Many Greeks found a partial satisfaction of their
religious longings in secret rites called mysteries. Of these the most
important grew up at Eleusis, a little Attic town thirteen miles from
Athens. They were connected with the worship of Demeter, goddess of vegetation
and of the life of nature. The celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries came in
September and lasted nine days. When the candidates for admission to the secret
rites were worked up to a state of religious excitement, they entered a
brilliantly lighted hall and witnessed a passion play dealing with the legend
of Demeter. They seem to have had no direct moral instruction but saw, instead,
living pictures and pantomimes which represented the life beyond the grave and
held out to them the promise of a blessed lot in another world. As an Athenian
orator said, "Those who have shared this initiation possess sweeter hopes
about death and about the whole of life." [14]
[14] Isocrates, Panegyricus, 29.
INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
The Eleusinian mysteries, though unknown in the Homeric
Age, were already popular before the epoch of the Persian wars. They became a
Panhellenic festival open to all Greeks, women as well as men, slaves as well
as freemen. The privilege of membership was later extended to Romans. During
the first centuries of our era the influence of the mysteries increased, as
faith in the Olympian religion declined. They formed one of the last
strongholds of paganism and endured till the triumph of Christianity in the
Roman world.
