PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER V

THE REGENERATIVE RITES OF THE GREAT MOTHER

FROM the Oriental as well as from the Hellenic world there emanated mystery religions that made their appeal and offered their satisfactions to the individual man. Like the Greek cults just described, they operated as private religious brotherhoods, though in occasional instances they were brought under state patronage and supervision. They came to the Graeco-Roman world with all the authority of a venerable past, with a theology developed in mythological forms, with a ritual, very crude perhaps, yet capable of lofty spiritual interpretation. Their appeal was primarily an emotional one, and it was addressed specifically to the individual; for all classes and all races, Greeks as well as barbarians, slaves as well as free men, were welcomed to their membership.

I

Of these Oriental mystery religions the first to invade the west was the cult of the Great Mother of the Gods, which came from central Asia Minor. The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature. This aspect of universal motherhood was the comprehensive feature of her character most frequently emphasized in the various cult titles applied to her. She was the "Great Mother" not only "of all the gods," but "of all men" as well. She was the "Mistress of All," the "All-Nourisher," and "All-Begetter," the "Mighty Mother," and the "Mother of Zeus Himself." "The winds, the sea, the earth, and the snowy seat of Olympus are hers, and when from her mountains she ascends into the great heavens, the son of Cronus himself gives way before her, and in like manner do also the other immortal blest honor the dread goddess." At Pessinus, the strongest center of her worship in Asia Minor, she was from primitive times represented by a sacred stone, said to have fallen from heaven. Indeed, the city itself, according to one legend, was named from this very circumstance (pesein, "to fall"). Here all the vital forces of mother earth were concentrated in "a stone not large, which could be carried in a man's hand without pressure--of a dusky and black color--not smooth, but having little corners standing out." This was the stone which was later carried to Rome when the worship of the Great Mother was officially introduced to the Occident. Ensconced in a silver statue where the face ought to be, it became the center of the Roman cult of the Great Mother--the whole life of nature embodied in a small, rough stone.

The Magna Mater of all living creatures was especially the goddess of the wilder aspects of nature. She was worshipped in the depths of virgin forests and on the tops of mountains, and her cult titles named her the "Mountain Mother," and the "Divinity of the Mountains," not to mention such local appellations as "Dindymene," or the "Idaean Mother." Even Cybele, the familiar literary designation of the Great Mother, was, according to Strabo and Diodorus, derived from a mountain or range of mountains. "A grove I had upon the mountains' crest, whither men brought me offerings," said the goddess herself in describing one of her favorite haunts, "a pine forest beloved for many years, dim with dusky firs and trunks of maple." Anacharsis the Scythian was a typical devotee of the Magna Mater, for he worshiped her in a place "full of trees." She was also the "Mistress of Wild Beasts, and lions were her constant companions in literature and in art. The author of the fourteenth Homeric Hymn addressed the Mother of the Gods as one who "is glad in the cry of wolves and fiery-eyed lions, and in echoing hills, and woodland haunts." Thus she appeared as the goddess of all natural life, particularly in its wild and untamed aspects.

With her was associated a hero-divinity called Attis who personified the life of the vegetable world particularly. The pine tree was peculiarly his own and played a prominent part in his annual ritual. His priests were tattooed with an ivy-leaf pattern. Statues represented him crowned with fruits and holding ears of corn in his hand. He was himself addressed as the "reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn" in the hymn of Hippolytus, and the myth of his sufferings was interpreted now as the harvesting of ripened grain or again as the fading of spring flowers. His devotees in their feasts, while they might eat the stalks and upper parts of plants, were forbidden to eat seeds and the roots of vegetables for in these the divine life of their god was especially manifested. Above all, the great festival of Attis, held at the time of the vernal equinox, took the form of a mystery drama which obviously represented the reviving of the vegetable world at that season of the year.

Around these two divinities, the Great Mother and the god of vegetation, there grew up a confused tangle of myths in explanation of their cult rites. Various writers, pagan and Christian, gave different versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. Pausanias recounted two very different renderings of the legend. One of these was repeated by the Christian writer Arnobius, on the authority of a certain Timotheus. In detail the final edition was much more elaborate than the earlier rendition by Pausanias. Diodorus also recounted the Cybele-Attis myth with one or two singular omissions, while Firmicus Maternus gave a markedly euhemeristic interpretation of the legend. The accounts by Ovid, bv the philosopher Sallust, and by the Emperor Julian were similar to each other at points, yet differed in important respects from the other renderings of the legend.

The specific variations in all these diverse statements do not concern us, for certain significant elements were common to all the various versions. In each instance the relationship of Cybele and Attis was essentially the same, and their experiences were much the same throughout. According to the myth, the goddess-mother loved the youthful, virgin-born shepherd Attis with a pure love. But Attis died, either slain by another or by his own hand. In the latter instance, he was unfaithful to the Great Mother and in a frenzy of regret he emasculated himself and died. The goddess-mother mourned her dead lover and finally affected his restoration. Thus, in the end, the mortal Attis became deified and immortal. These were the main elements in the developed myth which bulked largest in the mind of the devotee as he participated in the rites of the cult.

The whole myth was palpably transparent. Attis, the god of vegetation grown to youthful beauty, is loved by Mother Earth. But the flowers of springtime faded and the fruits of summer are harvested. Nature is despoiled of her vegetation. Attis dies. Then the Mother mourns her dead plant life and remains in sorrow during autumn and winter. But with returning springtime vegetation revives and the youthful god Attis is restored to life. These familiar natural phenomena, dramatized in the ritual of the Cybele-Attis cult, became the basis on which the devotees of the Magna Mater developed their personal religious experiences.

II

The primitive locus of this nature worship was in the uplands of Anatolia. In a general way legends agree in locating the rise of the Cybele-Attis cult in the area covered by Galatia, Phrygia, and Lydia. As M. Cumont has properly emphasized, the development of a highly emotional cult was natural in this vicinity. Here the climate went to extremes, cold and bleak in winter, hot and even scorching in summer. These climatic contrasts made themselves felt on the character of the inhabitants. Men were responsive to the varying moods of nature with the changing seasons. During the winter months they shared the sorrow of nature at the loss of her vegetation; but with the returning verdure of springtime they hailed with joy the revival of nature. Thus there developed in the uplands north of Paul's birthplace a cult distinguished for its excessive emotionalism.

Just when this religion had its inception it is impossible to state with any exactness. It is clear, however, that from the sixth century B.C. onward the worship of the Great Mother was dominant in Asia Minor. The earliest monuments of the cult, the so-called Niobe of Mount Sipylus and two reliefs from the vicinity of Prymnessus, date from the middle of the sixth century at least. Herodotus was acquainted with certain external features of this worship, and he knew the Great Mother as belonging to Sardis and enthroned on Mount Dindymon. By the beginning of the fifth century Pessinus had become a center of her cult, and a hundred years later Asia Minor generally was familiar with it. Considerably before the period of Alexander, therefore, the worship of Cybele and Attis was well established and widely spread in Asia Minor--mountains like Dindymon, Ida, and Tmolus, and cities like Cyzicus, Sardis, and Pessinus being the importaint centers of the cult.

The Great Mother early emigrated from her Asian home and travelled to Europe, first by way of the Hellesspont and later by the Aegean Islands. Pindar knew her worship at Thebes and Aristophanes ridiculed the goddess from Athens. The chorus of Euripides' Bacchae came from Mount Tmolus and sang the praises of the Great Mother as well as of Dionysus. By the end of the fourth century, the worship of the Mother existed privately in the seaport town of the Peiraeus, while the Emperor Julian had a story to tell concerning the introduction of the Great Mother's religion at Athens. Admittedly, however, the cult of the Magna Mater was not especially popular in Greece. The demand for a highly emotional type of religious experience was already well satisfied among the Hellenes. In the orgiastic rites of Dionysus, the Greeks had religious practices of strikingly similar character which gave them the desired emotional stimulation.

The coming of the Magna Mater to Rome and the west was under the most dramatic circumstances. It was in the year 204 B.C.; Hannibal was still in Italy and Rome was thoroughly exhausted. Moreover, the people had become frightened because of frequent showers of stones and other unusual phenomena. In desperation the Sibylline Books were consulted, and it was learned that the enemy could be conquered if the Idaean Mother should be brought from Pessinus to Rome. Accordingly, a delegation was sent to King Attalus of Pergamum, who conducted them to Pessinus and gave them the sacred stone which was the Mother of the Gods. On her arrival in Italy, the goddess was officially welcomed by the "best man" of the Republic and the leading matrons of Rome. Miracles attended the event, the citizens made holiday, and an annual festival was instituted in honor of the goddess. As a result--so it seemed--the crops of that year were successful and Hannibal was driven out of Italy and conquered. So the Magna Mater came in triumph to the west in 204 B.C.

Although the worship of the Great Mother was officially welcomed to Italy, it seems to have been regarded with suspicion, treated as foreign, and subjected to state regulation during the last two centuries of the Republic. Under the Empire, however, the cult came into its own. By the first century A.D. the legal restrictions of republican days were removed and the worship of the Magna Mater easily became one of the most popular and favored religions of the time. The Archigallus, or high priest of the cult, became the Attis populi Romani. During the reign of Claudius, the annual festival was elaborated with even more impressive rites than those of its native Phrygian home and it took on its final form as one of the great festivals of the Roman Empire. The literature of the first century shows the high degree of prominence attained by the cult during this period. Livy gave an account of the coming of the Great Mother to Rome. Ovid, in the Fasti, devoted much space to an explanation of the origin and significance of her rites. Vergil told how the Great Mother had protected Aeneas, the ancestral hero of the Roman race. Horace made several references to the Great Mother's rites, and Propertius recounted the story of Claudia, who led the Roman matrons in welcoming the goddess to Italy. Even Maecenas composed a poem in honor of Cybele. The satirists, on the other hand, were unsparing in making the Galli the butt of crude jokes. Thus, during the period when Pauline Christianity was barely beginning to make itself felt as a missionary movement in the Graeco-Roman world, the cult of the Great Mother of the Gods had already won a place of prominence for itself in the life of the Roman Empire. It is important, therefore, to consider the phenomena of this gentile religion in relation to the development of early Christianity itself.

III

Our clearest index to the personal religious experience of the devotees of the Great Mother is found in a study of cult ritual. Because of their public character we possess the most extensive information concerning the annual spring festival of Attis, and the Taurobolium of the Magna Mater--ceremonials that had the official sanction of the Roman state. In considering the spring festival which Claudius incorporated as a part of the established religion of the Empire, it is important to bear in mind that it most it was but in elaborition of rites that had long been practiced in Asia Minor. We are specifically informed that the Roman ritual was celebrated Phrygio more. It may reasonably be assumed, therefore, that the Roman ceremonies were not essentially different from their Asian originals.

The prelude to the annual festival began on the Ides of March. On the second festival day, which was designated Arbor intrat in the calendar of Philocalus, the guild of dendrophori, or tree bearers, were in charge of the ceremonial. It was the duty of the dendrophori to cut down a pine tree in the woods and bear it with due pomp to the temple of Cybele. The perennial pine was a natural embodiment of Attis, the spirit of vegetation. According to legend, it was under a pine tree that he had mutilated himself and died. He had himself been transmuted into a pine tree and carried in this form into the cave of Cybele where the goddess mothered her dead lover; hence the pine tree borne by the dendrophori into the temple of Cybele was regarded as the corpse of Attis dead and treated with divine honors. It was swathed with fillets of wool as the body of Attis had been. Its branches were hung with garlands of violets, the flowers that sprang from his blood. From the middle of the stem was suspended an image of young man, who was doubtless Attis himself.' The ritual fact was that the dead god was brought with funeral pomp to the temple of the Magna Mater.

The following day was one of fasting when the devotees of Attis mourned their god. It was a peculiar fast, however; Jerome called it "a gluttonous abstinence, when men ate pheasants in order not to contaminate cereals." Meats, in general, were allowed, but fruits and vegetables were forbidden. This prohibition extended to wine also. The vegetable abstinence was a natural one. As the cutting down of the pine tree symbolized that the god of vegetation was dead, so the vegetable world shared in the defunct condition of the god. To partake of vegetables and cereals at such a season would be to violate the bruised and broken body of a god. This fast probably began with the fifteenth of March, and it had its influence as a physical preparation for the excessive emotionalism of the rites which marked the climax of the festival.

These rites came on the twenty-fourth of March, a day that was called, significantly enough, the "Day of Blood." At this time the Great Mother of the Gods inspired her devotees with a frenzy surpassing that which the followers of Dionysus knew. It was a madness induced not by wine, but by the din of crashing music, the dizzy whirling of the dance, and the sight of blood. The music which accompanied these rites was wild and barbaric, made by clashing cymbals and blatant horns, shrilling flutes and rolling drums. It was maddening music, noisy and savage. Lucian vividly described the wild tumult made by the Galli on Mount Ida blowing their horns, pounding their drums, and clashing their cymbals. Music of this kind--the Anatolian prototype of modern jazz--was popularly known as Phrygian music.

To the accompaniment of these barbaric strains a dance was staged. With wagging heads and streaming hair, the devotees of the Great Mother whirled their bodies round and round in a dizzy dance, shouting and singing as they gyrated. Apuleius pictured such a dance performed in a Thessalian village by the mendicant priests of the Syrian goddess.

"They went forth with their arms naked to their shoulders, bearing with them great swords .... shouting and dancing like mad persons to the sound of the pipe ..... They began to howl all out of tune and hurl themselves hither and thither, as though they were mad. They made a thousand gests with their feet and their heads; they would bend down their necks and spin round so that their hair flew out in a circle; they would bite their own flesh; finally every one took his two-edged weapon and wounded his arms in different places."

This cruel custom of lacerating one's own flesh during the frenzied ritual was a distinctive characteristic of the Great Mother's cult. Slashing their arms with knives, or gashing their bodies, the worshipers sprinkled with their own blood the sacred tree that was Attis. When Martial was casting about for a comparison to make vivid the dangerous habits of a certain barber he could think of nothing more to the point than these bloody rites of the Great Mother. "He who desires not yet to go down to Stygian shades, let him, if he be wise, avoid barber Antiochus. White arms are mangled with knives less cruel when the frenzied throng raves to Phrygian strains," he declared. To the modern mind this sanguine rite seems cruel in the extreme. It is probable, however, that the devotees, wrought up to a very high pitch of excitement by the din of the noisy music and the frenzy of the wild dance, were largely insensible to the pain. This ghastly ritual formed a part of the mourning for the dead Attis. When the Great Mother saw the freely flowing blood of her worshipers, she could not doubt that they shared with her in her sorrow. The blood may well have been intended, also, to appease the manes of the dead Attis or to strengthen him for his resurrection. To imitate Cybele in her grief and to call Attis back to life were the purposes of this bloody rite.

But the devotees of the Great Mother did not stop with the shedding of blood merely. Keyed up to the highest pitch of religious excitement, they followed the example of Attis and emasculated themselves. With this final act of self-sacrifice and consecration, the Dies sanguinis was crowned and the devotee became one of the Galli, a eunuch-priest of the Asian goddess. This was the regular practice in Phrygia, and in Rome, even, it is probable that the custom was followed. In his account of the Syrian goddess, whose cult was strikingly like that of Cybele, Lucian gave a description of this sacerdotal initiation. It is not only a vivid depiction of the bloody scene itself but also a good piece of psychological analysis, for it shows the strange fascination of these barbaric rites and reveals their mesmeric effect upon the spectators witnessing the supreme act of consecration. In abbreviated form Lucian's account is as follows:

"During these days they are made Galli. As the Galli sing and celebrate their orgies, frenzy falls on many of them, and many who had come as mere spectators afterwards are found to have committed the great act. Any young man who has resolved on this action, strips off his clothes, and with a loud shout bursts into the midst of the crowd and picks up a sword. He takes it and emasculates himself and then runs wild through the city."

For one who had performed this irrevocable sacrifice in a moment of hot excitement a strong revulsion of feeling was later inevitable. This emotional reaction was powerfully depicted by Catullus in his famous poem bearing the name "Attis."

Undoubtedly for the devotee of Cybele the rite of self-mutilation had distinct religious values. By the very act the devotee himself became another Attis. He had done in the service of the goddess what Attis had already done. The Attis in the poem of Catullus was not the original lover of Cybele but rather one of her priests, who by the fact of priestly initiation had become identified with the god. "Methought in a dream that I had become Attis, and that the festival of the so-called Hilaria was fulfilled to me by the Great Mother," wrote Damaskios, the last of the Neoplatonists. The name Attis was actually used as a traditional title for the priesthood of the Great Mother. Just as Attis was believed to have attained the state of deity by the passion of emasculation so by the way of self-mutilation, the Gallus became a god instead of mortal.

The act that made an Attis of the votary placed him in peculiarly intimate relationship to the Mother Goddess herself. The broken instruments of his manhood were treated as an oblation to the goddess. Perhaps they were thrown into the lap of her statue, is the "Passion of St. Symphorian" suggests. In the case of a goddess of fertility, like the Magna Mater, this was a significant act. Thus the ministers of the Great Mother, who personated her divine lover, made it possible for her to exercise her beneficent function in renewing the life of nature. As a new Attis the votary assumed the role of a bridegroom to the goddess. There were "marriage chambers" in the sanctuary of the Great Mother at Lobrinon near Cyzicus. In such a chamber the newly consecrated priest, kept vigil during the night after his dedication, a bridegroom in the bridal chamber of his goddess. Indeed, a specific cult designation of the GalIus was "bridegroom." This indicates that the experiences of the Dies Sanguinus and the following night were interpreted as a process of mystical union with the Great Goddess herself, and by means of certain obscure ritual acts there was developed a sense of intimate divine communion on the part of the devotee. From another standpoint the newly consecrated priest was thought of as a male counterpart of the goddess. Hence, he was called Kubebos. By the fact of emasculation he had assimilated himself to the nature of the goddess. As an indication of this transformation he henceforth wore feminine dress and allowed his hair to grow long. At some point in the ceremony there was also a solemn enthronement and the consecrated mortal was crowned in token of his deification. Nothing less than this, in the experience of the Gallus, was the result of his act of devotion. It made him realistically and mystically one with his goddess.

The day following the "Day of Blood" brought a delirium of joy to replace the delirium of sorrow. Dead Attis had been buried and around his grave his devotees had mourned his death long into the night. Toward morning, however, a great light appeared in the darkness and the resurrection of the god was announced. Firmicus Maternus thus described the scene: "When they are satisfied with their fictitious grief a light is brought in, and the priest, having anointed their lips, whispers, 'Be of good cheer, you of the mystery. Your god is saved; for us also there shall be salvation from ills.'" Then joy took the place of sorrow, for the resurrection of the god brought with it the assurance of salvation for men, and this chiefly included the promise of a happy immortality. On the twenty-fifth of March, the first day when daylight exceeded darkness, the resurrection of the god was celebrated with universal license. The day's celebration was known as the Hilaria and was characterized by the general good cheer. Mourning was not permitted; but instead there were masquerades and banquets. Even the Galli were eased of their wounds in their joy because of the resurrection of Attis.

There followed a day of much needed rest, the Requiratio. Then the festival closed with the Lavatio, or washing of the goddess in the Almo, a rite that aroused the scorn and sarcasm of Arnobius. The silver statue of the goddess was placed in a wagon drawn by oxen and conducted in solemn procession to the Almo where it was washed in the water of the river. Amid rejoicing the statue was drawn back to its temple, showered with the flowers of springtime on its way. This was probably a rite of purification considered necessary because of the experience through which the goddess had passed on the Dies Sanguinis. After marriage, purification was deemed essential even for a goddess. Because the Magna Mater had been mystically united with her ministers, such postnuptial purification was necessary in her case.

In this, the annual spring festival of their god and goddess, the Galli found the beginning of a new life for themselves. It was a highly wrought emotional experience induced by fasting, wild music, frenzied dancing, and the sight of flowing blood. The sorrow thus aroused was interpreted as a sympathetic sharing with the Great Mother in her grief at the death of her lover. The orgiastic rite reached its climax in the irrevocable sacrifice of manhood, an act whereby the devotee physically assimilated himself to divinity. He himself became Attis, a god, mystically united,is a divine lover to the Great Goddess. In the resurrection of his god he felt himself personally participant and he found therein the assurance of a happy future life. The experience was a crudely physical one and realistic in the extreme. Yet it had a strange fascination because of its very realism, and it held out to the devotees who were willing to make the supreme sacrifice the promise of a divinization of human nature and an immediate communion with deity.

To this experience the figure of a new birth was not inappropriately applied. The pagan writer, Sallust the Philosopher, used this very terminology in describing the effect of the Attis festival on those who participated in it. He said that those who passed through this form of initiation were actually treated as new-born babes and dieted on milk for some time afterward. His exact expression was: hosper anagennomenon, "as of those who are being born again." Thus, at the annual spring festival the ministers of the Great Mother passed through a religious experience so fundamental that it seemed to them the beginning of a new life, essentially different from the life they had known before. It was a regeneration that transformed their beings, gave them a present communion with their god and goddess, and assured them of personal immortality.

IV

Another bloody rite of great importance connected with the cult of the Great Mother was the taurobolium, or sacrifice of a bull, with its variant, the criobolium, or ram sacrifice. The origin of the taurobolium and its relationship to the cult of the Magna Mater is obscure. Almost certainly, however, it was of oriental origin localized in Anatolia, and it probably had its inception in the primitive practice of washing in the blood of an animal in order to secure its vital energy. In the cult of the Great Mother, however, the primitive notions attached to the practice became transformed and spiritualized. When the rite came to prominence in Italy early in the second century A.D. two distinct motives were apparent, one official, the other personal. The taurobolium was officially performed vicariously for the safety of the emperor, the empire, or a particular community--pro salute imperatoris, pro salute imperii, pro salute urbis, etc. This was a purely official and sacerdotal celebration, with the Archigallus presiding, and during the second and third centuries this usage was especially prominent in Roman practice.

But the taurobolium might be a private ceremony also, performed by an ordinary person who bore the expense of it himself--de suo, suo sumptu, or sua pecunia. In this case the purpose was a purely personal one and the motive which actuated the celebration was the purification and regeneration of the individual. This private rite was performed on laymen as well as priests and by persons of all classes and both sexes. It was strictly an individualistic ceremony. During the third and fourth centuries, probably because of Christian competition, the private celebration of the taurobolium came forward into particular prominence. Between these two types of ceremony, however, the official and the private, there can be no doubt as to which was prior to the other. The rite in itself was essentially of a private and personal nature and its public, vicarious usage was clearly a later adaptation. The devotees of the Mother and Attis certainly experienced it for their own benefit before ever the rite was enacted for the good of the community. Centuries before the taurobolium was performed in Italy for the safety of the state, it was enacted in Asia Minor for the benefit of the individual devotee.

The ceremony itself was picturesque. In the Peristephanon by the Christian poet Prudentius there is a description of the rite which purports to be by an eyewitness. A priest is the subject of the ceremony. With a golden crown on his head and adorned with fillets, he descends into a deep trench which is covered with a platform of perforated planks. A large bull, gleaming with gold and garlanded with flowers, is led on to the platform. Here he is stabbed to death by the consecrated spear, and his blood flows out over the covering of the trench and rains down on the expectant devotee below.

"Through the thousand crevices in the wood the bloody dews run down into the pit. The priest receives the falling drops on his head, clothes and body. He leans backward to have his cheeks, his ears, his lips, and his nostrils wetted. He pours the liquid over his eyes and does not even spare his palate, for he moistens his tongue with blood and drinks it eagerly."

When the life of the bull is extinct, its body is removed and the neophyte emerges from the trench, drenched and dripping with blood. He resents himself to the expectant throng of worshipers who do obeisance to him as to a god, as to one who has been born again to a divine life.

For the one who experienced the blood bath of the taurobolium this was exactly the meaning of the rite. He came up out of the trench reborn to a new kind of existence. In effect the bath of blood was believed to purify him from the sins and evils of his old life and make him a new man, or rather a divinized human. In some cases the efficacy of the rite was supposed to last for a period of twenty years, and then the grace was renewed. In other instances, the conviction was that the effect of the rite was everlasting and that the devotee was in aeternum renatus, to quote the formula of the inscriptions. There is a strong temptation at this point to question if this startling phrase and the whole conception of the new birth experience in the cult of the Magna Mater may not be due to Christian influence. There is not, however, a shred of evidence to substantiate this contention. Against it is the purely pagan character of the rite itself, its undoubted antiquity, and the fact that it naturally lent itself to the new-birth interpretation. Held as it usually was, though not invariably, at the time of the vernal equinox on the Dies Saguinis, the resurrection of vegetation and of the god of vegetation naturally suggested the regeneration of the individual. Thus the whole ritual became a sort of passion drama in and of itself, involving three parties: the god, the neophyte, and nature in a single cycle of events. The neophyte descended into the pit; Attis died; vegetation withered. The neophyte came up out of the pit; Attis arose from the dead; vegetation revived. In this way, at the spring festival of Attis, the regeneration of the individual was made to coincide with the rebirth of nature.

V

The Cybele-Attis cult included certain strictly private rites that are quite as important for the student of personal religion as the public ceremonies we have just examined. Julian, the Emperor, in discussing the March festival, made careful distinction between two series of rites following the cutting down of the sacred pine, one secret and mysterious, the other open to the public. It is probable, therefore, that the secret rites of the cult were more or less co-ordinated with the public ceremonials. Augustine demanded to know of these esoteric rites, "What good is to be thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when those which are brought forth into light are so detestable?" This interrogation conveniently emphasizes the differentiation between the public and private rites of the Attis cult.

In the nature of the case the public rites were open to a more or less limited number of participants. The sacerdota] consecration of the Dies Sanguinis was a restricted type of initiation available only for men and to those only who felt impelled to make the supreme sacrifice. It was a masculine and priestly initiation. But the cult of the Great Mother welcomed women as well as men and included laymen as well as priests. Even the grace of the taurobolium was obtainable only by those who could bear the expense of the ceremony. The private rites of the cult, however, were accessible to a far larger group. They represented the type of initiation as contrasted with the priestly. Hence they are of more than usual importance from the point of view of personal religious experience.

Unfortunately, we know even less of these private ceremonials than of the secret rites in other mystery cults, and for much the same reason. Their secret has been too well guarded. Only a single formula has come down to us, in slightly variant forms, from the esoteric liturgy of the Attis cult. According to the version given by Clement of Alexandria the confessional of the initiate was:

I have eaten out of the drum:
I have drunk out of the cymbal:
I have carried the Kernos:
I have entered the bridal chamber.

Firmicus Maternus repeated the formula in a more brief form:

I have eaten from the drum:
I have drunk out of the cymbal:
I have become a mystic votary of Attis.

In this formula two experiential elements stand out clearly. One is union with divinity by the semblance of a mystic marriage. "I have entered the bridal chamber." The votary entering the shrine of the goddess went there as a bridegroom. In the secret chamber divinity and humanity were united in marriage, and thus the devotee attained communion with his goddess. This was the lay equivalent for the priestly experience when the Gallus, as a new Attis, became the bridegroom of Cybele.

The second important element of mystical experience emphasized in this formula was communion with the deity by the act of eating and drinking.

I have eaten from the drum:
I have drunk from the cymbal.

The similarity of this confessional to the Eleusinian password is incontestable. Just as the initiate at Eleusis drank of the mixed barley potion and ate sacred food from the chest, so the devotee of the Great Mother drank from the cymbal and ate from the drum. The instruments mentioned, the drum and the cymbal, were the favorite musical instruments of the Great Mother. It was natural, therefore, that they should be used as cup and plate in this ceremony. Just what was the sacred food which the devotees shared we have scarcely a hint. We know only that it consisted of a beverage and of solid food.

Much more important than to know these external details is to understand the psychological effect of this communion meal on the participants. Was it merely a common meal that gave the votaries fellowship with one another, binding them together in a brotherhood like that of a great family? It may have had this meaning incidentally, but certainly this was not the inclusive significance of the rite for the votary. It was a communion with divinity rather than a communion with one's fellow devotees. Firmicus Maternus, in denouncing this rite, contrasted it specifically with the Christian sacrament of the eucharist. His words show clearly that there was a genuine parallelism between the Christian rite and the pagan. Both were believed to communicate divine life to the devotee and assure him of salvation. Maternus concluded his invective against the pagan rite with the appeal, "It is another food that gives salvation and life. Seek the bread of Christ and the cup of Christ!" Apparently, therefore, the sacred meal in the Semele-Attis cult was a genuine sacrament that enabled the devotee to absorb the divine life in a realistic manner. In the liturgy of the cult, Attis himself was addressed as a "reaped ear of corn." It is not unlikely that a corn product, or some other vegetable food in which Attis was believed especially to dwell, formed a part of the sacred repast. In partaking of this meal, the devotee was enabled to share in a materialistic manner the life of his god. The common meal of the Great Mother's cult therefore was a means of attaining to a realistic type of mystical communion with divinity.

All these various rites in the cult of the Great Mother were crude enough. They were characterized by realism and naturalism. There was eating and drinking. There was a bath in blood. There was an orgy of self-induced sorrow and joy that had its climax in self mutilation. Yet these very rites with all their primitive crudity and cruelty became transmuted into vehicles for really deep religious experience. The act of eating and drinking became a sacrament of communion wherein the devotee partook of a divine substance and thus attained actual union with his deity. The semblance of a mystic marriage whereby the initiate as a divine lover was united to the goddess was another means of attaining the same end. The blood bath of the taurobolium brought with it the washing away of the sins and evils of an old life. It was a regenerating experience by which the neophyte was reborn for eternity. The passion drama depicting the death of natural life and its renovation in the springtime was an allegory of personal resurrection to eternal life. Even the act of self-mutilation became the means whereby the devotee, like Attis himself, effected his own deification and assimilated himself to the nature of the Great Mother. In the cult of the Mater Deum the communion of eating and drinking, the semblance of mystic marriage, the purification in the bath of blood, and the mortification of the flesh, all functioned as sacraments of spiritual regeneration.

VI

For the student of Christian origins a knowledge of the regenerative rites of the Great Mother is doubly important because her worship was remarkably like that in a whole group of cults with which Paul, the Christian apostle, had early familiarity and contacts that were intimate. These were the religions indigenous to the lands of Syria and Cilicia, where Paul was brought up and where he had his early missionary experience. Unfortunately, our knowledge of these gentile cults is fragmentary and chaotic. They had nothing like the solidarity of the Greek and major Oriental systems, and it would be utterly impossible to reconstruct their history or to outline their ritual in any detail. Still it is possible to distinguish among them certain common elements that show a general resemblance to the Phrygian worship of the Great Mother. Usually, the central place in the cultus was held by a mother-goddess who embodied the power of life, and a somewhat subordinate position was assigned to a youthful male deity who like Attis died and rose again.

The prototype for this diversified, yet measurably unified complex of religious systems seems to have been the Babylonian cult of Ishtar, the deified personification of motherhood. She was known to biblical writers as Ashtoreth, and to the Greeks as Astarte or Aphrodite. With her was associated a young and active deity called Tammuz, who was slain but afterward revived. As in the case of Attis, lamentations formed an important part of his worship. In Ezekiel's day this practice was adopted by Jews, even, and among the "abominations" which the prophet saw perpetrated at the very gate of the Jerusalem temple was the weeping of women for Tammuz! In Phoenicia the mother-goddess was worshiped under the name of Ashtart, and as early as the third century B.C. her cult was so pre-eminent that the kings of Sidon served her as priests. She, too, had her consort, Eshmun by name. Their houses were built together, and they were simultaneously glorified.

To the Greek world this immortal pair was familiar as Aphrodite and Adonis, the goddess of love and her impetuous young husband. "The Fourth Venus," said Cicero, "was a Syrian . . . . who is called Astarte and is said to have been married to Adonis." Greek and Latin writers delighted to retell the story of their love and of Aphrodite's loss. The tale was that of an ardent young hunter who, all too rash, was wounded to death by a boar. Thus young Adonis died; but the grief of his goddess-lover brought about his restoration to life. In the cult of these divinities, also, traditional lamentations were a conspicuous element of the ritual. Sappho more than once referred to this weeping for the god, while Bion wrote a lament for Adonis which, though a conventional literary product and not an actual cult hymn, yet gives a fairly accurate impression of the mourning songs sung at Adonis' festivals.

The annual celebrations in honor of the god were elaborated as a drama of marriage and passion. Around a ritual marriage bed the wedding of the divine pair was celebrated. There followed a lament for the dead Adonis ending in a forecast of the resurrection. Sometimes that joyous event was actually represented. At all the important centers of Adonis worship, not only in Syria and Cyprus but also in Athens and Alexandria, the festival of Adonis was one of the great events in the religious calendar. Theocritus, in one of his Idyls, described such a festival as it was conducted at the court of Ptolemy early in the Hellenistic period. The marriage song sung at this celebration began with a description of the wedding tableau and included an adequate account of the Adonis festival as a whole.

The bridal bed for Adonis spread of my own making is;
Cypris hath this for her wrapping, Adonis that for his.
Of eighteen years or nineteen, is turned the rose-limbed groom;
His pretty lip is smooth to sip, for it bears but flaxen bloom,
And now she's in her husband's arms, and so we'll say good-night;
But tomorrow we'll come with the dew, the dew, and take hands and bear him away
Where plashing wave the shore doth lave, and there with locks undight
And bosoms bare all shining fair will raise this shrilling lay:

"O sweet Adonis, none but thee of the children of gods and men
'Twixt overworld and underworld doth pass and pass again:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Adonis sweet, Adonis dear,
Be gracious for another year;
Thou'rt welcome to thine own alway,
And welcome we'll both cry today
And next Adonis-tide."

Another Syrian goddess who gained considerable prominence in the Roman world was Atargatis. Her consort was Hadad, with whom the belief in immortality was connected at an early period. In his ritual, as in that of Adonis, an elaborate show of grief was a characteristic factor, and the prophet Zechariah knew of the lamentations for Hadad. But it was the goddess who attracted the attention of the Roman world. In the eyes of the Greeks she was the "Syrian goddess," and among Latins this Dea Syria became popular as Iasura. During the latter days of the Republic her cult was notably propagated by the agency of slaves and under the Empire Syrian merchants became as her missionaries. She was especially popular with the lower classes, though some in high stations affected her cult. Marius was one of her devotees and Nero "held in contempt all religious rites except those of the Syrian Goddess"--though his esteem for her was not lasting one. The great slave uprising in Sicily in 134 was led by a slave who claimed to be inspired by the goddess herself--a revealing illustration of the loyalty she commanded for this class in society.

Her rites were such as would appeal to the proletariat and conserve religious values for them. They were realistic, picturesque, sensuous, and fascinating in their strangeness. Apulcius in an incidental account of the missionary operations of her travelling priests gave a memorable picture of their methods in actual practice among the rural population of Thessaly. The account was not a very complimentary one, and it was doubtless exaggerated. Certainly the itinerant priests of the Syrian goddess were generally actuated by more worthy motives than this particular group was represented to be. Still the description of their religious exercises was detailed by Apuleius with all the vividness of life itself, and it may be considered a true representation of the cult rites on festal occasions. Lucian, who was himself a Syrian and wrote as one wholly familiar with this religion, also described the rites in a way that parallels and confirms the account of Apuleius. The exercises were essentially the same as those that formed the climax of the Great Mother's festival and made eunuch priests of her male devotees. To the accompaniment of wild music men danced themselves into a frenzy and then lacerated and mutilated themselves unsparingly. Here again the central experience of the cult was ecstatic in character, with a cruel and crudely physical emotionalism. But it was not without its mystical content; for in this way the devotees sought to affiliate themselves with their pitiless goddess.

Altogether the cults of Cilicia and Syria may be grouped in the same class as the Anatolian worship of the Cybele. They were redemption religions, the deities of which were revered as the saviors of the individual man. In their propagandist efforts they aimed at universalism through individualism. They were still tainted with much of the grossness of primitive naturalism; yet this very fact was not a disadvantage with the humbler folk in society whom they captivated by the barbaric appeal of their ritual. They were religions of enthusiasm which aroused fear, pain, hope, joy, all culminating in ecstasy. By mortification, by stimulating music, by self-mutilation, and like means, these Syrian zealots strove to rise to a higher state than mere mortality and unite themselves with divinity. This was their rebirth to a new life and immortality.

PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER IV

ORPHIC REFORM

HISTORICALLY the cult most nearly related to that of Dionysus was the philosophico-religious system bearing the name of Orpheus. It is not possible to pronounce with certainty whether such a man as Orpheus ever really existed or not. He may have been a purely mythical figure. If he was a real man he was a religious leader of mark and deserving of admiration: a prophet, reformer, and martyr. Whether mythical or real, Orpheus was the antitype of the flushed and maddening wine-god Dionysus. He was a sober and gentle musician who charmed savage men and beasts with his music, an exact theologian, the prophet of reform in religion, who was martyred for his efforts.

The difference between Dionysus and Orpheus was the difference between the two religious systems which bore their names. The cult of Dionysus was more simple, primitive, elemental, spontaneous, and emotional. That of Orpheus was more elaborate, developed, controlled, and intellectualistic. Still, when all is said, the two systems had much in common. Both centered in the same god, Dionysus. Both aimed at the same goal, immortality through divinity. Both sought to attain that goal by prescribed rites and ceremonies. Both made a strictly individualistic appeal and were highly developed along the lines of personal experience. But Orphism fostered an ascetic rule of life that was the exact opposite of Dionysian license, and developed an elaborate theology of a highly speculative character. In brief, Orphism represented a reformed Dionysianism, and the practices it could not or did not reform it sought to explain and justify by its mythology.

I

Our sources of information concerning the Orphic movement are unusually authoritative and accessible. They include chiefly a reputable group of classical writers together with a singular collection of Orphic tablets found in south Italy and Crete. The list of classical witnesses to the Orphic cult is headed by the name of Pindar. In his "Dirges," or choral lyrics intended to be chanted at funerals, he offered consolation to mourners by telling them of the Orplic promise of immortality. He further detailed the Orphic doctrine of reincarnation which he represented as a scheme of preliminary purgation by means of triple earthly lives, preceding the final bliss. Again he described with pleasing detail the delights of the Elysian land where the final beatification was to be realized, and in the second Olympian Ode he told of the future of the wicked as well as of the pure. Another important classical witness to Orphism was Plato. Though affecting to despise the system, he was actually much influenced by it. In Cratylus, for example, he made use of the characteristic Orphic idea of the body as a prison house of the soul (soma-sema). In the Republic he described the missionary methods of the Orphics in terms that were not complimentary, yet revealed the vigor of the movement. He told of zealous propagandists who besieged the doors of the rich and persuaded them by a parade of Orphic scriptures that they could provide deliverance and purgation from sin, both for the living and the dead, by means of initiation. Plato also made reference to the idea of the transmigration of souls and to the Orphie rule of life. The dramatist Euripides included an all-important Orphic confessional in his Cretans, and in his admirable Hippolytus he drew a character sketch of a typical and consistent Orphic. Even the comedian Aristophanes bore favorable testimony to the influence of the Orphic mysteries. He had the glorified Aeschylus, the "grand old man" of Attic tragedy, commend Orpheus for teaching mystic rites to mortal men. This torch of reverence, however, did not prevent Aristophanes from giving a lively parody of Orphanic initiation in telling of old Strepsiades' visit to Socrates' "thinking shop." These four names, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Pindar, include the bulk of classical testimonia to the Orphic mysteries.

Quite as revealing as these literary refernces, however, are the so-called Orphic tablets from tombs in southern Italy and Crete. They are eight in number and are all of very thin gold. According to a consensus of scholarly opinion, they contain the mutilated fragments of a ritual hymn composed for members of the Orphic sect is early as the fifth century B.C. In their present form they may be dated roughly from the fourth century B.C. to the second century of our era. Their purpose is self-evident. Buried with the dead they were intended to give instructions concerning conduct in the next world, formularies and confessionals to be repeated, and directions as to postmortem ceremonial observances. Their ritualistic character and the tone of conviction that pervades them give them peculiar value as sources of information concerning Orphic experience and practice. These remarkable tablets, though they are few in number, constitute our most valuable source materials for the Orphic cult.

For an expansive expression of Orphic theology, however, one must turn to the corpus of so-called Orphic literature. We know that as early as the time of the Pisistratidae there were in existence at Athens various poems attributed to Orpheus. They were quoted by Plato and later writers, but their genuineness was challenged by Aristotle and Herodotus. Under the hands of the Orphics a vast literature grew up around this nucleus, but for our purpose the hymns only are of special importance. They are of late compilation and uncertain date, although Professor Dieterich would locate their original composition between 200 B.C. and the beginning of the Christian era. In their present form they represent the developed state of Orphic theology, their general tone being that of mystical monotheism. Of the eighty and more extant hymns, all but nine carry in their headings specifications concerning the particullar perfume to be burned while they were being stung. Most of them also conclude with an invocation to the deity addressed to bless the mystics in the fulfilment of their rites:

The sacred rites benevolent attend
And grant a blameless life, a blessed end.
Propitious to thy mystics' works incline
Rejoicing come, for holy rites are thine.

So runs the slightly varied refrain at the conclusion of almost every hymn. These formulas make it practically certain that this collection of hymns was made for liturgical use in Orphic brotherhoods.

In comparison with these major sources of information, classical writers, Orphic tablets, and Orphic hymns, other sources are distinctly of less significance. For the sake of completeness, however, there should be mentioned the "Apulian" vase paintings which depict the blessed dead in the society of the gods. These paintings are particularly significant in that they show the influence of Orphic ideas in Magna Graecia, south Italy especially, during the Hellenic era. Similarly, Greek sepulchral art and grave inscriptions of the Hellenistic and Roman periods are important. There are also casual references to Orphism in later pagan writers, Strabo, Pausanias, and Plutarch, which prove the vigorous persistence of Orphic ideas and practices through the early imperial period. Later Christian notices of Orphism are distinctly secondary to these pagan sources and are chiefly valuable in showing the later persistence of Orphism in its active competition with Christianity.

II

One of these Christian sources, however, deserves specific citation because it preserves in convenient mythological form a bit of fundamental Orphic theology. The passage in question is found in the "Exhortation to the Greeks" by Clement of Alexandria, and it includes a detailed narration of the myth of Dionysus Zagreus. Undoubtedly Clement's rendering of the legend was based upon a lost Orphic poem or poems--at least in the passage itself Clement made two quotations from Orphic literature. According to his version of the myth, Persephone bore to Zeus a son "who had the form of a bull." To quote "a certain mythological poet":

The bull begets a snake, the snake a bull.

This divine son was Dionysus Zagreus, or "the hunter." He was the favorite of his father, and Zeus destined him to become the ruler of the universe. Even while he was a child, the father of gods and men entrusted him with thunderbolts and allowed him to sit on his throne. But the malignant Titans, stung by jealousy and urged on by the vengeful Hera, sought the young child's life. Though he was carefully guarded by the warlike Curetes, the Titans succeeded in luring him away with childish toys, which were carefully enumerated in a quotation from "Orpheus of Thrace, the poet of the initiation." Having gained possession of the divine child, the Titans savagely tore him to pieces, and cooked and ate the pieces. Athena, however, preserved the heart of Zagreus and carried it away to Zeus who, in his anger, blasted the savage Titans with his thunderbolts. Clement omitted one item of the myth which formed an interesting connection with the Theban legend of Dionysus. Zeus, having received the heart of Zagreus from Athena, swallowed it. So when Semele bore Dionysus to Zeus the new god was but Zagreus reborn.

The Cretan provenance of the Zagreus legend was expressly stated by Diodorus. In his account of the various forms assumed by Dionysus, he said: "They allege that the god (Zagreus) was born of Zeus and Persephone in Crete, and Orpheus in the mysteries represents him as torn to pieces by the Titans." The relationship of this legend to the Cretan rite of eating raw flesh already described in connection with the Dionysus cult is obvious. It was an aetiological myth through and through. The worshippers of Dionysus were familiar with the ritual fact that a sacrificial animal, which in a sense embodied the god, was torn to pieces and eaten. They sought the sanction of antiquity and divinity for their ritual and posited the dismemberment of their god by the ancient Titans. Shocked at the thought of the brutal murder of a god, they had the bad Titans blasted by Zeus for their wickedness. Thus from the ritual fact of a feast of raw flesh, there grew up the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, the god on whom the Orphic cult was focused.

The importance of this myth lies in the fact that in Orphic thought it was connected with a peculiar theory concerning the origin and nature of man, and so ultimately with the thought of man's eternal destiny. From the ashes of the blasted Titans, the Orphic said, man was created. But these Titans had already consumed the god Dionysus, and their ashes contained the vitality of a divine being. Hence man by his very constitution was believed to be a compound of two natures, one Dionysian and immortal, the other Titanic and mortal. His soul was divine, but while in the body it was confined in a charnel house. Plato made full use of this Orphic conception, and in his Gorgias he quoted "a certain philosopher," who said, "We are dead and the body is a tomb." Pindar earlier stressed the divine origin and nature of the human soul in contradistinction to the mortality of the human body. "While the body of all men is subject to over-mastering death, an image of life remains alive, for it alone comes from the gods," he affirmed. This sharp dualism of soul and body appears again and again in the Orphic tablets, though it is not always clear that the myth of the origin of man from the ashes of the Titans was in mind. On the Petelian tablet (south Italy, third century B.C.) the soul is represented as asserting its divine nature thus:

I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven.

Similarly, on three Cretan tablets the soul answers the challenge "Whence are you?" with a reiterated declaration of its dual origin, "I am son of Earth and of Starry Heaven." On the Compagno tablets found near Sybaris the soul makes a like affirmation to the "Pure Queen of Them Below . . . .," "I avow me that I am of your blessed race." The dualism thus fixed between body and soul was fundamental in Orphic theology. Though the body was an evil thing, the soul was divine and immortal.

In its first analysis, therefore, the Orphic process of salvation was a process of purification from bodily taint. The problem, however, was not such a simple one as these words would indicate. It was not merely from the evils of a single existence that the Orphic sought deliverance, but from the evils of a long series of bodily existences. The Orphic first, and the Pythagorean later, believed in the transmigration of souls from body to body. On leaving the corpse at death, the soul was normally doomed to inhabit the bodies of other men or of animals even, passing on through a chain of physical existences until finally purified. An Orphic fragment preserved by Proclus reads: "Therefore the soul of man changing in the cycles of time enters into various creatures; now it enters a horse, again it becomes a sheep . . . . or as one of the tribe of chill serpents creeps on the sacred ground." Reincarnation, like dualism, was an important item in Orphic theology.

What the Orphic did with the idea of transmigration was to moralize it into a cycle of purgations intended to free the soul from bodily taint and leave it in the end a pure heavenly essence. According to Pindar, the soul had to undergo three such periods of purification in as many different incarnations before the process would be complete. Only those who "thrice had been courageous in keeping their souls pure from all deeds of wrong" could pass by the highway of Zeus into the tower of Cronus where the ocean breezes blow around the Islands of the Blest." In Plato the series of three incarnations was magnified to three periods of a thousand years each, during which the process of purgation might be completed. At the close of each thousand-year period, the souls drew lots, thus choosing the manner of their next incarnation. One of the most striking scenes depicted in any of Plato's writings was the eschatological vision of Er, son of Armenius, recounted in the tenth book of the Republic. At the place of judgment, Er saw mortal souls allotted to a new cycle of life choosing their several destinies.

"He saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of woman . . . . He beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale. Birds on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men . . . . After making choice and drinking of the waters of Lethe, these souls shoot away like stars, to birth."

Empedocles announced three transmigration periods of ten thousand years each ere the soul could be considered eligible for heavenly bliss.

The technical Orphic expression for the transmigration of souls and their reappearance in human bodies was "rebirth" (palingenesia). These physical rebirths, however, were what the Orphic least desired, and to escape this weary round of reincarnation was the goal of all his endeavor. According to Proclus, the salvation offered by this system was the freeing of the spirit from the wheel of physical rebirths. In his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, he said, "This is what those who are initiated by Orpheus to Dionysus and Kore pray that they may attain:

'To cease from the wheel and breathe again from ill.'"

Undoubtedly this was an Orphic formula for the salvation process. By Simplicius it was attributed to Orpheus himself. Appropriately, therefore, the purified Orphic soul was represented on the Campagno tablets as having escaped from the cycle of necessity and attained to the seats of the hallowed. Its joyful affirmation to the "Pure Queen of Them Below" was:

I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel;
I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired.

Thus, while the view of human existence fostered by Orphism was essentially pessimistic in its dualism and its theory of successive reincarnations, it did hold out the possibility of escape to weary mortals. It posited one great spiritual rebirth at the time of death which should put an end once for all to the series of physical rebirths that were so much dreaded. The question remains, How was this great deliverance from the cycle of physical existences to be accomplished?

III

The Orphic answer to this problem was, in the first instance, by participation in certain prescribed rites of initiation. Orphism came to the seekers for salvation in the Greek world not merely as a philosophy of life but as a religious cult with divinely authenticated rites which must be fulfilled, else there, could be no guaranty of deliverance. To those only who had "by happy fortune culled the fruit of the rite that releases from toil," was there assurance of salvation, the rite in this instance being initiation into the Orphic mysteries. The mendicants who, according to Plato, harassed the rich, exhibiting scriptures by Orpheus, sought to persuade people that they might obtain purification in life and release from suffering after death by the observance of their ritual. Initiation into an Orphic cult was the first step toward deliverance.

In general the prescribed Orphic ritual was a modification of the rude Bacchic rites we have already examined. The persistent representation of Orpheus in antiquity was that of a reformer of Dionysiac rites. Diodorus affirmed that "Orpheus being a man highly gifted by nature and highly trained above all others, made many modifications in the orgiastic rites; hence they call Orphic those rites that took their rise from Dionysus." From the standpoint of ritualistic observance, therefore, there was much in common between Dionysian and Orphic practices. On the very threshold to the Orphic cult stood the omophagy, or feast of raw flesh, which was so prominent a Dionysian rite. In the remaining fragment of Euripides' Cretans an initiate tells of certain ritual acts which he performed in the process of becoming a "Bacchus" and the one he stresses particularly is the eating of raw flesh.

For the Orphic this "red and bleeding feast" had two important meanings. It was, first of all, a communion service. Already he had within himself the spark of divinity which came from the ashes of the Titans. This divine life within him, however, was weak, very weak. It needed nourishment. In the sacrificial bull his god Zagreus was ritualistically incarnate; hence, in eating the raw flesh of the torn bull, be partook of a divine substance that nourished and strengthened the immortal life within himself. Just as the life of Zagreus entered the devotee physically when he partook of the flesh of the bull, so the man's soul entered more fully into the spiritual life of Zagreus by this very physical process. In a mystical sense God and man became one by the communion.

But the feast of raw flesh was also a memorial service to the Orphics. With the legend of the divine child Zagreus in mind, they looked upon their own ritual as a re-enactment of the ancient tragedy in which their god was done to death by the Titans. Just as they tore to pieces the flesh of the sacrificial bull and ate it, so the Titans of old had dismembered the child Zagreus. According to Nonnus, it was customary for Orphic initiates to daub themselves with white clay or gypsum as the Titans did in order to conceal their identity. One of the technical expressions for the ritual act of bedaubing with clay was apomattein (literally, "to smear off"). Harpocration has the following note on this word:

"Others use it in a more special sense, as for example when they speak of putting a coat of clay or pitch on those who are being initiated. In this ceremony they were mimetically enacting the myth told by some persons, in which the Titans, when they mutilated Dionysus, wore a coating of gypsum in order not to be identified."

In this comment the mimetic character of the Orphic ritual is definately asserted.

The real inwardness of this act of daubing with gypsum, however, lay in another direction. It was an act of purification--strange as it may seem. The terms perimattein and apomattein ("to besmear" and "to smear off") were used interchangeably to mean "to purify." In the Orphic rite of initiation, just as in the Sabazian rite at which Aeschines assisted, the candidates for initiation were "purified and wiped clean with mud and pitch." They were not purified from mud and pitch but rather with mud and pitch. Since it was not a physical cleansing that was sought but rather a spiritual cleansing, clay and pitch served the purpose quite as well as water. Yet Plutarch, with all his sympathy for Orphism, protested vigorously against purifications in this manner, calling them "unclean purifications, filthy cleansings and bemirings." Orphic initiation, then, in addition to the rite of communion, featured a strange ceremonial of cleansing intended to rid the candidate of the stains inherent in his physical nature.

For the Orphic, however, mere initiation with its prescribed rites, its mysticizing of crude Dionysian ritual, its communion service, and its purifications, was not sufficient as a guaranty of salvation. Initiation, while it was the beginning of a process that eventuated in complete salvation, was but the beginning. The salvation process itself continued as an arduous self-discipline and it lasted a lifetime. The initial sacraments of communion and purgation were supplemented by the austerities of the "Orphic life"--an expression that became proverbial. So the "Bacchus of the Mailed Priests" in Euripides' Cretans ends his confession thus:

Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man's vile birth and coffined clay,
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where life has been.

In general the disciplinary prescriptions of Orphism were almost identical with those of Pythagoreanism. Herodotus characterized the Orphic way of life as at once Egyptian and Pythagorean. Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Pythagoras, has given a convenient and comprehensive statement of the main items in the Pythagorean ascesis. His list of prescriptions is as follows:

"Purification is by means of cleansings, and baths and aspersions. A man must also keep himself from funerals and marriages and every kind of physical pollution, and abstain from all food that is dead or has been killed, and from mullet, and from the fish melanurus, and from eggs, and from animals that lay eggs, and from beans, and from the other things that are forbidden for those who accomplish the holy rites of initiation."

The Orphic, like the Pythagorean, lived a life of ceremonial cleanliness and holiness. By washing and aspersions, at once symbolic and sacramental in character, he sought to purge away the taint of his bodily nature, the "ancient woe" inherited from the Titans. He kept himself rigorously from all defilement of physical contacts with human or animal bodies, from human births especially, and from dead bodies; for in a corpse the evil Titanic matter was left without any vital Dionysian element. Both in life and in death certain clothing regulations were strictly observed. In life the Orphic wore garments of pure white. In death the initiated were never buried in woolen wrappings.

Not only were rules concerning cleanliness and clothing strictly adhered to, but certain food regulations were also carefully followed. Having once partaken of the sacrament of raw flesh, the Orphic fasted forever thereafter from animal food. This was the most familiar of all the prohibitions observed by the Orphics, and Plato defined the Orphic manner of living in terms of this observance. "Orphic lives, as they are caIled," he said, "were led by those of our race who adhered to the use of all inanimate things, but abstained from every thing wherein is life." This abstinence from animal food was a main item in the discipline of the tragic Orphic Hippolytus, whose asceticism was the object of Theseus' bitter invective in Euripides' drama. In his rage the old king cried out against his own son:

Now vaunt, ay now!--set out your paltry wares
Of lifeless food: ....
.... I warn all men to shun
Such hypocrits as you.

These words, from the mouth of a sadly mistaken father, should not be taken as proof of priggishness on the part of the Orphics, but at least they serve to emphasize the rigor of the Orphic discipline in the matter of abstinence from animal foods. By fasting and purifications, the disciple of Orpheus sought to purge away the evil which he had inherited with his physical nature. Only after a whole lifetime of such purgation could he affirm, in the terminology of the Compagno and Caecilia Secundina tablets,

Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below.

The question naturally suggests itself, whether or not the Orphic ideal made any moral demands on these who were initiated. Since personal purity, even though it was of a ceremonial and ritualistic character, stood at the very center of Orphism, the way was open for the development of morality. The very will to observe its rigid prescriptions was itself a moral attitude. Moreover, there is valuable testimony among ancient writers to show that Orphism did have an elevating effect on the moral life. Pindar, for example, based his Orphic eschatology on moral conditions and assumed that knowledge of the lore of Orphism would help men lead good lives. Aristophanes, who did not hesitate to poke fun at Orphism, paid a serious tribute to in The Frogs when the tragedian Aeschylus said of the poet Orpheus: "He made known to us mystic rites, and to abstain from slaughter." Certainly this last statement had reference to something more than mere abstinence from animal food. At the very least it meant that Orpbic ritual laid stress on the necessity of purification from blood, and at most it meant that Orphism came with a gospel of abstention from murder and of peace on earth. Horace doubtless had much the same thought in mind when he declared that Orpheus not only tamed fierce animals but savage men as well. The author of the speech against Aristogeiton also spoke reverentially of Orpheus "who instituted for us the most holy mysteries and declared that Justice is seated on the throne of God watching all the actions of mankind."

At one point especially the moral influence of Orphism was clear and indubitable: that was in its protest against suicide. Since the body was the soul's place of penance a man had no right to take his own life. If he did he was a fugitive prisoner trying to escape before God had released him. Here Plato found Orphic thought peculiarly congenial to his own. In the Phaedo he represented Socrates as saying, shortly before his death, "There is a doctrine whispered in secret that a man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand. Yet I too believe that the gods are our guardians and that we are a possession of theirs." In view of all this array of literary evidence, certain moral obligations must be added to the ritualistic requirements which characterized the Orphic life.

But participation in rites of initiation and a life of ascetic observance, even, were not sufficient to guarantee full and final salvation for the Orphic. There were certain postmortem rules of conduct to be observed as well. The Orphic tablets bring this out most clearly. They chart the geography of the next world for the initiate, acquaint him with the divine beings who have the determination of future weal or woe, prescribe certain ritual acts to be observed, and instruct him in formularies and confessions to be repeated under certain circumstances.

The Petelia tablet told of a nameless well-spring situated at the left of the House of Hades. This the soul must avoid. Since it was contrasted specifically with the Well of Memory in the following verses, the forbidden spring was probably Lethe, or Forgetfulness. Because the Orphic had spent a lifetime in purification he had no need of forgetfulness. The well-spring of which he must drink was the one flowing from the Lake of Memory. This was the Orphic counterpart of the "well of water springing up unto everlasting life." The Petelia tablet also served to inform the soul what formula to use in asking for a drink from the Well of Memory. It was an avowal of divine origin: "I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven." According to the tablet, this declaration would be sufficient to gain the boon desired from the guardians of the Lake of Memory.

Of themselves they will give you to drink,
From the holy Well-spring,
And thereafter among the other Heroes,
You shall have lordship.

The Eleuthernae tablets represented much the same situation in the lively form of a dialogue between the soul and the well itself.

On the Compagno tablets, certain additional declarations were placed in the mouth of the initiate. Here the soul came as a suppliant to the holy Persephone herself, and the prescribed words were addressed to her as the "Pure Queen of Them Below." As in the other tablets, there was the assertion of divine origin. "I avow me that I am of your blessed race." In addition, however, there was the further declaration of purity attained by the observance of Orphic practices.

Out of the pure I come . . . . .
I have flown out of the sorrowful weary wheel,
I have passed with eager feet to the circle desired.

These, affirmations on the part of the soul were an "open sesame" to immortal bliss for they brought the final assurance, "Happy and Blessed One, you shall be God instead of mortal." In this climactic fashion the postmortem ritual as recorded on the Orphic tablets was completed.

On the basis of Dionysian practice and experience, therefore, Orphism built up an elaborate theological construction with refined and extended ritualistic observances. Faced by the problem of the dual constitution of man, his soul Dionysian, divine and immortal, and his body Titanic, evil and mortal, Orphism found the solution of the antimony in two very different directions. On the one hand there was the prospect of a natural process of purification through a series of physical rebirths in animal or human form. This was a gloomy prospect, however--a remedy that was worse than the disease. On the other hand there was a way of salvation provided by the Orphic cult itself, an extended process of self-discipline ending in a spiritual regeneration that would break, once for all, the chain of successive physical births. It was a long and arduous process beginning with a rite of initiation which marked the formal entrance upon a new way of living. There were prayers to be repeated and sacrifices to be fulfilled. There were sacraments of communion and purification. Following the initiatory rites was the rigid discipline of a life-long asceticism that included purgations, fastings, and freedom from bodily contamination, as well as certain elementary moral requirements. All this, even, was not deemed sufficient. It had to be supplemented by a postmortem ritual. The Orphic imagination pictured the future, charted the next world, and prescribed the formulas and confessions to be repeated under given circumstances. Thus the final goal of ultimate assimilation to deity was to be attained. Thus the initiated, having lived a life of Orphic purity, finally became "God from man."

Admittedly Orphic practice did not offer a new birth experience as a single catastrophic event to be realized in one's lifetime, unless initiation itself is considered that event in a proleptic way. But Orphism did furnish the possibility for a long regenerative process, beginning at initiation and ending after the death of the physical body--a development that eventuated in happy immortality. As an extended process, therefore, rather than as a single event, Orphism fostered the experience of regeneration.

IV

It is certainly pertinent to inquire whether or not the Orphic type of religious experience had real significance in the Graeco-Roman world at the beginning of the Christian era. Of the influence of Orphism in the Greek world during classical times, we have found ample testimony by writers of the highest repute. It is more difficult to trace the influence of Orphism as a distinct religious movement during the Hellenistic and later periods. Still the discovery of the important private Orpheum in the recently excavated Villa Item at Pompeii, leads one to anticipate similar finds elsewhere that may illustrate the distinctive functioning of the Orphic cult in first-century life. If when Pompeii was overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. an Orphic brotherhood was operating under private patronage in this charming villa, similar groups were certainly to be found elsewhere in the Roman world maintaining their peculiar cult practices. Aside from such independent functioning, however, Orphism continued to influence the world through systems other than its own. Like Pythagoreanism in this as in much else, it merged readily with other movements. Its ideas were adopted by popular philosophies and its practices were taken over by popular religions. Orphism became very influential at ancient Eleusis particularly, and with the influx of foreign gods and goddesses into the Greek world it captivated them also. In these secondary forms the Orphic view of life and the Orphic way of living continued to influence thought and action even where Orphic brotherhoods as such had ceased to exist.

There is plenty of direct literary evidence as to the power of Orphic ideas and practices, however institutionalized, during the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman periods. One of the characteres of Theophrastus, for example, was a man who every month repaired to the priests of the Orphic mysteries to partake of their rites. Usually he was accompanied by his wife. But if she was too busy, his children and their nurse went along with him. Perhaps the most notable example of a prominent man who shared the Orphic hope in the first Christian century was Plutarch. Both he and his wife were initiated into an Orphic thiasus. Though he strongly criticized certain Orphic practices, and refused to be frightened by the terrors of their Hell, and depreciated the morbid type of self-examination fostered by their manner of life, yet he and his wife found the Orphic hope a real consolation to themselves in the time of trouble. Strabo and Pausanias, as well as Plutarch, made casual reference to Orphism as a feature of contemporary religion, while Lucian, in his irresponsible manner, reflected Orphic ideas here and there. The Latin poet Statius praised the widow of a certain Lucan for not deifying him as Bacchus and consecrating to him "a deceitful thiasus"--a testimony that the Orphic practice of deifying the dead was not infrequent in the Graeco-Roman world.

Of more concrete significance is the archaeological evidence furnished by sepulchral art and grave inscriptions. According to the Orphic scheme of things, the soul entered upon the status of divinity after death. Among the monuments there are a number--quite apart from royal or imperial memorials--which actually represented the dead as gods. At Guthaeum, for example, a first-century (A.D.) statue representing a youth was found near a sarcophagus. It was obviously intended to be a portrait statue; but a panther stands by the side of the youth, a grape cluster is in his hand, and a vine crown is on his head. Here is a clear memorial of the process of apotheosizing a youth after death and of representing him as the god Dionysus.

Among the grave inscriptions there are parallels to this sculptural representation of a deceased youth as a god. A priest of Thasos dedicated an inscription to his dead wife as "an incarnate goddess," and a man by the name of Lucius consecrated a monument to his child of four years with these words: "To my sweetest child and personal God who hearkens to my prayers." More clearly reminiscent of certain characteristic Orphic ideas is a second-century (A.D.) inscription found in a Sabine village. "The soul is immortal for it came from God. The body is the garment of the soul. Honor the God in me." This was good Orphic doctrine throughout.

Here and there also among grave inscriptions are to be heard the echoes of Orphic ritual. On a tombstone in Cnidus was engraved this affirmation, "I have not drunk of the water of Lethe that ends all things." Immediately one is reminded of the Petelia tablet with its description of a nameless well-spring at the left of the House of Hades with a white cypress standing near--a well-spring by all means to be avoided. There are other inscriptions which recall the cool waters of Memory flowing from the well-spring on the right, from which the parched soul may drink and find new life for itself. Two epitaphs of the third century (A.D.) found at Rome contain prayers that are reminiscent of the Orphic tablets. "May Aidoneus, the king of the dead, give you the cold water" is the petition of one, while the second inscription repeats the same request in the first person, "May he give the cold water to my thirsting soul." Most peculiar of the Orphic inscriptions is one from Abydos, dated roughly at the beginning of our era. It stood originally on the grave of a Lycian Greek buried near the reputed tomb of Osiris. The inscription expressed the conviction that since the tomb of the god was near, the soul of the dead would escape Hades: "Hermes gathers me with the sons of the gods, and I have not drunk the water of Forgetfulness." Here the Arcadian Hermes makes his appearance in the role of Psychopompos, as in classical mythology and the Hermetic literature, and the inscription as a whole memorializes the blending on Egyptian soil of Orphism, Hermetism, the Osiris cult, and local tradition.

Altogether, therefore, the grave monuments of Graeco-Roman times strongly reinforce the literary evidences that Orphic ideas were still very influential in the life of paganism when Christianity first emerged. Hence, among the new-birth experiences of paganism contemporary with early Christianity the extended Orphic process of regeneration must not be ignored.

PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER III

DIONYSIAN EXCESSES

IN A characteristic passage in the Bacchae, Euripedes, "the Rationalist," speaks of Demeter and Dionysus as the greatest of the gods. He puts into the mouth of the aged prophet Teiresias this preachment for the instruction of the honest but irreconcilable Pentheus:

Two chiefest powers,
Prince, among men there are: Divine Demeter--
Earth is she, name her by which name you will.
She upon dry food nurtures mortal men;
Then follows Semele's son, to match her gift
The cluster's flowing draught he found and gave
To mortals, which gives rest from grief to men,
So that through him do men obtain good things.

This juxtaposition of Demeter and Dionysus is not at all surprising; for among the friendly rivals of the Eleusinian mysteries in Greece the most vigorous, the most distinctive, and the most widespread was the worship of Dionysus. Three centuries before Alexander made his conquest of the Orient, Dionysus had made his conquest of Greece. Coming as an immigrant from Thrace, attended by a wild crew of satyrs and maenads, he took Greece by storm, and sometime between Homer and Phidias, he won a place for himself on Olympus and the patronage of the most dignified city-states in Greece. The type of religious experience exemplified by his cult is of exceptional interest to the student of personal religion. In order to understand the Dionysian experience, however, it is necessary to know who Dionysus himself was.

I

Notwithstanding his elevation to Olympus, Dionysus was anything but an aristocratic sky-god. He was rather an earth-deity, a god of the peasantry. Though his father was Zeus, the sky- and rain-god, his mother was of the earth earthy. Dionysian mythology named her Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, and this name betrays her real significance as a personification of the earth (cf. Nova Zembla, "new earth"). In the Hope collection there is a vase painting representing the youthful Dionysus rising out of an earth mound--the vase-painter thus emphasizing the earth-born nature of the god.

But Semele, the god's earth-mother, was not only the fertile earth of springtime absorbing the warm showers of the sky and naturally productive; in local legend at Thebes see was represented as the thunder-smitten earth also. For Hera in her jealousy had craftily persuaded Semele to ask her lover to prove his deity by appearing in all his power and glory as god of heaven. Zeus acceded to her request appearing to her armed with all his terrors, destroyed her with his lightnings. Even as the mother was dying, however, Zeus rescued their unborn child from her tortured body.

In birth-bowers new did Zeus Cronion
Receive his scion;
For hid in a cleft of his thigh,
By the gold clasps knit, did he lie
Safe hidden from Hera's eye
Till the Fates' day came.

Lucian, in his usual satirical vein, made the most of his opportunity to parody this mythological theme. Thus, in popular legend the earth-born Dionysus, the son of Semele, was himself represented as a twice-born deity. He was dithyrambus, which for the Greeks meant "he who entered life by a double door." In this peculiarly artificial sense he was Dionysus, the son of Zeus, as his name suggests.

Quite naturally this son of earth and sky functioned as the personification of vegetable life. As such he was a yearly divinity, who came and went with the seasons. His experience in relation to men was characterized by recurrent theophanies and recessions as the life of nature died and revived year after year. Plutarch noted among various peoples this characteristic conception of Dionysus:

"The Phrygians think that the god is asleep in the winter and is awake in summer, and at one season they celebrate with Bacchic rites his goings to bed and at the other his risings up. And the Paphlagonians allege that in the winter he is bound down and imprisoned and in the spring he is stirred up and let loose."

In the popular phrases of his worship, Dionysus was apprehended in very concrete terms. He was, on the one side, the god of vegetation in general and the wine-god in particular. Thus he made his chief impression on the Greeks. It may be, as Miss Harrison has suggested, that in his native Thracian home he functioned as a beer-god, Sabazius or Bromius, the god of a cereal intoxicant; but certainly he came to Greece and won his signal triumph there as the wine-god. Even as the olive was constantly associated with Athena, so the vine was characteristically associated with Dionysus. Other familiar symbols of Dionysus were the grape cluster and a two-handled drinking cup. By these accessories the god may easily be identified in Greek vase paintings and on cult monuments. The various cult appellatives emphasizing this aspect of Dionysus are far too numerous to be listed. Greek literature, too, rang with the praises of the god who "made grow for men the clustered vine," but the fact is so familiar that it does not demand special citation.

What is particularly noteworthy is this, that the relation of the god to the drink was not merely that of creator to the thing created. Many times the relationship expressed was that of identification even. The god was in the wine; he was the wine, even. He was not merely the god of libation. To quote Euripides statement, he was the libation, "The god who himself is offered in libation to the other gods." In this passage the identification of the god with the wine is as absolute as the identification of Christ in Catholic thought with the consecrated wine of the mass, or, to cite an illustration from the far away religious system of the Vedas, the identification of the god Soma with the soma drink. It is not surprising, therefore, to find in Attica the festival of the theoinia or the "god wine," celebrated by those families who were believed to be the direct descendents of Dionysus' original followers, in whose vineyards grew vines which were offshoots from the vine spray that the god himself had given them. Under such circumstances the devotees of Dionysus would be sure of the presence of the very god himself in the consecrated wine made from the sacred grapes. That this realistic identification of the deity and the fruit of the vine was not merely a primitive conception is proved by the existence at Philippi in Paul's time of a religious brotherhood dedicated to Dionysus Botreus ("Dionysus the Vine Cluster").

Dionysus was the god of animal life as well as of vegetable life. As such he was variously represented in different animal forms. It was inevitable that these animal embodiments should be varied in different localities. In a goat-raising country the normal representation of the power of life and generation would be the goat. Similarly, in a cattle-raising country the embodiment of the divine power in the form of a bull was to be expected. And so we have various animal theophanies of Dionysus recorded in Greek literature. Euripides chorus of Bacchanals, for example, thus variously invoke their god in their moment of supreme anxiety:

Appear, appear, whatso thy shape or name
O Mountain Bull, Snake of the Hundred Heads,
Lion of the Burning Flame!
O God, Beast, Mystery, come!

Of the less frequent animal forms under which Dionysus was revered, that of the goat should especially be noted. What makes this conception of Dionysus peculiarly important is the fact that as a goat-god he was involved in the obscure beginnings of Attic tragedy, and thereafter he remained the patron deity of this highly artistic literary form (trag-odia, goat-song). Another less familiar animal embodiment of Dionysus was that of a kid. There was a common legend that Zeus, in order to save his son from the jealous wrath of Hera, transformed him into a kid. A mystic expression nebrizein, "to play the fawn," was common in the Dionysus cult. While it is an expression of doubtful import, yet it is clearly reminiscent of another primitive conception of Dionysus as a fawn.

By far the most generally accepted and most significant of the animal embodiments of the god, however, was that of a bull. There were a multitude of cult appellatives emphasizing this conception of Dionysus. He was variously addressed as the "horned child," the "horned deity," the "bull-horned," and the "bull-browed." The Argives worshiped him as "the son of a cow" or "bull-born," and the ancient Elean chant addressed him directly as a bull. "Come, hero Dionysus, come with the Graces to thy house by the shores of the sea; hasten with thy bull-foot." So ran the hymn itself, while the chorus repeated "goodly bull, goodly bull." One readily recalls, also, that the residence of the king-archon at Athens, where the sacred marriage between Dionysus and the basilinna was celebrated, was called the boukolion, or "ox stall."

With all this background of realistic thought, it is strange that we do not have a representation of the bull-Dionysus in Greek vase paintings. Plutarch, however, states that the Greeks not infrequently imaged the god in bull form in sculpture, and in classical literature this representation of the god was a stock one. Thus the Bacchae of Euripides is permeated with the conception of Dionysus as a bull-god. Of Dionysus' second birth it is said:

Then a God bull-horned Zeus bare, And with serpents entwined his hair.

When Pentheus attempted to imprison Dionysus, "a bull beside the stalls he found." And finally when the god led the king in a hypnotized state out to his doom, Pentheus seemed to see a bull going before him. In his hallucination the king exclaimed:

A bull you seem that leads on before;
And horns have sprouted upon your head.
How, were you a brute?--Truly you are a bull now!

These passages reflect perfectly the realism of primitive thought about the god. Far more than being represented by the bull, Dionysus was thought of as being actually embodied in the bull, so that the animal, like the wine, was the god.

II

With these primitive conceptions of Dionysus in mind, it is possible for the modern student, even, to appreciate something of the vivid, central experience of the god's devotees. Wine played a prominent part in Dionysian worship. Bacchic literature reeks with wine and rings with the joys of intoxication. The chorus in Euripides' Bacchae sings:

The cluster's flowing draught....
....gives rest from grief to men
Woe-worn, soon as the vine's stream fills them
And sleep, the oblivion of our daily ills,--
There is none other balm for toils.

This Bacchic joy puts an end to woe.

When blent with the flute light laughters awaken,
And the children of care have forgotten to weep
Whensoever is revealed the cluster's splendour
In the banquet that men to the high Gods tender
And o'er ivy-wreathed revellers drinking deep
The wine bowl drops the mantle of sleep.

The truth is that sheer physical intoxication from the drinking of wine was the essence of Dionysian religion. In the service of their god the Bacchanals drank wine until they were intoxicated. There was indeed point to Plato's criticism that an immortality of drunkenness seemed to be considered the Dionysian reward of virtue. For the Bacchanals themselves, however, the experience was something more and higher than drunkenness. It was spiritual ecstasy, not mere physical intoxication. The wine they drank was for them potent with divine power--it was the god himself, and the very quintessence of divine life was resident in the juice of the grape. This the devotees of Bacchus knew as a matter of personal experience when, after drinking the wine, they felt a strange new life within themselves. That was the life and power of their god. Their enthusiasm was quite literally a matter of having the god within themselves, of being full of and completely possessed by the god. So they themselves described it in their own language (entheos, enthusiasm). They might be intoxicated; but they felt themselves possessed by the god. The drinking of wine in the service of Dionysus was for them a religious sacrament. Even Plato, who had few kind words to say for intoxication, made one exception to his usual rule that it was unfitting for a man to drink to the point of drunkenness. That one exception was "on the occasions of festivals of the god of wine." At such times drunkenness was a matter of communion with the god. So Euripides could say that he who knows the Dionysian mysteries "is pure in life, and revelling on the mountains, has the Bacchic communion in his soul."

The devotees of Dionysus had other realistic means of attaining to communion with their god. They had a sacrament of eating as well as a sacrament of drinking. This rite was the "feast of raw flesh." To be an initiate into the mysteries of Dionysus one must be able to avow

I have .... Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts.

The victim varied. Sometimes it was a goat, as was probably the custom in Thrace. The Bacchanals of Euripides follow this practice and know

The joy of the red quick fountain
The blood of the hill-goat torn.

They

Quaff the goat's delicious blood,
A strange, a rich, a savage food.

Sometimes the victim was a fawn, and the sacred fawn-skins with which the maenads were clothed were the skins torn from these luckless animals. One of the familiar depictions of the maenads on Greek vases was to show them carrying a fawn in their arms or tearing it to pieces in frenzy. More frequently, however, the Dionysian victim was a bull. This was particularly the case in Crete where, to quote Firmicus Maternus, "the Cretans rend a living bull with their teeth, and they simulate madness of soul as they shriek through the secret places of the forest with discordant clamors."

This quotation well suggests the orgiastic character of the feast of raw flesh. The denvotees tore asunder the slain beast and devoured the dripping flesh in order to assimilate the life of the god resident in it. Raw flesh was living flesh, and haste had to be made lest the divine life within the aniinal should escape. So the feast became a wild, barbaric, frenzied affair. In the Bacchae one of the herdsmen describes to Pentheus an attack of the maenads upon the royal herd. Doubtless the description gives an adequate impression of one of the Bacchic feasts.

Down swooped they then
Upon our pasturing kine with swordless hand,
Then had you seen your mother with her hands
Rend a deep uddered heifer bellowing loud:
And others tore the calves in crimson shreds.
Ribs had you seen and cloven hoofs far hurled
This way and that, and flakes of flesh that hung
And dripped all blood bedabbled, 'neath the pines.
Bulls chafing, lowering fiercely along the horn
Erewhile, were tripped and hurled upon the earth
Dragged down by countless clutching maiden hands
More swiftly was the flesh that lapped their bones
Stripped, than you could have closed your kingly eyes.

This orgiastic rite furnished the Fathers of the early church with just the material for which they were looking to use in discrediting paganism. With genuine satisfaction they described the barbarous ceremonial in all its revolting detail. Clement of Alexandria said:

"I will not dance out your mysteries as they say Alcibiades did, but I will strip them naked, and bring them out on the open stage of life, in view of those who are spectators at the drama of truth. The Bacchi hold orgies in honor of a mad Dionysus. They celebrate a divine madness by the eating of raw flesh. The final accomplishment of their rite is the distribution of the flesh of butchered victims. They are crowned with snakes, and shriek out the name of Eva, that Eve through whom sin came into the world, and the symbol of their Bacchae orgies is the consecrated serpent."

In a similar vein, Arnobius wrote of the "feasts of raw flesh in which with feigned frenzy and loss of a sane mind you twine snakes about you, and to show yourselves full of the divinity and majesty of the god, you demolish with gory mouths the entrails of goats bleating for mercy."

The fact should not be blinked that in its primitive this rite probably involved the sacrifice of a human victim. Porphyry knew a tradition that in Chios a man was torn to pieces in the worship of Dionysus Omadius, the "Raw One." At Potniae, according to Pausanias, a priest of Dionysus was once slain by the inhabitants and a plague was sent upon them in punishment. They sought relief, and the Delphian oracle told them that a beautiful boy must be sacrificed to the deity. Immediately afterward, Dionysus let it be known that he would accept a goat as a substitute. This story records the ancient transition in cult practice from the cannibal to the animal feast. Also in the fearful fate that met Pentheus at the hands of his own mother, as recorded by Euripides, there is a late literary echo of the primitive cannibalistic ritual.

To focus attention on these savage features, however, is to miss entirely the significance of the crude ceremonial. The real meaning of the orgy was that it enabled the devotee to partake of a divine substance and so to enter into direct and realistic communion with his god. The warm blood of the slain goat was "sacred blood," according to Lactantius Placidus. The god Dionysus was believed to be resident temporarily in the animal victim. One of the most remarkable illustrations of this ritual incarnation of the god was described by Aelian. Of the people of Tenedos, he said: "In ancient days they used to keep a cow with calf, the best they had, for Dionysus, and when she calved, they tended her like a woman in childbirth. But they sacrificed the newborn calf, having put cothurni on its feet." The use of the tragic buskins symbolized the conviction that the god was temporarily incarnate in the calf--pious opinion did not doubt that. Primitive logic easily persuaded men that the easiest way to charge oneself with divine power was to eat the quivering flesh and drink the warm blood of the sacred animal. Some went farther and sought to assimilate themselves to deity by wearing the skin of the animal. The central meaning of the celebration was that it enabled the devotee to enter into direct and realistic communion with his god.

Another means of inducing the divine possession, and the usual concomitant of the sacraments of eating and drinking just described, was the vertigo of the sacred dance. In preparation for the Bacchic revel, the devotees of the god properly equipped themselves with the gear of Dionysus. Like him they carried the thyrsus, a wand tipped with a pine cone and usually entwined with ivy. In their hair serpents were twisted and over their shoulders was thrown the sacred fawn-skin. Sometimes they wore horns on their foreheads. In clothing and equipment they were as like their god as possible.

The dances in honor of Dionysus were usually held at night time by torchlight and were preceded by fasting. They were accompanied by the weird music of wind instruments and the clashing of tambourines. Mingled with this strange music were the shouts of the Bacchanals themselves as they waved their torches in the darkness, thus giving to the scene an unearthly light. The dances were wild and irregular and were characterized by a tossing of the head and a violent, whirling bodily motion. Thus, by the very movements of the dance a physical frenzy was quickly induced, quite as the "dancing dervishes" of Mohammedanism lose control of themselves in the delirium of their ritual. It was for this ecstatic experience that the Bacchae of Euripides were yearning when they sang together:

Ah, shall my white feet in the dances gleam
The livelong night again? Ah, shall I there
Float through the Bacchanal's ecstatic dream,
Tossing my neck in the dewy air?

Significant of the maddening experience of the sacred dance were the names applied to the female followers of Dionysus. They were the maenads or "mad ones," and the thyiads or "rushing distraught ones." These epithets were but different ways of describing the female devotees who were under the influence of and possessed by their god. A more frequent designation was the more intimate one which called the devotees after the name of the god himself. The women who shared in the frenzied rites of Bacchus were themselves called Bacchae even as the men were Bacchi. Each one, without distinction of sex, by the very experience of divine possession became a personification of the god. Their delirium, induced by purely physical means, was for them a spiritual experience, and eventuated in the conviction, deep and strong, that they had their god within themselves. Plutarch connected the Dionysian frenzy with the Bacchic custom of chewing ivy leaves during this ceremonial, and affirmed that thus "the violent spirits which caused their enthusiasm entered into them.", Dionysus was god of the ivy quite as much as god of the vine. By the realistic ritual act of chewing ivy, then, the maenads of Dionysus incorporated his spirit within themselves. Herodotus, in speaking of the initiation of the Scythian king, Scyles, cited a particular and notable instance of Dionysian possession. The historian said of the king that "the god took possession" of him so that "he was maddened by the god and played the part of Bacchus." Thus, in the frenzy of the ritualistic revel, as in the orgy of eating raw flesh and drinking wine, the Bacchanals experienced communion with their god.

Apparently, in later times, at least, a sharp distinction was drawn between those who merely indulged in the physical excitement of the Bacchic revel and those who really shared in the spiritual experiences of the cult. At least we are acquainted with a familiar proverb, quoted by Plato, to the effect that "many are the bearers of the thyrsus, but the Bacchanals are few." Unless the initiate himself was conscious of contact with the divine de did not shared in the genuine Bacchic experience.

III

This predominantly emotional experience, whether induced by the dizziness of dancing or the crude sacraments of wine and raw flesh, marked for the Bacchanal the beginning of a new life. In a very real sense it was a new birth for the individual who experienced it. Hitherto he had been a man merely. Now he was something more; he was man plus god, a divinized human. Certain aspects of his new divine life deserve to be noted in order to emphasize the contrast with life as it was lived at the ordinary levels of human experience.

In its temporary emotional aspect it was characterized by excessive indulgence as contrasted with the reasoned moderation that was typical of Greek life generally. For Greek self-control was one of the four cardinal virtues and "nothing in excess" was a fundamental Hellenic principle of life. The Bacchic experience, however, cut sheer across this principle. In the Bacchae, Euripides said of Dionysus, "By halves he cares not to be magnified." And Plato admitted that "madness sent by god is better the moderation of men." Such was clearly the conviction of the followers of Dionysus.

Bacchic experience also caused a break with the customs and conventions of ordinary life and a return to the freedom of nature. The devotees of Dionysus deserted their homes temporarily, wandered free on the mountains, and indulged in certain wild, primitive, half-animal passions. Euripides gave a picture of the matrons of Thebes leaving their homes, their work, their babies even, to wander and revel in the mountains. They dressed themselves in fawnskins and wound snakes around their bodies.

Some cradling fawns or wolf cubs in their arms
Gave to the wild things of their own white milk
Young mothers they, who had left their babies.

With this return to the life of nature there was mingled a recrudescence of certain very primitive impulses. There was a lust for hot blood and a certain ferocious cruelty in the tearing to pieces of hapless victims.

The Bacchic revel also caused the joy and abandon of self-forgetfulness. The Bacchanals were no longer themselves, and this very fact brought a sense of freedom from former limitations and restraints. To what ridiculous extremes this self-abandon might be carried Euripides gave illustration when he represented aged Cadmus and blind Teiresias clad in fawnskins and gamboling off to join the. Bacchic revel. The ancient founder of Thebes gleefully affirms:

I shall not weary, nor by night nor day
Smiting on earth the Thyrsus. We forget
In joy our age.

Again, in a beautiful strophe by the chorus, Euripides glimpsed in more serious and appreciative fashion the sense of freedom which characterized the Bacchanal's experience. The simile he used was appropriately that of the faun escaping nets and huntsmen:

Till sheltering arms of trees around her close
The twilight of the tresses of the woods;-
O happy ransomed one, safe hid from foes
Where no man tracks the forest solitudes!

Altogether, therefore, the new Bacchic life was one of joyful self-abandon, of freedom from the complexities and restraints of civilization, of return to the direct simplicities of nature.

More than all this it was a life of miraculous power; for by the very fact of divine possession the Bacchanal believed himself to have acquired the power of the god. Hence, he could heal diseases, control the forces of nature, and even prophesy. Plato reflected the popular conviction that the Bacchae could work miracles in his famous comparison of the lyric poets to the maenads. He said:

Lyric poets are not in their right minds when they are composing their beautiful strains; but when failing under the power of music and meter they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind.

The Bacchae of Euripides literally teems with miracles. There

flows with milk the plain,
and flows with wine,
Flows with the wild bees' nectar dews divine.

The credulous herdsman of Pentheus tells of particular wonders wrought by the maenads:

One grasped her thyrsus staff, and smote the rock,
And forth upleapt a fountain's showry spray:
One in earth's bosom planted her reed-wand,
And up there through the god a wine-fount sent:
And whoso fain would drink white-foaming draughts
Scarred with their finger tips the breast of earth,
And milk gushed forth unstinted: dripped the while
Sweet streams of honey from their ivy staves.

In the battle between the Theban folk and the Bacchae, later narrated, this strange portent occurred: the javelins of the townspeople drew no blood while the wands of the maenads caused wound after wound. The same drama of Euripides also tells of the prophetic power of one who was possessed by Dionysus. Again it is Teiresias, himself a professional prophet, who thus testifies of Bacchus:

A prophet is this god, the Bacchic frenzy
And ecstasy are full fraught with prophecy:
For, in his fullness when he floods our frame
He makes his maddened votaries tell the future.

The life of the Bacchant was, therefore, a dynamic life in which the peculiar power of the deity operated to perform wonderful deeds through men.

Most important of all, the new Bacchic life in its emotional and dynamic aspects was viewed as but the foretaste of a happy existence in the future. The Thracians, among whom the Dionysian cult originated, seem to have early attained the belief in a blessed future life with the gods. In speaking of the Getae, a tribe of the Thracians, Herodotus affirmed, "They were the most valiant and most just of the Thracians," and then he added in explanation of these characteristics that "they believe themselves immortal; they think that they do not die, but that the dead go to join their god Zalmoxis." Pomponious Mela, a Latin geographer of the early imperial period, repeated a similar testimony concerning the Getae, only more in detail. There is considerable probability that this Zalmoxis was an indigenous Getan divinity, and was related to Sabazius, the Thracian prototype of the Greek Dionysus. Whatever may have been the relationship, it is clear that Dionysus functioned in Hellenistic cults as god of the underworld, and his devotees had the same expectation in relation to him that the ancient Getae had concerning Zalmoxis.

Being a yearly divinity Dionysus was a natural candidate for this function. His experience in nature was characterized by a constant dying and rising again. Yet it was only by proxy that Dionysus passed through these experiences; just as he was immolated by proxy in the rending of the sacred victim. The real Dionysus was the permanent spirit back of the phenomena of nature which caused the recurrent revival of life. He was a god, and immortality was one of the distinguishing characteristics of godhead. Immortality and divinity were all but interchangeable terms in primitive Greek thought.

Thus when the Bacchanals by the sacraments of eating and drinking entered into direct communion with their god, they became partakers of his immortality. In assimulating the raw flesh wherein the god was temporarily incarnate and in drinking the juice of the grape, they received into their bodies an undying substance. In life mystically united with their god, in death they could not be divided, and when the time came for them to go to the invisible world, they were sure of sharing the blessed life of their god. So the unusual emotional experiences fostered by the Dionysian rites, the intoxication of wine or of the dance, the frenzy of the orgy, the divine gift of foresight or miracle-working power--these were more than merely proofs of divine possession. They were a definite foretaste and assurance of a blessed future life. In the crude physical emotionalism of Bacchic ecstasy, therefore, the devotees of the wine-god found a new birth experience which guaranteed them a happy immortality.

IV

The question of the influence of the Dionysus type of experience in the Graeco-Roman world remains to be discussed. As early as the seventh century before the Christian era the state religions of the serene and placid Olympians were failing to satisfy the religious needs of great masses of the common people in Greece. In their dissatisfaction they turned to the more intimate gods of the earth who had to do with the common things of life: to Demeter, the goddess of grain, and to Dionysus, the god of the vine. These were divinities who suffered with men in their toil and who gave them joy at harvest time. The cult of Dionysus coming from the northland spread in a great wave of religious enthusiasm over Greece proper, over the island states of the Aegean, and across to the mainland of Asia Minor. At first it met with violent opposition, as the legends of Lycurgus and Pentheus prove. In those early days rarely was the god graciously received as he was, for example, by Icarus in Attica. In spite of opposition, however, the contagious enthusiasm of the wine-god spread with unusual rapidity throughout Greece. In order to restrain Bacchic excesses the city-states of Greece had no other alternative than to adopt the Cult, bring it under state patronage, and by official regulation temper its enthusiasm somewhat. At Delphi Dionysus was associated with Apollo, and there the sacred maidens went mad in the service of the two gods. In Athens he entered into civic partnership with Athena and yearly wedded the Basilinna. At Eleusis he was brought into relation with Demeter and led the march of the candidates along the Sacred Way from Athens. In Teos and Naxos he even became the paramount state deity, the "god of the city" and "protector of the most holy state."

It was as a private cult, rather than as a state religion, however, that the worship of Dionysus made its deepest impression on both Hellenic and Hellenistic life. In the private brotherhoods, the natural emotions aroused by the cult practices were allowed free play and the guaranties offered to initiates were of a very realistic order; hence the appeal of the cult was strong, particularly to the masses and to women generally. At the beginning of Aristophanes' comedy, Lysistrate, impatient with waiting, complains that if the women had been invited to the shrine of Bacchus "there would be no getting along for the crowd of timbrels." Indeed, the prominence of women in the worship of Dionysus is one of the most striking features of the cult.

Such a religion as this, which overflowed the political boundaries of states and appealed not to local interests but to certain elemental human desires and emotions, had a great opportunity in the Helenistic period. With the conquests of Alexander the eastern Mediterranean world was thrown open to Dionysian influence. It is difficult, however, to trace the independent existence and influence of Bacchic mysteries for the simple reason that they fused so readily with similar cults all over the Mediterranean area. The religion of Dionysus lived on in altered form in Orphism. In Asia Minor it merged with the cults of Attis and Sabazius. Plutarch noted the affinity between the rites and legends of Adonis and their Dionysian counterparts, while Tibullus, in one of his elegies, clearly recorded the identification of Dionysus and Osiris.

Notwithstanding this widespread syncretism, the literature of the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman periods is full of references which show the strength and extent of peculiarly Dionysian influences. At the very beginning of the Hellenistic period stands the classical instance of the estrangement of Philip of Macedon and his queen Olympias. Plutarch was of the opinion that Bacchic orgies had much to do with this unfortunate situation. He said that Olympias was more zealous than all the rest of the women of that country in her devotion to Dionysian orgies and

"carried out these rites of possession and ecstasy in very barbarous fashion. She introduced huge tame serpents into the Bacchic assemblies, and these kept creeping out of the ivy and mystic likna and twining themselves around the thyrsi of the women and their garlands and frightening the men out of their senses."

Philip was jealous and suspicious of his queen's exclusive devotion to the Dionysus cult. In Italy, at the beginning of the second century B.C., Dionysus worship spread with such rapidity and created such a disturbance in society that the Senate, as a result of reported excesses, took strenuous measures for the suppression of the cult. The affair ended with the promulgation of rigid regulations governing the conditions under which meetings of the brotherhood might be held. The Sicilian Diodorus, writing in the Augustan age, said, "In many of the Hellenic states every other year, Bacchic bands of women collect, and it is lawful for maidens to carry the thyrsus and join in the enthusiasm; while the women forming in groups, offer sacrifices to the god, and revel, celebrating with hymns the presence of Dionysus." Plutarch, in his writing, made many references to Dionysian practices and told strange tales concerning the Bacchantes of Delphi especially. Once when the thyiades on Parnassus were overtaken by a violent snowstorm, the good people of Delphi went out to rescue them, and their coats actually crumbled to pieces they were frozen so hard. Again, during a sacred war between Phocis and Delphi, the thyiades lost their way and came to Amphissa without realizing where they were. Here they threw themselves down in the agora and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. The women of the city guarded them so long as they were asleep, refreshed them when they awakened, and set them on their homeward way in safety. These tales are recalled in order to show the reverence with which the devotees of Dionysus were held in the first Christian century. Pliny told of the popularity of the Dionysian cult in Thrace even in his day, while Pausanias referred to the worship of the god in many widely scattered localities. Even in the later days of paganism, Firmicuss Maternus said that the Cretans still practiced their orgiastic rites in honor of Dionysus.

These are but samples of an array of evidence which might be assembled to prove the widespread influence of the Bacchic type of experience with all of its excessive emotionalism in the first-century Graeco-Roman world. People in general were thoroughly familiar with it, as contemporary literature fully proves. Accordingly, in reckoning up the satisfactions offered by pagan religions to the seekers for salvation in the day of Jesus and Paul, the emotional rebirth experience in the Dionysian cult be counted as significant.

PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER II

THE GREATER MYSTERIES AT ELEUSIS

AMONG the cults of Greece none was more favorably known in the first century of the Christian era than the Eleusinian mysteries. Although it was more definitely localized and centralized than were the other Greek mysteries, this circumstance did not detract from either its reputation or its influence. Locally it was associated with an antique tradition that ran back to prehistoric times, and such antiquity was a valued credential for any first-century religion. The home of this cult was the town of Eleusis on the fertile Rharian plain a few miles from Athens, where in prehistoric times the cereal goddess Demeter was revered by an agricultural community. Legends of the special initiation of foreigners like Heracles and the Dioscuri recall the primitive time when membership in the cult was open to citizens of Eleusis only. With the political fusion of Eleusis and Athens, however, the local barriers were broken down and rebuilt along much extended lines. The dominant city-state of Athens adopted the cult as her own, brought it under state supervision, and entrusted the general management of the mysteries to the Archon Basileus. Inscriptions of the Periclean period attest the well-considered plan of Athens to use the mysteries as a religious support for her political hegemony. This combination of ancient Eleusinian tradition and the official patronage of the Athenian state gave dignity and prestige to the mysteries of Demeter even in the first century.

But this cult was more than merely a state religion of the usual Greek model. In the first century its appeal and its guaranties were for the individual rather than for the citizen. On the one hand not all Athenians, by any means, were members of the cult. The citizen of Athens did not automatically come under the protection of Demeter by natural birth as he found himself under the aegis of Athena. It was by special initiation alone, conceived and represented as a process of rebirth, that he could avail himself of the cult privileges. No less an Athenian than Socrates was reproached for not seeking initiation into these mysteries. The state cult of Demeter operated as a voluntary religious association in which Athenian citizens were eligible for membership; but their adherence was a matter of their own volition.

Conversely, eligibility for admission was not limited to Athenians only. When, as a result of the absorption of Eleusis by Athens, the mysteries lost their local exclusiveness, they further took on a pan-Hellenic character. The so-called Homeric Hymn to Demeter, one of the earliest and most valuable of Eleusinian documents, invites the whole Greek world to come and participate in the mysteries. Herodotus states that in his day whoever wished to do so, whether they were Athenians or other Greeks, might come to be initiated. Later, even the Hellenic limitation was removed and persons of any nationality were received, providing they understood the Greek language in which the ritual was conducted. In the time of Cicero, just before the beginning of our era, "the most distant nations were initiated into the sacred and august Eleusinia."

It is interesting to note further that women and slaves, even, were admitted to this cult. The author of the oration In Neaeram, which was once attributed to Demosthenes, states that Lysias, without any difficulty, was able to arrange for the initiation of his mistress Metanira. That slaves were admitted is suggested by a fragment from the comic poet Theophilus in which a slave speaks with gratitude of his beloved master who taught him his letters and got him initiated into the sacred mysteries. An inscription dated in the administration of Lycurgus (329-328 B.C.) further puts the question of the admission of slaves beyond doubt. It is an expense account of an Eleusinian official, and among the items included is the following: "For the initiation of two public slaves; thirty drachmae." The mysteries of Demeter, therefore, once a local cult and later a state religion, came in the end to assume an international character and to make an individualistic appeal. In its developed form, the cult received into membership not only Greeks but also "barbarians," and women and slaves as well as free men.

I

It is indubitable that the influence of the Eleusinian mysteries was widespread in the Graeco-Roman world. Though localized at Eleusis this cult influenced rites that were celebrated elsewhere in widely scattered centers. In Ionia, at Eleusis this cult influenced rites that were celebrated elsewhere in widely scattered centers. In Ionia, at Ephesus and Mycale, and again in the Arcadian city of Pheneus, Demeter Eleusinia was worshipped and her cult was related in local legend to the Attic foundation. Pausanias vouches for the statement that Celeae near Philius, and Megalopolis in Arcadia each had an "initiation mystery of Demeter" in which the proceedings were conducted "in imitation of those at Eleusis." According to a late inscription (third century A.D.), a mystery of Demeter flourished at Lerna in Argolis, and the hierophant in charge was the son of an Athenian priest. There are further records that Demeter Eleusinia was worshiped in Boeotia and Laconia on the Greek mainland, and in Crete and Thera among the Greek islands. At Naples, in Italy, mysteries in honor of Demeter were celebrated after the Attic manner. It is even possible that the Andanian mysteries in Messenia, which Pausanias regarded as second in dignity and prestige to the Eleusinian alone, were also related to the Attic cult. In each of these instances two possibilities are to be considered. Either the similar rites had their origin in the Eleusinian ceremonies or else both came from a common parentage. In either case it is patent that there was widespread interest in Demeter cults in the Graeco-Roman world.

Quite apart from the question of related Demeter cults, however, there is an abundance of testimonia to prove the world-wide reputation of the Eleusinian rites themselves at the beginning of the common era. Crinagoras, the Greek epigrammatist of Mytilene, writing in the time of Augustus, advised his friend by all means to go to Athens and see the mysteries, even though he traveled nowhere else. If we may credit Philostratus, his hero Apollonius of Tyana, certainly one of the most famous and respected religionists of his day, applied in person for admission to the Eleusinian mysteries. "But the hierophant was not disposed to admit him to the rites, for he said he would never initiate a wizard and charlatan, nor open the Eleusinian Mysteries to a man who dabbled in impure rites."

During the early imperial period some very famous non-Greeks showed their deep interest in the mysteries at Eleusis, among them the Emperor Augustus himself. Though normally not attracted by foreign religions, he was initiated at Eleusis in 21 B.C. Later, according to Suetonius, he gave signal proof of his reverence for the mysteries.

"He was hearing a case at Rome which involved the privileges of the priests of the Attic Ceres. When some of the mysteries of their sacred rites were to be introduced into the pleadings, he dismissed those who sat upon the bench with him as judges, as well as the bystanders, and heard the arguments upon these points himself."

Seutonius also tells us that when Nero was in Greece, "he dared not attend the Eleusinian Mysteries at the initiation of which impious and wicked persons are warned by the voice of the herald from approaching the rites." However, there were other emperors who like Augustus attained the goal which Nero failed to gain. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus were two of these illustrious mystae. The epitaph of an Eleusinian priestess mentions it as a matter of special pride that she set the crown upon their heads as they participated in the solemn rites. The fact that the first citizens of the Roman Empire sought membership in the Eleusinian cult is striking proof of its great influence.

Other significant testimony is given by the philosophers and moralists of this period. At the close of the pre-Christian era, Cicero declared it was his personal opinion that Athens had given nothing to the world more excellent or divine than the Eleusinian mysteries. At the beginning of the Christian centuries, the Stoic Epictetus spoke of the impressiveness of these mysteries in terms of genuine appreciation. Thus, at the beginning of our era, when Olympian Zeus had lost his ancient supremacy and Delphian Apollo, though reviving, was yet reduced in influence, Demeter of Eleusis still enjoyed a high reputation. The influence of her mysteries was literally world-wide during the early imperial period.

II

In order to understand the type of religious experience represented by this important cult, it is necessary clearly to keep in mind the main points of the Eleusinian myth which was developed to explain and justify the cult rites. These are stated with sufficient elaboration in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, although this document does not give the myth in its fully developed form. According to the story, Persephone, daughter of Demeter, "giver of goodly crops," was stolen by Pluto and carried off to the underworld to be his bride. This was done with the knowledge and tacit approval of Zeus himself. The mother, frenzied with grief, rushed about the earth for nine days, torch in hand, abstaining from eating and drinking, and searching wildly for her lost daughter. As she rested at the "maiden well of fragrant Eleusis" she was welcomed by the daughters of Celeus, who took her to their father's house for refreshment. Here she finally broke her fast and dwelt for a time. ln her resentment against Zeus, she brought famine upon the fruitful earth so that no crops grew for men and no offerings were made to the gods. Finally, an arrangement was made with Pluto whereby Persephone was restored to her sorrowing mother. Since, however, the daughter had eaten a sweet pomegranate seed in the underworld she was forced to return there regularly for a portion of each year. Demeter, in her joy at the restoration of her lost daughter, allowed the crops to grow once more and instituted in honor of the event the Eleusinian mysteries which gave to mortals the assurance of a happy future life. Such was the myth which stood in the background of thought for one who participated in the Eleusinian rites.

The experiential basis for this story is quite clear. It was a nature myth, a vivid depiction of the action of life in the vegetable world with the changing of the seasons. Each year nature passed through the cycle of apparent death and resurrection. In winter vegetable life was dead while Demeter, the giver of life, grieved for the loss of her daughter. But with the coming of spring the life of nature revived again, for the sorrowing mother had received her daughter back with rejoicing. Through the summer the mother abundantly maintained the life of nature until autumn, when again her daughter returned to the underworld and earth became desolate once more. Thus year after year nature re-enacted the myth of Eleusis.

It was also a reflection of poignant human experiences, mirroring the joys, sorrows, and hopes of mankind in face of inevitable death. The three actors of the Eleusinian tragedy, the mater dolorosa as the protagonist, the maiden daughter is the deuteragonist, and the sinister figure of the ravisher as the mysterious third actor, these three enacted the mystery of human life and death. The god of death himself stole the beloved daughter away from the life-giver; but the divine mother would not give up her loved one, and in the end she accomplished her daughter's resurrection. Here was human experience made heroic and divine; for man has ever loved and lost, but rarely has he ceased to hope for reunion with the loved one. The Eleusinian myth told of these fundamental human experiences as well as of the life of nature.

III

With this mythological background in mind the Eleusinian ritual should be examined, at least in its more important features, in order to define the variety of religious experience fostered by this cult. It was an elaborate ceremonial, extending over a long period of time. The classical analysis of the Eleusinian rite divided it into four distinct stages: the katharsis, or preliminary purification, the sustasis, or preparatory rites and sacrifices, the telete, i.e., the initiation proper, and the epopteia, or highest grade of initiation. Of these various stages the first two were public, and concerning them there is a large amount of information. But the last two were very strictly private and therefore they remain for us shrouded in mystery. Unfortunately, it is these very private ceremonials that are most important for the student who is interested in the personal religious experiences of paganism. The elaborate preliminary ceremonies do not concern us in detail except as a preparation for the all-important rites which followed.

More than six months before the "great mysteries" in September the "lesser mysteries" were celebrated at Agrae, a suburb of Athens, on the banks of the Illisus. Clement of Alexandria spoke of "the minor mysteries which have some foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to come after." This statement emphasizes what for our purpose was the most significant feature of the mysteries at Agrae--they were important as a prerequisite for the "great mysteries."

On the thirteenth of September the "great mysteries" began and they lasted over a full week. Early in the festival there was a solemn assembly in the Stoa Poicile, the main item of which was a proclamation by the hierophant. This was not a sermon but rather a warning to depart, addressed to those who for one reason or another were disqualified or unworthy of initiation. As to the content of the formal warning, Libanius states that the "leaders of the mystae" proclaimed to those seeking initiation that they must be "pure in hand and soul and of Hellenic speech." These terms are confirmed in part by a mathematician of the imperial period who compared his studies to the mysteries. "Not all who wish," he said, "have a share in the Mysteries. But there are some who are forewarned to abstain; such as those whose hands are not clean and whose speech is unintelligible." Celsus, as reported by Origen, gives two formulas of invitation, one altogether similar to those already cited and the other of a somewhat different character. He is quoted as follows:

"Those who invite people to other mysteries make proclamation thus: 'Everyone who has clean hands and intelligible speech,' others again thus: 'He who is pure from all pollution, and whose soul is conscious of no evil and who has lived well and justly.' Such is the proclamation made by those who promise purification from sins."

These quotations from late pagan writers indicate that the Athenian proclamation included not only ritualistic requirements but elements of moral scrutiny as well. One may say that over the Eleusinian shrine as over the doorway of the Rhodian temple were inscribed the words "[Those can rightfully enter] who are pure and healthy in hand and heart and who have no evil conscience in themselves."

On the day following the assembly came the cry, "To the sea, O Mystae!" and the candidates for initiation ran down to the sea, there to purify themselves in its salt waves--a lustration believed to be of greater virtue than that of fresh water. "Sea waves wash away ill sin," said Euripides. The potent effect of the cleansing by salt water was further enhanced by sprinkling with pig's blood. Each of the mystae carried with him a sucking pig which he purified by immersion in the waters of the sea. Later the pig was sacrificed and its blood sprinkled on the candidate. Tertullian, in speaking of this rite, declared, "At the Eleusinian mysteries men are baptized and they assume that the effect of this is their regeneration and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries." This striking affirmation by a Christian writer shows that the initiates themselves applied the new birth comparison to their own experiences in Eleusinian baptism. The rite was believed to be more than cathartic, merely. Regenerative powers were credited to it which operated to make the initiate in some sense a new being. It was with this rite particularly that the Eleusinian devotees associated the idea of personal transformation.

After the preliminary rites at Athens, the purified candidates formed in solemn procession on the nineteenth of September and marched to Eleusis, there to complete the celebration of the festival. Along the Sacred Way leading from Athens there were many holy places, and since the mystae performed ritualistic observances en route the company arrived at Eleusis by torchlight late in the evening. The long march was followed by a midnight revel under the stars, a ceremony that Aristophanes described in glowing terms. This was held on the Rharian plain, and it is not improbable that it partook of the nature of a mimetic ritual. Near the great propylaea of the sacred precinct was the Well of Callichoros, where the first choral dances were organized by the women of Eleusis in honor of Demeter. Close at hand was the Unsmiling Rock, where the desolate mother sat when she first came to Eleusis. Not far away were the meadows which had seen her torchlit wanderings. It would not be strange if the mystae beginning their choral dances at the Well of Callichoros, continuing their revel by torchlight in the meadows, or resting at the Unsmiling Rock--it would not be strange if they felt that they were really sharing in the antique experiences of their goddess. Certainly in their wearied state, weakened by fasting, they would be peculiarly susceptible to such mystical emotions.

Thus the mystae were prepared for the climactic feature of the celebration which took place in the telesterion, or Hall of Initiation. This sacred place was closed to all save the initiated, and the events which occurred there were strictly private and shrouded in the densest mystery. The initiates were under pledge of secrecy not to divulge the revelation there given. Apparently, Public opinion enforced this pledge in a very remarkable manner. Once when Aeschylus was acting in one of his own tragedies the audience became suspicious that he was betraying certain secrets of the Eleusinian mysteries. They arose in real fury and attacked the author-actor, who saved his life only by fleeing to the altar of Dionysus, a refuge that the Athenian mob respected. Later, however, Aeschylus was brought to trial before the Areopagus for revealing forbidden secrets and was acquitted quite as much because of his bravery at Marathon as because of his plea of ignorance. Alcibiades, on the eve of his departure for the Sicilian expedition, was charged with "impious mockery of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone" because he had "profanely acted the sacred mysteries at a drunken meeting." Even such a garrulous historian as Herodotus, though he was "accurately acquainted with the sacred rites of Demeter" yet felt that he "must observe a discreet silence" concerning them. The secret of Eleusis was guarded all too well and as a result we know almost nil concerning the central rites of the mysteries of Demeter.

One of the incidents just mentioned, however, makes it clear that the heart of the Eleusinian ritual was in the nature of a religious drama. The accusation against Alcibiades very definitely specified actors in a mock pageant which he staged at his drunken revel. "Theodorus represented the herald, Polytion the torch-bearer, and Alcibiades the chief priest, while the rest of the party appeared is candidates for initiation and received the title of initiates." This describes the situation in the telesterion at Eleusis on the night of initiation; the priests took the part of actors in a religious drama or pageant of which the initiates were the spectators. The archaeological remains of the Hall of Initiation at Eleusis bear out this theory. It was a great square hall around the four sides of which ran stone seats eight steps high, one above the other. Here the initiates sat and watched the spectacle staged in their midst.

Of what did the dramatic action in the telesterion consist? Only hints are given; yet these are sufficient to suggest what was probably the subject matter of the mystery play. Clement of Alexandria tells us that "Deo [Demeter] and Kore became [the personages of] a mystic drama, and Eleusis with its dadouchos celebrates the wandering, the abduction, and the sorrow." Apparently the drama of the telesterion was a sort of passion play, the subject matter of which was essentially the same as that of the Homeric Hymn. It concerned the loss of the daughter, the sorrow of the mother, and the final return of the loved one from Hades. This view is further confirmed by the words which Apuleius puts into the mouth of Psyche when she appeals to Demeter "by the unspoken secrets of the mystic chests, the winged chariots of thy dragon ministers, the bridal descent of Proserpine, the torchlit wanderings to find thy daughter, and all the other mysteries which Attic Eleusis shrouds in secret." From these two references it is evident that the important parts of the great myth of Demeter were enacted as a drama before the eyes of the mystae gathered in the telesterion.

Various writers, pagan is well as Christian, furnish additional evidence on this point and emphasize certain crises in the unfolding plot of the passion drama. Apollodorus, an Athenian historian and mythographer of the second century B.C., is quoted as saying, "The hierophant is in the habit of sounding the so-called gong when Kore calls for aid." Undoubtedly this statement has reference to the Eleusinian ritual, as the mention of the hierophant proves. One can easily understand that the cry of Persephone marked a high point of interest in the course of the Eleusinian drama, and that it was accentuated by the sounding of a gong. The effect of this on the devotees can easily be imagined. It was an unexpected sound coming suddenly in the midst of a solemn ceremonial. It focused attention entirely and sharply on the immediate action. In emotional effect, it was probably not unlike the sounding of the gong during the celebration of mass. By this simple expedient, the abduction of Persephone was made a memorable part of the passion play of Eleusis.

The statement already quoted from the Alexandrian Clement concerning the actors in the Eleusinian drama makes specific reference to the grief of Demeter as constituting a part of the action. This reference is further confirmed by a quotation from a late pagan author, Proclus, who asserts, "The ceremonies of the mysteries in their secret part, transmit certain sacred lamentations of Kore, of Demeter, of the Great Goddess herself." Thus again it becomes clear that the Eleusinian passion play was not merely a pantomime, reproducing the actions and gestures of the divine personages, but that it included vocal expression as well. By recitative or chant the actors who impersonated the goddesses gave expression to the emotions of the moment. The text suggests that these chants were traditional and were characterized by the fixity of form usual in ritual. Such being the case, the sorrow of Demeter which formed a distinct episode in the Eleusinian drama was further made impressive by traditional liturgical expression.

An important but very vague reference to the secret part of the Eleusinian mysteries is found in the Panegyric oration of Isocrates. "In her wanderings after the abduction of Persephone, Demeter came into our land. She wished to give testimony of her benevolence to our ancestors in recompense for the good offices of which initiates alone are permitted to hear." What were these services with which only initiates into the Eleusinian mysteries were familiar and of which they could speak only among themselves? Obviously it could not be the welcome given to Demeter by the household of Celeus. That was known to the wide world through the Homeric Hymn. A Latin poet of the first century furnishes a possible explanation of this veiled reference in Isocrates. Addressing the goddess herself, Statius says:

"Tuque, Actaea Ceres, cursu cui semper anelo Votivam taciti quassamus lampada mystae."

Here the Latin poet speaks as an initiate himself. He is contemplating a ceremony which is not a mere spectacle but a religious rite, shared in by the devotees. In solemn silence, torch in hand, they accompanied Demeter in her breathless wanderings. Just as the priestess personified the goddess, they temporarily represented the legendary inhabitants of Eleusis who not only welcomed the goddess but also assisted her in her search. These were probably the services of which Isocrates hinted with such reserve. In the wanderings of Demeter, then, the initiates actually participated by mimetic action. They did the very things which would enable them best to share emotionally in the profound experiences of their goddess.

A quotation from a fourth-century Christian writer, Lactantius, adds confirmatory evidence here and further suggests what was probably the closing scene of the Eleusinian drama. Referring specifically to the mysteries of Demeter, Lactantius says, "With burning torches Proserpina is sought, and when she is found, the rite is closed with general thanksgiving and a waving of torches." The search was not in vain. The lost daughter was found and restored; and the initiates who had shared in the anxious wanderings of the mother now shared in her happiness at the recovery of her daughter. With joyous acclamation and the waving of torches the return of the lost daughter was hailed by the initiates. This scene of happiness, according to Lactantius, closed the drama of Eleusis.

Thus, notwithstanding the meagerness of information concerning the Eleusinian passion play, we can yet distinguish the main episodes of its action. The abduction of Persephone, the grief of her mother, the search for the lost daughter, and the reunion of the two goddesses--these were the principle scenes. The indecent actions suggested by a few Christian writers must be ruled out as vouched for only on the testimony of prejudiced and highly interested witnesses. On the other hand, the well-certified scenes, though so few in number, constitute the basis for a religious rite of impressive possibilities.

True, the actors in this passion play were few. But classical Greek tragedy at its best boasted of but three actors. And in the telesterion the protagonist was Demeter, the goddess of grain, and the deuteragonist was Persephone, the goddess of the underworld. Clad in gorgeous and traditional costumes the personages of the Eleusinian passion play must have been very impressive figures. Of scenic effect there was little or nothing. The architectural remains of the telesterion show no provision for anything like stage settings or machinery. There was not even a stage, and the properties were probably the simplest possible--torchlight and rich robes. Again the familiar effects of Greek drama may serve to account for this absence of properties. On the Greek stage all was simplicity and convention. Greek audiences, like the spectators of the Elizabethan drama, were trained to depend upon their imaginations to supply what was lacking in stage settings. So at Eleusis, the effectiveness of the passion play depended much upon the cultivated imaginations of the mystae. Moreover, by simple expedients the participation of the initiates in the action of the drama was brought about. They were not merely spectators of a pageant; they were participants in a ritual. The gong focused their attention upon the first great crisis of the drama, the abduction of the daughter. With torches they followed the mother in her frantic search and again with the waving of torches they expressed their joy at the return of her daughter. Thus, by participation in the dramatic action, as well as by active imagination, the mystae were enabled to share emotionally in the experiences of the great goddesses.

Does the plot centering around the abduction of Persephone and her restoration to her sorrowing mother mark the limits of the dramatic representation in the telesterion? Many students believe it does not. M. Foucart, for example, goes so far as to distinguish a second drama, enacted at Eleusis on the evening following the passion play just outlined. According to M. Foucart, the main features of this second mystery drama were a sacred marriage and the birth of a holy child.

The citations supporting this view are not numerous. A commentator on a passage in Plato's Gorgias says, "The Mysteries are celebrated in honor of Demeter and Kore, because the latter was abducted by Pluto and because Zeus was united with Demeter." This reference does suggest the possibility of two different Eleusinian dramas along the lines indicated. From the context, however, it is evident that the scholiast is drawing uncritically from Christian sources; hence the value of his testimony is not certain. Tertullian's question, "Why is the priestess of Ceres ravished, unless Ceres herself suffered the same sort of thing?" is a passage of doubtful reference and interpretation that can scarcely be cited in proof of a sacred marriage at Eleusis. It is most reasonable to think that Tertullian in speaking thus merely confused Demeter and Persephone. As a subsidiary bit of evidence from a pagan source, it should be noted that Lucian had his false-prophet Alexander introduce a sacred marriage into his mysteries, which were modeled in part after the Eleusinian rites. However, the clearest passage in support of the sacred marriage idea is found in the writings of Asterius, a fourth-century Christian bishop. With unpleasant insinuation, he speaks of "the underground chamber and the solemn meeting of the hierophant and the priestess, each with the other alone, when the torches are extinguished, and the vast crowd believes that its salvation depends on what goes on there."

If this passage may be taken as conclusive evidence of a sacred marriage in the Eleusinian telesterion, then it has a further significance that is noteworthy. It shows that the marriage was a representative act whereby the initiates entered into mystical communion with their deity. As such it would be a more or less realistic rite after the order of the marriage of the Basilinna at Athens with the god Dionysus, in which the city was united by proxy to the god. The point has this importance: if a sacred marriage was part of the Eleusinian ritual, then this rite assured the initiates of a more direct and immediate communion with the goddess than would otherwise be possible. Whether or not the testimony of Asterius is accepted, his insinuations deserve to be repudiated. There is no reason to assume that any part of the rites were indelicate or were regarded otherwise than with reverence by the initiates. We may be sure of this, that if there was a sacred marriage at Eleusis it was a solemn ceremonial, probably a liturgical fiction, and not an exhibition of licentiousness. Indeed, we have the positive statement of Hippolytus as to the scrupulous purity of the hierophant.

Closely connected with the question of a sacred marriage is that relative to a holy birth at Eleusis. Hippolytus, in the Naassenic sermon just cited, is almost the only authority for this episode. He says:

"The hierophant himself .... celebrating at Eleusis the great and ineffable mysteries beside a huge fire cries aloud and makes proclamation, saying: 'August Brimo has brought forth a holy son, Brimos,' that is, the strong has given birth to the strong. For august, he says, is the generation which is spiritual, or heavenly, or from above, and strong is that which is thus generated."

Such a holy birth as this would normally follow the marriage rite just discussed. What lends exceptional interest to the rite is the idea suggested unclearly in a brief word study that follows. Quoting from "those initiated into the mysteries," the name Eleusis is derived from eleusesthai (to come) "because we spiritual ones came on high." This suggests that the holy birth of the Eleusinian drama, a birth "spiritual, heavenly, and from above" was viewed as typifying the new birth of the initiate which translated him from the earthly, human sphere to the heavenly, spiritual realm. On this interpretation the rite came to be viewed as a dramatic enactment of a spiritual rebirth experienced individually by the initiates themselves.

The possibility of such a two-act drama as this at Eleusis must certainly be allowed. With lights extinguished, the initiates may have waited in breathless silence for the consummation of a sacred marriage, believing that it involved their own direct communion with the goddess. Again in a blaze of light they may have welcomed the announcement of a holy birth, believing that their own rebirth as spiritual beings was involved in the process. If so, the rites of Eleusis held out to the whole body of initiates the possibility of immediate communion with deity and complete personal transformation guaranteed by appropriate rites. The mystical communion fostered by the problematic second drama at Eleusis was even more intimate and realistic than that cultivated by the passion play.

Distinct from the dramatic part of the initiation ceremony at Eleusis was the exhibition of sacred objects. This part of the service was at least of equal importance with the passion play. The title of the hierophant was "he who displays the sacred things," and his exhibition of these objects was an act of the utmost solemnity. Only a part of them were, shown during the celebration at which the neophytes witnessed the mystic drama and attained the grade of mystae. Others were reserved for exhibition a year later at the epopteia, or final grade of initiation, when the mystae became epoptae. Thus the display of venerable objects marked the culmination of the "great mysteries" and, so far as we know, was the all-important feature of the final grade of initiation.

Just what the "sacred things" were is a question not clearly answered. It is but reasonable to suppose that they were the very objects which were solemnly escorted to Athens at the beginning of the festival and were later returned to Eleusis in the procession of the candidates on the nineteenth of September. In these processions they were treated with the highest honors and were carefully guarded from public view. Probably they included statues of the goddesses, images of great antiquity and sanctity. We know how the crude old wooden statues of the gods were venerated in other cults. Ordinarily their origin was a matter of marvel. At Athens, for example, the wooden image of Athena Polias, which was believed to have fallen from heaven during the reign of Cecrops, was inextricably bound up with the fortunes of the city. Tertullian speaks not only of a wooden statute of Athena but also of a like image of Demeter as well. Accordingly, we may infer that Eleusis had its wooden image of Demeter even as Athens had its xoanon of Athena Polias, and in all probability this was the most sacred of all the sacred objects at Eleusis. Quite certainly it was accompanied also by an image of Persephone. Within the sacred area at Eleusis, these statues were housed in the anactoron, or chapel, of Demeter which crowned the citadel. This was the holy of holies in the Eleusinian precinct and none but the hierophant might enter here. An Epicurean who had the hardihood to violate the shrine perished miserably as a result of his impiety. In this anactoron the sacred objects were carefully guarded from profanation until the time came for their exhibition.

The display of the hiera was contrived in a most impressive manner. When the door of the shrine was opened the hierophant, clad in his festival robes, came out into the full blaze of a bright light and revealed the sacred objects to the gaze of the initiates. It was an awesome spectacle. The hierophant in his priestly vestments was himself an impressive figure. Eleusinian inscriptions also suggest how effective was the lighting of this scene. One of them speaks of the "holy night, clearer than the light of the sun." Another one, a metrical inscription engraved on the base of the statue of a hierophant, exclaims: "O mystae, formerly you saw me coming from the shrine and appearing in the luminous nights." Being in an impressionable state of mind, the mystae must have felt themselves very near to divinity when objects so jealously guarded and of such sanctity were finally exposed to view. The emotional effect of the exhibition is well suggested by a passage from Plutarch. In discussing "Progress in Virtue," he used a figure of speech derived from the initiation ceremony of these mysteries. According to Plutarch, "He who once enters into philosophy and sees the great light, as when shrines are open to view, is silent and awestruck." This passage probably well describes the impression made by the spectacle at Eleusis on a company of initiates.

Of the epopteia attained a year after the telete, our knowledge is most scanty. Apparently it was in the nature of a further revelation of sacred tokens. But a single rite is known to us and this only on the authority of Hippolytus. With a fine show of sarcasm he speaks of "the Athenians initiating people at Eleusis and showing to the epoptae that great and marvellous mystery of perfect revelation, in solemn silence, a cut cornstock!" There are two points of emphasis in this passage: first, that the exhibition of a corn token formed a part of the Eleusinian mystery, and, second, that this exhibition was reserved for the epoptae. On these two points there can be little doubt. Indeed, considering the agricultural background of the Eleusinian festival, it is not only credible, but even probable that a corn token should be among the most sacred things of the Eleusinia. The solemnity of this final exhibition is emphasized by the phrase "in silence." In this case the display took place without a word of elucidation from the hierophant, whereas the year before the spectacle had been accompanied with an explanatory discourse throughout. As to the meaning of this silent exhibition, we are left entirely to conjecture. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the corn was regarded as the symbol of a birth and rebirth in man paralleling the vernal rebirth of nature. This, at least, is the explanation suggested by Farnell. To the gentile mind of the first century, however, it was not merely a matter of symbolism, but rather a conviction arising "in accordance with the naive and primitive belief in the unity of man's life with the vegetative world." In this final exhibition, therefore, the initiate would find a proof as well as an illustration of a personal rebirth like that of the grain in springtime. The emotional effect of this rite was probably not unlike that of the hieratic spectacle a year previous. But the conviction arising from it would be rather the assurance of individual rebirth to new life, instead of communion with deity.

The revelation in silence at the epopteia serves to throw into relief a third distinctive element of the Eleusinian mysteries, the discourse or verbal explanation which accompanied the ceremonial. A quaint rhetorical fragment preserved under the name of Sopatros suggests the importance of this discourse. It recounts the dream of a young man who saw the spectacle of the mysteries. Because he did not hear the words of the hierophant, however, he could not consider himself initiated. Without the priestly discourse, then, the initiation was incomplete.

It is difficult to determine precisely what the content of the discourse was. The references at hand concerning these utterances, however, make it clear that it was not,in isolated speech but rather a running commentary which served to expIain to the mystae the meaning of the tableaux and the significance of the sacred objects. In all probability the formulas used were liturgical in character, though some freedom of utterance may have been allowed the hierophant. In the course of the explanation, he probably descanted on the blessings assured by the initiation ceremonies, and he may have included moral exhortation as well. About all that can be said, therefore, concerning the sacred discourse is that it was an oral interpretation of the Eleusinian ceremonial intended to give to tableau and drama and exhibition their full meaning.

Having canvassed the drama, the spectacle, and the discourse, have we exhausted the significant elements in the Eleusinian ceremonial? Clement of Alexandria has preserved a formula that suggests the possibility of a different type of ritualistic observance. His statement is, "The password of the Eleusinian Mysteries is as follows: 'I have fasted, I have drunk the barley drink, I have taken things from the sacred chest, having tasted thereof I have placed them into the basket and again from the basket into the chest.'" There is no reason for doubting the genuineness of this password. The meaning of the first two elements in the process is fairly clear. The fasting of the mystae corresponded to that of the sorrowing goddess Demeter who "sat smileless, nor tasted meat nor drink, wasting with long desire for her deep-bosomed daughter." Likewise the drinking of the barley drink corresponded to the breaking of her fast; for the goddess had refused a cup of sweet wine, "but she had them mix meal and water with the tender herb of mint, and give it to her to drink." This mixed potion the goddess accepted. Accordingly, in drinking a similar potation the mystae shared the cup from which the great goddess drank in her sorrow. It was a direct and sympathetic participation in the experiences of the goddess, an action expressive of attained fellowship with the deity.

Just what the eating of food from the chest meant to the participant is less obvious. Like the drinking of the barley drink, it was probably a sacrament of communion, and it may have implied an even more realistic communion than was involved in the act of drinking. If, as is most likely, the sacred food consisted of cereals, then the assimilation of this food meant a direct and realistic union with Demeter, the goddess of grain. It meant an incorporation of divine substance into the human body. However the idea was arrived at, this rite clearly involved a mystical communion by the act of eating, even as the barley drink stood for mystical fellowship through the act of drinking. Already emotionally united with Demeter through participation in her passion, the initiates now became realistically one with her by the assimilation of food and drink.

IV

It is further important to note the effects, both imediate and ultimate, of this elaborate ceremonial upon the lives of the devotees. According to Aristotle, the mysteries did not teach rules of conduct but rather stimulated the emotions. "Aristotle is of the opinion," Synesitis affirms, "that the initiated learned nothing precisely, but that they received impressions and were put into a certain frame of mind. To use the Aristotelian formula, not mathein (to learn) but pathein (to suffer) was the reason for participation in the Eleusinian ritual; and in its immediate aspect this was exactly the effect of the celebration.

This stimulation of emotion is so frequently mentioned in Eleusinian sources that there is little danger of exaggeration at this point. Plutarch drew several striking comparisons illustrating the emotional effect of the rites of Eleusis. In his treatise on "Progress in Virtue" he compared the effect of initiation on a confused and jostling crowd of candidates to the influence of philosophy on a noisy and talkative group of students.

"Those who are initiated, come together at first with confusion and noise, and jostle one another, but when the mysteries are being performed and exhibited, they give their attention with awe and silence..... So also at the commencement of philosophy.... you will see round its doors such confusion and assurance and prating, some rudely and violently jostling their way to reputation; but he who once enters in assumes another air and is silent and awestruck, and in humility and decorum follows reason as if she were a god."

Plutarch used yet other striking similes to illustrate more specifically the emotional effect of participation in the mysteries. The joy of the initiated, he affirmed, was like that of the ostracized returning to their native land after banishment. Again he took advantage of the mingled trouble and apprehension, the peculiar hope and final joy of the initiated to describe the feelings of the soul at death. According to Plutarch:

When a man dies,he is like those who are being initiated into the mysteries. The one expression teleutan the other teleisthai correspond..... Our whole life is but a succession of wanderings, of painful courses, of long journeys by tortuous ways without outlet. At the moment of quitting it, fears, terrors, quiverings, mortal sweats, and a lethargic stupor, come over us and overwhelm us; but as soon as we are out of it pure spots and meadows receive us, with voices and dances and the solemnities of sacred words and holy sights. It is there that man, having become perfect and initiated--restored to liberty, really master of himself--celebrates crowned with myrtle the most august mysteries, and holds converse with just and pure souls.

With all this evidence it cannot be doubted that the extended ceremonial of the Eleusinia had a profound effect in stirring deeply the feelings of the mystae. They experienced the whole gamut of emotions from doubt and fear to hope and joy.

Furthermore, the Eleusinian rites were so ordered as to enable the worshiper to enact the legendarv experiences of his goddess, and feel as she had felt of old. There was, first of all, the careful mental and physical preparation, the purification of body, and the disposition of mind, which Epictetus stressed, without which, he said, the mysteries could bring no benefit. It was a long preparation beginning at Agrae six months before the initiation proper. At the opening of the greater mysteries the candidates prepared themselves for approach to divinity by fasting and lustrations. They marched in solemn procession along the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis, stopping at holy places redolent with memories of their goddess. After all these preliminaries, they were impressionable and psychologically prepared to share intensely in the emotional experiences of the Great Goddess. When in the passion play of the telesterion they witnessed the abduction of Persephone they were sensitive to the grief of the mother. They assisted her in her frenzied search for her lost daughter, and at the reunion of the goddesses they participated in the joy of the occasion. Like Demeter herself they broke their fast by drinking of the barley drink. As completely as possible the devotees of Demeter reproduced her experiences, shared her feelings, and thereby established a sense of mystical fellowship with their goddess. This was the great experience of their religion.

It was not, however, a mere matter of temporary emotional satisfaction to the initiates; for the rites of Eleusis gave positive assurance for the future as well. The mystical communion established by initiation was a lasting one. Sharing in the other experiences of the goddess, the mystae believed they would share also in her triumph over death. According to Farnell, it was their sense of present fellowship that led directly to this conviction concerning the future.

"These deities, the mother and the daughter and the dark god in the background, were the powers that governed the world beyond the grave: those who had won their friendship by initiation in this life would by the simple logic of faith regard themselves as certain to win blessing at their hands in the next. And this, as far as we can discern, was the ground on which flourished the Eleusinian hope."

Nothing is clearer than that the devotees of Demeter enjoyed the anticipation of a happy future life. It was not merely the vague promise of a future existence, it was the definite assurance of a blissful future that the mysteries of Eleusis offered to seekers for salvation. In classical antiquity this Eleusinian assurance was generally known and appreciated. The Homeric Hymn declared, "Happy is he among deathly men who has seen these things! But he who is uninitiated, and has no lot in them, will never have equal lot in death beneath the murky gloom." Pindar and Sophocles re-echoed the same thought. "Thrice happy they who go to the world below, having seen these mysteries; to them alone is life there, to all others is misery." Among the orators, Isocrates declared, "Those who share this initiation have sweet hopes for the end of life and for all future time." Plato also gave recognition to this conviction when he said that the mysteries taught enigmatically "that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will lie in a slough, but he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods." At the beginning of the Christian era, this was still the strong hope that the mysteries of Eleusis guaranteed. Cicero said of them, "In the mysteries we learn not only to live happily but to die with fairer hope." Thus, the mythical experiences of the Eleusinian goddesses in breaking the power of death became the basis for a definite assurance of a happy life beyond the grave. Precisely what the relationship was between the mythological experiences of the Great Goddess and the hopes of her devotees is, indeed, unclear, but that the relationship existed is certain and that the mysteries gave prized assurance of immortality is indubitable.

Not only did the experience of initiation result in a temporary emotional exaltation and a lasting guaranty of future bliss, but it eventuated also in a purification and elevation of the present life of men as well. It is true that the Eleusinian mysteries were criticized at exactly this point. Diogenes of Sinope, for example, sarcastically declared, "It will be an absurd thing if Aegesilaus and Epaminondas are to live in the mire and some miserable wretches who have been initiated are to be in the island of the blest." Undoubtedly there was reason enough for his criticism. Nevertheless, the general testimony of the ancients was on the other side of the case. Andocides, on trial for impiety before a jury of mystae, assumed that those who had been initiated would be more ready to punish the impious and save the righteous than others would be, and that sin was the more heinous in one who was consecrated to the service of the mother and daughter. At the close of one of his beautiful odes, Aristophanes had the happy initiated sing, "To us alone is there joyous light after death, who have been initiated and who lived in pious fashion as touching our duty to strangers and private people." Cicero stated as his conviction that in the mysteries we perceive the real principles of life. Even such a stern moralist as Epictetus encouraged reverence for the mysteries, recognized their benefits, and asserted that they were established by those of old for our education and the amendment of life." In face of such an imposing array of evidence, the modern student cannot avoid the conclusion that the Eleusinian mysteries did exert an elevating influence on the moral life.

Here again, the precise relationship between the Eleusinian ritual and its moral effect is exceedingly unclear. We do not know what was the basis for the Eleusinian ethic. There may have been no exhortation to the mystae to lead pure and good lives. Indeed, the immediate and conscious aim of the rites may not have been an ethical one at all. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the mysteries of Demeter did exercise a salutary influence in the matter of practical living. Not only a temporary stimulation of the emotions, not only a positive guaranty of future happiness, but also a lasting elevation of moral standards was a result of initiation into the mysteries at Eleusis.

V

For the devotees of Demeter initiation into her cult marked the beginning of a new kind of life more divine than they had known before. It was virtually for them the experience of a new birth. True, the exact word palingenesia does not occur on any of the Eleusinian monuments, but Tertullian attests that the mystae applied this very figure of speech to their initiation experiences and to baptism especially. Tertullian himself did not question the applicability of the term, though as a Christian he naturally insisted on the superior validity of the Christian rite and experience. He argued thus:

"If the mere nature of water, in that it is the appropriate material for washing away, leads men to flatter themselves with a belief in the omens of purification, how much more truly will waters render that service through the authority of God, by whom all their matter has been constituted."

In other words, Christian baptism according to Tertullian was a potent agency for spiritual regeneration, while Eleusinian baptism was not, though the Christian lawyer admitted that pagan religionists claimed regenerative power for their rite.

In the Eleusinian ritual itself there was much besides baptism to suggest and realistically induce a new birth experience. The mythical background of Eleusinian thought distinctly picturized the recurrent revival of life in nature with each successive year. It represented this fact of common experience in the mythological terms of a goddess who was carried off to Hades but later returned to the upper air. The lesser mysteries, celebrated at Agrae in the springtime, were probably especially suggestive of this renewal of life in nature. The ritual of purification and the long period of fasting preliminary to the great mysteries were intended to wash away the stains of the old life so that the purified candidates might approach the two goddesses prepared for personal renewal. If a ritual marriage formed a part of the mysteries, then the initiates realized a real unio mystica with the divine, in itself a completely transforming process. If the sacred marriage was followed by a holy birth, then the idea of anew life "spiritual, heavenly, and from above," was further accentuated. With the exhibition of sacred relics the initiates were brought very close to things divine, and the most sacred of these objects, the corn token, was itself a symbol of regeneration. Furthermore, in a realistic sacrament of eating and drinking, the neophytes assimilated food charged with such divine potency that it could transmute human nature into immortal essence. Thus, by realistic union as well as by sympathetic communion, the individual neophyte came to realize a new life by means of initiation.

The type of life which was thus induced by the Eleusinian ritual has been sufficiently characterized. From a purely descriptive standpoint the new birth experience of Eleusis was temporarily a matter of the feelings--the arousal of deep emotions by participation in an ancient and well-ordered ritual. But it resulted in more than a temporary satisfaction of the emotions merely. It eventuated in an amended moral life and the ultimate assurance of future happiness. These were the permanent effects of Eleusinian regeneration.