THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG i2
a a PR ee a a
who trained the chorus of hymnodoi or hymnetreie, neokoroi attended to the sacred furniture, and plaidryntai cared for the divine statues. There were also panageis (office unknown), “initiated of the altar ”’—children chosen by lot at Eleusis to perform expiatory or avertive rites, hieropoiot offered the sacrifices, and the archon-basileus supervised the whole. The sacerdotal families had in their hands the many affairs pertaining to the regulation of the mysteries, and controlled the civil status of members of the Eleusinian families. The rules of observance were probably written and kept for reference; this is known to have been the case at Pheneus (Pausanias, VIII., xv. 1), where a stone crypt preserved them. While at Eleusis the mysteries were official and yearly, others said to be identical with these were observed elsewhere at greater intervals, e. g., at Celew every third year (Pausanias, II., xiv. 1), and at Pheneus every second year (ib., VIII., xv. 1).
Of the great influence of the Eleusinia over the Greeks for a millennium there can be no doubt. The basis of this influence, in the face of the secrecy which covers the teaching, of which almost nothing is known, can only be inferred. Greeks were in temperament undogmatic. The ‘formula of confession,” as some have called Clement’s ‘‘ token”’ (ut sup.), is not a statement of belief, but an affirmation that certain actions have been performed. ‘The essentials, apart from the purifications and sacrifices done in public, were symbolical; they consisted in certain articles, probably insignificant in themselves, and in such actions as taking these things from a chest and putting them back. So far as one can learn, there was no teaching of dogma. But the total impression left by the Eleusinia is that of solemnity. The implications of lewdness suggested by Clement are not confirmed by archeology. Demeter herself is an impressive figure—a tender mother, sorrowing for a daughter snatched from her by powers whom she could reach only indirectly. In her sorrow the earth shared, as later it partook of her joy when her daughter was for a season restored to her. No finer or more chaste statue exists, and none more pathetic, than the seated mourning Demeter. And when in the myth Kore is given back to her, there is no hint of orgies, only the grateful joy which spends itself in the renewal of the bountiful soil’s gifts to man. That in the later and other forms of mysteries, which Clement confused in his polemic, there were shameful features is true. But nothing that is known of the
10. Significance.
Eleusinia proper carries such a suggestion. In-.
stead, the one expression of teaching that peeps out through the veil of obscurity is the hope so needed in Greek religion—that the future life was to be made happier because of participation in the mysteries. “ Demeter .. . bestowed on us two priceless gifts: the cultivation of the fruits of the earth . . . and the ceremony which brings to the initiated the sweetest consolation at death and the hope of eternity ” (Isocrates, “‘ Panegyrics,” cited by Philios, Hleusis, pp. 41-42, London, 1906). Cicero and others might be quoted to the same effect. Granting the truth of this, one great reason
for reverence for the Eleusinia is evident. Moreover, much as Christian pilgrims sought and believed they found the favor of God by visiting the Holy Land and traveling the roads trodden by the Savior’s feet, so the myst# thought to secure the goddess’s favor by visiting the scenes where she sorrowed and then found joy. Add to these the sense of moral and religious relief brought by the purifications of fasting and lustration, and little more of explanation is needed to justify, from the standpoint of the old religions, the high estimation in which the Eleusinia were held throughout the Greek world and in the Roman.
2. Dionysiac-Orphic Mysteries: Of a very different type from the Eleusinia were the Dionysiac- Orphic mysteries, which from the fifth century B.c. on invaded and pervaded popular Greek religion.
The character of the god and of the 1. Charac- man from whom these derived their ter of Dio- 1 ,mes furnish clues to the character nysiac Cel- :
ebration. of the observances. Dionysus (Bac-
chus) was not in the Homeric pantheon, but by the beginning of the sixth century he had scaled Olympus. He was of Thracian origin, in all probability the deity of the Satre (who gave their name to satyrs—Harrison, ut sup., p. 379) or the Bessi, a mountain tribe which had the reputation of being the worst of brigands, living on Mt. Hemus (Strabo, vii. 318, and Fragment 25), which yielded in religion or politics to no conqueror till Nicetas of Remesiana (q.v.) at the end of the fourth century won them for Christianity (Paulinus of Nola, Carmen, xxx.). The traditional origin of Dionysus from Thebes (asin the Tyrannus of Sophocles) is an attempt to give this foreign god, who had been received into the pantheon, a native origin. His late arrival in Greece is avouched in the prologue to the Bacche of Euripides: ‘‘ Now I come to Hellas, having taught all the world else my dances and my rite of mysteries’ (Harrison, ut sup., p. 371). This statement involves the fact, which could be abundantly attested, that the Dionysiac ceremonies had spread widely, partly in consequence of northern (Thracian) migration in two streams, one via Macedonia to the Greek peninsula, and the other into Asia Minor and thence east and south, having meanwhile assimilated much from the mysteries of the Great Mother for which Asia Minor was celebrated. The names and epithets by which this god was known encyst the facts of his origin, his wanderings, and his nature. “ Sabazios’”’ bespeaks Thrace and Phrygia, and contains in itself the idea of sleep brought on by sabaium, a fermented drink made of grain. “ Bromios ”’ has a Theban ring which expresses confused sounds, as the rumbling of thunder, or of the mob, or of orgiastic music—the noise of the rout. And this fits in with and is used in connection with the myth that Dionysus came untimely to birth when his mother Semele (an earth deity) was smitten with the lightning of Zeus. He was also ‘“ Dendrites,” the “ tree-god,” and then specialized as deity of the grape and of wine. Similarly as “ Dithyrambos ” he suggests the heady mead made of honey. Many other titles might be cited to the same purport were these not sufficient to reveal his