guest friends, the orator Lysias promised to initiate Metaneira, the courtesan he was in love with, and Plutarch stresses that the murderer of Plato’s friend Dio had also been his mystagogue,[17] which clearly made the murder even more heinous.[18]
Initiation into the Mysteries, then, was not a simple act; potential initiates must have been in a position to spend time and money, as they also had to pay a fee to the officiants.[19] All these conditions will have limited participation mainly to the less poor strata of the population. In addition, we should never forget that not every Athenian was initiated. The story that Aeschylus escaped condemnation for revealing the mysteries by arguing that he had not been initiated is probably a misunderstanding by Clement of Alexandria, our source,[20] but Socrates was not initiated; Andocides, charged with impiety in relation to the Mysteries, reports that the uninitiated had to withdraw from his trial,[21] and the lexicographer Pollux, whose information seems to derive from the orator Hyper-ides, records that jurors in Mysteries trials were chosen from those who had been initiated in the epopteia.[22] These cases are somewhat exceptional, but we must remain aware that we simply do not know how many Athenians participated in the Mysteries.
On the fifteenth of the month Boedromion (September) well over 3000 prospective initiates and mystagogues assembled in the agora of Athens to hear the proclamation of the festival, a gathering that excluded those who could not speak proper Greek or had blood on their hands;[23] in later antiquity, in line with the growing interiorisation of purity,[24] this ban came to be extended to those ‘impure in soul’.[25] Participation en masse meant that the initiates had to bring their own sacrificial victims, just as they did at other large festivals, such as the Diasia for Zeus Meilichios and the Thesmophoria.[26] The initiates of the more remote regions must have brought their own piglets, to sacrifice later, and their squealing can hardly have enhanced the solemnity of the occasion (we may compare the inevitable ringing of cell phones at inappropriate moments today). The next day the formula ‘initiates to the sea’ sent them off to the coast in order to purify themselves and their animals.[27] This must have been an interesting occasion for voyeuristic males, as Athenaeus (13.590f) relates that the famous courtesan Phryne did not visit the public baths, and was only ever seen naked, even if perhaps from a distance, when she went into the ocean at the ‘Eleusinia’ (surely meaning the Mysteries) and the Poseidonia of Aegina. Some participants must have confused purification with having a nice swim, as in 339 BC a prospective initiate was eaten by a shark.[28] A sacrifice of the ‘mystic piglets’ probably concluded the day.[29]
The ‘Myêsis’
On the morning of the 19th Boedromion, after three days rest (a free period of time that had made it possible to intercalate the Epidauria festival for Asclepius),[30] the prospective initiates assembled again in the agora and formed the procession to the sanctuary of Demeter and her daughter Persephone in Eleusis.[31] At the front went the Eleusinian dignitaries,[32] dressed in their full glory,[33] the priestesses carrying sacred objects on their heads in special baskets closed by red ribbons,[34] and, in later times, the ephebes, the Athenian male youth. They were followed by a huge cavalcade of Greeks, each holding a kind of pilgrim’s staff consisting of a single branch of myrtle or several held together by rings[35] and accompanied by their donkeys with provisions and torches for the coming days.[36] The procession now left the city, and it would have been quite a few hours before they completed the roughly 15 mile journey, which was repeatedly interrupted by sacred dances, sacrifices, libations, ritual washings,[37] and the singing of hymns accompanied by pipes.[38] It was hot and dusty, but the crowds did not care and rhythmically chanted ‘Iakch’, o Iakche’, invoking the god Iakchos at the head of the procession, who was closely related to and sometimes identified with Dionysos.[39] Later reports told how during the battle of Salamis (480 BC), ‘a great light flamed out from Eleusis, and an echoing cry filled the Thriasian plain down to the sea, as of multitudes of men together conducting the mystic Iakchos in procession’.[40] At times, the scene must have resembled that of fervent Catholic or Shi’ite processions.
The participants were now in that transitory stage of betwixt and between, which, as the anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983) has taught us, is often characterised by reversals and confusions of the social order.[41] During the journey the young mocked the old,[42] at the bridge over the Athenian river Kephisos a prostitute hurled mockery at the passers-by,[43] and the wealthier women who rode in buggies reviled one another.[44] Although some couples must have been initiated together,[45] in general the occasion presented an opportunity for the two sexes to take a close look at one another in a way that would have been unthinkable in normal circumstances. Aristophanes even has one of his male characters peep at a slave girl who had performed a Janet Jackson act with her top.[46] That will have been wishful thinking, but Phaedra, a kind of Athenian desperate housewife, first saw Hippolytus when he came to Athens for, to quote Euripides,‘the viewing of and initiation into the most solemn mysteries’ (Hippolytos 25).
At the end of the day, the procession finally reached the sanctuary ‘together with Iakchos’,[47] and they entered it from the east through the relatively new Propylon that had been constructed around 430 BC.[48] The night fell early, and the flickering of the thousands of torches must have produced a near psychedelic effect among the weary travellers.[49] Recent neurological research has stressed that a good walk can produce euphoric effects.[50] I take it therefore that the ‘pilgrims’ were already in a state of excitement when they reached their goal, which can only have increased that mood. At the entry to the sanctuary was the Kallichoron Well, literally meaning ‘Beautiful dancing’, which was the location for dancing during the Mysteries cited by Euripides in his Ion (1074); apparently, the ‘pilgrims’ danced their way into the sanctuary.[51] Demeter is portrayed several times as seated on the well,[52] so the place clearly had a marked symbolic significance.
After their tiring but inspiring journey, the prospective initiates are unlikely to have performed other ritual obligations, and the evening and night must have been fairly quiet. The next day will have begun with sacrifices, as was normal. Wehear of sacrifices by the epimelêtai, the archôn basileus and the ephebes.[53] To demonstrate their physical prowess, the ephebes, ‘in the way of the Greeks’ (Eur. Helen 1562), lifted up the sacrificial bull to have its throat cut. This custom is attested in many inscriptions but was doubted by Paul Stengel, the greatest expert on Greek sacrifice at the turn of the twentieth century. He had put the question to the Berlin abattoir, where the possibility was laughed away. Yet the sixth-century athlete Milo of Croton had gained great fame for lifting a four-year old bull on his shoulders and carrying it round the stadium at Olympia, and a more recently published sixth-century amphora shows us a group of adult males with a bull on their shoulders, clearly on their way to the sacrifice.[54] Modern viewers of bulls or oxen will probably share Stengel’s doubts, but ancient Greek bovids were considerably smaller than those we see nowadays.[55] Despite this difference–and bovids on the mainland may have been somewhat bigger–the ‘lifting up of the bulls’ was undoubtedly a feat that was admired by the prospective initiates. Burkert places these sacrifices after the completion of the whole ritual of the Mysteries,[56] but this seems less likely, as people would hardly have been very interested in such ritual activities after the highlights of the actual initiation were over.
Some time after sunset, the prospective initiates would go to the telestêrion, where the actual initiation would take place over two consecutive nights.[57] This was a square or rectangular building of about 27 by 25 metres, seating around3000 people,[58] and in its centre was a small chapel, the anaktoron/anaktora,[59] about 3 by 12 metres, which had remained in the same place despite successive reconstructions and innovations. This housed the sacred objects that were displayed at some point in the ritual. Given that there were 5 rows of 5 pillars each inside the telestêrion, it is understandable that, as Plutarch noted, there was shouting and uncomfortable jostling at the entrance to the building, presumably in order to get the best places.[60] Finally, the initiates, who would have washed themselves to be pure for the occasion,[61] sat down on the 8 rows of stepped seats around the walls ‘in awe and silence’,[62] the room smelling of extinguished torches,[63] darkness reigning supreme. The initiation could begin.
But what was the programme? In the second century AD a religious entrepreneur, Alexander of Abonuteichos (a kind of Greek Joseph Smith), founded Mysteries which were closely modelled on those of Eleusis. Their highlights were divided over two nights, with a kind of sacred wedding and the birth of a child on the second night.[64] The same division over two nights will have taken place in Eleusis, as there were two grades of initiation,[65] and two nights were available within the programme of the Mysteries.[66] It seems a reasonable guess that each night was different:[67] the freshly initiated would surely not have had to leave the scene after the climax of their initiation in order to clear the field for those aspiring to the highest grade.[68] We should therefore distribute the information that has come down to us over the two nights. This is not impossible, as both Plato in the Phaedrus and Christian authors assign certain events explicitly to the highest grade of the initiation, the epopteia, literally ‘the viewing’. Thatl eaves the events connected with the kidnapping of Persephone for the first night.
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the foundation myth of the Mysteries,[69] relates how Hades kidnapped Persephone and how her mother Demeter wandered the earth in search of her. When her daughter had been returned to her, Demeter promised fields yellow with corn and a better afterlife. It was this myth that was in some way acted out by the Eleusinian clergy and the prospective initiates on the first night. Only the three highest Eleusinian officials seem to have participated in this ‘mystic drama’;[70] their limited number enabled Alcibiades and his friends to parody the Mysteries in private houses.[71] It was a kind of Passion Play, which contained dances,[72] but no discursive accounts. Apparently, the initiates were sent outdoors to look for Persephone with their torches,[73] like Demeter herself in her Homeric Hymn(47);[74] eventually the hierophant, the Eleusinian high-priest, sounded a gong to call up Persephone.[75] This was the sign for the initiates to assemble in order to witness her successful recovery, which guaranteed the fertility of the land. It must have been an extremely joyful moment and Lactantius, surely correctly, reports that after Persephone was found the ritual came to an end with ‘rejoicing and brandishing of torches’.[76] The search for a divinity was a well-known ritual in ancient Greece,[77] and, originally, the Mysteries did perhaps end with the return of Demeter’s daughter.[78]
The ‘Epopteia’
This leaves the initiation into the highest degree of the Mysteries, the epopteia, for the second night–once again, surely, after washing. Although we do not know the exact order of the programme, it must have included several things, and it seems reasonable to surmise that it gradually worked towards a climax. We will therefore start with the preliminary events. Tertullian mentions that a phallus was shown to the epoptai. The reliability of this information has been denied, but another Christian author also mentions ‘acts about which silence is observed, and which truly deserve silence’.[79] In fact, a phallus was part of several festivals and does not seem to be out of place in a ritual for Demeter.
A more intriguing feature is mentioned by the late antique Christian bishop Asterius of Amaseia in Pontus. He rhetorically asks:
Are not the Mysteries at Eleusis the core of your worship […]? Are the dark crypt (καταβάσιον)not there and the solemn meeting of the hierophant with the priestess, the two alone together? Are not the torches extinguished while the whole huge crowd believes its salvation (σωτηρ-ίαν: note the Christian interpretation) to lie in the things done by the two in the dark?[80]
The mention of a subterranean crypt should not be taken as a reference to a ‘gate to the underworld’, as suggested by Burkert, since the wordκαταβάσιονnever has this meaning,[81] and archaeology has demonstrated that there was no subterranean crypt in the telestêrion. However, that does not really solve the problem, as was thought by Mylonas, who felt he had to defend the dignity of the Mysteries.[82] Now a Hymn to Isis by the mid-second century AD Cretan poet Mesomedes indicates the stages of the Mysteries of Isis according to rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries.[83] His list mentions the ‘birth of a child’(13), the ‘unspeakable fire’(14), the ‘harvest of Kronos’(16) and, finally, the anaktora(18), a term that betrays the material’s Eleusinian origin. And indeed, Mesomedes ’list starts with a chthonios hymenaios(10), which is exactly and irrefutably a ‘subterranean wedding’. The Mysteries of Isis were developed by the Eleusinian hierophant Timotheus, who had been summoned to Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter to propagate the cult of Sarapis (Plut. Iside 28). This takes the information about the Eleusinian mysteries back to about 300 BC, which is pretty early.
Burkert interprets chthonios hymenaios as a reference to Persephone, but her wedding was in no way a highlight of the Mysteries. Given that all the other references are to clearly identifiable stages of the epoptic ritual, it seems more likely that we have here a reference to the same act mentioned by Asterius. In fact, Gregory of Nazianzus notes: ‘nor does Demeter wander and bring in Celeuses and Triptolemoi and snakes, and perform some acts and undergo others’; love between the Eleusinian king Celeus and Demeter is attested elsewhere.[84] In other words, various sources suggest that sex played a role at least on the mythical level, which could, but need not, have been reflected on the level of ritual. But how do we explain a ‘subterranean wedding’ when no such space is attested archeologically? Two answers seem possible. The anaktoron was sometimes called megaron or magaron, the term for subterranean cultic buildings of Demeter and Persephone, but also of the pits in which sacrifice was deposited during the Thesmophoria.[85] Both Asterius and Mesomedes, directly or indirectly, could have misinterpreted their source’s report of the sacred wedding in the anaktoron because they were not, or no longer, familiar with the Mysteries. A second possibility is that the hierophant himself, who was the only one who had access to the anaktoron,[86] made a suggestion of a subterranean descent. We simply do not know.
There will also have been dancing,[87]and probably other acts that escape us but which almost certainly included speaking or singing, as euphônia was required of the hierophant, whose voice could even be depicted as that of his eponymous ancestor Eumolpos.[88] In fact, there is a close connection between Mousai and mystêriain a number of texts.[89] As the singing of hymns is securely attested in the Mysteries of the Lykomids,[90] we should expect them in Eleusis as well. A first-century BC inscription mentions hymnagôgoi in Eleusis,[91] but unfortunately we cannot tell whether they instructed choirs or whether we should think of some kind of congregational singing in the telestêrion.
Before the high point of the ritual occurred, the initiated were first subjected to a terrifying experience, perhaps by being confronted with a female monster with snaky hair. As Plutarch notes: ‘subsequently, before the climax (my italics: pro tou telous) [come] all the terrors–shuddering (phrikê), shivering, sweating and amazement’.[92] It is the same rhythm that we see in Plato’s Phaedrus (251a), where those who have seen ‘a godlike face’ first experience shuddering (phrikê), sweating and abnormal heat.[93] We may safely assume that the Eleusinian clergy knew how to build up tension in the performance, and several sources state that prospective initiates were frightened during initiations into all kinds of Mysteries.[94] It seems a fair assumption that Greek initiations learned from one another, and that such a practice will thus have occurred at Eleusis as well.
The high point of the initiation has been described by a Gnostic author, who rhetorically asked: ‘what is the great, marvellous, most perfect epoptic Mystery there, an ear of wheat harvested in silence’, the showing of which was probably accompanied by the display of a statue of Demeter.[95] But that was not all. The Gnostic author proceeds, ‘just as the hierophant […] at Eleusis, when performing the great, unspeakable Mysteries amid great fire, calls out at the top of his voice: “the reverend goddess has given birth to a sacred boy, Brimo to Brimos, that is the strong one has born a strong child”.’[96] As we just noted (above), Mesomedes had also mentioned the birth of a child, the fire and the ‘harvest of Kronos’. These acts surely constituted the climax of the epoptic ritual.[97]
This conclusion is confirmed by other indications. Around AD 200 an epigram for a hierophant stresses the moment that the initiates saw him ‘stepping forward from the anaktoron in the shining nights’ of the Mysteries.[98] The fire returns in many allusions to the Mysteries,[99] and was clearly a well-staged moment in the ritual which made a big impression on the participants. One of the newly discovered epigrams of Posidippus mentions it, and Plutarch even uses this crucial moment in a discussion of the Werdegang of a philosopher: ‘but he who succeeded in getting inside, and has seen a great light, because the anaktora was opened…’.[100] The announcement of the birth also seems to be traditional, as the beginning closely resembles a line from Euripides’ Suppliants: ‘You too, reverend goddess, once gave birth to a boy’(54). The main difference with the Gnostic report is the introduction of the names Brimo and Brimos. The Suppliants probably date from about 420 BC, and it fits with this date that the name Brimo is most likely an import from Orphic poetry, probably at the end of the fifth century BC.[101] The most likely interpretation of these somewhat enigmatic words is that the boy is Ploutos, the personified Wealth, who is a recurrent figure in Eleusinian iconography and who is already mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as ‘the god who bestows affluence on men’(489).[102] The ritual thus seems to have celebrated the arrival of both wheat and its personification. We may think the showing of an ear of wheat to be a rather poor climax, but we must not forget that the fifth century was the heyday of Athens’ claims to have invented agriculture and of the notion of Triptolemos as the missionary of this new invention,[103] as well as of Prodicus’ re-interpretation of Demeter as the deified wheat.[104]
Finally, why did the hierophant call out ‘at the top of his voice’? We touch here upon a difficult and debated topic of the Mysteries. One of the obvious answers is: because this was the climax of the ritual. And indeed, already at the end of the fifth century the loud voice is mentioned at the conclusion of a list of profanations of the Mysteries, just as Alexander of Abonuteichos used a loud voice at the climax of his ritual.[105] Yet there will have been another, more practical reason. Given the architecture of the telestêrion with its many pillars, it must have been impossible for everyone to see exactly what was on show during the climax of the ritual. This is admitted by our best recent students of the question, but they refuse to accept it because, as they argue,[106] the importance of ‘seeing’ and ‘showing’ is continuously stressed by our sources as a fundamental component of the highest degree of initiation.[107] Yet in the same passage of Plato’s Phaedrus (248ab), which is so replete with the terminology of the Mysteries,[108] we also read that many horses could not behold the realities or could only just do so. The ancient Greeks were not yet like modern consumers who would certainly have demanded their money back if they had not seen everything. We may better compare church services in medieval cathedrals. Here, too, not everyone could see the performance of the Eucharist and, in fact, a bell had to be rung so that the faithful knew when to kneel at the climax of the mass. In many churches the clergy even made a squint – ‘an aperture, usually oblique, affording a view of an altar’ – in walls or screens to permit a view of the climax of the service at the high altar.[109]
However this may be, we may assume that whatever awe there was would eventually have turned into relief and joy. With their personal well-being assured the initiates will have left the telestêrion tired but content.
The Aftermath
The last day of the Mysteries was a day of festivities and sacrifices, and the happy initiates now could wear a myrtle wreath, like the officiating priests.[110] The day was called Plemochoai, after a type of vessel that was used for the concluding libation, one vessel upturned to the west, the other to the east,[111] to the accompaniment of a ‘mystic utterance’, perhaps the attested cry ‘Rain’, while looking up to heaven, and ‘Conceive’ while looking down to the earth.[112] During this day, and probably also before, the initiates visited the fair, which was a standard feature of ancient festivals, as it often still is today.[113] In the mid-fourth century BC the Athenian state even issued a number of coins with symbols referring to the Mysteries, such as Triptolemos, the mystic piglet and the staff. These will have helped to pay the vendors of food and drink but also the sellers of presents, souvenirs and, probably, ladies of pleasure.[114] We must never forget that longer rituals regularly had, so-to-speak, empty moments, which were not rule-bound, formal or differentiated from everyday activities.[115]
On leaving, the initiates perhaps uttered the words ‘paks’ or ‘konks’, as we are told that this was the exclamation upon a completed task.[116] We have no idea what these words mean, but the end of the Mysteries had to be ritualised somehow. Once they had returned home, the initiates used the clothes they had worn during their initiation as lucky blankets for their children or consecrated them in a local sanctuary. For that reason, many an initiate even wore old clothes.[117] Afterall, religion and economic interest are not mutually exclusive, as the USA shows us all too clearly.
When we now review this description of the Eleusinian Mysteries, we may first note that the term ‘Mysteries’ is misleading to a certain extent. The rite was secret, but there was nothing mysterious about it. Even if we were to find a full, ancient description of it, nothing leads us to expect that we would encounter anything outlandish. Why, then, were the Mysteries secret in historical times? The Homeric Hymn to Demeter explains the secrecy from the fact that the rites, like the deities to whom they belong, are semna, ‘awesome’, and ‘a great reverence for the gods restrains utterance’(478–9).[118] In Augustan times, Strabo gave the following explanation: ‘the secrecy with which the sacred rites are concealed induces reverence for the divine, since it imitates the nature of the divine, which is to avoid being perceived by our human senses’ (10.3.9, tr. Jones, Loeb). These ‘emic’, or insider, explanations are fully satisfactory: it is the very holiness of the rites that forbids them to be performed or related outside their proper ritual context.[119] It is also important to note that these ‘emic’ explanations do not suggest that there was a valuable propositional element in the Mysteries. Contrary to what many moderns seem to think, there was no esoteric wisdom to be found in the ancient Mysteries, no Da Vinci Code to be deciphered.
Second, what was the goal of the Mysteries? Was it eschatological, as one of the best students of Greek religion states in his most recent discussion?[120] Such a statement perhaps overstates one, admittedly important, aspect of the Mysteries and fails to take another claim sufficiently into account. As we have seen, the first day ended with the return of Persephone, the guarantee of fertility, and the second with the showing of an ear of wheat and the birth of (Agricultural) Wealth. Varro, the most learned Roman of the first century BC, noted that, ‘there are many traditions in her (Persephone’s) mysteries, all related to the discovery of grain’.[121] As Burkert has observed, ‘no matter how surprising it may seem to one Platonically influenced, there is no mention of immortality at Eleusis, nor of a soul and the transmigration of souls, nor yet of deification’.[122] In other words, the actual performance of the Mysteries points only to agricultural fertility.
This interpretation of the Mysteries as a kind of fertility ritual seems to fit the iconographical representations. None of those with Eleusinian themes refers to blessings in the afterlife, but the message of fertility is very clearly expressed through the prominence of the gods Ploutos and Pluto, whose names reflect the aspiration for (agricultural) wealth.[123] The connection of Eleusis with agriculture is also manifest in the equally prominent position in Eleusis of Triptolemos, the inventor of agriculture, who only in the fourth century becomes a judge in the underworld, and by the presence on a fourth-century Apulian vase of personified Eleusis sitting next to Eniautos, ‘(The products of the) Year’, holding a horn of plenty that sprouts ears of wheat.[124]
On the other hand, literary texts regularly speak of the eschatological hopes that await the initiates and the punishments awaiting non-initiates.[125] As the afterlife does not seem to have been mentioned during the actual performance, which consisted primarily in ‘showing’ not ‘teaching’, prospective initiates will have heard about it during their preliminary initiation. Such a ‘catechism’ kept the interpretation of the Mysteries up-to-date and could incorporate contemporary intellectual fashions, just as Christian theology and rabbinic scholarship have kept the texts of the Bible alive for the faithful by their interpretations.
Recent years have seen many discussions of the relation between myth and ritual, which have led to the realisation that myth often selects the more striking parts of a ritual and also dramatises and simplifies the issues at stake in it.[126] We have also recently learned that there is no one-to-one relationship between rituals and their representations.[127] We must therefore accept that to represent the Mysteries vase painters chose to emphasise fertility rather than the eschatological promise. There was probably a good reason for that choice, as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (480–3) says only this about the afterlife: ‘Blessed is he of men on earth who has seen them, whereas he that is uninitiated in the rites […] has another lot wasting away in the musty dark’. That is all, and the other older texts with this promise (cited above) are equally vague. As belief in the afterlife was not widely held and always seems to have been limited to a minority,[128] vase painters had little to work with and hardly ever represented the afterlife.[129] People will have made their own choices about what to bring home from the festival. As no-one seems to have put the fact of their Eleusinian initiation on his or her tombstone before the second century BC,[130] most Greeks may well have looked forward more to the promise of wealth in this life than to a good afterlife. The era of medieval Christianity was still far away.[131]
Endnotes
- For an excellent collection of sources, see P.Scarpi Le religioni dei misteri, 2 vols (Milan, 2002)1.5–219.
- W. Burkert, Homo necans (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983), 248–297; F. Graf, ‘Mysteria’, in Der Neue Pauly 8 (Stuttgart and Weimar, 2000) 611–615; R.Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005) 334–368; see also R.Turcan,‘Initiation’,inRAC18 (1998) 87–159 at 95–102.For the older, linear approach see A. Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipzig, 1864) 243–269 and Fest eder Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipzig, 1898) 204–245 (very little about the actual performance of the Mysteries); L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932) 71–91; G.E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton, 1961) 237–285. For a different – and in my opinion unpersuasive – brief reconstruction, see K. Clinton, ‘The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis’, in N. Marina-tos and R. Hägg (eds), Greek Sanctuaries (London, 1993) 110–124 at 118–119.
- We can see the effect of this approach very clearly in the study of Aristophanes’ Frogs by I. Lada-Richards, Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs (Oxford, 1999) 81–84, who completely confuses the two stages of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
- For the term, note A. Hermary, ‘Dioskouroi’, in LIMC 3.1 (1986) 567–553 at 576 no.111 (black-figure Attic pelike of about 510 BC); Sophocles fr. 804; Eur. Suppl. 173, 470; Ar. Ra. 159, 887; Thuc. 6.28.1 and 53.2; the title Mystai of one of Phrynichus’ comedies and Mystis of comedies by Philemon, Antiphanes and Philippides.
- Burkert, AMC, 91–93; C. Riedweg, Mysterienterminologie bei Platon, Philon und Klemens von Alexandrien (Berlin, 1987) 1–69; R.Kirchner, ‘Die Mysterien der Rhetorik. Zur Mysterienmetapherin rhetorik theoretischen Texten’, RhM 148 (2005) 165–180; Th. Lechner, ‘Rhetorik und Ritual. Platonische Mysterienanalogien im Protreptikos des Clemens von Alexandrien‘, in F.R. Prostme-ier (ed.), Frühchristentum und Kultur (Freiburg, 2007) 183–222.
- Contra B.Sattler, ‘The Eleusinian Mysteries in Pre-Platonic Thought: Metaphor, Practice, and Imagery for Plato’s Symposium’, in V.Adluri (ed.), Greek Religion, Philosophy and Salvation (Berlin and Boston, 2013)151–190.
- I. Patera, ‘Changes and Arrangement in the Eleusinian Ritual’, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean (Stuttgart, 2011) 119–138.
- Orphic influence: F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit (Berlin, 1974) 182–186; W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften III (Göttingen, 2006) 34–37; A. Bernabé, ‘Orpheus and Eleusis’, Thracia 18 (2009) 89–98; Bremmer, ‘Divinities in the Orphic Gold Leaves: Euklês, Eubouleus, Brimo, Kore, Kybele and Persephone’, ZPE 187 (2013) 35–48 at 39–41. Allegorisation: Eus. Praep. Ev.3.12.
- For the well-known Ninnion Pinax, see most recently M. Tiverios, ‘Women of Athens in the Worship of Demeter: Iconographic Evidence from Archaic and Classical Times’, in N. Kaltsas and A. Shapiro (eds), Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens (New York, 2008) 125–135 at 130–131. K. Papangeli, ibid., 150–151 wrongly implies that the name Ninnion suggests a courtesan, cf. O. Masson, Onomastica Graeca Selecta 3 (Geneva, 2000) 238.
- IG I3 6=I. Eleusis 19; IG II2 1672 =I. Eleusis 177; Theophilos, fr.1 (a favour by a benevolentmaster); especially, K. Clinton, Eleusis, the inscriptions on stone: documents of the Sanctuary of the Two Goddesses and public documents of the deme, 3 vols (Athens, 2005–2008) 2.184–185 (slaves).
- This liberal policy was probably imitated by some Attic demes with regard to their own Eleusinia, cf. S. Wijma, ‘The “Others” in a lex sacra from the Attic Deme Phrearrioi (SEG 35.113)’, ZPE 187 (2013) 199–205.
- Clem. Alex. Protr. 2.21.2; Arnob. 5.26, cf. P. Roussel, ‘L’initiation préalable et le symbole éleusinien’, BCH 54 (1930) 52–74; Burkert, Homo necans, 269–274; Parker, Polytheism, 354.
- This seems to be suggested by Clem. Alex. Strom. 5.11.
- IG I3 6B36–47 = I. Eleusis19 B 36–47; Plut. Demetr. 26.2, cf. Parker, Polytheism, 344f.
- R.Simms, ‘Myesis, Telete, and Mysteria’, GRBS 31 (1990) 183–195 at 183; Parker, Polytheism, 345–346: K. Clinton, ‘Preliminary Initiation in the Eleusinian Mysteria’, in A.P. Matthaiou and I. Polinskaya (eds), Mikros hieromnēmōn: meletes eis mnēmēn Michael H. Jameson (Athens, 2008)25–34.
- Note the close connection between mystagogues and teaching: Posidonius, fr. 368; Plut. Mor. 795e; Dio Chr. 12.27; I.Sluiter, ‘Commentaries and the Didactic Tradition’, in G.W. Most (ed.), Commentaries–Kommentare (Göttingen, 1999) 173–205 at 191–195. For assistance by mystagogues, see Menander, fr. 500; LSCGS 15; Plut. Mor. 765a; for the instruction, Riedweg, Mysterienter-minologie, 5–14. Mystagogues are still under-researched, but see A.D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Z. Stewart, 2 vols (Oxford, 1972) 2.793 note 8; Simms, ‘Myesis’, 191–195, who notes the relatively late appearance of the term; P.Mueller-Jourdan, ‘Mystagogie’, in RAC 25(2013) 404–422; ThLL s.v. mystagogia.
- And. Myst. 29; [Dem.] In Neaeram 21; Plato, Ep. 7, 333e; Plut. Dio 54, 56.
- For the close connection between friendship and mystagogy, see also ThLL s.v. mystagogus.
- I. Eleusis19 C (=IG I36 C), with Clinton ad loc.; I. Eleusis 233; Parker, Polytheism, 342 note 65; I. Pafford,‘ IG I 36 and the Aparche of Grain?’, ZPE 177 (2011) 75–78, who also compares Athen. 2.40d and Dem. 59.21 for the major expense of the Mysteries.
- Clem. Alex. Strom. 2.14.60.2, cf. Radton Aeschylus T 93d.
- Luc. Dem. 11 (Socrates); And. Myst. 12. For his process, see R. Gagné, ‘Mystery Inquisitors: Performance, Authority, and Sacrilege at Eleusis‘, Class. Ant. 48 (2009) 211–247.
- Pollux 8.123–124, 141, cf. P.O’Connell, ‘Hyperides and Epopteia: A New Fragment of the Defense of Phryne’, GRBS 53 (2013) 90–116.
- Ar. Ra. 369 with scholion ad loc.; Isocr. 4.157; Suet. Nero 34.4; Theon Smyrn., De utilitatemathematicae p.14.23–24 Hiller; Celsusapud Or. CCels. 3.59; Pollux 8.90; Lib. Decl. 13.19, 52; SHA Alex. Sev. 18.2, Marc. Aur. 27.1; Riedweg, Mysterienterminologie,74–85.
- J.N. Bremmer, ‘How Old is the Ideal of Holiness (of Mind) in the Epidaurian Temple Inscription and the Hippocratic Oath?’, ZPE 142 (2002) 106–108; A. Chaniotis, ‘Greek Ritual Purity: from Automatisms to Moral Distinctions’, in P. Rösch and U. Simon (eds), How Purity is Made (Wiesba-den, 2012) 123–139.
- Or. CCels. 3.59; [Eus]. Contra Hieroclem 30.3 (anecdote about Apollonius of Tyana); Lib. Decl.13.19, 52; Julian, Or. 7.25; M.W. Dickie, ‘Priestly Proclamations and Sacred Laws’, CQ 54 (2004)579–591.
- CONTINUE WITH ENDNOTES AT SOURCE
Chapter I from Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World, by Jan N. Bremmer (De Gruyter, 06.26.2014), published under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license.