J. A. M'Clymont

FROM Athens to Eleusis is a journey of about twelve miles by a road which follows very much the line of the Sacred Way, along which the great procession went for the celebration of the Mysteries. The starting-point was close to the Dipylon Gate, of which there are still sufficient remains to enable us to understand its structure. It was the most strongly fortified point in the city wall, being the part most exposed to attack; and it was there that the city was taken by the Roman general Sulla, who had recourse to the erection of a mound in the neighbourhood. The gate was a double one, as its name implies, not merely in the sense of being a divided gate with a pillar in the centre, but as a combination of two separate gates with a walled court between them, so that an enemy who forced his way through the outer gate would find himself (as Philip V. of Macedonia once did) exposed to attack not only in front but also from the sides, and would be glad to make good his retreat from such an untenable position.

For miles from this point the Sacred Way was lined with tombs, especially in the immediate neighbourhood of the gate. A number of the ancient tombstones are still standing in their original place, but many have sunk out of sight, and not a few were used as materials for fortification after the Persian war, and again after the battle of ChÆronea. Indeed, some of them are still to be seen built into portions of the wall. It was outside the Dipylon that the bones of those who had died in battle were interred. One of the most sacred obligations of a Greek army after an engagement was to recover the bodies of its dead, and whenever a truce for this purpose was asked by the defeated side it could not be refused without a breach both of honour and of religion. At the interment it was customary for a funeral oration to be delivered in praise of those who had given their lives for their country. On one of these occasions, as Thucydides tells us, when Pericles was the speaker, he gave such a noble address that the women mourners in their gratitude and enthusiasm crowned him with wreaths, as if he had been a conqueror.[6] Funeral honours paid to the brave dead were not a mere expression of sentiment, for provision was at the same time made out of the public funds for the support of their children till they came of age.

The existing tombstones, as a rule, depict scenes illustrative of the life of the departed, or else they

The central block of the outer side of the gate is in the foreground; in front of it the marble base of a statue with a low bench, also in marble. In the distance is seen the Acropolis, with the PropylÆa at the right hand.

represent in a simple and impressive way the last farewell, by the mutual clasp of the hands, or by figuring the deceased as in the act of going on a journey. It was different, however, with the earthenware vases, called lecythi, which were placed within the tomb, for they had usually depicted on them a funeral scene of some kind, either borrowed from real life or having reference to the unseen world, Charon and his boat being frequently introduced in this connection. In some few cases the dead man is represented as partaking of a banquet, suggesting the idea that he still survived to claim the ministrations of his friends as a hero or demi-god. There was one form of large, two-handled vase in particular, generally of marble, which when deposited on a tomb indicated that the person interred there had died unmarried. As its name, loutrophoros, signifies, it was the jar used for carrying water from the spring Callirhoe for the bridal bath, and its presence on the tomb symbolised the belief that a marriage with Hades (Pluto) awaited those who had died in their virginity.

The ground, both inside and outside of the Dipylon Gate, was called Cerameicus (“Inner” and “Outer”), its name being derived from the fine red clay which for two or three thousand years has yielded material for one of the chief branches of industrial art in Athens. The Dipylon vase was well-known as early as the eighth or seventh century B.C. Its style of decoration was geometrical, with varieties of the “key pattern.” The men and horses depicted on it are conventional and angular; and from an artistic point of view it is inferior to the earlier style. Towards the end of the seventh century it gave way to the “Phalerum” vase, which was smaller and more delicate, with some oriental features, borrowed apparently from the woven fabrics of the east. In the sixth century Attic pottery underwent great improvements, both as regards the preparation of the clay and the decoration of its surface. It became famous all over the western world, and thousands of specimens have been found in the cemeteries of Etruria, as well as in the Cerameicus and elsewhere. Instead of the figuring being in black on the red ground, the terra-cotta began to be reserved for the figures, which were thus rendered much more attractive. Though so largely used for funeral purposes the fact that so many vases have been found on the Acropolis among the ruins left by the Persian invasion shows that that was not their only use—otherwise they would not have been suitable for dedication to the gods. Many of them seem to have been placed on the grave-mound, or near it, as useful and ornamental articles, which might supply the wants of the departed. The lecythi, which, as already mentioned, were specially intended for funeral purposes, were generally decorated with black silhouette figures on a fine white ground. Some of the vases placed on tombs had no bottom, so that when a libation was poured into them it sank into the grave.

From an early period there was a tendency to extravagance in connection with funerals. In Solon’s time it seems to have been excessive demonstrations of grief that needed to be restrained; but before long a law was passed that “no tomb should be built with more elaboration than could be effected by ten men in three days.” In the beginning of the fourth century Demetrius of Phalerum, who was then in power at Athens, forbade the erection of anything more than a mound of earth with a column not exceeding three cubits high, or a simple slab, or a water-vessel. We can judge of the extravagance which occasioned such regulations from the fact that Harpalus, to whose care Alexander the Great confided his treasures before invading India, had recently erected a tomb on the Eleusinian way in memory of his wife Pythionice, who was originally a slave, at an expense of more than £6000, which, Pausanias tells us, was the tomb best worth seeing in Greece. The same man built a still grander memorial to his wife at Babylon, at a cost of about £36,000. Even this was a trifle, however, compared with the two or three millions of pounds expended by Alexander himself on the funeral obsequies of his friend HephÆstion, shortly before his own death—which was brought on by the fierce intemperance in which he sought to drown his grief. A more precious tribute of affection was paid to the remains of the statesman Phocion by his widow. As the Athenians in a frenzy of excitement had found him guilty of treason, he could not be buried in his own country, and his body was therefore carried into the adjoining territory of Megara and burned there. His wife brought back the bones in her bosom by night, and laid them near her own hearth, with the prayer: “Beloved Hestia” (the Goddess of the Hearth), “I confide to thee these relics of a good man. Restore them to his own family vault, as soon as the Athenians shall come to their senses.” Before long the prayer was fulfilled, for the Athenians ordained a public funeral in honour of the condemned man, and erected a statue to his memory.

Besides the road westward to Eleusis, there were two other ways from the Dipylon Gate, the one leading in a north-westerly direction to the Academy, the other south-west to the PirÆus. On the latter road were the tombs of some famous men, including Socrates, Euripides, and Menander, but the way to the Academy was the favourite place for monuments in honour of those who had fallen in war or had otherwise distinguished themselves in the service of their country. Cicero, who, like so many of his countrymen, studied at Athens, speaks with admiration of these monuments; and we can imagine that a walk in the neighbourhood must have been as interesting and inspiring to an Athenian as a visit to Westminster or St. Paul’s is to a modern Briton. Many of the monuments were in honour of large bodies of men who had lost their lives in battle; but, as Pausanias tells, there were also to be seen the tombs of great statesmen like Solon, Cleisthenes, and Pericles; great warriors like Chabrias, Phormio, and Conon; great benefactors like Thrasybulus and Lycurgus; and great philosophers like Zeno and Plato.

The Academy was about three-quarters of a mile from the gate. No remains of the ancient buildings have been found, but there are still trees to remind us of—

Its name had originally no flavour of learning, being derived from an early owner, Academus, whose greatness was of a vague and mythical character. The place was of considerable extent. It was first enclosed by Hipparchus, the son of Peisistratus, and was afterwards planted and laid out by Cimon. It was famous for its great plane-trees, and Aristophanes speaks of “the plane-tree whispering to the elm.” But there were twelve ancient olive-trees which were still more highly prized. They were called Moriai, in allusion to some legend connected with them, and were believed to be offshoots from the sacred olive in the Acropolis. It was at one time a capital offence to injure these olive-trees in any way; and the oil derived from them was preserved in the Acropolis, and jars of it given to the victors in the Pan-Athenaic games. In the neighbourhood there was an altar of Prometheus—that much-enduring Titan, who suffered for his sin in stealing fire from heaven for the material welfare of the human race. This altar, with its sacred fire, was the starting-point for one of the most famous contests in the Athenian games, namely, the torch race. It was a race that was sometimes run by individual competitors, sometimes by companies. In the former case the prize was won by the man who first reached the goal with his torch still burning. When it was a contest of parties, the object was to pass the lighted torch from one member of the party to another, till at length it reached the man stationed farthest ahead, who carried it forward to the goal, the prize being awarded not to the individual who came in first but to the company to which he belonged. No doubt it is this form of the game that has given rise to the popular metaphor about handing on the torch of truth. Funeral games were also held in the Academy in honour of the soldiers buried in the neighbourhood, and there was a sacrificial pit, at which worship was offered to them as heroes. There was also a gymnasium, and so much open ground that a cavalry parade was occasionally held in it. Plato dedicated a shrine to the Muses in it, and it was his favourite haunt for about forty years, though he was advised to quit it on account of its low and unhealthy situation; it also continued to be the headquarters of his school for several generations. He was buried in it, or very near it, by the Athenians with great pomp, and the following was said to be his epitaph: “Apollo created the two—Asclepios and Plato: Asclepios, that he might save the body; Plato, that he might save the soul.”

A few hundred yards off, rather more to the east, lies Colonus, a knoll some fifty feet high. There is little about it to remind one of the description of it

given by Sophocles, which has been thus translated by Prof. Lewis Campbell—

But you have only to go a short distance to the west and you will find the olive woods, rich in all their ancient charms. For the Greek scholar Colonus will always have a strong attraction as the birthplace of Sophocles, and as the scene of his Œdipus Coloneus; but the ordinary traveller will perhaps find his best reward for the excursion in the very beautiful view which it affords of Athens and the Acropolis.

Soon after leaving the Dipylon Gate, on the way to Eleusis, the road passes through the olive grove already mentioned, which borders the course of the Cephisus for several miles, though the bed of the river is often dry owing to the water being diverted from its course for purposes of irrigation. It was at this point that a strange play of abusive wit usually took place between the returning celebrants of the Mysteries as they crossed the bridge, and the crowd of spectators. A little farther on the spot is passed where Demeter is said to have presented Phytalus with the first fig-tree. About midway between Athens and Eleusis, at the top of the pass over Mt. Ægaleos, from which you have a charming view of the city as you look back, there is a deserted monastery dating from the thirteenth century, the work of one of the Burgundian Dukes of Athens. It is built on the site of an ancient temple of Apollo, and has inherited the name of Daphni, Apollo’s favourite, while its walls are also enriched with marbles from the ancient edifice, though it was deprived of three fine Ionic columns, which were transferred by Lord Elgin to the British Museum. About a mile farther, where a stone has been discovered bearing the letters ? ex asteos (i.e. Seven miles from the City), there are some scanty remains of a temple of AphroditÉ, and behind it a rocky wall with niches for votive offerings, some of which have been recovered, especially doves in marble and bronze. It is about this point that the bay of Eleusis comes into view, looking like a lake, with Salamis, of glorious memory, enclosing it on the south-west. A mile or two farther on there are salt springs quite close to the road, called Rhiti, whose waters have been dammed up so as to form pools in which there is said to be good fishing, once the exclusive property of the priests of Demeter. The Thriasian plain is now seen on the right, and by and by Eleusis itself is reached, an unattractive and unhealthy village with about 1200 (Albanian) inhabitants, which would have no interest for the visitor except as the birthplace of Æschylus, if it were not for the sacred and venerable ruins on the adjoining hill.

It is a remark of Pausanias that “there is nothing on which the blessing of God rests in so full a measure

as the rites of Eleusis and the Olympian games.” These two institutions may be said to have been in some respects the counterpart of one another, the one being the celebration of what is commonly called life, the other of what is known as death; the one sacred to the god who rules in heaven, the other to the infernal or Chthonian deities.

Of the myth on which the Eleusinian rites were based the earliest account is to be found in what is called the Homeric hymn to Demeter, though it is known to be the work of a later writer. According to this tale, Cora, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter (“Earth-Mother”)—otherwise called Persephone or Proserpine—was carried off by Hades while she was playing with her companions in a flowery meadow. Her mother sought her for nine days and nights with the aid of torches, but without success. Overcome with grief and deeply offended that Zeus should have permitted such an outrage, she withdrew from the society of the gods of Olympus. In her wanderings she came, in the guise of an old woman, to Eleusis, where she was kindly received by the ruler Celeus and his family. For a time she acted as nurse to his infant son Demophoon, and would have conferred upon him immortality, had not his mother, Metaneira, been terrified one night to see her plunging him in fire, as she was in the habit of doing to purify him from the elements of corruption. The goddess, incensed at the mother’s interference, revealed her divine rank, and commanded the family to build a temple for her on the hill, which they did; and there she dwelt for a year, during which the earth was visited with barrenness. At length Zeus consented to restore Cora to her mother, on condition that she should return to Hades every year and remain with her husband in the underworld for four months while the seed was in the ground. Before leaving Eleusis, Demeter revealed to Celeus and three others, in whose families they were to remain, the secret rites which she wished to be celebrated every year in her temple.

According to a later addition to the tale, the goddess also taught Triptolemus how to grow corn, an art which had hitherto been unknown among men, and was first practised in the Thriasian plain. This version was current among the Athenians, who, although not mentioned in the hymn, ultimately assumed the chief responsibility for the celebration of the rites, and introduced various modifications, in which Dionysus and Iacchus had a prominent place. For hundreds of years before, the “Mysteries” were entirely in the hands of the people of Eleusis, which was then as independent of Athens on the east as it was of Megara on the west.

The rites were of a mystical nature, and consisted largely of a dramatic representation of the myth above referred to. They grew in popularity and importance as faith in the traditional theology declined; and even the philosopher found in them an aid to natural religion. So great, indeed, was the importance attached to them that, at a later time, the Christian apologists (to whom we are chiefly indebted for information

regarding them) felt it necessary to combat the idea that they embodied the essential truths of Christianity.

After Eleusis was incorporated with Attica the Mysteries were celebrated with a pomp and splendour unknown in any other religious service in the Hellenic world—music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and dancing being all laid under tribute for the purpose of rendering them attractive and imposing. To heighten the expectations and deepen the impressions of the worshippers there was a preliminary initiation into the Lesser Mysteries in February at AgrÆ, a suburb of Athens, before the chief celebration in autumn at Eleusis; and a year had to elapse after participation in the latter before one could be admitted to full communion. On the first day there was a great assembly at Athens; next day they bathed in the sea; the third day they offered sacrifice; the fourth day they marched in procession along the Sacred Way to Eleusis, which they reached at sunset. During the night they wandered about the shore with torches, looking for the lost Persephone. At length they were admitted in a state of excitement, intensified by their long fast, into a brilliantly lighted hall called the Telesterium, which has been recently excavated. In this hall the strange events which had for some days absorbed their attention were dramatically exhibited before them on two nights, amid profound silence, the divinities concerned being personally represented in appropriate costume. Certain sacred relics which Demeter had shown to the daughters of Celeus were produced, to be handled and kissed by the worshippers, who repeated the solemn formula of initiation. Everything was fitted to awaken feelings of reverence and awe, and the whole celebration seems to have held a similar place in the religion of the Greeks to what the Mass has among Roman Catholics, the Communion among Protestants, and the Easter Eve ceremonial among the members of the Greek Church. While the sorrows of bereavement, the pangs of inevitable death, and the mysterious gloom of the underworld could hardly fail to be impressed on the minds of the celebrants, the return of Persephone to her mother in spring seems to have inspired a hope of immortality, for we are told that the culminating point in the service in the Telesterium was the mowing down of a ripe ear of corn. It requires no stretch of imagination to believe that it conveyed to the devout worshipper something of the thought which Jesus Christ expressed on the eve of His death to certain Greeks who came desiring to see Him, when He said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The same thought is echoed by St. Paul in writing to the Corinthians on the subject of the Resurrection, when he says, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” This view of the Mysteries is confirmed by the statement made by Cicero, who had himself been initiated, that they taught men “not only to live happily but also to die with a fairer hope.”

Like all symbolic rites, however, they depended for

their efficacy on the susceptibilities of the worshipper. Plutarch says that it required a philosophical training and a religious frame of mind to comprehend them, and Galen maintained that “the study of Nature, if prosecuted with the concentrated attention given to the Mysteries, is even more fitted than they are to reveal the power and wisdom of God, as these truths are less clearly expressed in the Mysteries than in Nature.”

There is no evidence that metempsychosis or transmigration of souls had any place in the rites, and they appear to have been free from the grossness of the Orphic and Phrygian Mysteries, as well as from the superstition associated with Pythagoreanism. It has been suggested that they may have been of Egyptian origin, and recently this theory has derived some support from the discovery of three Egyptian scarabs in the grave of a woman, who appears to have been a priestess, as more than sixty vases of various kinds were found buried with her, besides a great quantity of female jewellery, in gold and silver and bronze and iron.

The Eleusinian rites breathed quite a different spirit from the ordinary religion of the Greek, and as soon as they were over he resumed his enjoyment of the present world. There were games and theatrical performances on the last day before leaving Eleusis, and on the way back to Athens there were many ebullitions of mirth and wit, owing to the reaction from the unwonted solemnity and gloom.

We have a token of the sacredness attaching to the rites in the fact that one of the most solemn oaths which could be taken was in the name of Demeter and her daughter. It was regarded as an extreme aggravation of the guilt of Calippus, the Syracusan, who compassed the death of Dion, Plato’s friend, that, when he was suspected of a hostile design and challenged by AretÉ, Dion’s wife, he denied with an oath and went into the sacred grove, touching the purple robe of the goddess, and taking a lighted torch in his hand. To make the crime still worse, it was perpetrated on the very day sacred to these goddesses when the Coreia were celebrated, and it was through their initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries that the two men had become acquainted—showing how little impression may be made on some minds by the most solemn rites of religion. The Mysteries were open to women as well as to men, but not to slaves or Persians, or infamous persons such as murderers whose guilt had not been expiated.