The details of the Mystic drama set before the worshippers cannot here be described. A very
* That the kid is here the mystic form of Dionysos, as the God-Son in the Divine nature, is generally recognized: see S. Reinach, Rev. Avch., Sept. 1901, p. 205 (though we cannot go with him beyond what we have adopted from him in the text above). The Phrygian Zeus Galaktinos, or Galaktios, may be brought into comparison (Histor. Geogr. As. Min. p. 235, and A. Korte, Beilage zwm Vorlesungsverzeichniss, Greifswald, 1902, p. 30): he is the god of the pastoral people of the great plains and the grassy hills of Phrygia. ’ :
+ Plato, Phedr. p. 250, Epinomis, p. 986 ; Isocr. Paneg. vi. p. 59, § 28; Pindar, fr. 96 (H.) ; Soph. f7. 719\(Dind.) ; Crinagoras in Anthol. ii. 332 (Jac.); Diodorus Sic. Hist. v. 49; Cicero, de Legg. ii. 14; Andocides, de Myst. § 31; Sopater, Dicer. Zetem. p. 121 in Walz, Rhet. Greec.; Theon. Smyrn. Mathem. i. p. 18 (Bull); Strabo, p. 467f.; Philostr. Vit. Apoll. i. 15, 17; Herod, vili. 65 ; and many other passages (see Lobeck, Aglaoph. j. p. 67ff., etc. ; Lenormant in Contemp. Review, | Sept. 1880, p. 429ff., and in Daremberg-Saglio’s Dict. Antig. Ul. P- 579 ff.
p. 48, ed. Petau ;
etc.). ri ted by Synesius, Ovat. t See Aristotle, quoted by sy 9 Defect. Orac. 22,
Galen, de Us. Part. vii. 14 (ed. Kuhn); Plut. etc. : see preceding note.
126 RELIGION OF GREECE
7
RELIGION OF GREECE
brief description is given, in vol. iii. p. 467, of the ceremonial of the Eleusinian Mysteries ; and in the last few paragraphs we have had those Mysteries chiefly in mind.
(4) The character of the Phrygian and the Greek Mysteries.—Probably there was not a wide differ- ence even in the beginning, and still less in later times, between the Eleusinian and the Phrygian Mysteries as regards actual ritual: many cere- monies were probably common to both, and in both there was much that was disgusting and repulsive. Yet the Phrygian Mysteries are described as abomin- able and immoral by the older Greek writers, even by those who praise and admire the Eleusinian : the former were believed to ruin and degrade a Greek city, but the latter to save and ennoble it. The difference lay not simply in the fact that some repulsive ceremonies are quoted by the Christians as peculiar to the Phrygian Mysteries ; for much of what remains in Clemens’ description of the Eleusinian is equally detestable. The real superi- ority of the Eleusinian over the Phrygian Mysteries lay, first, in a certain difference of spirit, as the Greek sense of order and measure and art un- doubtedly gave a harmony and artistic character to their version of the Oriental forms; and, secondly, in the fact that, as known in Greece proper, the Phrygian Mysteries were introduced by slaves and foreigners, and participated in by the superstitious and the ignorant: they were celebrated for money by strolling priests, and any one who paid a fee was initiated without preparation except some ritual acts: there was no solemnity in the sur- roundings, and no dignity in the ceremonial, but all was vulgar and sordid. A very few persons, also, might observe that the slight requirement of moral purity made at Eleusis had become a mere phrase in those street celebrations, and that ad- vantages in the future world were promised in return for mere participation in those vulgar rites. But that observation was probably beyond the ordinary range of even the educated Greeks.
As regards the many disgusting details against which the Christian writers direct their polemic, the admirers of the Mysteries might defend them by arguing * that religion places us face to face with the actual facts of life, and that, when the mind is exalted and ennobled by intense religious feeling, it is able to contemplate with pure insight phenomena of nature and life in which the vulgar mind sees nothing but grossness. They would point out that the language of religion may be and ought to be plainer and more direct than the language of common life. These arguments are weighty ; but one has only to read the undeniable accounts given by Clemens, Arnobius, ete., to see how insufficient they are to palliate the ugliness of the ritual.
In primitive thought the direct and simple ex- pression of the facts of life would need no apology and no explanation. The feature of the Mysteries that needs and _ is incapable of apology is that, as known to us in later time, they are not simple and direct : they are elaborate and artificial products of diseased religion. They stand before us as the culmination of a long development ; and the de- velopment has been a depravation, not an eleva- tion, of a ritual which had at first been naive and direct in its simple rudeness,
(5) The growth of ritwal.—The process of growth in ritual went on in two ways.
(a) In the meeting of two different races their respective religions affected one another. Doubt- less, the one generally swamped and submerged the other ; but the apparent victor was not unaffected in the process. n indubitable example is seen
* The following sentences are slightly modified from the writer’s article ‘ Mysteries’ in the Encyclopedia Britannicad,