ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. - They were celebrated at Eleusis (modern Lefsina), a village 22 km northwest of Athens. They were dedicated to Demeter, the "earth mother" of Bide, and to Kore, the "maiden," that is, her daughter vegetation. Originally having purely agrarian significance, like the other festivals celebrated there at various times of the agricultural year—Proerosia (sowing), Chloia (the sprouting of grain), Kalamaia (strengthening of the stalk), Haloa (plowing)—the Eleusinian Mysteries, by virtue of the intrinsic capacity of agrarian rites to rise to a higher meaning, assumed, especially after the close union between Eleusis and Athens, a spiritual significance and opened to the initiates the hope and vision of a better life.
The period of this transformation can be placed between the 7th and 6th centuries, an era of great spiritual and social upheaval in ancient Greece, religiously represented by the Orphic-Dionysian movement. That it was Dionysus, the god beloved by the masses for his beatifying ecstasies, who provoked this transformation is inferred from the fact that Eumolpus, the eponymous ancestor of the first Eleusinian priestly family, was from Thrace, the homeland of Dionysus; that the Lesser Mysteries, celebrated in Athens, were partly dedicated to Dionysus; that the great procession that carried the "sacred things" (τὰ ἱερά) from Athens to Eleusis had as its escort Iacchus, the youthful and ecstatic form of Dionysus; and that Pindar (Isthm. 6, 3, 5) calls Dionysus paredros, i.e., consort of Demeter, because of his association in the Mysteries.
The sanctuary dates back to Minoan times, as excavations have shown: beneath the current Telesterion, the "Hall of Initiation," a single hypostyle hall of 42 columns built by Pericles (5th century BC), with orthogonal seating carved into the rock on three sides, another much smaller one has been uncovered, dating back precisely to Minoan times. The entire sanctuary, which included chapels and minor sacred precincts, was enclosed by a perimeter wall (peribolos) that concealed it from the eyes of the profane.
(From L. Deubner, Atti del Convegno di Eleusini, 1927, 1, 2, 3)
ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. - Greek lekythos with depiction of the Mysteries (4th century BC) - Athens, National Museum.
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ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. - The priesthood was exercised especially by the two families of the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes. The Eumolpidae provided the hierophant, so called from his office of "showing the sacred things." The Kerykes provided the "torchbearer" (daduochos) in the nocturnal ceremony of the Mysteries. There were also minor priests.
The celebration of the Greater Mysteries, which took place in autumn, was preceded by the Lesser Mysteries, which served as a preliminary instruction for the Greater and lasted from the 19th to the 21st of the preceding month (February–March). The Greater Mysteries followed six months later, from the 13th to the 21st of the month of Boedromion (September–October). Of these days, the most notable were the 16th, when the initiates were purified at the sea of Phalerum with the sacrifice of a piglet; and the 19th, when the great procession took place, led by the effigy of Iacchus, which carried in a wicker cart the basket with the "sacred things" and, skirting the bay of Salamis, arrived in the evening amid dances and songs before the sanctuary’s peribolos. What took place inside from the 20th to the 22nd was "shown" (deiknymena) and reserved for the initiates. The secrecy has been maintained regarding the ceremonial; therefore, only fragmentarily can one attempt an outline of what were the most solemn mystery celebrations of Hellenism.
a) 21st Boedromion. — Liturgical drama of Demeter and Kore: initiation of the first degree (myesis). The secret rites performed in the Telesterion were of two kinds: liturgical dramas (drōmena) and initiatory rites (teletai).
Here, "drama" must not be understood as a staged performance, which the hypostyle structure of the Telesterion would not have allowed to be seen, but as a liturgical ceremony in which the officiant performs, in reduced form and with ritual garments, the sacred action whose protagonist is the being of which he is the minister. The liturgical drama enacted in the Telesterion had as its protagonists the two goddesses, Demeter and Kore. A fairly adequate idea of this drama is offered by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (late 6th century BC), a kind of sacred, though not liturgical, laud composed in Eleusinian circles and intended to exalt the religious privilege of the city.
The hymn, in 495 hexameters, narrates the abduction of Kore by Pluto, who carries her to the Underworld; the consternation of Demeter, who, setting out in search of her daughter, arrives at Eleusis, where she meets the royal family, reveals her identity to them, and orders King Celeus to build a temple. As soon as it is completed, she shuts herself inside until her daughter is returned to her, thus depriving the earth of its fertility. Zeus orders Pluto to release Kore and decrees that the maiden shall spend two-thirds of the year with her mother and one-third with Pluto (a transparent myth signifying the seed hidden in the earth for three months and sprouting as vegetation for the rest). With Demeter’s release, the whole earth flourishes.
This dramatic myth of the two ideas consists of two parts: a sorrowful one, corresponding to the abduction of Core, the mourning of Demeter, and the consequent barrenness of the earth; and a joyful one, corresponding to the recovery of Core, the mother’s rejoicing, and the consequent renewal of vegetation.
That two moments, one sad and one joyful, were celebrated at Eleusis is attested generally by Plato (Phædr., 250 B C), by Themistius (in Stobae, Flor., 4, 107), by the rhetorician Aristides (Elen., 256); and, with direct mention of the two ideas, by Clement of Alexandria (Protr., II, 12), by Apuleius (Met., VI, 2), by the grammarian Apollodorus (fig. 36, Muller), by Statius (Silv., IV, 8, 50-51), by Lactantius (Div. Inst., Epit., 18).
From these direct references it may be inferred that the mystical drama of the two ideas re-enacted at Eleusis must have been a liturgical procession in which the initiates rushed about in agitation, brandishing torches behind the daucus acting the part of Demeter, in search of the daughter. The precise details and formulas employed in this liturgical race have remained secret.
It is impossible to determine when the true initiatory rite itself took place; the preserved formula of Cle...
in a poor village where women, as among all primitive groups, had charge of the rough agricultural work. An essential part of this rite was the sacrifice of a pig, an animal particularly sacred to the earth-goddess, and a real coupling enacted in the field, intended to provoke lush vegetation from the earth. Homeric and Hesiodic poetry are acquainted with this agrarian stage of Eleusinian religion.
In a period dating from the 8th to the 6th century BC, Eleusis too underwent, in step with the great social and spiritual upheaval afflicting Greek society, a profound transformation of the old rite through the addition of a new, more spiritual and universal element, consonant with the new religious current known as Orphic-Dionysian and with the new pan-Hellenic political order centering on Athens, a religious movement represented by Dionysus.
Faith in blessed immortality was attained at Eleusis not through dogmatic instruction but through an impression experienced especially in the sight and touch of sacred objects and representative rites: this is expressed very effectively in a fragment of Aristotle (in Syn. Dion., 48), who states that people go to Eleusis not to learn (μαθαίνω) but to experience (παθαίνω). This impression, reserved for the initiated, was a sure pledge of immortality. Hence, after the Homeric Hymn (vv. 485-89), Sophocles in a surviving fragment (no. 755 Nauck) thrice calls blessed those who have been able to attend the Eleusinian rites, for to them alone is it granted to live beyond the tomb.
The Eleusinian Mysteries flourished throughout the imperial age and were revered by Augustus and Claudius; certain emperors—Hadrian, Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus—underwent initiation. The ban issued by Valentinian (364) against nocturnal pagan festivals excepted the Mysteries of Eleusis. The sanctuary was destroyed in 394 by the Goths of Alaric.