Listed 42 sub titles with search on: Ancients' feasts, games and rituals for wider area of: "ATTIKI Region GREECE" .
ATHENS (Ancient city) GREECE
An Athenian festival in honour of Agraulos, daughter of Cecrops.
A festival held at Athens in the middle of the month Elaphebolion. It is doubtful whom it originally commemorated, and the ancients themselves disputed this question-- whether it was in honour of Pandion, Pandia, the moon-goddess, or Zeus, the all-divine. Hermann regards it as the feast of the old tribe Dias; Welcker inclines to the Zeus hypothesis; and Mommsen and Preller think it originated in the worship of Pandia=Selene.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Antinoeia, annual festivals and quinquennial games, which the Roman emperor Hadrian instituted in honour of his favourite, Antinous, after he was drowned in the Nile, or, according to others, had sacrificed himself for his sovereign, in a fit of religious fanaticism. The festivals were celebrated at Athens, Eleusis, in Bithynia, at Argos, and Mantineia, in which places he was worshipped as a god. Afterwards this festival appears to have been discontinued. (Spart. Hadr., c. 14; Dio Cass. lxix. 10; Pans. viii. 9, 4)
AGRYLI (Ancient demos) ATHENS
These were held in the spring at Agrae, a place on the Ilissus,
southeast of the Acropolis. Initiation of Heracles. (Vase from Panticapaeum.)
There is no doubt that they were held in the month Anthesterion, when there were
the first signs of returning vegetation just after field-work began. The exact
date cannot be fixed, but Mommsen's suggestion is most probable, that the chief
day was the 20th, the same day of the month as the Greater Mysteries were held
on in Boedromion, to which the Lesser Mysteries had many points of similarity,
even in matters connected with the calendar--e. g. the same length of the mystery
truce. Mommsen supposes that the 19th was a day of preparation, and the 20th and
21st the special mystery days. These Lesser Mysteries were considered as a prelude
to the Greater (Schol. on Aristoph. Plut. 845), being on a much smaller scale;
but initiation in the Lesser was generally required before the candidate could
present himself for initiation into the Greater.
The mysteries at Agrae consisted probably to a large extent
of purifications, for which the water of the Ilissus was much used. They were
held more especially in honour of Persephone, called Pherrephatta here, than of
Demeter. It appears that the carrying off of Persephone was the most important
representation in these mysteries. Again we hear that at Agrae the fate of Dionysus
was pourtrayed (mimema ton peri ton Dionuson, Steph. Byzant. s. v. Agrai). The
death of Dionysus-Zagreus took place on the 13th of Anthesterion, the day on which
the festival of the Chytri was held; so perhaps on the ninth day after, the 21st
(for funeral rites on the ninth day after death, the enata, see Aesch. Ctesiph.
225), the funeral ceremony may have been held and his violent death related in
a drama. A great many, especially strangers, were initiated into these mysteries
who did not proceed to initiation into the regular Eleusinia; the legend, too,
said it was for the purpose of initiating Heracles, who was a stranger and according
to the primitive regulations could not be initiated into the Eleusinia, that these
Lesser Mysteries were established.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
The Mysteries at Agrae (ta en Agrais). These were held in the spring at Agrae, a place on the Ilissus, S.E. of the Acropolis. There is no doubt they were held in Anthesterion, when there were the first signs of returning vegetation just after field-work began. The exact date cannot be fixed, but Mommsen's suggestion is most probable, that the chief day was the 20th, the same day of the month as the Greater Mysteries were held on in Boedromion--to which the Lesser Mysteries had many points of similarity, even in matters connected with the calendar, e. g. the same length of the mystery truce. Mommsen supposes that the 19th was a day of preparation, and the 20th and 21st the special mystery days. These Lesser Mysteries were considered as a prelude to the Greater (Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 845, esti ta mikra hosper prokatharsis kai proagneusis ton megalon), being on a much smaller scale, but initiation in the Lesser was generally required before the candidate could present himself for initiation into the Greater (Plat. Gorg. 497 C; Plut. Dem. 26). At Eleusis there were temples to Artemis Propylaea, to Triptolemus and to Poseidon, as well as to Demeter; similarly at Agrae there was a temple to Demeter, and altars to Artemis and Poseidon, and a statue of Triptolemus (Mommsen, p. 377). The mysteries at Agrae consisted probably to a large extent of purifications, for which the water of the Ilissus was much used (Polyaen. v. 17). They were held more especially in honour of Persephone, called Pherrephatta here, than of Demeter (Schol. on Aristoph. Plut. 845, yet cf. Bekk. Anecd. 326). It appears that the carrying off of Persephone was the most important representation in these mysteries. Again we hear that at Agrae the fate of Dionysus was pourtrayed (mimema ton peri ton Dionuson, Steph. Byz. s. v. Agrai). The death of Dionysus-Zagreus took place on the 13th of Anthesterion, the day on which the festival of the Chytrae was held: so perhaps on the ninth day after, the 21st (for funeral rites on the ninth day after death, the enata, see Aeschin. Ctesiph. § 225), the funeral ceremony may have been held and his violent death related in a drama (Mommsen, p. 378). A great many, especially strangers, were initiated into these mysteries who did not proceed to initiation into the regular Eleusinia: the legend, too, said it was for the purpose of initiating Heracles, who was a stranger and according to the primitive regulations could not be initiated into the Eleusinia, that these Lesser Mysteries were established (Schol. on Aristoph. Plut. 845, 1013). A representation of the initiation of Heracles on a vase found at Panticapaeum is given in Baumeister's Denkmaler, p. 475. For the appearance of Aphrodite, cf. Themist. Or. xx. p. 288, Dind. There is a very similar one on a Pourtales vase in the British Museum, which Baumeister also alludes to (cf. Wieseler, ii. 112).
This extract is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Agroteras Thysia, a festival celebrated at Athens in honour of Artemis, surnamed
Agrotera (from agra, chase), in consequence of a vow made before the battle of
Marathon. It was solemnised, according to Plutarch (De Malign. Herod. 26), on
the sixth of the month of Boedromion, and consisted in a sacrifice of 500 goats,
which continued to be offered in the time of Xenophon (Xenoph. Anab. iii. 2, 12).
Aelian (V. H. ii. 25) places the festival on the sixth day of Thargelion, and
says that 300 goats were sacrificed; but as the battle of Marathon, which gave
rise to this solemn sacrifice, occurred on the sixth of Boedromion, Aelian's statement
appears to be wron. (Plut. de Glor. Athen. 7).
This festival is said to have originated in the following manner :
When the Persians invaded Attica, Callimachus, the polemarch, or, according to
others, Miltiades, made a vow to sacrifice to Artemis Agrotera as many goats as
there should be enemies slain at Marathon. But when the number of enemies slain
was so great that an equal number of goats could not be found at once, the Athenians
decreed that 500 should be sacrificed every year. This is the statement made by
Xenophon; but other ancient authors give different accounts. The Scholiast on
Aristoph. (Equit. 666) relates that the Athenians, before the battle, promised
to sacrifice to Artemis one ox for every enemy slain; but when the number of oxen
could not be procured, they substituted an equal number of goats. It is not improbable
that annual processions from Athens to the temple of Hecate at Agrae, in remembrance
of the victory of Marathon, may have been connected with the sacrifice to Artemis
Agrotera. (Plut. de Malign. Herod. 26)
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ATHENS (Ancient city) GREECE
A festival celebrated in Athens on the 14th Scirophorion (June
to July) to Zeus as the protector of the city. It was also called Buphonia, from
the sacrifice of an ox connected with it. A labouring ox was led to the altar
of Zeus in the Acropolis, which was strewn with wheat and barley. As soon as the
ox touched the consecrated grain he was punished by a blow on the neck from an
axe, delivered by a priest of a particular family, who instantly threw away the
axe and took to flight. In his absence the axe was brought to judgment in the
Prytaneum, and condemned, as a thing polluted by murder, to be thrown into the
sea. To kill a labouring ox, the trusty helper of man, was rigidly forbidden by
custom. In the exceptional sacrifice of one at this festival the ancient custom
may be regarded as on the one hand excusing the slaughter, and on the other insisting
that it was, nevertheless, equivalent to a murder.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
A very ancient festival celebrated at Athens, which at different times seems to have had a different character, for at first it was solemnized in honour of Athene, surnamed Ergane, and by the whole people of Athens, whence it was called Athenaia or Pandemos. At a later period, however, it was celebrated only by artisans, especially smiths, and in honour of Hephaestus, whence its name was changed into chalkeia. It was held on the thirtieth day of the month of Pyanepsion. Menander composed a comedy called Chalkeia, a fragment of which is preserved in Athenaeus.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
An ancient festival originally held in honour of Athene at Athens, and of an agrarian character.
A festival of the Dioscuri, or Anakes, held at Athens
Panathenaea. The greatest festival of Athens took place every four years in honor of Athena, the patron deity of Athens. According to Athenian tradition, the games were organized for the first time by Erichthonios or possibly by Theseus. It was Peisistratus, however, who reorganized the games during the decade 570-560 BC. During the Archaic and Classical period the Panathenaic games had an allure equal to that of the other famous Panhellenic games (the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean and the Isthmian Games). During the Hellenistic and Roman time the festival was one of few instances in which Athenian presence became obvious. It is estimated that the Panathenaea seized in the early 5th century AD. During the Classical period, the festival took place in the second half of August for eight days and consisted of athletic and equestrian contests, music and rhapsody competitions, as well as other sports and festivities. As opposed to the other Panhellenic games, the Panathenaea were characterized as chrematites (monetary) and not stefanites (wreath-bearing) because the athletes received expensive prizes (e.g. olive oil in amphorae) and not plain wreaths.
This text is cited June 2005 from the Foundation of the Hellenic World URL below, which contains images.
Panathenaia (Panathenaea), (ta Panathenaia). The most ancient and most important of Athenian
festivals. It was celebrated in honour of Athene, the patron deity of Athens.
Related to have been founded in early times by Erichthonius, it is said to have
been originally named only Athenaea, and to have first received the name of Panathenaea
at the time when Theseus united all the inhabitants of Attica into one body. In
memory of the union itself was kept the festival of the sunoikia, or sunoikesis,
on the 16th of Hecatombaeon (July-August), which may be regarded as a kind of
preparatory solemnity to the Panathenaea. There was a festival of the ordinary
or lesser Panathenaea celebrated every year, and from the time of Pisistratus,
the great Panathenaea held every fifth year, and in the third year of every Olympiad,
from the 24th to the 29th of Hecatombaeon. Pisistratus, in the year B.C. 566,
added to the original chariot and horse-races athletic contests in each of the
traditional forms of competition. He, or his son Hipparchus, instituted the regulation
that the collected Homeric poems should be recited at the Feast of Rhapsodes.
In 446 Pericles introduced musical contests, which took place on the first day
of the festival, in the Odeum, which he had built. Competitions of cyclic choruses
and other kinds of dances, torch-races and trireme-races added to the splendour
of the festival. The care and direction of all these contests were committed to
ten stewards (athlothetai), who were elected by the people for four years, from
one great Panathenaic festival to the next. In the musical contests the first
prize was a golden crown; in the athletic, the prize was a garland of leaves from
the sacred olive-trees of Athene, together with large and beautiful vases filled
with oil from the same trees. Many specimens of these Panathenaic vases have been
found in Italy, Sicily, Greece, and at Cyrene. They have the figure of Athene
on one side and a design indicating the contest for which they are awarded on
the other. Most of them belong to the fourth century B.C., 367-318; the so-called
"Burgon Vase," in the British Museum, to the sixth century. The tribe
whose ships had been victorious received a sum of money, part of which was expended
upon a sacrifice to Poseidon.
The culminating-point of the festival was the 28th day of the
month, the birthday of the goddess, when the grand procession carried through
the city the costly, embroidered, saffron-coloured garment, the peplus (peplos).
This had been woven in the preceding nine months by Attic maidens and matrons,
and was embroidered with representations from the battle of the gods and giants.
It was carried through the city, first of all, as a sail for a ship moving on
wheels, and was then taken to the Acropolis, where it adorned one of the statues
of Athene Polias. The procession is represented in a vivid manner in the well-known
frieze of the Parthenon. It included the priests and their attendants, leading
a long train of animals festally adorned for sacrifice; matrons and maidens bearing
in baskets the various sacrificial implements; old men in festal attire, with
olive-branches in their hands, whence came their name, thallophoroi; warriors,
with spear and shield, in splendid array; young men in armour; the cavalry under
the command of both the hipparchoi; the victors in the immediately preceding contests;
the festal embassies of other States, especially of the colonies; and, lastly,
the aliens resident in Athens. Of these last the men bore behind the citizens
trays with sacrificial cakes, the women water-pots, and the maidens sunshades
and stools for the citizens' wives; while on the freedmen was laid the duty of
adorning with oak-leaves the market-places and streets through which the procession
moved. The feast ended with the great festal sacrifice of a hecatomb of oxen,
and with the general banqueting which accompanied it. At the yearly minor Panathenaea,
on the 28th and 29th of Hecatombaeon, contests, sacrifices, and a procession took
place, but all in a more simple style, under the direction of the hieropoioi.
In later times the festival was removed to the spring, perhaps in consequence
of Roman influence, in order to make it correspond to the Quinquatrus of Minerva.
Panathenaea (ta Panathenaia) was a very ancient festival in honour of Athena Polias
and Erechtheus, said to have been founded by Erechtheus or Erichthonius 729 years
before the first Olympiad (C. I. G. 2374, cf. p. 325), called at first Athenaea,
but after the sunoikismos by Theseus Panathenaea (Plut. Thes. 24; Suid. s. v.
Panathenaia). Pisistratus renewed it with increased splendour, and attached more
especial importance therein to the worship of his protecting divinity, Athena.
1. The Greater and Lesser Panathenaea.
The Greater Panathenaea was a penteteris celebrated every fourth year, and was
merely an extended and more magnificent performance of the Lesser Panathenaea,
which was always from of old held every year (cf. Hom. Il. ii. 551). As each fourth
year came round the Lesser was incorporated in the Greater. The procession and
the hecatomb always remained the basis of the latter, but the chariot-race also
appears to have been considered as belonging to the original festival. Erechtheus
is said to have ridden at it himself (C. I. G. l. c.). Pisistratus may be virtually
considered as the second establisher of the Greater Panathenaea, though we hear
that the performance under the Archon Hippoclides in 566 B.C. was attended by
a large concourse of strangers and was widely celebrated, especially as on that
occasion gymnastic contests were first introduced. Indeed Marcellinus (Vit. Thuc.3)
says the Panathenaea was established in the archonship of Hippoclides. The increased
splendour of the Greater festival of course diminished the importance of the Lesser:
so, though the adjective megala is often found attaching to the Greater (C. I.
G. 380, 1068), still generally Panathenaia alone is used for the Greater, the
Lesser one being styled mikra.
The statement in the Arg. to Dem. Mid. 510, that the Lesser festival
was a trieteris, is disproved both by such evidence as ta Panathenaia ta kat'
eniauton and also by the fact that inscriptions on vases point to Panathenaea
having been held in every single Olympic year. The Greater Panathenaea were celebrated
every third Olympic year (e.g. C. I. G. i. 251, by the Archon Charondas in 110.
3; Lys. Accept. Mun. Def.1, by the Archon Glaucippus in 92. 3); therefore they
were held in the same years as the Pythian games. Solon, we know, took a Pythian
calendar to regulate the Athenian one, and Pisistratus in many points followed
closely in Solon's steps.
2. The date of the Panathenaea.
The principal day was the third from the end of Hecatombaeon (about August 13th).
Proclus (in Plat. Tim.) says so expressly of the Greater: and this agrees with
Schol. on Hom. Il. viii. 39, where Athena is said to have been born on that day.
But Proclus says that the Lesser Panathenaea came immediately after the Bendideia,
accordingly on the 21st of Thargelion (about June 8th). But the Greater and Lesser
Panathenaea are undoubtedly connected in that the former is but an amplification
of the latter so that a priori there is a presumption that they are held at the
same time. Further C. I. G. 157 obviously follows the calendar, and it puts the
Panathenaea after the sacrifice to Eirene on Hecatombaeon 16th. According to Demosthenes
(Timocrates), the Panathenaea are just approaching on Hecatombaeon 11th; but these
are certainly the Lesser Panathenaea. The argument that the list in Lysias (op.
cit.4) is necessarily in chronological order is disproved by such lists as Isaeus
(de Dicaeog. hered. 36), and Andoc.] contr. Alc. 42, which can be seen from comparison
to be certainly not both in chronological order.
The evidence for a Panathenaea in the spring is Himerius, who gives
as a title to his third speech, eis Basileion Panathenaiois, archomenou tou earos:
cf. Verg. Ciris, 21 ff. (probably composed in Hadrian's time); but this refers
to the Roman Quinquatria, which were called Panathenaea after the disappearance
of the older festival (Dionys. Hal. ii. 70).
3. The Musical Contest.
This was only held at the Greater Panathenaea. Pisistratus was of the gens of
the Philaidae, who lived in Brauron, where there was a contest of rhapsodes from
of old (Schol. on Aristoph. Av. 873). Hence he but transferred to the capital
the custom of his village. He introduced recitations of the Homeric poems, which
were better regulated by Hipparchus: cf. Plat. Hipp. 228 B; Ael. V. H.. viii.
2. The poems were now sung in much longer portions than before, and probably both
the Iliad and the Odyssey as the Neleidae are especially celebrated in the latter
. In later times other poets (e. g. Choerilus of Samos, fl. 420 B.C.) obtained
the privilege of being recited at the Panathenaea (Suidas, s. v. Choirilos).
The musical contest proper was introduced by Pericles, who built the
new Odeum for the purpose (Plut. Pericl. 13). Previously the recitations of the
rhapsodes were in the old unroofed Odeum. There is a very important inscription
(C. I. A. ii. 965) concerning these musical contests. The part referring to the
rhapsodists is probably lost. Then follow five prizes for the kitharoidoi. For
the first an olive crown set with gold (stephanos thallou chrusous), value 1000
drachmas and 500 drachmas in silver: for the second, probably a crown value 700,
for the third 600, for the fourth 400, and for the fifth 300. Next two prizes
andrasi auloidois: for the first a crown value 300, for the second one value 100.
Next andrasi kitharistais: for the first it appears a crown valued at 500 drachmas,
or 300 drachmas in money; for the second probably 200, and for the third 100.
The fact that we find andrasi added proves that there were contests of boys too
(cf. C. I. G. 2758, Col. i.). The auleta also got prizes, but the inscription
does not record what they were. Note that the prizes in the musical contests are
reckoned in money, not in kind, as in the older gymnastic and equestrian contests.
The first who won a victory in these musical contests was Phrynis in Ol. 83. 3
(446 B.C.): see Schol. on Aristoph. Nub. 971 (alter Kalliou to Kallimachou). Plutarch
appears to have written a treatise on the Panathenaic music (de Mus. 8). There
were not any dramatic representations at the Panathenaea. When we consider the
long recitations of the rhapsodes and the musical contests proper, we may allow
perhaps three days for this part of the ceremony on a liberal computation, certainly
not less than one and a half days.
4. The Gymnastic Contest.
There is frequent mention of this contest at the Greater Panathenaea (C. I. G.
251, Rang. 849, 18; Dem. de Cor.116--a passage, by the way, which shows that proclamations
in honour of benefactors were made at the Greater Panathenaea at the gymnastic
contest), none for the Lesser: besides, it had nothing to do with the ritual;
it was a purely secular and late addition, said to have been first made by the
Archon Hippoclides in 566 B.C., or perhaps Pisistratus himself. The inscription
referred to above, C. I. A. ii. 965, also gives details as to the gymnastic contests.
The competitors were divided into paides, ageneioi, and andres, the paides being
those from 12 to 16 years of age, the ageneioi from 16 to 20, and the andres above
20. Thus neither a pais nor an ageneios could compete as such twice. In later
times (Rang. 964) the paides were still further divided e. g. into tes protes
helikias, tes denteras (cf. C. I. G. 1590, paidon ton presbuteron, paidon ton
neoteron), the paides tes trites being doubtless the ageneioi. There is then an
event ek panton, which means an all-comers' race, but for boys, as is plain from
its position before andras. The boys and striplings had their events first: then
there was an interval (if a whole night did not intervene); and on re-assembling
the men's events took place. According to C. I. A. ii. 965, the paides and ageneioi
have five contests,--stadion, pentathlon, pale, pugme, pankration. According to
Rang. 963 (belonging to the late period of the Diadochi), the paides have six,
while the ageneioi still have only five. Perhaps the dolichos, which was added,
was for all below the class of andres. The men's contests were, according to x.
i. a. 966 (= Rang. 962), of 190 B.C., dolichos, stadion, diaulos, hippios (=a
double diaulos), pentathlon, pale, pugme, pankration, hoplites (= race in armour).
Note the order of the events, though in Plato's time the stadion came first (Legg.
viii. 833 A): cf. C. I. A. ii. 965. The races were run in heats (taxeis) of four
each (Paus. vi. 13, 4); the victors in the heats afterwards running together.
There were prizes for the first and second in the deciding heat in the ratio of
5: 1 (= ox: sheep, cf. Plut. Sol. 23): see C. I. A. l. c. The prizes consisted
of oil from the moriai in the Academia (see Olea=olive),
given in special prize amphorae, which were called amphoreis Panathenaikoi (Athen.
v. 199). The oil was meant to be sold, and could be exported free of duty (ouk
esti d'exagoge elaiou ex Athenon ei me tois nikosi, Schol. on Pind. Nem. x. 64).
The number of amphorae given, according to the inscription referred to, was about
1450, and the value (1 amphora worth 6 drachmas) about 1 talent 2700 drachmas.
The gymnastic games probably lasted two days, certainly not less than one.
5. The Equestrian Contest.
There is plenty of evidence for an equestrian contest at the Greater Panathenaea,
none for the Lesser; though there may have been a kind of ceremonial race, more
as a matter of worship than as a contest in which the victors got substantial
prizes. None of the evidences for Athlothetae at the Lesser Panathenaea are absolutely
conclusive, yet we may perhaps suppose that there was an equestrian contest on
a small scale at this festival. To understand thoroughly the many events of this
division at different times, the reader must study the inscriptions in C. I. A.
965 b=Rang. 960 (380 B.C.), 966 = Rang. 962 (190 B.C.), 968 (166 B.C.), 969 (162
B.C.), C. I. G. 1591 (250 B.C.), and above all the elaborate table of the comparison
of these inscriptions in Mommsen (Taf. IV.). The multifarious details can only
be set forth in such a table, and any one who wants to study them very closely
must be referred to it. Here we can merely give an idea of the plan, noticing
that the events appear to have increased in number as time went on. The first
and chief event, the one which legend said Erechtheus introduced, was that of
the apobates (cf. tes apenes kai tes kalpes dromos at Olympia in Paus. v. 9, 1
and 2). A charioteer (heniochos egbibazon or zeugei ebibazon) and a companion,
as in the Iliad, occupy the chariot. The companion (here called apobates, not
paraibates) leaps out (hence his name) and again up (hence sometimes we find him
also called anabates), partly helped by the driver (who thus gets his title egbibazon),
partly by kinds of wheels called apsbatikoi trochoi. The son of Phocion (Plut.
Phoc. 20) took part in this contest, so it must not be inferred from its absence
in C. I. A. ii. 965 that it did not exist in 380 B.C. It is really broken off
the inscription. The second division in Mommsen's table is. ordinary riding and
driving, without any relation to ritual or war. Here the horses are divided into
foals and full-grown horses; they are yoked either singly, or two or four together;
and the races are divided into diauloi and akampioi. Then there are various permutations
and combinations that may be made of these (e.g. sunoridi polikei, keleti teleioi,
harmati teleioi in C. I. A. ii. 968): but there is no diaulos ever for a single
horse, only for a yoke or a pair, and not even for these in the case of foals.
The third division consists of what we may call military competitions, and they
are much the same as the second division, only there do not appear so many combinations
(e.g. ib. harmati polemisterioi, hippoi polemistei). There is no need to suppose
that these contests were exclusively confined to the cavalry. The fourth refers
to the procession in honour of Athena, and always consisted of four horses zeugei
pompikoi diaulon or akampion. The fifth was of javelin-throwers from horseback,
a contest which soon disappeared. Notice further that several events are for all
comers (ek panton): cf. C. I. A. 968, 42 ff., as opposed to those for Athenians
only (ton politikon).
The inscription C. I. A. ii. 965 b, of which the beginning is lost
containing the apobates, gives the following, which Mommsen classifies thus:
1st Class. [apobates,]
2nd Class. hippon polikoi zeugei (40:8).
hippon
zeugei adephagoi (140:40); i. e. teleioi (see Hesych. s. v. adephagos); was probably
a slang word for the great expense. such splendid racehorses entailed.
3rd Class. hippoi keleti nikonti (16:4).
hippon
zeugei nikonti (30:6).
(It is specially noted in the inscription that these are polemisteriois.)
4th Class. zeugei pompikoi nikonti (4:2)
5th Class. aph' hippon akontizonti (5:1).
(In brackets we have given the number of jars of oil awarded for first and second prizes.) The amateurs who took part in the contests of the second class are the best rewarded; and it was to encourage them to spend their money on keeping horses that these events were made the most distinguished. In C. I. A. ii. 966, 41, king Ptolemy Epiphanes appears as victor among them in the diaulos with a chariot.
The place for both the gymnastic and equestrian contests was perhaps
the Eleusinium (Kohler to C. I. A. ii. 2, p. 392), or the deme Echelidae, W. of
the Piraeus (Steph. Byz. s. v. Echelidai: Etym M. s. v. Enechelido, 340, 53).
It took up a day probably, though possibly only half a day.
6. The Smaller Contests.
(a) That called Euandria (euandria) was a means by which the leaders of the procession
were chosen. It was a leitourgia (Andoc. Alcib. 2) and he who performed it chose
out of his tribe a certain number -perhaps about twenty--four, the number of a
chorus- of the tallest and best looking members, and arrayed these with proper
festal garments. A member of another tribe did the same, and probably only two
tribes contended, as no second prize appears in C. I. A. ii. 965. From this contest
strangers were expressly excluded. Sauppe and Kohler consider that there were
two companies who contended in each case in the Euandria, one of seniors, the
other of juniors; perhaps the contest of the seniors was called euandria in the
special sense, and that of the juniors euoplia..
(b) The Pyrrhic dance (see Pyrricha),
performed at both the Greater and Lesser Panathenaea (Lys. Accept. Mun. Def.1,
4). With the Euandria and the Lampadedromia
it belonged to the more strictly religious part of the festival (cf. Aristoph.
Nub. 988 and Schol.). Athena was said to have danced the Pyrrhic dance after her
victory over the Giants (Dionys. Hal. vii. 72). As belonging to the religious
part of the festival, the prize was an ox for sacrifice, and bore the special
title of niketerion (cf Xen,. Cyr. viii. 3, 33, where the ox alone is called niketerion,
not the goblets. There were Pyrrhic dancers of all three ages -paides, ageneioi,
and andres. A relief published by Beule presents eight armed youths performing
the Pyrrhic dance. A full body of Pyrrhicists would then be twenty-four, the number
of a comic chorus. They wear a light helmet, carry a shield on their left arms,
but are otherwise naked. How the victory was gained in the Pyrrhic dance and the
Euandria is not stated; probably by decision of a judge. The. figure on the left
of the relief may be perhaps. the judge.
(c) The Lampadedromia
the prize of which in C. I. A. ii. 965 was a hydria of oil (cf. Schol. in Pind.
Nem. xv. 61), value 30 drachmas.
7. The Pannychis.
This was the night of the 28th (the day being reckoned from sunset to sunset).
The Lampadedromia
was the first event in it. Then followed during the greater part of the night
litanies (ololugmata) by the elder priestesses, which were originally prayers
and thanksgivings for the harvest, and subsequently songs of joy for the birth
of Athena. Mommsen thinks that possibly the conclusion of the Eumenides may have
reference to the ceremonies of the Panathenaic pannychis. There were also dances
by the younger priestesses, and towards morning songs by cyclic choruses (cf.
Lys. op. cit. 2) of youths and men (neon t'aoidai choron te molpai, Eur. Heracl.
779, a passage comprising many features of the Panathenaea, which, however, must
not be taken as expressing the order in time, only the order in importance of
the several events). The hieropoioi got next to nothing for the expenses of the
Pannychis, only 50 drachmas, and this had to compensate much other outlay besides.
8. The Procession and Sacrifices.
The procession was most splendid. It comprised the victors in the games of the
preceding days, the pompeis or leaders of the sacrifices, both Athenian and those
of strangers (for the colonies and cleruchies used to send sacrifices to the Panathenaea,
e. g. Brea, C. I. A. i. 31), a large quota of cavalry (for Demosthenes, Phil.
i. 26, speaks of hipparchoi: cf. Schol. on Aristoph. Nub. 386), the chief officers
of the army, taxiarchoi and strategoi, dignified elders (thallophoroi, Xen. Symp.
4, 17), bearing olive branches (thalloi), doubtless with their metoikoi as skaphephoroi
following, in later times the ephebi splendidly equipped: while of women there
was a long train of kanephoroi (see Canephorus),
with the wives and daughters of the metoikoi as their skiadephoroi and diphrophoroi
(see Metoeci):
then the Athenian people, generally marshalled according to their demes. Though
the frieze of the Parthenon reproduces some points, especially the genuine Athenian
element of the Panathenaic festival, still it must not be supposed that it reproduces
all the details; e. g. the metoikoi, of whom we have most specific, evidence,
do not appear. For another service of the female metoikoi at the Panathenaea,
see Hydriaphoria.
One of the most striking features of the procession was the Peplus,
worked by ergastinai, superintended by two arrephoroi and certain priestesses,
which was destined for the ancient statue of Athena Polias, according to certain
prescriptions of the Delphic god. Pisistratus probably intended that a new peplus
should be brought every four years; the Elean maidens wove a peplus for the goddess
only once in every four years (Paus. v. 16, 2); but in republican Athens a new
peplus was made each year (Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 566). In the time of the Diadochi
portraits of some of these were placed where the figures of the gods should have
been (Plut. Demetr. 10). The peplus was suspended like a sail from the yards on
the mast of the Panathenaic Ship (Schol. on Hom. Il. v. 734), which was an actual
ship, very large and beautiful. The marvellous appearance of a ship going through
the streets was effected by subterranean machines (Philostr. Vit. Soph. ii. 1,
5; Paus. i. 29, 1), of which we should very much like to have further information.
The Athenians had become a seafaring people, and they wished to signify it: the
time of the agrarian Athena was passed. On the peplus were represented the aristeia
of the goddess, especially her victory over Enceladus and the Giants (Schol. on
Eur. Hec. 466; Suidas, s. v. Peplos). It was considered a great sight for the
populace (Plaut. Merc. prol. 67).
The procession, marshalled mainly in the ,outer Ceramicus, partly
inside the town, passed through the market-place to the Eleusinium at the east
end of the Acropolis (cf. Schol. to Aristoph. Eq. 566), turned round this to the
left, and passed along the Pelasgicon, north of the Acropolis, and so reached
the Propylaea (Philostr. l. c; cp. Xen. Hipp. 3, 2). Then some of the members
performed the sacrifice to Athena Hygiaea, while others offered a prelimiuary
sacrifice on the Areopagus. Prayers accompanied these offerings, and we hear of
prayers being offered for the Plataeans at the Greater Panathenaea (Herod. vi.
111). On entering the Acropolis, which was only allowed to genuine Athenians,
there was the sacrifice of one cow to Athena Nike; after this followed the. hecatomb
to Athena Polias, on the large altar in the eastern part of the Acropolis. In
earlier times the hecatomb was offered at the Erechtheum. After the procession
followed the hestiasis. The flesh of the victims was given, according to demes,
to a certain fixed number out of each deme. The skaphephoroi supplied bread and
cakes.
9. The Boat-race
was a supplementary event on the 29th of Hecatombaeon, the day on which ships
are to be drawn down to the sea (Hes. Op. 815). It was held every four years in
the Piraeus in honour of Poseidon (identified with Erechtheus) and Athena. The
difference of locality forbids our associating it with the Sunian regatta, though
this was also held only once in four years (Herod. vi. 87; Lys. op. cit. 5). In
connexion with this part of the festival the orator Lycurgus, in whose family
was the priesthood of Poseidon Erechtheus, established three cyclic choruses in
honour of that god, with valuable prizes.
10. The Calendar of the Panathenaea.
For the Lesser Panathenaea (which was the nucleus of the Greater) the chief day
of the festival was the 28th of Hecatombaeon; it comprised the pannychis, the
procession, the sacrifices, and the feasting: and the 27th sufficed for the horseraces
(when there were any), the Euandria and the Pyrrhic dances. At the Greater Panathenaea
these days were allotted to the same events. But the day on which the festival
began will vary according as we allow a longer or shorter period for the three
chief contests: thus the Musical contest might last three days or 1 1/2 days,
the Gymnastic two days or one day, and the Equestrian one day or half a day. According,
then, to the longer period, the Panathenaea would begin on the 21st; according
to the shorter, on the 24th. The longer period has the advantage that it leaves
the afternoons free for prelections or dinner-parties (Xen. Symp. init.). The
shorter will suit Thucyd. v. 47 better.
11. The Officials of the Festival.
(1) The ten Athlothetae, one chosen from each tribe. They held office for four
years, and their function, as Pollux says (viii. 93), was to arrange the musical,
gymnastic, and equestrian contests at the Panathenaea. We find in inscriptions
that they received subsidies from the tamias of the sacred chest of Athena (C.
I. A. i. 188).
(2) The Hieropoioi (see Hieropoei),
who managed the Lesser Panathenaea (Rang. 814, 32). They appear to have had nothing
to do with the specially Greater festival.
(3) The Gymnasiarchae (see Gymnasium),
who especially superintended the Lampadedromia.
(4) The Demarchs (see Demarchi),
who marshalled the people in demes for the procession and for the hestiasis (Schol.
on Aristoph. Nub. 37; Suidas, s. v.). Concerning those who had perquisites in
connexion with the festival, such as the manteis and archons in the kreanomiai.
12. Panathenaea outside Athens
may perhaps be inferred from Panathenaia en Athenais in C. I. G. 1068. We are
told that Themistocles established Panathenaea in Magnesia (Ath. xii. 533), and
in Teos there was a guild of Panathenaistae (C. I. G. 3073). The cleruchs no doubt
celebrated the festival abroad.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Boedromia, a festival celebrated at Athens on the seventh day of the month of Boedromion, in honour of Apollo Boedromios. (Muller, Dor. ii. 8, § 5.) The name Boedromios, by which Apollo was called in Boeotia and other parts of Greece (Pans. ix. 17, § 1; Callimach. Hymn. Apoll. 69), seems to indicate that by this festival he was honoured as a martial god, who either by his actual presence or by his oracles afforded assistance in the dangers of war. The origin of the festival is, however, traced by different authors to different events in Grecian story. Plutarch (Thes. 27) says that Theseus, in his war against the Amazons, did not give battle till after he had offered a sacrifice to Phobos; and that, in commemoration of the successful battle which took place in the month of Boedromion, the Athenians, down to his own time, continued to celebrate the festival of the Boedromia. According to Suidas, the Etymol. Magn. and Euripides (lon. 59), the festival derived its name and origin from the circumstance that when, in the reign of Erechtheus, the Athenians were attacked by Eumolpos, Xuthos or (according to Philochorus in Harpocration, s. v.) his son Ion came to their assistance, and procured them the victory. Respecting the particulars of this festival, nothing is known except that sacrifices were offered to Artemis. (Comp. Spanheim, ad Callim. Hymn. in Apoll. 69.)
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Boedromia. A festival celebrated at Athens on the seventh day of the month of Boedromion, in honour of Apollo Boedromios (Muller, Dor. ii. 8. 5). The name Boedromios, by which Apollo was called in Boeotia and other parts of Greece, seems to indicate that by this festival he was honoured as a martial god, who either by his actual presence or by his oracles afforded assistance in the dangers of war. The origin of the festival is, however, traced by different authors to different events in Grecian story. See Plutarch, Theseus, 27.
Chloeia (chloia), a festival celebrated at Athens in honour of Demeter Chloe,
or simply Chloe, whose temple stood near the Acropolis (Hesych. s. v. chloia;
Paus. i. 22, 3; Athen. xiv. p. 618; Soph. Oed. Col. 1600, with the Scholiast).
It was solemnised in spring, on the sixth of Thargelion, when the blossoms began
to appear (hence the names chloe and chloeia), with the sacrifice of a goat and
much mirth and rejoicing (Eupolis, apud Schol. ad Soph. Oed. Col. l. c.)
Diasia, a great festival celebrated at Athens, without (outside) the walls of the city (exo tes poleos), in honour of Zeus, surnamed Meilichios (Thuc. i. 126). It was the greatest of the Athenian festivals of Zeus, before the time of Solon, and was of a propitiatory character. The whole people took part in it, and the wealthier citizens offered victims (hiereia), while the poorer classes burnt such incense as their country furnished (thumata epichoria), which the scholiast on Thucydides erroneously explains as cakes in the shape of animals (Compare Xen. Anab. vii. 8, 4; Lucian, Tim. 7; Aristoph. Nub. 402). The diasia took place on the 23rd of the month of Anthesterion (Schol. ad Aristoph. l. c.) with feasting and rejoicings, and was, like most other festivals, accompanied by a fair (Aristoph. Nub. 841). It was this festival at which Cylon was enjoined by an oracle to take possession of the acropolis of Athens; but he mistook the oracle, and made the attempt during the celebration of the Olympian games (Compare Pollux, i. 26; Suidas, s. v.). The etymology of diasia given by most of the ancient grammarians (from Dios and ase) is false; the name is a mere derivative from Dios, as Apollonia from Apollon.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Hephaestia. A festival at Athens, celebrated annually, in honour of Hephaestus.
Scirophoria (ta Skirophoria). An Athenian festival celebrated on the 12th of the month Scirophorion (June-July), called after it. It was in honour of Athene (or, according to some, Demeter and Kore), who was worshipped under the name of Sciras near Sciron, a spot on the Sacred Way leading from Athens to Eleusis. It had its name from the large white sunshade (skiron) beneath which the priestess of Athene (the patron goddess of the city), the priest of Erechtheus, and the priest of Helios went to Sciron to sacrifice. The sunshade was a symbol of heavenly protection against the rays of the sun, which began to burn more intensely during the month of the festival. This protection was invoked with special reason, for the dry limestone rock was thinly covered by a meagre surface of soil in the neighbourhood of Athens, and particularly near Sciron itself. In this, as in other festivals of invocation, there were also expiatory offerings; and hence they carried in the procession the hide of a ram that had been sacrificed to Zeus as the mild and gracious deity.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ATHMONON (Ancient demos) ATTIKI
Amarynthia, Amarysia (Amarunthia, Amarusia), a festival of Artemis Amarynthia or Amarysia, celebrated, as it seems, originally at Amarynthus in Euboea, with extraordinary splendour; but it was also solemnised in several places in Attica, such as Athmone (Paus. i. 31, § 3); and the Athenians held a festival, as Pausanias says, in honour of the same goddess, in no way less brilliant than that in Euboea. (Hesych. s. v. Amarusia; comp. Schol. ad Pind. Olymp. xiii. 159.) The festival in Euboea was distinguished for its splendid processions; and Strabo himself (x. p. 448) seems to have seen, in the temple of Artemis Amrynthia, a column on which was recorded the splendour with which the Eretrians at one time celebrated this festival. The inscription stated that the procession was formed of three thousand heavy-armed men, six hundred horsemen, and sixty chariots.
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ELEFSIS (Ancient city) ATTICA, WEST
Mysteria (musteria). Though the term musteria is that which has survived, still
it was only one and that a late one, and perhaps the least common of the terms
used by the Greeks to express their mystic rites. The word orgia is found in the
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, ll. 274, 476, derived from eorga (cf. Lat. operari),
which signifies to perform ritual, and it was only in later times that it came
to connote ecstatic worship. The term musteria is derived from muein, used of
closing the lips or eyes; mustes, according to Petersen, means with eyes shut,
as opposed to epoptes. Musteria is applied both to the objects of secret worship
(Themist. Or. iv. 55) and also the secret ritual; aporreta is similarly used.
According to Lobeck mustikon is anything recondite, enigmatical, indirect, allegorical;
in fact, what is purposely not simple, plain, and straightforward. Again there
is the term telete.. It is used of an ordinary festival (Pind. Nem. x. 34); as
applied to sacred worship, it signifies the consummation of the votary's progress
in his religion. (Cf. such phrases as telos gamoio, tele used for the magistrates
of the state, and telete taken by the philosophers to express complete knowledge
of the subject). Diutius initiant quam consignant, says Tertullian (contra Valentin.
1), translating pleiona chronon muousin e telousin: compare sphragis and teleiosis,
used for baptism. The Latins used initia, which signified an ideal beginning (initia
ut appellantur ita re vera principia vitae cognovimus, Cic. de Leg. ii. 1. 4,
36), -a sort of new birth, as Preller says. Thus then we have terms signifying
both the objective secret nature of the ritual and the subjective condition of
the votary.
1. The Kinds of Mysteries.
We can hardly consider under the head of mysteries those mystic usages which occur
here and there in certain festivals, such as the marriage of the basileus and
basilissa at the Dionysia;
nor the multitude of purifications and sin-offerings found in most religions,
all with more or less of a mystic meaning. Again the mystic worships performed
by private families are hardly to be reckoned either, and do not come under our
notice except in some few cases, such as the Orphic rites of the Lycomidae (see
Eleusinia). But the mysteries properly so called, viz. those which
were recognised by the state and required a regular initiation, may be divided
into
(1) those performed by a special sex, e. g. the Thesmophoria
celebrated by women only, as was also the worship of Dionysus in Laconia (Pans.
ii. 20, 3), of Cora in Megalopolis (ib. viii. 31, 8), Rhea in Thaumasion (ib.
36, 3), Dionysus on Parnassus (ib. x. 4, 3). Special mystic ceremonies for men
only are rarely found, such as that to Demeter, Cora, and Dionysus at Sicyon (ib.
ii. 11, 3).
(2) Those open to all Greeks, such as the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries.
It is often stated that the only gods who had a mystic worship were the Chthonian
ones; but this statement is not quite true, though the Chthonian gods are the
gods principally worshipped in mysteries, as might be inferred even a priori from
their very nature. But there are some Olympian gods to whom mystic worship was
performed, e. g. Zeus Idaeus (Eur. Cretes, Frag. 2), a mixture of Phrygian Cybele-worship
and Cretan or Thracian Zagreus worship, in honour of Zeus, celebrated (phaneros,
according to Diod. v. 77, i. e. during the day, not at night; the Argive Hera
(Paus. ii. 38, 2), even the Graces (ib. ix. 35, 3). Foreign mystic worships are
those of Cybele, which were wild and enthusiastic, with flutes, drums, and cymbals
(Herod. iv. 76); the trieteric worship of Dionysus; of Hecate at Aegina (Paus.
ii. 30, 2) and in the Zerynthian cave in Samothrace (Schol, on Lycophr. 77). This
goddess was especially worshipped in the Roman Empire just before it became Christian;
during which period too, and indeed earlier also, the mysteries of Isis, Sabazius,
and Mithras were much in vogue. For these the reader must be referred to the articles
Rhea, Hecate, Isis, Sabazius in Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, There is a good article on
Mitiras in the Dict. of Christian Biography. A remarkable Roman mystery confined
to women was that of the celebrated Bona Dea, which Cicero (Att. vi. 1, 26) calls
Romana mysteria. See Dict. of Myth. s. v. Bona
Dea.
As to the general character of the gods of the mysteries, we cannot
do better than quote Lenormant: Like all the worships of antiquity, the Eleusinian
mysteries were founded on the adoration of Nature, its forces and its phenomena,
conceived rather than observed, interpreted by the imagination rather than by
the reason, transferred into divine figures and histories by a kind of theological
poetry, which went off into pantheism on the one side and into anthropomorphism
on the other. The nature and concatenation of their rites and plays were connected
with precise beliefs; which tended to efface the distinction between the divine
personages of the poetical and popular mythology, in such a manner as to lead
to what has been called mustike theokrasia, and to reduce these gods who were
exoterically individuals to mere general abstractions. But the form under which
these beliefs were presented was such that, among the ancients themselves, some
have been able to find in it a kind of philosophy of nature or physiologia, and
others bring out of it euhemerism and with it atheism. So far we will go, emphasising
the fact, that this physiologia was of late growth in the mysteries; but no further.
However, to such students as do not easily get dizzy and who may wish to pursue
the subject into its details, we recommend Lenormant's articles on Bacchus, Ceres,
and the Cabiri, in Daremberg and Saglio; also chapter vi. of his Voie Sacree,
where his views issue in the purest pantheism, which he supposes to be the doctrine
taught by the Hierophant at Eleusis and to be the primitive Aryan dogma that lay
at the base of the mysteries.
2. The Origin of the Mysteries.
That they were mostly old Pelasgian worships, which were driven into the background
by the conquering races, and accordingly carried on as mysteries, is a very reasonable
view, and is supported by what Herodotus says of the Thesmophoria (ii. 171) and
the Cabiri (ii. 51). By the Pelasgians we mean what Curtius means (Hist. of Greece,
i. 35 ff.), viz. the first great body of emigrants westward from among the Phrygians,
that tribe which forms the link by which the Aryans of the West were connected
with the Asiatics proper. They are the primitive indigenous race of Hellas, the
dark background of history, children of the black earth (as the poets called Pelasgus),
who amidst all the changes of the ruling generations calmly clave to the soil,
leading their life unobserved under unchanging conditions, as husbandmen and herdsmen.
They brought with them their Phrygian forms of worship, as they passed through
Thrace into Hellas. Curtius represents their religion to have been of the purest
and noblest type -the worship of the Pelasgian Zeus upon the- mountain-tops, a
god without images or temples, a god unnamed except as the pure, the great, the
merciful, &c --and that Greek polytheism was a development in decadence as far
as spirituality went. When the fascination of Curtius's eloquence is passed, we
are unable to feel: that the religion which the Pelasgians brought from Phrygia
was much better than that of ordinary savages. Mr. Andrew Lang mentions several
points in which the Greek mysteries are in harmony with Australian, American,
and African practice: the mystic dances (cf. tous exagoreuontas ta musteria exorcheisthai
legousin hoi polloi, Lucian, de Salt. 15), the fastings, the elaborate and anxious
purifications; the use of the konos described by Lobeck as xularion hou exeptai
to spartion kai en tais teletais edoneito hina rhoizei, similar to the turndun
of the Australians, to call the votaries together; the plastering of initiates
with clay or dirt of some kind and washing it off to symbolise purification (cf.
Dem. de Cor. 313, 259, and Soph. Frag. 32, stratou kathartes kapomagmaton idris),
and the purifications by blood of swine mentioned in Aesch. Eum. 273 -an undoubted
savage custom, though not immediately connected with the mysteries- the use of
serpents in the mysteries, and so forth. Mr. Lang goes on to repeat again and
again in his gentle vein of satire how easy it is to think anything as a symbol
of anything, and wonders why the allegory should choose the practices of early
savage tribes. Nor is it any disgrace to the Greek race to allow this; rather
that the list of savage survivals is not many times as large and very much more
apparent. Most of the savage elements disappeared soon, and what remained became
blended with purer and later speculations.
This old religion was thrust into the background by the conquering
tribes, the gods of the latter becoming predominant and the stategods of the nation,
while the old religion for the most part gradually disappeared. But by some families
and tribes its ritual was in a large measure retained, and they probably formed
themselves into brotherhoods, like those of the Roman Church, and preserved their
rites doubtless with great strictness. Surely they were sodalities or confraternities
that lived the Orphic life. Now, the Greeks never persecuted doctrine, unless
indeed any doctrine was much blazed abroad and seemed likely to involve danger
to the state-worship; and no danger seemed to arise from the remnants of this
primitive worship. Indeed, they were sometimes adopted into the state-religion
on occasions. of religious terror, when a feeling of sin and need for purification
laid hold of the people. Thus it was that the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace
were adopted. The gradual development of the Eleusinian worship (that mystic ritual
with which we are best acquainted), from its original Phrygian-Pelasgian beginnings
to its adoption into the Athenian religion, we, have attempted to sketch in outline
in Eleusinia § 1.
3. Silence enjoined on the Votaries.
This is an important feature in the mysteries; the votaries could not divulge
the mysteries to noninitiates. Its original reason doubtless lies in the separatism
of early worships, a fear lest any outsider should learn how to get the favour
of the god; and the reason why it was retained in later and more enlightened periods
was to enhance the solemnity of the ritual. Strabo says x. 717, 77 he krupsis
he mustike ton hieron semnopoiei to theion mimoumene ten phusin autou ekpheugousan
ten aisthesin. Every expression, says Renan, is a limit, and the only language
not unworthy of things divine is silence. It prevented familiarity breeding contempt,
as in the ordinary religion. Chrysippus, Etym. Mag. 751, thinks it was intended
for an ethical purpose, viz. to teach the government of the tongue, tes psuches
echouses herma kai pros tous amuetous siopan dunamenes.
4. The Ceremony.
Whatever is to be said specially about the initiated, the priests, and the ceremony,
we have endeavoured to set forth in the particular articles, especially Eleusinia.
There will be found some description of the mystic drama, such as it was in later
times when it was part of the state-religion and full of foreign accretions. It
was of a splendid, solemn, vague nature, such as fettered the imagination of the
votary; and, if it only put the worshipper in a certain state and did not teach
anything (tous tetelesmenous ou mathein ti dein alla pathein kai diatethenai,
as Aristotle says, ap. Synes. Orat.), yet it made a man here and there think of
things spiritual and proceed on the task of working out his own salvation. To
such a man further progress was possible and a higher and deeper knowledge open,
imparted by gradual stages, after due time being given to allow the awakened thought
and imparted knowledge to germinate and fructify. All this is very Eastern, but
it is none the less very rational. Among the peasants who attend a midnight mass,
how many are there who think of the mystery of the Incarnation? asks M. Renan.
Yet, if a man here and there does think about it, he can learn more about it from
his teachers. But to the majority of the worshippers (and everyone who spoke the
Greek language and was not stained with gross crime was welcome, no previous katechesis
being required) the impression of the whole, not the perception of each particular,
was the important part. We may allow that the whole drama of Eleusis would appear
a miserable travesty to us, even its fireworks; but we answer in the bold words
of Renan, You are not to ask for reason from the religious feeling. The spirit
bloweth where it listeth; and if it chooses to attach the ideal to this or to
that, what have you to say?
But was there any reality at the back of it all, any doctrine like
the Incarnation, symbolised by the midnight ceremonies? There certainly was in
later times. The reality which the priests then appear to have taught was some
kind of system of cosmogony: cf. Cic. de Nat. Deorum, i. 42, 119 (of the Samothracian
mysteries), quibus explicatis ad rationemque revocatis rerum magis natura cognoscitur
quam deorum; Clem. Alex. Stromat. v. 689, ta de megala [musteria] peri ton sumpanton
ou manthanein eti hupoleipetai, epopteuein de kai perinoein ten te phusin kai
ta pragmata. But the true value of the mysteries did not lie here, in this kind
of dogmatic teaching, but in the moral improvement apparent in the votaries (Diod.
v. 48), in the comfort they gave in the present life and the glad hopes for the
world to come (Isocr. Panegyr. 28).
5. Monotheism and Immortality.
It is generally supposed that the mysteries were the fountain from which Greek
philosophy derived the two great ideas of monotheism and immortality. The mystic
school of theological teaching is the Orphic; to it we must look for these ideas.
Now, as regards monotheism, we have attempted to show in Orphica
that the passages which refer to monotheism in the Jewish or Christian sense date
from Alexandrine times, and in the pantheistic sense are hardly much earlier:
even the celebrated Zeus kephale, Zeus messa, Dios d'ek panta tetuktai, supposed
to be alluded to by Plato (Legg. iv. 715 E), as Zeller shows, does not imply more
than Homer's line that Zeus is the father of gods and men, or Terpander's (650
B.C.) address, Zeu panton archa panton agetor. The Greeks with their personifying
of everything in nature came to have a feeling of the Divine pervading all nature,--one
and the same Nature-power, as Petersen puts it. This unity of the Divine element
which polytheism presupposes was made concrete in Zeus as king of the gods; and
so far all that exists and all that happens is ultimately referred to Zeus, but
it does not imply that Zeus is the ideal complex (Inbegriff) of all things. Zeller
goes on to contrast the polemic of Xenophanes against polytheism, with the syncretism
of the Stoics and Alexandrines, showing how the Greeks arrived at the idea of
the Divine unity less by way of syncretism than of criticism. But if the idea
of monotheism was naturally developed into a distinct form by Greek thought, and
that only in comparatively late times, it was thereafter adopted into the mysteries,
and especially some of the Orphic ones, and doubtless taught in them to those
who had gone through the various stages and shown themselves naturally fitted
to receive and understand it.
As to immortality, the case is different. Mr. Tylor has shown that
the doctrine of Transmigration migration was universal among savage and barbarian
races. This doctrine the Aryans probably brought with them into Europe. Herodotus
thinks it came from Egypt (ii. 123); but when we find similar notions among the
Indians from the earliest times even to the present day, and among the ancient
Druids in Gaul (Caes. B. G. vi. 14; Diod. v. 28; Amm. Marc. xv. 9 fin.), we may
infer that it was an original idea of the Aryan race, which gradually developed
into the purer doctrine of what we call a Future Life; we find a strange example
of this latter doctrine among the Thracians (Herod. iv. 94, 95). For the further
discussion of immortality in the Orphic doctrine, see Orphica
6. The modern Critics of the Mysteries.
Passing over such treatises as Warburton, On the divine Legation of Moses (ii.
133-234), and Sainte-Croix, Recherches sur les Mysteres du Paganisme (1784), the
first really great work on the mysteries was that by Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie
der alten Volker, 1810-1812, written by a genuinely religious Doctor in Theology
of the Roman Church. The title is certainly not a misnomer, for he finds symbolism
everywhere. He is in fact too symbolical. He does not distinguish the ideas of
different epochs, does not weigh evidence nor take sufficient thought of development
in religious ideas. After him followed J. H. Voss, a zealous Protestant, who attacked
Creuzer with unpardonable virulence and little success, especially in his Anti-Symbolik
(1824). Abuse of priests occupies a large portion of the work. In 1829 Lobeck's
great work, Aglaophamus, was published with the view of crushing the symbolical
school. Its learning is portentous, its satire grim and savage. But with all his
great gifts Lobeck had one thing wanting, the sense of things religious. Everything
is judged from the level of the intellect, but religion is of another order. The
whole book bears the character of a violent reaction, and so far is necessarily
unfair; and Lobeck sometimes quite forgets himself, as for example when he says
(p. 119) that the spectacles at Eleusis were seen with the eyes of the mind, not
with those of the body. K. O. Muller (art. Eleusinia in Ersch and Gruber), and
after him Preller (Demeter und Persephone, 1837; art. Mysteria in Pauly), make
accurate distinctions of times, places, and races. They allow a mystic character
to the worship of the Pelasgi, who adored Nature regarded as living and divine,
especially in their worship of the Chthonian divinities, the naturalism of the
Pelasgi being contrasted with the anthropomorphism of the Hellenes, as exemplified
in the Homeric Age; but hold that, when this warrior age passed away at the time
of Solon, there was a reaction in favour of the ancient cults. Francois Lenormant,
in his Voie Sacre Eleusinienne (1864) and in the articles in Daremberg and Saglio
mentioned above, is a strong symbolist; cf. also his articles in the Contemporary
Review for May, July, September 1881. Other works to be consulted with advantage
are Hermann, Die Gottesdienstlichen Alterthumer, 32, 55; Maury, Histoire des Religions
de la Grece antique, ii. chap. xi.; Renan, Les Religions de l'Antiquite, No. 1
of his Etudes d'Histoire religieuse; Ramsay, s. v. Mysteries, in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica.
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Eleusinia, (ta Eleusinia). A title chiefly applied to a festival held
by the Athenians in the autumn, in honour of Demeter, Persephone, and Iacchus,
consisting of sacrifices, processions, and certain mystical ceremonies. It was
one of the most important festivals of Greece. The mythical origin of the Eleusinia
is contained in the Homeric hymn to Demeter, which tells how Persephone, while
gathering flowers, was, with the connivance of Zeus, carried off by the god of
the lower world, Hades or Polydegmon (the great receiver); and how her mother
Demeter, daughter of Rhea, searching distractedly for her child, is advised by
Hecate to consult Helios, who sees all things; and how Helios in pity tells her
that Zeus has granted to Hades to carry off her daughter to be his wife. Forthwith
Demeter changes herself into an old woman; and as she wanders forth disconsolate
through the world she comes to Eleusis, and sits down on the cheerless stone by
a well. The daughters of Celeus, the king of Eleusis, come to the well to draw
water. They bring her to their home, where Metanira, wife of Celeus, gives her
the latest born child, Demophoon, to nurse. But Demeter is still bowed down with
grief; she sits dignified but silent in her room, till the jests and raillery
of Iambe, the servant-maid, at last make her smile. She consents to take food
and drink, but will have no wine, only a mixture (kukeon) of water with barley-meal
and mint. Days go on, and the child Demophoon thrives beyond what mortal child
was wont, for a goddess was his nurse; she used to anoint him daily with ambrosia
and place him in the fire by night. But a little more time and the child would
have been immortal, when one night Metanira saw the nurse place him in the fire
and cried aloud with terror. Then the anger of Demeter blazed forth, and the aged
nurse transformed herself into the goddess, told who she was, what she had intended
to do, and how that the little faith of the mother had robbed the child of immortality,
and finally bade the people of Eleusis to erect a temple for her on the hill above
the fountain, when she herself would prescribe the services they must perform
in order to gain her favour. They did so, and Demeter dwelt there, shunning all
association with the other gods who had been parties to the carrying off of her
daughter. For a year Demeter dwelt there--a year of want, for nothing grew; and
the human race would have perished, had not Zeus agreed that Persephone should
return. Gladly did Persephone obey the summons of Hermes; but Hades persuaded
her to eat a pomegranate seed before she left, and that prevented her staying
away from him for a whole year. So Persephone returns, and great is the joy of
mother and daughter, in which the faithful Hecate sympathizes. Rhea is then sent
down by Zeus to her daughter and effects the reconciliation. The corn comes up
in abundance in the Rarian plain; Demeter returns to Olympus to dwell with the
gods, and prescribes to Celeus and to his sons Triptolemus, Diocles, and Eumolpus
the solemnities and divine services that were in future time to be paid her; and
hence the famous Eleusinian Mysteries were a [p. 579] direct appointment of the
great goddess Demeter herself.
Such was the story of the origin of the mysteries; but how the mysteries
came to be Athenian depends on another story, which concerns the union of Eleusis
with Athens. Erechtheus warred with the Eleusinians, who were helped by one Eumolpus,
a Thracian, son of Poseidon and founder of the mysteries. The difficulties connected
with the exact birthplace and genealogical position of Eumolpus we may pass over,
remembering that he is, according to this legend, a foreigner. Eleusis was conquered,
and to the Athenians fell the political headship, but to the family of Eumolpus
and the daughters of the Eleusinian king Celeus was assigned the highpriesthood
(hierophantia) of the Eleusinian worship. The other family which held a priesthood
in the mysteries, the Kerykes, were said to have been descended from Keryx, the
son of Eumolpus; though the family itself considered its ancestors to have been
Hermes and Aglauros, daughter of Erechtheus, and so genuine Athenians.
Mysteries were celebrated in honour of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus
in Asia Minor (e. g. at Cyzicus); in Egypt on Lake Mareotis; in Sicily at Gela
and elsewhere; in Boeotia at Plataea; in many parts of Arcadia; and in Messenia
at Andania. But the most splendid and important of all the Eleusinia were those
of Attica, which may be regarded as having consisted of two parts: (1) the Lesser
Mysteries at Agrae, and (2) the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis.
(1) The Lesser Mysteries at Agrae (ta en Agrais). These were held
in the spring at Agrae, a place on the Ilissus, southeast of the Acropolis. There
is no doubt that they were held in the month Anthesterion, when there were the
first signs of returning vegetation just after field-work began. The exact date
cannot be fixed, but Mommsen's suggestion is most probable, that the chief day
was the 20th, the same day of the month as the Greater Mysteries were held on
in Boedromion, to which the Lesser Mysteries had many points of similarity, even
in matters connected with the calendar--e. g. the same length of the mystery truce.
Mommsen supposes that the 19th was a day of preparation, and the 20th and 21st
the special mystery days. These Lesser Mysteries were considered as a prelude
to the Greater, being on a much smaller scale; but initiation in the Lesser was
generally required before the candidate could present himself for initiation into
the Greater. The mysteries at Agrae consisted probably to a large extent of purifications,
for which the water of the Ilissus was much used. They were held more especially
in honour of Persephone, called Pherrephatta here, than of Demeter. It appears
that the carrying off of Persephone was the most important representation in these
mysteries. Again we hear that at Agrae the fate of Dionysus was pourtrayed (mimema
ton peri ton Dionuson, Steph. Byzant. s. v. Agrai). The death of Dionysus-Zagreus
took place on the 13th of Anthesterion, the day on which the festival of the Chytri
was held; so perhaps on the ninth day after, the 21st (for funeral rites on the
ninth day after death, the enata, see Aesch. Ctesiph. 225), the funeral ceremony
may have been held and his violent death related in a drama. A great many, especially
strangers, were initiated into these mysteries who did not proceed to initiation
into the regular Eleusinia; the legend, too, said it was for the purpose of initiating
Heracles, who was a stranger and according to the primitive regulations could
not be initiated into the Eleusinia, that these Lesser Mysteries were established.
(2) The Greater Mysteries at Eleusis. Two days are fixed by definite
evidence--viz. the 16th Boedromion for the Halade mustai, and the 20th for the
Iacchus day. The fixing of other days depends on conjecture, but can be determined
with a considerable degree of certainty. A month before the middle of Boedromion--i.
e. the middle of Metageitnion--the spondophoroi used to announce the mystery truce
to the neighbouring States, so as to give the strangers time to make all arrangements
necessary for a visit to Athens. During the latter portion of this month the votary
who intended to be initiated used to betake himself to some private man who had
gone through all the grades of initiation, was examined by him as to his freedom
from sin, received instruction as to what purifications and offerings were necessary
to gain the favour of the goddesses, and submitted the actual offerings for his
inspection and approval. This instructor was the mustagogos. He certified to the
Hierophant the fitness of the applicant and introduced him, this proceeding being
apparently called sustasis. Sincere devotees appear to have fasted for nine days,
from the 13th to the 21st--i. e. ate nothing during the day, taking whatever food
they did take between sunset and sunrise, like the Mahomedans during Ramadan;
and votaries generally appear to have abstained from domestic birds, fish, pomegranates,
apples, and beans. On the 15th of Boedromion the formal assemblage (agurmos, Hesych.
s. v.) was held of those citizens and strangers who intended to take part in the
mysteries--though this assemblage does not appear to have been absolutely essential,
at least in late times. At the beginning of the 16th, in the evening (the day
is reckoned from sunset to sunset), Chabrias's distribution of wine to the people
in honour of his victory at Naxos used to take place; and the next morning began
the first formal act of the festival--viz. the prorresis or Halade mustai. A proclamation
was made by the Archon Basileus and by the Hierophant and Daduchus in the Stoa
Poecile (Schol. on Aristoph. Ran. 369), for the departure of all strangers and
all murderers; and then the order for purification given, "Ye mystae, to
the sea!" The "sea" was sometimes the Piraeus, though probably
only in time of Attica being occupied by enemies; but generally the Rheitoi, two
salt streams on the Sacred Road, one dedicated to Demeter, the other to Core,
which contained fish that the priests alone were allowed to eat. The next day,
the 17th, sacrifices (hiereia) were offered for the safety of the State by the
Archon Basileus and the epimeletai in the Eleusinium at Athens; and at all these
sacrifices the theoroi of foreign States seem to have taken part. The night of
the 18th may have been spent by the very devout in sleeping in the Temple of Aesculapius,
southwest of the Acropolis, or in the Iaccheum, also called the Temple of Demeter.
It was just where the road from the Piraeus entered Athens. The early morning
of that day till about 9 a.m. was devoted to ordinary business, as we find decrees
issued bearing that date. After this hour the Epidauria was celebrated in the
Temple of Demeter or Iacchus and in the Temple of Aesculapius. It was, as has
been seen, a supplementary sacrifice for those who came late, and legend said
it was instituted for the sake of Aesculapius, who himself came late for the mysteries.
Doubtless, however, the thought really lay in this, that Aesculapius was supposed
by his wondrous skill to have raised again Iacchus from the dead, and the festival
probably was incorporated in the Eleusinia when the worship of Epidaurus became
connected with that of Athens. Meanwhile there were being brought from Eleusis
certain religious objects--playthings, it was said, of the child Iacchus --bone
(astragalos), top (strobilos), ball (sphaira), apples (mela), tambourine (rhombos),
looking-glass (esoptron), fleece (pokos), fan (liknon), and such like, as is learned
from Clement of Alexandria. Phalli were perhaps also carried among these mystical
objects; but we must remember that the statue of Iacchus, as we shall see, which
was carried in procession to Eleusis on the 19th, was not kept at Eleusis during
the year, but at Athens, having been brought back some day shortly after the conclusion
of the mysteries; for there was no Iaccheum at Eleusis. The Athenian Ephebi met
this convoy at the Temple of Echo (evidence from inscriptions in Mommsen, p. 252),
and conveyed it to Athens by nightfall. In the early morning of the 19th, there
were occasionally decrees passed. In the forenoon the Iacchus procession started
from the Eleusinium and proceeded to the Iaccheum, where they got the statue of
Iacchus; perhaps then definitely organized the procession in the building assigned
for that purpose; and then passing through the Ceramicus left Athens by the Sacred
Gate, priests and people crowned with myrtle and ivy, the rich ladies till the
time of the orator Lycurgus riding in carriages. The statue of Iacchus was probably
that of a fair child crowned with myrtle and holding a torch, hence called phosphoros
aster in Aristophanes. There were many ceremonies to be performed as the procession
passed along the Sacred Way to Eleusis-- ceremonies which had to be given up during
the Peloponnesian War, while Attica was invaded by the Peloponnesians. One section
of the procession repaired to the Cephissus and took baths therein, another to
the bath by Anemocritus's statue near the tomb of Scirus the soothsayer, who came
from Dodona to Eleusis to assist the Eleusinians in the war against Erechtheus
and was slain. The Phytalidae sacrificed to Phytalus in Laciadae, where lay a
temple to the Mourning (Achea) Demeter, and to Core, with whose worship that of
Athene and Poseidon was joined. At the palace of Crocon, the Croconidae perhaps
bound small bands of saffron thread round the right wrist and right foot of each
mystes, which was considered as a protection from the evil eye.
Occasionally during the procession the majority of those who took
part in it indulged in flouts and gibes at one another, a proceeding called gephurismos,
the origin of which title is unknown, but is generally associated with the bridge
over the Cephissus. Chants in honour of Iacchus were sung constantly during the
procession, which swelled louder as when, near midnight, Iacchus arrived at Eleusis
amid the blaze of torches. That the procession did not arrive till late at night
is plain from the splendid chorus in the Ion, which sings of the torches and of
the moon and stars dancing in heaven at the sight. The journey from Athens to
Eleusis is really only four hours long, but the various ceremonies performed during
the course of the procession extended it to three or four times its normal length.
On the next morning certain sacrifices were performed, consisting probably in
part of swine, to Demeter. An inscription in Mommsen, p. 257, orders sacrifices
to be made by the hieropoioi to Hermes Enagonius, the Graces, Artemis, and certain
heroes, Telesidromus and Triptolemus. It is not known what these sacrifices were
at Eleusis; at Andania they were, besides others, a sheep to Persephone and a
sow to Demeter. In later times the Ephebi made supplementary sacrifices of cattle.
The bulls were brought unbound to the altar, and the Ephebi struggled with them
to hold them as they were being sacrificed.
The 22d and 23d were the musteriotides hemerai, and the ceremonies
celebrated thereon were pannuchides. During the evening of the 22d was probably
what was called lampadon hemera, which consisted of a symbol of search after Core
with torches, performed principally by and for the less highly initiated, who
conducted the search crowned with myrtle, wearing a fawn-skin, and holding a wand,
the mystagogues of the several initiates taking part in the search --the whole
proceeding being perhaps an interlude in the story of Demeter and Core, which
appears to have been represented in the temple on this night. After it, came with
much ceremonial the partaking of the kukeon, a mixture of mint, barley-meal, and
water. This was a cardinal feature in the ceremony, being, if we may so say, a
participation in the Eleusinian sacrament. It was in remembrance of Demeter being
refreshed after her long wandering and fruitless search. Thereafter followed what
was called the paradosis ton hieron: certain relics and amulets were given to
the votary to touch or kiss or even taste, the votary repeating, as the priest
tendered him the objects with a regular question, a formula (sunthema), given
by Clement of Alexandria. It appears that some kind of memento of this ceremony
was given by the priest to the votaries, which a sincere believer used to keep
in a linen cloth. The actual hiera themselves were kept in a chest (teletes enkumona
mustida kisten, Nonnus, Dionys. ix. 127) bound with purple ribbons, and consisted
among others of sesame cakes of particular shapes, pomegranates, salt, ferules,
ivy, poppy-seeds, quinces, etc.: the uninitiated were not allowed to see these
"even from the housetop".
Not very different appear to have been the ceremonies of the 23d.
There were many wand-bearers but few bacchants, as the superintendents of the
mysteries used to say, and it was for these latter, the more highly initiated
mystae of at least a year's standing, generally called epoptai, that the ceremonies
of the 23d were held, and they were the highest and greatest. Here, too, was probably
a paradosis ton hieron, the sacramental words used in receiving which being ek
tumpanou ephagon, ek kumbalou epion, ekernophoresa, hupo ton paston hupeduon.
All this undoubtedly points to the Phrygian worship of Sabazius, which was introduced
by the Orphics into the Eleusinian mysteries. On the afternoon of the 23d was
held that portion of the feast which was called plemochoai or plemochoe, a sacrifice
to the dead. The plemochoe was a broad-bottomed earthen jar, and two such were
used in the ceremony, one filled with wine and the other with water, the contents
of the one thrown to the east and of the other to the west, while mystic words
(hue kue) were spoken. This sacrifice formed a fitting conclusion to the mysteries
in the special sense, the musteriotides hemerai. It ended with a chairete to the
dead, which conclusion was called prochaireteria.
The next morning, the 24th, occurred perhaps the balletus, also called
tuptai, a sort of sham fight, enjoined, it seems, in the Homeric hymn. There was
a similar contest, called lithobolia, at the festival of Damia and Auxesia at
Troezen. On this same morning and afternoon were the agones stadiakoi. They were
called Eleusinia or Demetria, and the prize was some barley grown on the Rarian
Plain. There is no reason to suppose that these games were not annual. In early
times these games probably lasted two days; but in later times, on the 25th, the
theatrical representations of the Dionusou technitai were held, and we have some
inscriptions referring to the sacrifices offered by this guild. As time went on,
the 26th and 27th appear to have been devoted to such theatrical exhibitions,
held perhaps for the purpose of keeping the visitors in the country. The people
do not appear to have returned to Athens in a regular procession, though Lenormant
thinks they did, and that the gephurismos and the plemochoe were incidents in
that return journey. The mystery truce lasted till the middle of Pyanepsion.
(3) The Priests and Priestesses. (a) The most important priest was
the Hierophant (Hierophantes). In lists of the Eleusinian priests he is put first.
He was nominated for life from the Eleusinian family of the Eumolpidae, and was
generally an elderly man and bound to a life of strict chastity. There was only
one Hierophant at a time, and his name was never mentioned, though in late inscriptions
we find the Roman gentile name but not the praenomen or the cognomen given. His
principal duty was, clothed in an Oriental style, with a long robe and a turban
(strophion), as his name indicates, to show and explain the sacred symbols and
figures--perhaps in a kind of chant or recitative, as he was required to have
a good voice. (b) The Daduchus (daidouchos) or torch-bearer was inferior to the
Hierophant, and of the same rank with the Keryx. Originally he was descended from
the Eleusinian Triptolemus; but about B.C. 380 this family died out, and the Lycomidae,
the family to which Themistocles belonged, which celebrated a local worship of
Demeter at Phlyae full of Orphic doctrines and ceremonies, succeeded to the daduchia.
It is uncertain whether the name of the Daduchus was sacred. His head-dress was
Oriental, as we may infer from a Persian soldier mistaking a Daduchus for a king.
His main duty was to hold the torch at the sacrifices, as his name indicates;
but he shared with the Hierophant several functions, reciting portions of the
ritual, taking part in certain purifications in the prorresis, and even in the
exhibition of the mysteries. For these two priests, the Hierophant and the Daduchus,
who had to be men of tried sanctity, there was a regular consecration on their
entering office. It was the telos tes epopteias, and was called anadesis kai stemmaton
epithesis, because the sign of it consisted in placing on the head of the new
priest the diadem of purple and the wreath of myrtle which they wore permanently.
(c) The Keryx or Hierokeryx (Kerux, Hierokerux). According to Eleusinian tradition,
the Kerykes traced their origin back to Keryx, a younger son of Eumolpus; but
they themselves considered their ancestors to be Hermes and one of the daughters
of Cecrops--Aglauros according to Pausanias, Pandrosos according to Pollux. His
duties were chiefly to proclaim silence at the sacrifices. (d) The Epibomios (ho
epi bomoi). In early times he was certainly a priest; he is generally mentioned
in connection with the other three priests, but not always. No family laid especial
claim to this priesthood. His name, as well as that of the Keryx, was probably
not sacred. The four Eleusinian priests were among those who were maintained in
the Prytaneum--were aeisitoi, as they were called. (e) The Hierophantis (Hierophantis).
There was originally only one at a time; she belonged to Demeter, and her name
was sacred; but a new one was added when Hadrian's wife Sabina was deified as
the younger Demeter. Perhaps at this time or afterwards the priestesses came to
be multiplied. (See the Schol. on Soph. Oed. Col. 683). They lived a life of perfect
chastity during their tenure of office, though they might have been married previously.
It is uncertain to what family the original Hierophantis of Demeter belonged;
that of the younger belonged to a branch of the Lycomidae. The duties of the Hierophantis
corresponded to those of the Hierophant. Pollux appears to call these priestesses
prophantides, and perhaps they were also called melissai (Hesych. s. v.). (f)
Female torch-bearer, Daidouchesasa. (g) Priestess (Hiereia). She was not hieronymous,
but eponymous. These priestesses belonged to the family of the Phillidae. Their
duties corresponded in all probability with those of the Epibomius. (h) The Spondophori
(Spondophoroi) were sent out to the adjoining country a month before the ceremony
to announce the truce for the mysteries. They belonged to the families of the
Eudanemi and Kerykes. (i) Minor offices: (1) phaidruntes toin theoin, perhaps
belonging to the Eleusinium of the city. (2) hudranos, whom Hesychius describes
as hagnistes ton Eleusinion. He probably superintended the halade mustai. (3)
iakchagogos and kourotrophos, female nurses attending on the child Iacchus. (4)
Perhaps the same may be said of the daeiritis, but it is very uncertain. It is
known that Persephone was originally called Daeira in the Eleusinian worship.
(5) hieraules was probably the head of the humnoidoi and humnetrides (Poll. i.
35), a sort of choir. (6) Who the panageis and the purphoroi were, beyond what
can be inferred from their names, cannot be determined. Lenormant says the panageis
were intermediate between the ministers and the initiates. Though not strictly
a priest, yet as exercising an important function in the mysteries, (j) the mystagogi
(mustagogoi) may be mentioned here. They had to be men who had passed through
all the grades of initiation. They were probably under the cognizance of the State,
in a manner licensed. Prior to presenting himself for initiation, each votary
had to place himself under the guidance of one of these mystagogues, and get instruction
from him as to the various purifications and ceremonies he was to perform. It
was only by the carelessness of mystagogues that unworthy applicants ever got
admission to the mysteries. After due examination, if the mystagogue was satisfied,
he presented the applicant or returned his name to the Archon Basileus or his
assistants. This was called sustasis. If a mystagogue could not say what purificatory
sacrifices were required for a special candidate, recourse was had to (k) an Exegetes
(Exegetes), who appears to have been elected by the people from the Eumolpidae
or Kerykes, and whose business it was to decide such difficult cases and generally
to give responsa on eleusinian ecclesiastical law. There were many books of the
mysteries which were intended to have been strictly kept from the uninitiated,
and which appear to have contained not only what ritual was to be performed in
various cases, but also, perhaps, the allegorical and symbolical interpretations
of some of the myths.
The priests of the mysteries, especially the Eumolpidae, appear to
have had a special ecclesiastical court (hiera gerousia) for trying offences of
impiety, in connection with the festival, which court they conducted according
to unwritten laws of immemorial antiquity. To prosecute before this court was
called dikazesthai pros Eumolpidas. Their punishments, according to Caillemer
(D. and S., s. v. Asebeia), were strictly religious--exclusion from the mysteries,
deprivation of title of initiate, and such like. The curse and excommunication
were most solemn--priests and priestesses, turning to the west, uttered the words
of imprecation and shook their garments ([Lys.] in Andoc. 51). It may be that
this court was the only tribunal for cases of what we may call heterodoxy, impiety
consisting in the performance [p. 583] of rites contrary to the traditional one
and to that held by the priests; while other kinds of procedure, superadded to
the religious investigation and condemnation, were adopted in accordance with
ordinary criminal law in cases of impiety, which consisted of disorder and vulgar
profanity. These charges were brought before the Senate of Five Hundred sitting
in the Eleusinium of the city on the day after the mysteries. The penalty was
death or banishment, with confiscation of goods, for profanation of the mysteries.
The accuser, if he did not get the fifth part of the votes, suffered a kind of
atimia --i. e. was deprived of the right to enter the temples and fined the usual
1000 drachmas. Many shrank from themselves bringing the accusation, and used to
inform the Archon Basileus of the profanation they had observed, and if he thought
it serious he made the accusation officially.
(4) Civil Functionaries connected with the Festival. The chief civil
superintendence of the festival was intrusted to the Archon Basileus, who was
assisted by four epimeletai, elected by the people, two from the people generally
and one each from the families of the Eumolpidae and Kerykes. The Archon generally
appears to have appointed an assistant (paredros). The duties of the Archon and
his assistant were to sacrifice and pray for the prosperity of the people, both
at Athens and Eleusis, and to have general police supervision over the whole solemnity.
The epimeletai had also such duties as looking after the sacrifices, testing the
offerings of the votaries, classifying and marshalling the different grades of
initiates, managing certain moneys, etc., as may be inferred from the similar
duties attaching to the officials of this name at Andania. As to the finances
of the festival generally, according to C. I. G. 71 a, 29, three hieropoioi had
the administration of them.
(5) The Initiates. Originally only Athenians were admitted; legend
said that Heracles and the Dioscuri had to be adopted prior to initiation; but
later all Greek-speaking people who were not murderers were admissible to be initiated.
Barbarians were excluded; but it was not at all necessary to be an Athenian citizen.
Women, and even perhaps slaves, were admissible. Children were admitted to the
first grade only; but among the children brought to Eleusis one was picked out
for special initiation, and "to appease the divinity by a more exact performance"
of the ceremonies required. The boy or girl had to be an Athenian of high birth,
perhaps of the special family of the Lycomidae, Eumolpidae, or the like; and was
probably initiated standing on the steps of the altar, while the rest stood afar
off. The parents of the child had to make extensive offerings and pay a large
fee. Originally admission was free for all initiates; but by virtue of a law passed
by the orator Aristogiton, each initiate paid a fee to the public treasury.
The ordinary proceeding was for the initiate to receive his first
introduction as a child and afterwards the higher grades as a man. The whole cycle
of the mysteries was a trieteris, and could be gone through in two years; even
the Homeric hymn extends the whole legend beyond a year; and when the Orphic theology
blended Iacchus Zagreus into the story, the regular course of two years came to
be adopted. There is a high probability that the first-year votaries at Eleusis
viewed a drama representing the usual story of Demeter and Core, while the second-year
votaries were shown the whole legend of Zagreus; and as to the whole course of
the actual mysteries, there is a possibility that the following arrangement was
that adopted, though it must be remembered that it is little more than conjecture
and given for what it is worth:
(a) First Spring at Agrae--the votaries mourn for Core ravished by Hades.
(b) First Autumn at Eleusis--mourning with Demeter for the loss of her daughter,
and exhibition of the ordinary legend.
(c) Second Spring at Agrae--the murder of Zagreus and his heart being given to
Core (who here seems to take the place of Semele), and conception of Iacchus.
(d) Second Autumn at Eleusis--rebirth of Iacchus, who is carried in procession
to Demeter at Eleusis, and there the votaries sympathize in the joy of the earth-goddess,
who once more has her child and grandchild about her.
That there were different grades of initiates hardly needs proof:
the mustai were those who had received any degree of initiation, the epoptai or
ephoroi the second-year votaries. Suidas (s. v. epoptai) says so explicitly. There
were mystic ceremonies for both these classes of initiates, one on each of the
two days, 22d and 23d. While any one introduced by a mystagogue could get admission
to the ceremonies of the first year, the muesis, the epopteia or epopsia could
only be seen by those who got a ticket from the daidouchos. A ticket of that kind
has been discovered marked DAD and EPOPs, with the symbols of an ear of corn and
a poppy. What those ceremonies were is the most important and interesting point
in our subject, but the seal of silence which was laid on the votaries has not
been broken. This secrecy was most strenuously enjoined and most rigorously enforced,
as we have seen. The prosecution of Alcibiades for holding a travesty of the mysteries
in his own house and Andocides's speech on the subject are well known. Aeschylus
is said to have divulged the mysteries in styling Artemis a daughter of Demeter
and in other matters, and to have only barely escaped death. Diagoras of Melos
was banished from Athens and a price set on his head for having divulged the mysteries.
It was the prevailing belief of antiquity that he who was guilty of divulging
the mysteries was sure to bring down divine vengeance on himself and those associated
with him.
(6) The Ceremonies in the Temple. They were performed in the temple
of the two goddesses at Eleusis, a building reckoned one of the greatest masterpieces
of the Periclean Age. Ictinus superintended the whole. Coroebus built the lower
story, with four rows of columns which divided the interior space. On his death
Metagenes took up the work and added an upper story, and Xenocles built a cupola
roof with an opening (opaion) in the middle for the light. The dimensions of the
whole building were 223 feet by 179, the measurement of the cella being 175 feet
by 179. The temple had no pillars in the facade till the architect Philon, in
the time of Demetrius of Phalerum, built a pronaos with twelve pillars. The temple
stood inside a large enclosure, which was approached by a propylaeum, there being
yet another propylaeum leading to the temple. Inside this enclosure Lenormant
has fixed the position of the agelastos petra, where Demeter was said to have
rested in her wanderings, as the rock where the great statue of Demeter Achea,
now at Cambridge, stood--i. e. on the axis of the first propylaeum close to a
well, which he also identifies as Callichorum. The temple of Ictinus, though built
on the site of an older and smaller one, must be distinguished from the most ancient
temple which stood more to the north, occupying a platform which overlooked the
well Callichorum and the agelastos petra, exactly on the spot where the Homeric
hymn (273) orders it to be built. The great temple of Ictinus was called by the
ancients mustikos sekos, and the inner portion telesterion or anaktoron or megaron.
The ceremony was doubtless dramatic. "Deo and Core," says
Clement of Alexandria, "have become a mystic drama. Eleusis illustrates by
the light of the torches of the Daduchus the carrying off of Core, the wandering
journeys and grief of Deo." The ceremony, then, was dramatic. Aelius Aristides
asks, "Where else do the recitals of the narratives chant forth greater marvels,
or does the ceremonial (ta dromena) involve a greater affrightment (ekplexin),
or does the spectacle match more fully what the ear hears?" The drama consisted
of dromena and legomena, the former being much the more important, for the ancient
religious worship addressed itself more to the eye than to the ear. There were
hymns and chants, speeches and exhortations (rheseis, parangelmata), recitals
of myths (muthon phemai), and wailings for the loss of Persephone. There were
kinds of dancing or rhythmical movements by those performing the ceremony, clashing
of cymbals, sudden changes from light to darkness, "toilsome wanderings and
dangerous passages through the gloom, but the end is not yet, and then before
the end all kinds of terror, shivering and quaking, sweating and amazement, when
suddenly a wondrous light flashes forth to the worshipper, and pure regions and
meadows receive him: there are chants, voices, and dances, solemn words and holy
images; and amongst these the votary now perfected is freed at last and is released,
he wanders to and fro with a crown on his head, joining in the worship and in
the company of pure and holy men; and he sees the uninitiated and unpurified crowd
of the living in the thick mire and mist, trampling one another down, and huddled
together, abiding ever in evils through fear of death and disbelief in the good
things yonder" represents a man having entered Hades and got into the dark
asking his companion if what was represented at Eleusis was not like this. Claudian's
description is sufficiently terrible; and amidst that rhetoric Lenormant fancies
he can infer that the votaries, waiting anxiously outside the building, saw the
glimmer of the lighted interior through the opaion: then was heard the noise of
the preparations for the play, the doors were thrown open, and the Daduchus appeared
with torches in his hands, and the statue of Demeter was seen in gorgeous vestments
and brilliantly lighted up. It is more probable that the whole performance took
place inside the temple. But that figures of the gods were introduced is certain,
which flitted noiselessly (apsopheti, Themist. Or. xvi. 224, ed. Dind.) across
the stage; but the images were incomplete, not simple but overcharged with strange
attributes, they were ever in motion and represented in a dim and murky light.
To be more precise, the mystic drama of Demeter and Core was unfolded to the mystae,
the first-year initiates; but the epoptae were shown a representation of what
Clement calls "the mysteries of the dragon," which is the story of Zeus
uniting himself with Persephone (called Brimo: cf. Philosophumena, viii. p. 115,
ed. Miller) in the form of a serpent, and the whole tale of Iacchus-Zagreus was
probably told. There was shown to the epoptae a representation, symbolical probably
of creation, in which we hear that the Hierophant used to assume the part of the
Creator, the Daduchus that of the sun, the altar-priest that of the moon, and
the Hierokeryx that of Hermes. Again, "the last, the most solemn, and the
most wonderful act of the epopsia" was shown--the ear of corn cut in perfect
stillness; the blade of corn symbolized, we are told, the great and perfect ray
of light issuing from the Inexpressible One, whatever that means, or rather, perhaps,
it was the symbol of life, the cutting down being death. This may lead us to what
is to be said in conclusion on the moral and religious import of the mysteries.
If we choose to regard them in a cold, un-religious way, we can say that they
were a somewhat melodramatic performance, splendid no doubt, full of what Lobeck
calls fireworks (pyrotechnia), but a mere theatrical display. That there were
connections between the mysteries and the theatre (the Hierophants are said to
have borrowed costume from the dramas of Aeschylus, Athen. i. p. 22, if the reverse
is not rather the case) need not surprise us; and that modern arch?ologists profess
to find in the temple of Eleusis evidences of machinery by which the spectacle
was worked is only natural; for there undoubtedly was a spectacle, a religious
spectacle. But anything moral or religious may be made ridiculous if one chooses
to regard it from the lower plane of the intellect alone, and does not take into
account the subjective condition of the moral worker or the religious worshipper.
The universal voice of the great names of pagan antiquity, from the Homeric hymn
down to the writers of the late Roman Empire, attest to the wonderfully soothing
effect the mysteries had on the religious emotions, and what glad hopes they inspired
of good fortune in the world to come. Neque solum, says Cicero, cum laetitia vivendi
rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore moriendi. For the object aimed at
was rather, not that the initiate should be taught anything that would appeal
merely to his intellect, but should be moved and have his higher impulses stirred.
"The light of the sun is bright for the initiated alone," sing the chorus
of mystae in the Ranae (454). Not but that there were many scenes and symbols
of a somewhat coarse nature--phallic rites, hieroi gamoi, such as those represented
by the Hierophant and Hierophantis, which portrayed perhaps the unions of Zeus
and Demeter, Zeus and Persephone, and which entered into the higher worship, but
which are probably grossly exaggerated by the Christian writers, who did not take
into consideration their symbolical meaning. The truths, however, which these
and other symbolical performances contained were known only to the Hierophant,
and explained by him to those whom he thought fit to hear them. Even the epoptai
only knew part of the mystic secrets, gnonai ti ton aporreton. The multitude of
worshippers took it all on faith, but, as Mahaffy finely remarks, "even the
coarsest features were hallowed and ennobled by the spirit of the celebrants,
whose reverence blinded their eyes while it lifted up their hearts."
The Eleusinian Mysteries lasted for more than five centuries after
Greece became a Roman province. As late as the time of the emperor Julian they
still enjoyed a considerable portion of their primeval sanctity, and were held
in the highest esteem by the Neo-Platonic philosophers. The edict of Valentinian
and Valens against secret worships did not extend to the Eleusinia, the prefect
of Achaea, Pretextatus, having represented that the life of the Greeks would be
barren and comfortless without the mysteries. The Hierophant who initiated Maximus
and Eunapius in the fourth century was the last Eumolpid. Subsequently Mithraic
worship was blended with the Eleusinian; but the mysteries did not finally perish
till the destruction of Eleusis by Alaric in his invasion of Greece, A.D. 396.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Eleusinia. This title was chiefly applied to a festival held by the Athenians
in autumn, in honour of Demeter, Persephone, and Iacchus, consisting of sacrifices,
processions, and certain mystical ceremonies. It was one of the most important
festivals of Greece, dated from the earliest times, and continued to maintain
its high position long after living Greece was no more, and everything else in
that country had either perished or become mean and contemptible (cf. Aristides,
Or. Eleusinia).
1. The Origin of the Eleusinia.
The mythical origin is contained in the Homeric hymn to Demeter, which tells how
Persephone, while gathering flowers, was, with the connivance of Zeus, carried
off by the god of the lower world, Hades or Polydegmon (the great receiver); and
how her mother Demeter, daughter of Rhea, searching distractedly for her child,
is advised by Hecate to consult Helios, who sees all things and how Helios in
pity tells her that Zeus has granted to Hades to carry off her daughter to be
his wife. Forthwith Demeter changes herself into an old woman; and as she wanders
forth disconsolate through the world, she comes to Eleusis, and sits down on the
cheerless stone by a well. Anon the daughters of Celeus, the king of Eleusis,
come to the well to draw water. They bring her to their home, where Metanira,
wife of Celeus, gives her the latest born child, Demophoon, to nurse. But Demeter
is still bowed down with grief: she sits dignified but silent in her room, till
the jests and raillery of Iambe, the servant-maid, at last make her smile. She
consents to take food and drink, but will have no wine, only a mixture (kukeon)
of water with barley-meal and mint. Days go on, and the child Demophoon thrives
beyond what mortal child was wont, for a goddess was his nurse: she used to anoint
him daily with ambrosia, and place him in the fire by night. But a little more
time and the child would have been immortal, when one night Metanira saw the nurse
place him in the fire and cried aloud with terror. Then did the anger of Demeter
burn forth. Of a sudden the aged nurse transformed herself into the goddess, told
who she was, what she had intended to do, and how that the little faith of the
mother had robbed the child of immortality, and finally bade the people of Eleusis
be told to erect a temple for her on the hill above the fountain, when she herself
would prescribe the services they must perform in order to gain her favour. They
did so, and Demeter dwelt there, shunning all association with the other gods
who had been parties to the carrying off of her daughter. For a year Demeter dwelt
there -an awful and desperate year. Nothing grew. The human race would have perished,
had not Zeus agreed that Persephone should return. Right joyfully did Persephone
obey the summons of Hermes: but Hades persuaded her to eat a pomegranate seed
before she left, and that prevented her staying away from him for a whole year.
So Persephone returns, and great is the joy of mother and daughter, in which the
faithful Hecate sympathises. Rhea is then sent down by Zeus to her daughter, and
effects the reconciliation. The corn comes up in abundance in the Rarian plain,
and Demeter returns to Olympus to dwell with the gods: but before she goes she
prescribes to Celeus, and to his sons Triptolemus, Diocles, and Eumolpus, the
solemnities and divine services that were in future time to be paid her: and so
the famous Eleusinian mysteries were a direct appointment of the great goddess
Demeter herself.
This was the story of the origin of the mysteries: but how the mysteries
came to be mysteries of the Athenians depends on another story, which concerns
the union of Eleusis with Athens. Erechtheus warred with the Eleusinians (Pans.
i. 38, 3), who are helped by one Eumolpus, a Thracian, son of Poseidon (Apoll.
iii. 14, 4), and founder of the mysteries (Lucian, Demon, 34). The difficulties
connected with the exact birthplace and genealogical position of Eumolpus -even
Pausanias (i. 38, 7) is perplexed with Eleusinian genealogies- we may pass over,
remembering that he is, according to this legend, a foreigner (Plut. de Exsilio).
The many beautiful stories which are connected with Erechtheus and his family
we may also forget for the present, and proceed at once to the result, which was,
that Eleusis was conquered, and to the Athenians fell the political headship,
but to the family of Eumolpus and the daughters of the Eleusinian king Celeus
was assigned the high-priesthood (hierophantia) of the Eleusinian worship. The
other family which held a priesthood in the mysteries, the Kerykes, were said
to have been descended from Keryx, the son of Eumolpus; though the family itself
considered its ancestors to have been Hermes and Aglauros, daughter of Erechtheus,
and so genuine Athenians (Pans. i. 38, 3).
So ran the legends of Eleusis, grouping together, in the same scene
and story, the goddess and the heroic fathers of the town; legends which did not
take their start from realities of the past, but from realities of the present,
combined with retrospective feeling and fancy, which filled up the blank of the
aforetime in a manner at once plausible and impressive (Grote, i. 42). But yet
something perhaps of the realities of the past may be learned from them. We can
clearly see that it is in connexion with the lower world that the goddesses are
honoured. They are Chthonian divinities, who presided over the production of the
fruits of the earth; and it is reasonable to suppose that this most primitive
kind of worship was a relic of the Pelasgian past, which continued on into historical
times, in the form of mystical and secret worship. The religions of previous inhabitants
sometimes continued in this form: e. g. the Thesmophoria in the Peloponnesus,
after its conquest by the Dorians (Herod. ii. 171). The worship, too, was confined
to certain families, which we shall see took an important part in the ceremonies
during historical times, when the festival had become a state one. Curtius (Hist.
of Greece, i. 304) indeed holds the view that the worship of the Great Goddesses
was brought into Attica and domesticated there by a number of illustrious Messenian
families who had fled from the Dorian invaders; a view Schomann approves of, but
suggests a more remote origin by pointing out that the Homeric hymn (v. 123) seems
to hint at Crete being the original home of the mysteries; and that a worship
of Demeter, similar to that of Eleusis except that it was not secret, was held
at Cnosus is stated by Diodorus (v. 77). Phrygian and Lydian influences may be
seen in the appearance of Rhea and Hecate in the hymn, but the influence of Thrace
and Crete (where Bacchus was a great god) -unless we are to suppose, with K. O.
Muller, that Demophoon of the hymn is to be taken as a representative of Iacchus-
had not yet been felt, though it appears in the second legend.
That influence came with the elaborate Orphic theology and mythology
(see Orphica),
about the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. One of their tales related that Zagreus was
son of Zeus and his own daughter Persephone, a noble child, destined to be Zeus's
successor. Hera, in jealousy, urged the Titans to destroy him. They cut him up
and boiled him in a caldron, all except his heart, which Athena picked up and
carried to Zeus, who, after striking down the Titans, gave the heart to Semele,
and Zagreus was born again from her under the name of Dionysus, or Iacchus, as
he is called in the Eleusinian worship. This tale is a good specimen of the Orphic
mythology; according to which the clear and definite Hellenic gods disappear into
vague kinds of half-allegorical or symbolical forms, the divinities blend into
one another according to stories which are of a coarse and extravagant as well
as tragical and terror-striking nature, but which, from the very first, were in
all probability intended for the initiates, and meant to be taken as symbolical
representations of cosmogony, rather than as actual dogmatic facts (cf. Euseb.
Praepar. Evang. iii. 1). Along with the Orphic theology came also the Orphic life
(Plat. Leg. vi. 782), and the need it inculcated of religious purifications and
various kinds of asceticism, e.q. abstinence from animal food (Herod. ii. 81;
Eur. Hipp. 967; Cretes, fragm. 20). Lenormant thinks that Orphism, though introduced
in a measure at this time, did not get any permanent hold on the Eleusinian worship
till 380 B.C., when the family of the Lycomidae, who were specially devoted to
Orphic rites, obtained the office of daduchus, his reason being that there is
no allusion to Zagreus in Aristophanes or the other Attic writers, while he appears
quite established by the time of Callimachus. And then, again, there was the influence
of Egypt, which became fully open to the Greeks about 660 B.C. This influence
was most marked. Dionysus and Demeter became identified with Osiris and Isis (Herod.
ii. 42, 59, 144); and with this adoption of the Egyptian divinities came the peculiarities
of the Egyptian priesthood, with their minute and scrupulous ceremonies, separate
mode of life, elaboration of sacred tales (hieroi logoi), and the secrecy and
silence they required. This secrecy is a cardinal feature of the Eastern religions
and the Eastern hierarchies; and it was doubtless owing to Eastern influences,
superadded to the national privacy of separate family cults, that this secret
and mystic character came to be attached so especially to the worship of Demeter
at Eleusis, the more so as we find many striking Oriental characteristics in other
mystic worships in Greece, such as that of the Cabeiri in Samothrace (see Cabeiria).
This influx of new and peculiar religious rites is a marked feature in the history
of Greek thought in the 6th century B.C., producing as it did not only oracles
such as those of Bakis and the Sibyls, purificatory and tranquillising rites such
as those of Epimenides, but also the great Pythagorean philosophy and the mystic
brotherhood who held it.
It is just at this point that we are to fix the adoption of the Eleusinian
mysteries by the Athenians, consequent on the incorporation of Eleusis into the
Athenian state. Grote has proved that this incorporation took place much later
than is generally supposed, as it occurred only a short time before Solon (cf.
Herod. i. 30, about Tellus the Athenian), and the list of Athenian-Eleusinian
priests does not reach higher. The fact is, this introduction of the Eleusinian
worship, with its foreign teaching concerning the death and re-birth of Iacchus,
was brought about by Epimenides, who was called in from Crete to assuage the religious
terrors of the Athenians after the murder of Cylon, and the feeling of guilt which
took hold of the state in consequence of that crime of the Alcmaeonidae. That
was a time which in an eminent degree called for the introduction of new forms
of religious service; and to this earnest and holy priest the Athenians were indebted
for the development of the gracious worship of Apollo (Curtius, Hist. i. 323),
and for the introduction of the Eleusinian worship of Demeter and Iacchus, with
the religious hope and consolation they brought to the afflicted; and in gratitude
a statue of Epimenides was set up before the temple of the goddess in Agrae.
2. Eleusinia elsewhere than in Attica.
Not to mention the wide-spread worship of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus throughout
Asia Minor, evinced by such ceremonies as were held at the Carian Nysa (Strabo,
xiv.), the Pherrephattia at Cyzicus (Plut. Lucull. 10; Appian, Bell. Mithr. 75),
and the Dionysiac symbols which so constantly occur on Asiatic coins; nor the
Eleusis on Lake Mareotis in Egypt, where there were initiations which were arche
tou Kanobismou (Strabo, xvii.), accompanied indeed with much debauchery; nor the
worship of these goddesses in Sicily, both at Gela, where Telines used their sacred
symbols with such effect as to restore his political faction and to get himself
established as their high-priest (Herod. vii. 153), and elsewhere (Diod. v. 77)
-we find special evidence that the Eleusinian Demeter was worshipped in Boeotia,
at Plataea where she had a temple (Herod. ix. 62, 65, 101), at Celeae near Phlius
(Paus. ii. 14, 1), and in many places in Arcadia, Pheneus (ib. viii. 15, 1), Thelpusa
(25, 2, 3), Basilis (29, 5), Megalopolis (31, 7). The mysteries at Pheneus are
interesting not only for the writings on the stone (petroma) read each year to
the mystae, but also from its clearly being a worship of the dead, as may be seen
from the ceremony of the priest striking the ground with rods and calling on those
that are beneath the earth (tous hupochthonious, Paus. l. c.). In Messenia there
were ancient solemn mysteries to these goddesses and to the Great Gods -i. e.
the Cabeiri- at Andania in Messenia, which were put down by the Spartans after
the Second Messenian War, but restored to their old splendour by Epaminondas (Paus.
iv. 1, 5; 2, 6 ; Curtius, Hist. iv. 433). At this place was found a most important
inscription of 91 B.C. relating to the mysteries. But even this worship was inferior
in solemnity and importance to the Attic Eleusinia (Paus. iv. 33, 5), which may
be considered to have consisted of two parts, viz. the Lesser Mysteries at Agrae
and the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis.
3. The Mysteries at Agrae (ta en Agrais).
These were held in the spring at Agrae, a place on the Ilissus, S.E. of the Acropolis.
There is no doubt they were held in Anthesterion, when there were the first signs
of returning vegetation just after field-work began (C. I. G. 103, l. 20). The
exact date cannot be fixed, but Mommsen's suggestion is most probable, that the
chief day was the 20th, the same day of the month as the Greater Mysteries were
held on in Boedromion -to which the Lesser Mysteries had many points of similarity,
even in matters connected with the calendar, e. g. the same length of the mystery
truce (C. I. G. 71). Mommsen supposes that the 19th was a day of preparation,
and the 20th and 21st the special mystery days. These Lesser Mysteries were considered
as a prelude to the Greater (Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 845, esti ta mikra hosper
prokatharsis kai proagneusis ton megalon), being on a much smaller scale, but
initiation in the Lesser was generally required before the candidate could present
himself for initiation into the Greater (Plat. Gorg. 497 C; Plut. Dem. 26). At
Eleusis there were temples to Artemis Propylaea, to Triptolemus and to Poseidon,
as well as to Demeter; similarly at Agrae there was a temple to Demeter, and altars
to Artemis and Poseidon, and a statue of Triptolemus. The mysteries at Agrae consisted
probably to a large extent of purifications, for which the water of the Ilissus
was much used. They were held more especially in honour of Persephone, called
Pherrephatta here, than of Demeter (Schol. on Aristoph. Plut. 845). It appears
that the carrying off of Persephone was the most important representation in these
mysteries. Again we hear that at Agrae the fate of Dionysus was pourtrayed (mimema
ton peri ton Dionuson, Steph. Byz. s. v. Agrai). The death of Dionysus-Zagreus
took place on the 13th of Anthesterion, the day on which the festival of the Chytrae
was held (see Dionysia):
so perhaps on the ninth day after, the 21st (for funeral rites on the ninth day
after death, the enata, see Aeschin. Ctesiph. 225), the funeral ceremony may have
been held and his violent death related in a drama. A great many, especially strangers,
were initiated into these mysteries who did not proceed to initiation into the
regular Eleusinia: the legend, too, said it was for the purpose of initiating
Heracles, who was a stranger and according to the primitive regulations could
not be initiated into the Eleusinia, that these Lesser Mysteries were established...
There is a very similar one on a Pourtales vase in the British Museum.
4. The Course of the Festival at Eleusis.
Two days are fixed by definite evidence; viz. the 16th Boedromion for the Halade
mustai (Polyaen. iii. 11, 11; de Glor. Ath. 349 fin.), and the 20th for the Iacchus
day (Plut. Cam. 19, Phoc. 28). The fixing of other days depends on conjecture,
but can be determined with a considerable degree of certainty. A month before
the middle of Boedromion, i. e. the middle of Metagitnion, the spondophoroi (see
below) used to announce the mystery truce to the neighbouring states (C. I. G.
71; Aeschin. Fals. Leg.133), so as to give the strangers time to make all arrangements
necessary for a visit to Athens. During the latter portion of this month the votary
who intended to be initiated used to betake himself to some private man who had
gone through all the grades of initiation, was examined by him as to his freedom
from sin, received instruction as to what purifications and offerings were necessary
to gain the favour of the goddesses, and submit the actual offerings for his inspection
and approval. This instructor was the mustagogos (see below). He notified to the
hierophant. the fitness of the applicant and introduced him, this proceeding being
apparently called sustasis. A not uncommon form of purification was the Dios kodion
(Suidas, s. v.), which the daduchus used to cover the sinner's feet with. Sincere
devotees appear to have fasted for nine days (cf. Hom. Hymn. Dem. 47), from the
13th to the 21st, i. e. ate nothing during the day, taking whatever food they
did take between sunset and sunrise, like the Mahomedans during Ramadan (cf. Ov.
Fast. iv. 535;); and votaries generally appear to have abstained from domestic
birds, fish, pomegranates, apples, and beans (Porphyr. Abst. iv. 16). Ramsay notices
the effect of the long fasts as tending to enfeeble the body, already weak enough
after the heat of summer, and as a consequence the predisposition of the votaries
to religious enthusiasm; but perhaps he exaggerates too much these fasts.
On the 15th of Boedromion the formal assemblage (agurmos Hesych. s.
v.) took place of those citizens and strangers who intended to take part in the
mysteries--though this assemblage does not appear to have been absolutely essential,
at least in late times (C. I. G. 523).
At the beginning of the 16th, in the evening (the day is reckoned
from sunset to sunset), Chabrias's distribution of wine to the people in honour
of his victory at Naxos used to take place (Plut. Phoc. 6); and the next morning
began the first formal act of the festival, viz. the prorresis or Halade mustai.
These are to be identified in point of time, else Philostratus ( Vit. Apoll. iv.
18) in an important passage would omit the striking ceremony of Halade mustai.
The passage is this: ta de Epidauria meta prorresin te kai hiereia deuro muein
Athenaiois patrion epi thusia deuterai ( as a secondary sacrifice ), touti d enomisan
Athklepiou heneka, hoti de emuesan auton hekonta, Epidaurothen opse musterion.
A proclamation was made by the Archon Basileus (Poll. viii. 90) and by the Hierophant
and Daduchus in the Stoa Poecile (Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 369), for the departure
of all strangers and all murderers: and then the order for purification given,
Ye mystae to the sea. The sea was sometimes the Piraeus (Plut. Phoc. 28), though
probably only in time of Attica being occupied by enemies ; but generally the
Hpeitoi, two salt streams on the Sacred Road, one dedicated to Demeter, the other
to Cora, which contained fish that the priests alone were allowed to eat (Pans.
i. 38, 1; Hesych. s. v.; cf. Etym. M. s. v.: hiera hodos: he eis Eleusina agousa
hen apiasin hoi mustai halade).
The next day, the 17th, sacrifices (hiereia) were offered for the
safety of the state (Rangabe, Inscr. 795) by the Archon Basileus and the epimeletai
in the Eleusinium at Athens (Lys. Andoc. 4); and at all these sacrifices the theoroi
of foreign states seem to have taken part (Eur. Suppl. 173).
The night of the 18th may have been spent by the very devout in sleeping
in the temple of Aesculapius, S.W. of the Acropolis, or in the laccheum, also
called the temple of Demeter. It was just where the road from Piraeus entered
Athens (Paus. i. 2, 4). The early morning of that day till about 9 A.M. was devoted
to ordinary business, as we find decrees issued bearing that date. After this
hour the Epidauria was celebrated in the temple of Demeter or Iacchus and in the
temple of Aesculapius. It was, as we have seen, a supplementary sacrifice for
those who came late, and legend said it was instituted for the sake of Aesculapius,
who himself came late for the mysteries. Doubtless, however, the thought really
lay in this, that Aesculapius was supposed by his wondrous skill to have raised
again Iacchus from the dead, and the festival probably was incorporated in the
Eleusinia when the worship of Epidaurus got connected with that of Athens (Herod.
v. 82). Meanwhile there were being brought from Eleusis certain religious objects
-playthings, it was said, of the child Iacchus- bone (astragalos), top (strobilos),
ball (sphaira), apples (mela), tambourine (rombos), looking-glass (esoptron),
woolly fleece (pokos), fan (liknon), and such like, as we learn from Clement of
Alexandria. Phalli were perhaps also carried among these mystical objects; but
we must remember that the statue of Iacchus, as we shall see, which was carried
in procession to Eleusis on the 19th, was not kept at Eleusis during the year,
but at Athens, having been brought back some day shortly after the conclusion
of the mysteries; for there was no Iaccheum at Eleusis. The Athenian Ephebi met
this convoy at the temple of Echo, which was probably the same as the hiera suke,
where the story ran that Phytalus met the wandering Demeter, and the bridge over
the Cephissus, and was so called from the cymbals (echeia) used in the Eleusinian
ceremony (Schol. Theocr. ii. 36), and conveyed them to Athens by nightfall. This
is Mommsen's view as to the date: but Lenormant thinks this convoy took place
on the 16th; for the convocation of the Ephebi is on the 14th, according to the
inscription given by Mommsen , and it is highly probable that it should have been
thus arranged so that additional splendour might be given to the procession by
the mystae who went to the Rheitoi joining it on their return home. In the early
morning of the 19th, there were occasionally decrees passed. In the forenoon (Plut.
Alcib. 34; cf. Herod. viii. 65) the Iacchus procession started from the Eleusinium
and proceeded to the Iaccheum, where they got the statue of Iacchus; perhaps then
definitely organised the procession in the building assigned for that purpose
(Paus. i. 2, 4); and then passing through the Ceramicus (Schol. Aristoph. Ran.
399) left Athens by the Sacred Gate (Plut. Sull. 14), priests and people crowned
with myrtle and ivy, the rich ladies till the time of the orator Lycurgus (Plut.
Vit. X. Orat. 842-4) riding in carriages (Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 1014). The statue
of Iacchus was probably that of a fair child crowned with myrtle and holding a
torch, hence called phosphoros asteer in Aristophanes (Ran. 342). There were many
ceremonies to be performed as the procession passed along the Sacred Way to Eleusis--ceremonies
which had to be given up during the Peloponnesian War, while Attica was invaded
by the Peloponnesians (Plut. Alcib. 34). One section of the procession repaired
to the Cephissus and took baths therein, another to the bath by Anemocritus's
statue near the tomb of Scirus the soothsayer, who came from Dodona to Eleusis
to assist the Eleusinians in the war against Erechtheus and was slain. The Phytalidae
sacrificed to Phytalus in Laciadae, where lay a temple to the Mourning (Achea)
Demeter, and to Cora, with whose worship that of Athena and Poseidon was joined
(Pans. i. 37, 2). Here according to Preller lay the sacra gentilitia of the Gephyraei
(cf. Herod. v. 61) at the sacred fig-tree. At the palace of Crocon, the Croconidae
perhaps bound small bands of saffron thread round the right wrist and right foot
of each mystes (cf. Phot. s. v. krokoun), which was considered as a protection
from the evil eye. The other priestly families had probably particular ceremonies
to perform at particular places... Occasionally during the procession the majority
of those who took part in it indulged in flouts and gibes at one another, a proceeding
called gephurismos, the origin of which title is unknown, but is generally associated
with the bridge over the Cephissus (Strabo, ix. 400). It was similar to the ta
ex hamaxon of the Dionysia, or the stenia of the Thesmophoria. We must remember,
however, that Lenormant supposes this gephurismos to have occurred during the
procession, as it returned to Athens after the ceremonial at Eleusis was finished.
Chants in honour of Iacchus (e. g. Aristoph. Ran. 325 ff.) were sung constantly
during the procession, which swelled louder as when, near midnight, Iacchus arrived
at Eleusis amid the blaze of torches (Soph. Oed. Col. 1045). That the procession
did not arrive till late at night is plain from the splendid chorus in the Ion
(1076 ff.), which sings of the torches of the 20th and of the moon and stars dancing
in heaven at the sight. The journey from Athens to Eleusis is really only four
hours long; but the various ceremonies performed during the course of the procession
extended it to three or four times its normal length.
On the next morning certain sacrifices were performed (Rangabe, 813,
4), consisting probably in part of swine, to Demeter (Schol. to Aristoph. Pax,
374). An inscription orders sacrifices to be made by the hieropoioi to Hermes
Enagonius, the Graces, Artemis, and certain heroes, Telesidromus and Triptolemus.
We do not know what these sacrifices were at Eleusis: at Andania they were (Inscr.
l. 70), besides others, a sheep to Proserpina and a sow to Demeter... In later
times the Ephebi made supplementary sacrifices of oxen. The bulls were brought
unbound to the altar, and the Ephebi struggled with them to hold them as they
were being sacrificed: compare the rites to Demeter Chthonia at Hermione (Paus.
ii. 35, 5); hence perhaps the origin of the bull-fights alluded to by Artemidorus
(Oneirocr. i. 8) as occurring at the Eleusinia.
The 22nd and 23rd were the musteriotides hemerai, and the ceremonies
celebrated thereon were pannuchides. During the evening of the 22nd was probably
what was called lamprdon hemera, which consisted in a symbolical search after
Cora with torches, performed principally by and for the less highly initiated,
who conducted the search crowned with myrtle, wearing a fawn-skin, and holding
a wand, the mystagogues of the several initiates taking part in the search--the
whole proceeding being perhaps an interlude in the story of Demeter and Cora,
which appears to have been represented in the temple on this night. After this
came with much ceremonial the partaking of the kukeon a mixture of mint, barley-meal,
and water. This was a cardinal feature in the ceremony, being, if we may so say,
a participation in the Eleusinian sacrament. It was in remembrance of Demeter
being refreshed after her long wandering and fruitless search. There-after followed
what was called the paradosis ton hieron (Suidas, s. v.): certain relics and amulets
were given to the votary to touch or kiss or even taste, the votary repeating,
as the priest tendered him the objects with a regular question (quae rogati in
sacrorum acceptionibus respondeant, Arnob. Adv. Gentes, v. 26), this formula (sunthema),
as given by Clement of Alexandria (Protrept): enesteusa, epion ton kukeona, elabon
ek kistes engeusamenos, apethemen eis kalathon kai ek kalathou eis kisten. It
appears that some kind of memento of this ceremony was given by the priest to
the votaries, which a sincere believer used to keep in a linen cloth (Apul. Apol.).
The actual hiera themselves were kept in a chest (teletes enkumona mnstida kisten,
Nonnus, Dionys. ix. 127) bound with purple ribands, and consisted among others
of sesame cakes of particular shapes, pomegranates, salt, ferules, ivy, poppy-seeds,
quinces, &c. (Clem. Alex. Protrept.): the uninitiated were not allowed to see
these even from the housetop (Callim. Hymn to Ceres, 4).
Not very different appear to have been the ceremonies of the 23rd.
There were many wand-bearers but few bacchants, as the superintendents of the
mysteries used to say (Plat. Phaed. 69 C), and it was for these latter, the more
highly initiated mystae of at least a year's standing, generally called epoptai,
that the ceremonies of the 23rd were held, and they were the highest and greatest.
Here, too, was probably a paradosis ton hieron, the sacramental words used in
receiving which being ek tumpanou ephagon, ek kumbalou epion, ekernophoresa, hupo
ton paston hupeduon. All this undoubtedly points to the Phrygian worship of Sabazius,
which was introduced by the Orphics into the Eleusinian mysteries. On the afternoon
of the 23rd was held that portion of the feast which was called plemochoai (Ath.
x.) or plemochoe (Poll. x. 74), a sacrifice to the dead. The plemochoe was a broad-bottomed
earthen jar, and two such were used in the ceremony, one filled with wine and
the other with water, the contents of the one thrown to the east and of the other
to the west, while mystic words (hue kue) were spoken. This sacrifice formed a
fitting conclusion to the mysteries in the special sense, the musteriotides hemerai:
for that is the way we are to understand Athenaeus, not that it was the end of
the whole festival. It was like the zemia of the Thesmophoria: and it ended with
a chairete to the dead, which conclusion was called prochaireteria (Harpocr. 161,
9). It must be noticed, however, that Lenormant supposes the plemochoe to have
taken place just outside the Dipylon gate of Athens, on the return of the procession
from Eleusis; and that this is proved from the mystic words hue kue huperkue found
engraved on the kerbstone of a well near that spot.
The next morning, 24th, occurred perhaps the balletus (Athen. 406;
Hesych. s. v.), also called tuptai (Hesych. s. v.), a sort of sham fight, enjoined,
it seems, in the Homeric hymn (v. 267 ff.). There was a similar contest, called
lithobolia, at the festival of Damia and Auxesia at Troezen (cf. Paus. ii. 32,
2). Lenormant sees a connexion with the herb balis, symbol of resurrection and
immortality (Etym. M. s. v.; Plin. H. N. xxv.14). On this same morning and afternoon
were the agones stadiakoi. They were called Eleusinia or Demetria, and the prize
was some barley grown on the Rarian plain (Schol. on Pind. Ol. ix. 150, 166).
Euripides was crowned at these Eleusinian games (Gell. xv. 20, 3). There is no
reason to suppose that these games were not annual; for the Eleusinian penteteris
referred to by Pollux, viii. 107, is a different and second-rate festival, as
may be seen from its being mentioned last in the list. In early times these games
probably lasted two days; but in later times on the 25th the theatrical representations
of the Dionusou technitai were held, and we have some inscriptions referring to
the sacrifices offered by this guild (ib. 266-7).
As time went on, the 26th and 27th appear to have been devoted to
such theatrical exhibitions, held perhaps for the purpose of keeping the visitors
in the country. According to a decree in Mommsen, dated 28th, the people were
assembled at Eleusis and had not yet returned to Athens: but in the time of Andocides
(de Myst. 111) the 26th was the day after the mysteries; and that there were some
business days in Boedromion free after the mysteries is proved by Demosthenes
(Ol. iii.5). The people do not appear to have returned to Athens in a regular
procession, though Lenormant, as we have seen, thinks they did, and that the gephurismos
and the plemochoe were incidents in that return journey. The mysterytruce lasted
till the middle of Pyanepsion (C. I. G. 71).
5. The Priests and Priestesses.
(a.) The most important priest was the Hierophant (Hierophantes). In lists of
the Eleusinian priests he is put first (Dio Chrys. xxxi.; C. I. G. 184, 190).
He was nominated for life (Paus. ii. 14, 1) from the Eleusinian family of the
Eumolpidae, and was generally an elderly man and bound to a life of strict chastity.
There was only one hierophant at a time, and his name was never mentioned (Lucian,
Lexiph. 10), though in late inscriptions we find the Roman gentile name but not
the praenomen or the cognomen given (C. I. G. 187). His principal duty was, clothed
in an Oriental style with a long robe (stole) and a turban (strophion), as his
name indicates, to show and explain the sacred symbols and figures -perhaps in
a kind of chant or recitative, as he was required to have a good voice (cf.Plut.
Alcib. 22; Epictet. iii. 21,16; C. I. G. 401).
(b.) The Daduchus (daidouchos) or torchbearer was inferior to the Hierophant,
and of the same rank with the Keryx (C. I. G. 185, compared with 188). Originally
he was descended from the Eleusinian Triptolemus (Xen. Hell. vi. 3, 6); but about
380 B.C. this family died out, and the Lycomidae, the family to which Themistocles
belonged, which celebrated a local worship of Demeter at Phlyae full of Orphic
doctrines and ceremonies, succeeded to the daduchia. We have seen above, how important
Lenormant thinks the introduction of this family into the Eleusinian priesthood
was, in that it brought with it into the Eleusinian ceremonies in a large measure
the Orphic rites it was accustomed to practise. It is uncertain whether the name
of the daduchus was sacred (Lucian, l. c.) or not (C. I. G. 403, 423). His head-dress
was Oriental, as we may infer from a Persian soldier mistaking a daduchus for
a king (Plut. Arist. 5). His main duty was to hold the torch at the sacrifices,
as his name indicates; but he shared with the hierophant several functions, reciting
portions of the ritual (Paus. ix. 31, 6, compared with Philostr. Vit. Soph. ii.
20), taking part in certain purifications (Suid. s. v. Dios koidion), in the prorresis
(Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 369), and even in the exhibition of the mysteries (Suid.
s. v. daidouchei). For these two priests, the Hierophant and the Daduchus, who
had to be men of tried sanctity (nomos ton mellonta daidouchein dokimazesthai,
quoted by Mayor on Juv. xv. 140), there was a regular consecration on their entering
office. It was the telos tes epopteias, and was called anadesis kai stemmaton
epithesis, because the sign of it consisted in placing on the head of the new
priest the diadem of purple and the wreath of myrtle which they wore permanently.
(c.) The Keryx or Hierokeryx (kerux, hierokerux). According to Eleusinian tradition,
the Kerykes traced their origin back to Keryx, a younger son of Eumolpus; but
they themselves considered their ancestors to be Hermes and one of the daughters
of Cecrops, Aglauros according to Pausanias (i. 38, 3), Pandrosos according to
Pollux (viii. 103). Mommsen supposes they were an Athenian family which ousted
or absorbed an Eleusinian family, perhaps the Eudanemi (Hesych. s. v.). His duties
were chiefly to proclaim silence at the sacrifices (Poll. iv. 91).
(d.) The Epibomios (ho epi bomoi). In early times he was certainly a priest (ton
epi toi bomoi hierea, C. I. G. 71 a, 39); he is generally mentioned in connexion
with the other three priests, but not always (e. g. Plut. Alc. 22; Epictet. iii.
21, 13; C. I. G. 188, 190, 191). No family laid especial claim to this priesthood.
His name, as well as that of the Keryx, was probably not sacred. The four Eleusinian
priests were among those who were maintained in the prytaneum -were aeisitoi,
as they were called (C. I. G. 183 ff.).
(e.) The Hierophantis (hierophantis). There was originally only one at a time;
she belonged to Demeter (C. I. G. 434, 2), and her name was sacred: but a new
one was added when Hadrian's wife Sabina was deified as the younger Demeter (ib.
435, 1073). Perhaps at this time or afterwards the priestesses came to be multiplied;
see the Schol. on Soph. Oed. Col. 683, kai ton hierophanten de kai ras hierophantdas
kai ton daidouchon kai tas allas hiereias murrines echein stephanon. They lived
a life of perfect chastity during their tenure of office, though they might have
been married previously. It is uncertain to what family the original hierophantis
of Demeter belonged; that of the younger belonged to a branch of the Lycomidae
(ib.). The duties of the hierophantis corresponded to those of the hierophant.
Pollux (i. 14) appears to call these priestesses prophantides, and perhaps they
were also called melissai (Hesych. s. v.).
(f.) Female torch-bearer, daidouchesasa (C. I. G. 1535; cf. Lucian, Cataplus,
22).
(g.) Priestess (hiereia). She was not hieronymous, but eponymous (cf. C. I. G.
386, epi hiereias Phlaouias Aodamias). These priestesses belonged to the family
of the Phillidae (Suid. and Phot. s. v.). Her duties corresponded in all probability
with those of the Epibomios.
(h.) The Spondophori (spondophoroi) were sent out to the adjoining country a month
before the ceremony to announce the truce for the mysteries (Aeschin. Fals. Leg.133).
They belonged to the families of the Eudanemi and Kerykes (Hesych. s. v. Eudanemos).
Mommsen thinks that a Eudanemos went from Eleusis and a Keryx from Athens at the
same time.
(i.) Minor offices: (1.) phaidruntes toin theoin, perhaps belonging to the Eleusinium
of the city. (2.) hudranos, whom Hesych. describes as hagnistes ton Eleusinion.
He probably superintended the halade mustai. (3.) iakchagogos and kourotrophos,
female nurses attending on the child Iacchus (Poll. i. 35; C. I. G. 481, 9). (4.)
Perhaps the same may be said of the daeiritis; but it is very uncertain. We know
that Proserpina was originally called Daeira in the Eleusinian worship. (5.) hieraules
(ib. 184, c. 18) was probably the head of the humnoidoi and humnetrides (Poll.
i. 35), a sort of choir. (6.) Who the panageis and the purphoroi were beyond what
can be inferred from their names cannot be determined. Lenormant says the panageis
were intermediate between the ministers and the initiates. Though not strictly
a priest, yet as exercising an important function in the mysteries,
(j) the mystagogi (mustagogoi) may be mentioned here. They had to be men who had
passed through all the grades of initiation. They were probably under the cognisance
of the state, in a manner licensed. Prior to presenting himself for initiation,
each votary had to place himself under the guidance of one of these mystagogues,
and got instruction from him as to the various purifications and ceremonies he
was to perform. It was only by the unconscientiousness of mystagogues that unworthy
applicants ever got admission to the mysteries. After due examination, if the
mystagogue was satisfied, he presented the applicant or returned his name to the
Archon Basileus or his assistants. This was called sustasis. If a mystagogue could
not say what purificatory sacrifices were required for a special candidate, recourse
was had to
(k) an Exegetes (exegetes), who appears to have been elected by the people from
the Eumolpidae or Kerykes (cf. C. I. G. 392) and whose business it was to decide
such difficult cases and generally to give responsa on Eleusinian ecclesiastical
law. There were many books of the mysteries which were intended to have been strictly
kept from the uninitiated and which appear to have contained not only what ritual
was to be performed in various cases--such perhaps was the Eumnolpidarum patria
which Cicero asks Atticus (i. 9, 2) for--but also perhaps the allegorical and
symbolical interpretations of some of the myths.
The priests of the mysteries, especially the Eumolpidae, appear to
have had a special ecclesiastical court (hiera gerousia, C. I. G. 392, 399) for
trying offences of impiety (a very vague and elastic term) in connexion with the
festival, which court they conducted according to unwritten laws of immemorial
antiquity (Lys. in Andoc.10). To prosecute before this court was called dikazesththi
pros Eumolpidas. Their punishments, according to Caillemer, were strictly religious,
exclusion from the mysteries, deprivation of title of initiate, and such like.
The curse and excommunication were most solemn; priests and priestesses, turning
to the west, uttered the words of imprecation and shook their garments (Lys. Andoc.
51). It may be that this court was the only tribunal for cases of what we may
call heterodoxy, impiety consisting in the performance of rites contrary to the
traditional one and to that held by the priests; while other kinds of procedure,
superadded to the religious investigation and condemnation, were adopted in accordance
with ordinary criminal law (such as apagoge, asebeiai graphe, endeixis, probole,
eisangelia, impiety, which consisted in disorder and vulgar profanity. These charges
were brought before the Senate of Five Hundred sitting in the Eleusinium of the
city on the day after the mysteries (Andoc. de Myst.111). The penalty was death
(Thuc. vi. 61 fin.) or banishment (Andoc.15), with confiscation of goods (C. I.
A. i. 277), for profanation of the mysteries. The accuser, if he did not get the
fifth part of the votes, suffered a kind of atimia (Andoc.33), i. e. was deprived
of the right to enter the temples and fined the usual 1000 drachmas. Many shrank
from themselves bringing the accusation, and used to inform the Archon Basileus
of the profanation they had observed, and if he thought it serious he made the
accusation officially. This information laid before the archon was called phrazein
pros ton basilea (Dem. Androt. l. c.).
6. The Civil Functionaries connected with the Festival.
The chief civil superintendence of the festival was entrusted to the Archon Basileus,
who was assisted by four epimeletai, elected by the people, two from the people
generally and one each from the families of the Eumolpidae and Kerykes. The Archon
generally appears to have appointed an assistant (paredros), who was probably
as a rule his relation -at least for the Dionysia in one case the Archon appointed
his father-in-law (Dem. c. Neaer.). The duties of the Archon and his assistant
were to sacrifice and pray for the prosperity of the people, both at Athens and
Eleusis, and to have general police supervision over the whole solemnity (Lys.
c. Andoc. 4). The epimeletai had also such duties as looking after the sacrifices,
testing the offerings of the votaries, classifying and marshalling the different
grades of initiates, managing certain monies, &c., if we may infer from the similar
duties attaching to the officials of this name at Andania. As to the finances
of the festival generally, according to C. I. G. 71 a, 29, hieropoioi had the
administration of them. Midias was elected one of these. They were three in number
(Dem. Mid.), though Etym. M. (s. v.) says they were ten.
7. The Initiates.
Originally only Athenians were admitted: legend said that Hercules and the Dioscuri
(Plut. Thes. 33) had to be adopted prior to initiation; but later (cf. Herod.
viii. 65) all Greek-speaking people who were not murderers were admissible to
be initiated (Isocr. Panegyr.42). Barbarians were excluded: so Anacharsis had
to be naturalised (Lucian, Scyth. 8); but it was not at all necessary to be an
Athenian citizen, as the Emperor Julian (Or. vii. 238) implies. This Lobeck (Aglaoph.
17-20) proves elaborately. Women (Aristid. Eleus. vol. i.), and even perhaps slaves
(Theophilus, Fr. i., vol. ii.), were admissible. Children were admitted to the
first grade only; but among the children brought to Eleusis one was picked out
for special initiation, and to appease the divinity by a more exact performance
of the ceremonies required (Porphyr. Abst. iv. 5). That boy or girl (for boys,
see C. I. G. 393, 400; for girls, 443-445, 448) was said muethenai aph hestias,
and was called ho (or he) aph hestias. He or she had to be an Athenian of high
birth, perhaps of the special family of the Lycomidae, Eumolpidae, or the like;
and was probably initiated standing on the steps of the altar, while the rest
stood afar off (Cf. Themist. xiii., all echren hos eoike ton mustagogon moi genesthai
tes erotikes teletes ou porrothen ton paidikon oude othneion all enguthen kai
aph hestias). The parents of the child had to make extensive offerings and pay
a large fee. For more concerning initiation aph heotias, see Boeckh on C. I. G.
393. Originally admission was free for all initiates; but by virtue of a law passed
by the orator Aristogiton, each initiate had to pay a fee to the public treasury.
The ordinary proceeding was for the initiate to receive his first
introduction as a child and afterwards the higher grades as a man--pais mustes
kai epoptes aner, as Himerius says (Or. xxii. 1). This falls in admirably with
what Tertullian says (contra Valentin. 1): Idcirco et aditum prius cruciant, diutius
initiant antequam consignant, cum epoptas ante quinquennium instituunt, --a statement
not contradicted by the fact that the shortest possible interval between the two
grades of initiation is stated at one year (Plut. Demetr.26; cf. Schol. on Aristoph.
Ran. 745). The whole cycle of the mysteries was a trieteris, and could be gone
through in two years: even the Homeric hymn extends the whole legend beyond a
year, and when the Orphic theology blended Iacchus-Zagreus into the story, the
regular course of two years came to be adopted. There is a high probability, as
we shall see, that the first-year votaries at Eleusis were shown a drama representing
the usual story of Demeter and Cora, while the second-year votaries were shown
the whole legend of Zagreus: and as to the whole course of the actual mysteries,
there is a possibility that the following arrangement was that adopted, though
it must be remembered that it is little more than conjecture, and given for what
it is worth.
(1.) First Spring at Agrae--the votaries mourn for Cora ravished by Hades.
(2.) First Autumn at Eleusis--mourning with Demeter for the loss of her daughter, and exhibition of the ordinary legend.
(3.) Second Spring at Agrae--the murder of Zagreus and his heart being given to Cora (who here seems to take the place of Semele), and conception of Iacchus.
(4.) Second Autumn at Eleusis--rebirth of Iacchus, who is carried in procession to Demeter at Eleusis, and there the votaries sympathise in the joy of the earth-goddess, who once more has about her her child and grandchild.
That there were different grades of initiates hardly needs proof:
the mustai were those who had received any degree of initiation, the epoptai or
ephoroi the second-year votaries. Suidas (s. v. epoptai) says so explicitly--cf.
Harpocr. s. v. epopteukoton, and Plut. Demetr. 26; not to mention such passages
as Plut. de Iside et Osiride, c. 78, where the different grades of proficiency
in philosophy are compared to those of the initiates into the mysteries. There
were mystic ceremonies for both these classes of initiates, one on each of the
two days, 22nd and 23rd. While anyone introduced by a mystagogue could get admission
to the ceremonies of the first year, the muesis, the epopteia or epopsia could
only be seen by those who got a ticket from the daidouchos. A ticket of that kind
has been discovered marked DAD and EROPs, with the symbols of an ear of corn and
a poppy. What those ceremonies were is the most important and interesting point
in our subject; but the seal of silence which was laid on the votaries has not
been broken. This secrecy was most strenuously enjoined and most rigorously enforced,
as we have seen. The prosecution of Alcibiades for holding a travesty of the mysteries
in his own house, and Andocides's speech on the subject, are well known. Aeschylus
is said to have divulged the mysteries in styling Artemis a daughter of Demeter
(Herod. ii. 156; Paus. viii. 37, 6), and: in other matters (Arist. Nic. Eth. iii.
1, 17 ), and to have only barely escaped death. Diagoras of Melos (Diod. xiii.
6; Lys. Andoc. 17) was banished from Athens and a price set on his head for having
divulged the mysteries. It was the prevailing belief of antiquity that he who
was guilty of divulging the mysteries was thought sure to bring down divine vengeance
on himself and those associated with him (Hor. Carm. iii. 2, 26). We are accordingly
left to conjectures more or less probable as to what the chief mystic ceremonies
were.
8. The Mystic Ceremonies in the Temple.
They were performed in the temple of the two goddesses at Eleusis, a building
reckoned one of the greatest masterpieces of the Periclean age. Ictinus superintended
the whole. Coroebus built the lower story, with four rows of columns which divided
the interior space. On his death Metagenes took up the work and added an upper
story, and Xenocles built a cupola roof with an opening (opaion) in the middle
for the light (Plut. Pericl. 13; Vitruv. vii. Pref.16, 17). The dimensions of
the whole building were 223 feet by 179, the measurement of the cella being 175
feet by 179. The temple had no pillars in the facade till the architect Philon,
in the time of Demetrius of Phalerum, built a pronaos with twelve pillars (Vitruv.
l. c.). The temple stood inside a large enclosure, which was approached by a propylaea,
there being yet another propylaea leading to the temple. Inside this enclosure
Lenormant has fixed the position of the agelastos petra, where Demeter was said
to have rested in her wanderings, as the rock where the great statue of Demeter
Achea, now at Cambridge, stood, i. e. on the axis of the first propylaea close
to a well, which he also identifies as Callichorum.. The temple of Ictinus, though
built on the site of an older and smaller one, must be distinguished from the
most ancient temple which stood more to the north, occupying a platform which
overlooked the well Callichorum and the agelastos petra, exactly on the spot where
the Homeric hymn (v. 273) orders it to be built. The great temple of Ictinus was
called by the ancients mustikos sekos (Strabo, ix. 395), and the inner portion
telesterion or anaktoron or megaron (cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph. 59).
The ceremony was doubtless dramatic. Deo and Cora, says Clement of
Alexandria (Protrept. p. 12), have become a mystic drama. Eleusis illustrates
by the light of the torches of the daduchus the carrying off of Cora, the wandering
journeys and grief of Deo (cf. Minuc. Felix, Octav. c. 21), a view to which the
terms hierophantes and epoptes also lead us, and which is consistent with the
whole tenor of the ancient Greek religion, which was materialist and naturalist
in its doctrines, and used for its inculcation visible symbols, but did not rise
through the hearts and the consciences of its votaries to a conception of the
Divinity whom eye hath not seen nor ear heard. Above these two conditions, says
Preller, Nature as object and the sensible as its formal expression, the religions
of the ancients have never arisen. The ceremony, then, was dramatic. Aelius Aristides
(Eleus. i. 256) asks, Where else do the recitals of the narratives chant forth
greater marvels, or does the ceremonial (ta dromena) involve a greater affrightment
(ekplexin), or does the spectacle match more fully what the ear hears? The drama
consisted of dromena and legomena, the former being much the more important, for
the ancient religious worship addressed itself, as Grote points out, more to the
eye than to the ear. There were hymns and chants (Paus. ix. 27, 2: the name Eumolpus
pointing to such, C. I. G. 401, and the hierophant, as we saw, was required to
have a good voice), speeches and exhortations (rheseis, parangelmata), recitals
of myths (muthon phemai. Aristid. l. c.), wailings for the loss of Persephone
(Proclus on Plat. Politic.). There were kinds of dancing or rhythmical movements
by those performing the ceremony (Lucian, de Salt. 15), clashing of cymbals (Schol.
on Theocr. ii. 36; Vell. i. 4, 1), sudden changes from light to darkness (skotous
te kai photos enallax genomenon, Dio Chrys. xii. 387), toilsome wanderings and
dangerous passages through the gloom, but the end is not yet, and then before
the end all kinds of terror, shivering and quaking, sweating and amazement, when
suddenly a wondrous light flashes forth to the worshipper, and pure regions and
meadows receive him: there are chants, voices, and dances, solemn words and holy
images; and amongst these the votary now perfected is freed at last and is released,
he wanders to and fro with a crown on his head, joining in the worship and in
the company of pure and holy men; and he sees the uninitiated and unpurified crowd
of the living in the thick mire and mist, trampling one another down, and huddled
together, abiding ever in evils through fear of death and disbelief in the good
things yonde. For somewhat similar descriptions of the mingled terror and comfort
in the spectacle, see Dio Chrys. xii. 202; Plut. Frag. de Anim. vi. 2, p. 270;
de Facie lunae, c. 28; de Prefect. Virt. p. 81; Proclus on Plut. Alc. p. 142.
Lucian (Catapl. 22) represents a man having entered Hades and got into the dark
asking his companion if what was represented at Eleusis was not like this. Claudian's
description is sufficiently terrible; and amidst that rhetoric Lenormant fancies
he can infer that the votaries, waiting anxiously outside the building, saw the
glimmer of the lighted interior through the opaion (et claram dispergere culmina
lucem, v. 8); then was heard the noise of the preparations for the play, the doors
were thrown open, and the daduchus appeared with torches in his hands, and the
statue of Demeter was seen in gorgeous vestments and brilliantly lit up. It is
more probable that the whole performance took place inside the temple. But that
figures of the gods were introduced is certain--eudaimona phasmata, as Plato (Phaedr.)
calls them, which flitted noiselessly (apsopheti, Themist. Or. xvi. 224, ed. Dind.)
across the stage; but the images were incomplete, not simple but over-charged
with strange attributes, they were ever in motion and represented in a dim and
murky light -they were neither holoklera, hapla, atreme, nor en augei katharai,
like the Platonic Ideas- as we may infer with Lenormant from Plato. Galen, too,
says the representations were amudra. At Andania, too (Inscr.), provision is made
for hosa dei diaskeuazesthai eis theon diathesin. To be more precise, the mystic
drama of Demeter and Cora was unfolded to the mystae, the first-year initiates;
but the epoptae were shown a representation of what Clement calls the mysteries
of the dragon, which is the story of Zeus uniting himself with Persephone in the
form of a serpent, and the whole tale of Iacchus-Zagreus was probably told (Clem.
Alex. Protrept.; Tatian, Or. ad Graecos, 13). There was shown to the epoptae a
representation, symbolical probably of creation, in which we hear (Euseb. Praep.
Evang. iii. 12) that the hierophant used to assume the part of the Creator, the
daduchus that of the sun, the altar-priest that of the moon, and the hierokeryx
that of Hermes. Again, the last, the most solemn, and the most wonderful act of
the epopsia was shown, the ear of corn cut in perfect stillness: the blade of
corn symbolised, we are told, the great and perfect ray of light issuing from
the Inexpressible One (ho para tou acharakteristou phoster teleios megas, Philosophumena,
p. 115), whatever that means, or rather perhaps it was the symbol of life, the
cutting down being death. Lenormant points to the Barone vase, which on one side
has Zeus striking down the Titans, signifying death, and on the other side the
ear of corn springing up and offerings being brought to it, which signifies life.
In describing these vase-paintings he points out that it was allowable to represent
the scenes from the mystic ceremonies, for they had no meaning without the explanatory
words, which were only known to the initiated. The general form under which the
initiations are represented on the vases is that of a marriage of the votary with
Eudaimonia in the other world--in one of which the votary, a youth cut off by
death in his prime, is represented as deserting Ugieia, Health, and passing to
the arms of Eudaimonia, Bliss.
This picture may lead us to what is to be said in conclusion on the
moral and religious: import of the mysteries. If we choose to regard them in a
cold unimpassioned un-religious way, we can say that they were a somewhat melodramatic
performance, splendid no doubt, full of what Lobeck calls fireworks (pyrotechnia),
but a mere theatrical display. That there were connexions between the mysteries
and the theatre (the hierophants are said to have borrowed costume from the dramas
of Aeschylus, Athen. i., if the reverse is not rather the case) need not surprise
us; and that modern archaeologists profess to find in the temple of Eleusis evidences
of machinery by which the spectacle was worked is only natural; for there undoubtedly
was a spectacle, a religious spectacle. But that man is not to be envied who thinks
to evince his superior wisdom by laughing at and depreciating the ceremonies,
as Lobeck does throughout his learned work, or talking of them as the great and
illustrious humbug of ancient history, as De Quincey does (On Secret Societies,
vi. 255). Anything moral or religious may be made ridiculous if one chooses to
regard it from the lower plane of the intellect alone, and does not take into
account the subjective condition of the moral worker or the religious worshipper.
The universal voice of the great names of pagan antiquity, from the Homeric hymn
down to the writers of the late Roman Empire, attest to the wonderfully soothing
effect the mysteries had on the religious emotions, and what glad hopes they inspired
of good fortune in the world to come (Hom. Hymn. Dem. 483 ff.; Pind. Fragm. 137;
Soph. Fragm. 719; Isocr. Panegyr. 28; Cic. Leg. ii. 1. 4, 36; Paus. v. 10, 1,
x. 31, 11); and as a consequence of this clearer light, this higher faith, the
votaries became better men and better citizens. Neque solum, says Cicero l. c.,
cum laetitia vivendi rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore moriendi. For
the object aimed at was rather, as Aristotle pointed out (ap. Synesius, Orat.),
not that the initiate should be taught anything, that would appeal merely to his
intellect (cf. Plut. de Defect. Orac. 23 fin.), but should be moved and have his
higher impulses stirred (ou mathein ti dein alla pathein kai diatethenai). The
light of the sun is bright for the initiated alone, sing the chorus of mystae
in the Ranae. Not but that there were many scenes and symbols of a somewhat coarse
nature, phallagogiai, heeroi gamoi, such as those represented by the hierophant
and hierophantis, which pourtrayed perhaps the unions of Zeus and Demeter, Zeus
and Persephone, and which entered into the higher worship (cf. hupo ron paston
hupeduon), hut which are probably grossly exaggerated by the Christian writers,
who did not take into consideration their symbolical meaning. The truths, however,
which these and other symbolical performances contained was known only to the
Hierophant, and explained by him to those whom he thought fit to hear them; cf.
Theodoretus (Therap.): ton heerophantikon logon ouch hapantes isasin: all ho men
polus homilos ta dromena theorei, hoi de ge prosagoreuomenoi hiereis ton ton orgion
epitelousi thesmon, ho de hierophantes monos oide ton gignomenon ton logon kai
oi an dokimasei uenuei. Even the epoptai only knew part of the mystic secrets,
gnonai ti ton aporreton (Sopatros, Distinct. Quaest.). The multitude of worshippers
took it all on faith, but, as Mr. Mahaffy finely remarks, even the coarsest features
were hallowed and ennobled by the spirit of the celebrants, whose reverence blinded
their eyes while it lifted up their hearts.
The Eleusinian mysteries lasted for more than five centuries after
Greece became a Roman province. As late as the time of the Emperor Julian they
still enjoyed a considerable portion of their primeval sanctity, and were held
in the highest esteem by the Neo-Platonic philosophers. The edict of Valentinian
and Valens against secret worships did not extend to the Eleusinia, the praefect
of Achaea, Pretextatus, having represented that the life of the Greeks would be
barren and comfort-less without the mysteries (ib. iii. p. 249). The hierophant
who initiated Maximus and Eunapius in the 4th century was the last Eumolpid. Subsequently
Mithraic worship got blended with the Eleusinian; but the mysteries did not finally
perish till the destruction of Eleusis by Alaric in his invasion of Greece, A.D.
396.
For further discussion on the mysteries, see Mysteria.
The principal books to consult on the Eleusinia are: St. Croix, Recherches sur
les Mysteres; Creuzer, Symbolik, iv. 33 ff.; Lobeck, Aglaophlamus, especially
pp. 3-228; K. O. Muller, Kleine Schriften, ii. 242-311 (a reprint of his article
Eleusinia in Ersch and Gruber); Petersen in Ersch and Gruber, xxviii. 219 ff.,
especially 252-269, in the second volume of the article Griechenland; Guigniaut,
Memoires sur les Mysteres de Ceres et de Proserpine in the Memoires de l'Academie
des Inscr. xxi.; Preller in Pauly, art. Eleusinia, and Griechische Mythologie,
i. 643-653; Hermann, Gottesdienstliche Alterthumer, § § 35, 55; Maury, Religions
de la Grece, ii. pp. 297-381; Schomann, Griechische Alterthumer, ii. 380-402;
August Mommsen, Hecrtologie der Athener, 62-75, 222-269; Baumeister, Denkmaler,
s. vv. Eleusinia and Eleusis; Lenormant, Monographie de la Voie Sacree Eleusinienne,
1864, and The Eleusinian Mysteries in the Contemporary Review, xxxvii. and xxxviii.
May, July, and September 1880; Ramsay in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, s. v. Mysteries.
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Iambe, a Thracian woman, daughter of Pan and Echo, and a slave of Metaneira, the
wife of Hippothoon. Others call her a slave of Celeus. The extravagant hilarity
displayed at the festivals of Demeter in Attica was traced to her; for it is said
that, when Demeter, in her wanderings in search of her daughter, arrived in Attica,
Iambe cheered the mournful goddess by her jokes (Hom. Hymn. in Cer. 202; Apollod.
i. 5.1; Diod. v. 4; Phot. Bibl. Cod. 239; Schol. ad Nicand. Alexiph. 134). She
was believed to have given the name to Iambic poetry; for some said that she hung
herself in consequence of the cutting speeches in which she had indulged, and
others that she had cheered Demeter by a dance in the Iambic metre. (Eustath.
ad Hom.)
Aloa. An Athenian festival celebrated at Eleusis in honour of Dionysus and Demeter, the inventors of the plough and protectors of the fruits of the earth.
Aloa (Haloa), an Attic harvest festival, but celebrated principally at Eleusis
and Athens, in honour of Demeter and Dionysus, the inventors of the plough and
protectors of the fruits of the earth. It took place every year after the harvest
was over, and only fruits were offered on this occasion, partly as a grateful
acknowledgment for the benefits the husbandman had received, and partly that the
next harvest might be plentiful. We learn from Demosthenes (c. Neaer.), that it
was unlawful to offer any bloody sacrifice on the day of this festival, and that
the priestess alone had the privilege to offer the fruits. The festival was also
called thalusia (Hesych. s. v.), or sunkomisteria. The exact time of its celebration,
as well as its duration, cannot be determined with certainty.
TRIZIN (Ancient city) GREECE
Saronia, a festival celebrated every year at Troezen in honour of Artemis; no particulars are known. (Pans. ii. 32, 9)
VRAVRON (Ancient city) ATTICA, EAST
Brauronia. An Attic festival held every fifth year in the
little town of Brauron, in honour of Artemis Brauronia. At Brauron, Orestes and
Iphigenia on their return from Tauris were supposed to have landed and to have
left the statue of the Tauric goddess. The festival was under the superintendence
of ten hieropoioi; and the chief solemnity consisted in the circumstance that
Attic girls between the ages of five and ten years, dressed in crocus-coloured
garments, went in solemn procession to the sanctuary, where they were consecrated
to the goddess. During this act, the hieropoioi sacrificed a goat, and the girls-performed
a propitiatory rite in which they imitated bears. This rite may have simply arisen
from the fact that the bear was sacred to Artemis, especially in Arcadia; but
a tradition preserved in Suidas relates its origin as follows: In the Attic town
of Phanidae a bear was kept, which was so tame that it was allowed to go about
quite freely, and received its food from and among men. One day a girl ventured
to play with it, and, on treating the animal rather harshly, it turned round and
tore her to pieces. Her brothers, enraged at this, went out and killed the bear.
The Athenians thereupon were visited by a plague; and when they consulted the
oracle, the answer was given that they would rid themselves of the evil which
had befallen them if they would compel some of their citizens to make their daughters
propitiate Artemis by a rite called arkteuein, for the crime committed against
the animal sacred to the goddess. The command was more than obeyed; for the Athenians
decreed that from thenceforth all women, before they could marry, should have
once taken part in this festival, and have been consecrated to the goddess. Hence
the girls themselves were called arktoi, the consecration arkteia, the act of
consecrating arkteuein, and to celebrate the festival arkteuesthai.
There was also a quinquennial festival called Brauronia, which
was celebrated by men and dissolute women, at Brauron, in honour of Dionysus.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Dec 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Brauronia, a festival celebrated in honour of Artemis Brauronia, in the Attic
town of Brauron (Herod. vi. 138), where, according to Pausanias (i. 23, 9; 33,
1; iii. 16, 6; viii. 46, 2), Orestes and Iphigeneia, on their return from Tauris,
were supposed by the Athenians to have landed, and left the statue of the Taurian
goddess. It was held every fifth year, under the superintendence of ten hieropoioi
(Pollux, viii. 9, 31) ; and the chief solemnity consisted in the circumstance
that the Attic girls between the ages of five and ten years, dressed in crocus-coloured
garments, went in solemn procession to the sanctuary (Suidas, s. v. Arktos; Schol.
on Aristoph. Lysistr. 646), where they were consecrated to the goddess. During
this act the hieropoioi sacrificed a goat, and the girls performed a propitiatory
rite in which they imitated bears. This rite may have arisen simply from the circumstance
that the bear was sacred to Artemis, especially in Arcadia; but a tradition preserved
in Suidas (s. v. Arktos) relates its origin as follows : In the Attic town of
Phauidae a bear was kept, which was so tame that it was allowed to go about quite
freely, and received its food from and among men. One day a girl ventured to play
with it, and, on treating the animal rather harshly, it turned round and tore
her to pieces. Her brothers, enraged at this, went out and killed the bear. The
Athenians now were visited by a plague; and when they consulted the oracle, the
answer was given that they would get rid of the evil which had befallen them if
they would compel some of their citizens to make their daughters propitiate Artemis
by a rite called arkteuein, for the crime committed against the animal sacred
to the goddess. The command was more than obeyed; for the Athenians decreed that
from thenceforth all women, before they could marry, should have taken part once
in this festival, and have been consecrated to the goddess. Hence the girls themselves
were called arktoi, the consecration arkteia, the act of consecrating arkteuein,
and to celebrate the festival arkteuesthai. (Hesych. and Harpocrat. s. v.; Schol.
on Aristoph. l. c.) But as the girls when they celebrated this festival were nearly
ten years old, the verb dekateuein was sometimes used instead of arkteuein.
There was also a quinquennial festival called Brauronia, which was celebrated
by men and dissolute women, at Brauron, in honour of Dionysus (Aristoph. Pax,
870, with the note of the Scholiast; and Suidas, s. v. Brauron). Whether its celebration
took place at the same time as that of Artemis Brauronia, must remain uncertain,
although the very different characters of the two festivals incline us rather
to believe that they were not celebrated at the same time. According to Hesychius,
whose statement however is not supported by any ancient authority, the Iliad was
recited at the Brauronian festival of Dionysus by rhapsodists.
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited Aug 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
TRIZIN (Ancient city) GREECE
Lithovolia, a festival celebrated at Troezen in commemoration of two maidens who came there from Crete, and were stoned to death during the civil broils of the place. (Pans. ii. 32)
AMFIARION (Ancient sanctuary) ATTICA, EAST
Amphiaraia, games celebrated in honour of the ancient hero Amphiaraus, in the neighbourhood of Oropus, where he had a temple with a celebrated oracle (Schol. ad Pind. Ol. vii. 154); the rites observed in his temple are described by Pausanias (i. 34, 3)
INOI (Ancient demos) ATTIKI
Apaturia (apatouria) was a political festival, which the Athenians had in common
with all the Greeks of the Ionian name (Herod. i. 147), with the exception of
those of Colophon and Ephesus. It was celebrated in the month of Pyanepsion, and
lasted for three days. The origin of this festival is related
in the following manner:
About the year 1100 B.C., the Athenians were carrying on a war against the Boeotians,
concerning the district of Cilaenae, or, according to others, respecting the
little town of Oenoe. The Boeotian Xanthios, or Xanthos, challenged Thymoetes,
king of Attica, to single combat; and when he refused, Melanthos, a Messenian
exile of the house of the Nelids, offered himself to fight for Thymoetes, on condition
that, if victorious, he should be the successor to Thymoetes. The offer was accepted;
and when Xanthios and Melanthos began the engagement, there appeared behind Xanthios
a man in the trage, the skin of a black goat. Melanthos reminded his adversary
that he was violating the laws of single combat by having, a companion; and while
Xanthios looked around, Melanthos slew the deceived Xanthios. From that time,
the Athenians celebrated two festivals; the Apaturia, and that of Dionysos Melanaegis,
who was believed to have been the man who appeared behind Xanthios.
This is the story related by the Scholiast on Aristophanes (Acharn.
146). This tradition has given rise to a false etymology of the name apatouria,
which was formerly considered to be derived from apatan, to deceive. All modern
critics, however Muller and Welcker agree that the name is composed of a=hama,
and patoria, which is perfectly consistent with what Xenophon (Hellen. i. 7, 8)
says of the festival: En hois (apatouriois) hoi te pateres kai hoi sungeneis xuneisi
sphisin autois. According to this derivation, it is the festival at which the
phratriae met, to discuss and settle their own affairs. But, as every citizen
was a member of a phratria, the festival extended over the whole nation, who assembled
according to phratriae. Welcker, on account of the prominent part which Dionysos
takes in the legend respecting the origin of the Attic Apaturia, conceives that
it arose from the circumstance that families belonging to the Dionysian tribe
of the Aegicores had been registered among the citizens.
The first day of the festival, which probably fell on the eleventh
of the month of Pyanepsion, was called dorpia or dorpeia (Athen. iv.; Hesych.
and Suid. s. v.); on which every citizen went in the evening to the phratrium,
or to the house of some wealthy member of his own phratria, and there enjoyed
the supper prepared for him (Aristoph. Acharn. 146). That the cup-bearers (oinoptai)
were not idle on this occasion, may be seen from Photius (Lexic. s. v. Dorpia).
The second day was called anarrusis (anarrein), from the sacrifice
offered on this day to Zeus, surnamed Phratrios, and to Athena, and sometimes
to Dionysos Melanaegis. This was a state sacrifice, in which all citizens took
part. The day was chiefly devoted to the gods, and to it must, perhaps, be confined
what Harpocration (s. v. Lampas) mentions, from the Atthis of Istrus, that the
Athenians at the apaturia used to dress splendidly, kindle torches on the altar
of Hephaestos, and sacrifice and sing in honour of him. Proclus on Plato (Tim.),
in opposition to all other authorities, calls the first day of the Apaturia anarrusis,
and the second dorpia, which is, perhaps, nothing more than a slip of his pen.
On the third day, called koureotis (kouros), children born in that
year, in the families of the phratriae, or such as were not yet registered, were
taken by their fathers, or in their absence by their representatives (kurioi),
before the assembled members of the phratria. For every child a sheep or goat
was sacrificed. The victim was called meion, and he who sacrificed it meiagogos
(meiagogein). It is said that the victim was not allowed to be below (Harpocrat.,
Suid., Phot. s. v. Meion), or, according to Pollux (iii. 52), above, a certain
weight. Whenever any one thought he had reason to oppose the reception of the
child into the phratria, he stated the case, and, at the same time, led away the
victim from the altar (Dem. c. Macart. 14). If the members of the phratria found
the objections to the reception of the child to be sufficient, the victim was
removed; when no objections were raised, the father, or he who supplied his place,
was obliged to establish by oath that the child was the offspring of free-born
parents and citizens of Athens. After the victim was sacrificed, the phratores
gave their votes, which they took from the altar of Jupiter Phratrios. When the
majority voted against the reception, the cause might be tried before one of the
courts of Athens; and if the claims of the child were found unobjectionable, its
name, as well as that of the father, was entered in the register of the phratria,
and those who had wished to effect the exclusion of the child were liable to be
punished (Dem. c. Macart. 82). Then followed the distribution of wine, and of
the victim, of which every phrator received his share; and poems were recited
by the elder boys, and a prize was given to him who acquitted himself the best
on the occasion (Plat. Tim.). On this day, also, illegitimate children on whom
the privileges of Athenian citizens were to be bestowed, as well as children adopted
by citizens, and newly created citizens, were introduced; but the last, it appears,
could only be received into a phratria when they had previously been adopted by
a citizen; and their children, when born by a mother who was a citizen, had a
legitimate claim to be inscribed in the phratria of their grandfather, on their
mother's side. In later times, however, the difficulties of being admitted into
a phratria seem to have been greatly diminished.
Some writers have added a fourth day to this festival, under the name
of epibda (Hesych. s. v. Apatouria; and Simplicius on Aristot. Phys. iv, a); but
this is no particular day of the festival, for epibda signifies nothing else but
a day subsequent to any festival.
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