In accordance with this principle various reliefs are to be explained, in which the representation is grouped in different zones: in the upper zone the Divine figures appear in their own proper circle of circumstances ; in the lower zone the Divine figures appear as brought into relations with mankind, their worshippers, and, ¢.g., as teaching men the method of sacrifice and offering. One of the best
examples has been published by an old traveller, Wagener, in his Inser. rec. en Asie Mineure, pl. 1. It is still in existence, and will be republished in the proper chapter of the Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, ii. ;
According to our view, then, the Anatolian religious ritual was a representation or repetition of the stages and actions of the Divine life. The important stages in human life were embraced therein; and human individuals made their lives right and holy by performing their actions after the Divine plan.
This is a large subject. It is as wide as the life of the ancient Anatolian races, and in its full breadth it would have to include the progress of history and the march of conquerors and of immi- gration, for all those events affected and modified ritual. Here we touch on a few details only. Fortunately, circumstances favoured the preserva- tion, throughout the dominance of paganism, of an important part of the primitive ritual under the form of Mysteria in many of its original seats, not merely in Anatolia, but also in Attica, Samothrace, etc. The primitive forms were not, indeed, kept pure, but were adulterated by many additions ; but still they remained ; and if we had a complete knowledge of the Mysteria, we could go far to recover the primitive forms. It is necessary here to treat together the Anatolian and the Greek Mysteries, anticipating part B.
(2) The Mysteries. —'The ancient ritual of the Greek or Pelasgian tribes was overlaid but not de- stroyed by later religious forms of more ‘ Hellenic’ character. In mythology this is expressed by tales of the conquest of the old deities by younger gods, Kronos or Saturn by Zeus or Jupiter, Marsyas by Apollo, ete. In such cases the old religion, though conquered, is not extirpated, but only submerged. It takes a long time, and much education, to eradicate a religion from the popular heart: the hearts of the educated and privileged classes are more easily changed. When the new religion stands on a distinctly higher platform than the old, or is of an uncompromising nature, the ancient beliefs persist in some such form as magic and witchcraft and rites proscribed as unhallowed and evil, and the older gods are stigmatized as devils: see B, §§ I, V; C, § III (5).
But in this case the new religion was not un- compromising, but singularly accommodating in type. Its spirit was polytheistic and eclectic in the highest degree. It had little objection to a pair or a score or a hundred of additional gods, old or new. Where laws existed in the Greek cities forbidding the introduction of ‘new gods,’ the intention was rather political than religious: the dread was lest anything should be introduced that would disturb the delicate equilibrium of Hellenic city-constitution, and especially anything that would prove self-assertive or bigoted, and would tend to subvert the established city religion, which formed an essential element of the city- constitution, and was to a great extent political in character: see B, § IV (14).
Accordingly, the old forms persisted in the form of Mysteries, sanctioned by the State as ancient and holy, yet distinctly regarded as a survival not quite in keeping with the true Hellenic religion. The old gods were still considered and reverenced as gods, admitted as members of the Hellenic Pantheon ; and though Zeus was nominally the supreme god, yet in some ways the old gods whom he had dethroned were esteemed more holy and more efficacious than he. The name Mysteria, which was given to the ancient rites, was indicative of an element of secrecy, and a certain uncanny char- acter, as of ideas which were not to be admitted as part of ordinary life.
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What, then, were the Mysteries? In what lay their essential character? Before trying to answer this question we must point out that, though there is in the general view a distinct separation be- tween Mysteries and the cults of the properly Hellenic gods, yet in practice and in detail they pass into one another, so that it is impossible in some cases to say what category certain rites fall under. But there is a general type characterizing all the cults called Mysteries ; and, as we shall see, the great Mysteries were in Roman times developed so as to be even more strikingly similar to one another. The Mysteries of the Anatolian religion may be conveniently summed up under the name Phrygian Mysteries, as they are commonly called by the ancient writers; but they were celebrated far beyond the bounds of Phrygia. The name Mysteria was, doubtless, given to them in Asia Minor rather from their analogy to the Mysteria of Greece proper ; and not because they were con- sidered there so mystic and separate from ordinary religion as they were in Greece proper. In the cities of Asia Minor, however, the Greek or Hellenic views of religion became steadily more effective; and as those views grew stronger, the native religion was more and more felt to be of the nature of Mysteria.