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The Eleusinian Mysteries
Excerpted from Walter Burkert, “Athenian Cults and Festivals,” in Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 5, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 264-265.
The festival of Eleusis, which was known simply as ‘the Mysteries’, is as fascinating as it is elusive. Mysteries are initiation ceremonies with the obligation to silence, and the secrecy was strictly and deliberately kept throughout pagan literature. Yet the Mysteries were open to the public: ‘whoever among the Greeks wishes is initiated’ (Hdt. VIII.65.4), and the huge Telesterion built by Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, held more than 3,000 mystai. The administration of the Mysteries was in the hands of the Athenian authorities, but the priestly functions inalienably belonged to the two families of the Eumolpids and the Kerykes. In investigations and lawsuits involving the Mysteries the non-initiated were bidden to leave the court; the majority would be those who ‘knew’. The ephebes regularly took part in organizing and protecting the procession from Athens to Eleusis; it started at a special sanctuary above the Agora, the Eleusinium. When Diagoras, called ‘the atheist’, provocatively violated the secret of Eleusis, he was pursued through the whole Athenian empire, yet he escaped.
Philosophically inclined writers spoke about the ‘two gifts’ Demeter brought to Eleusis, grain and the Mysteries. Both were intimately linked, as the same myth about the rape of Persephone and Demeter's visit to Eleusis had to account for both. According to a late Gnostic writer, an ear of corn was shown by the hierophant at the climax of the secret festival (Hippol. Haer. V.8.39). Yet the point of the nocturnal celebration, whatever its symbols, gestures and words might have been, was to arrive at ‘better hope’ for a life after death. This is already present in the earliest text, the ‘Homeric’ hymn to Demeter, and it persisted to the end of antiquity. The promise seems to have been general, with different possibilities of interpretation.
We are well informed about the general programme (IG II/III2 1078 = LSCG 8) and some details of organization. At some time participation in the ‘Lesser Mysteries’ in spring was made a prerequisite (Pl. Gorg. 497C). On 15 Boedromion the candidates assembled at Athens. There were purifications, including bathing in the sea, and the sacrifice of piglets, one for each person. Some kind of verbal explanation and instruction that prepared for what was to be ‘seen’ on the concluding night must have been part of the proceedings. The main event was the procession on the ‘sacred way’ to Eleusis, some 30 km from the city, on 19 Boedromion. Priestesses carried ‘holy things’ in closed baskets (kistai, while the crowd chanted the rhythmical cry ‘Iakch' o Iakche’; this was soon understood as the invocation of a special daimon, Iakchos. With the arrival at the Eleusinian sanctuary the fast was broken, and after sunset the really secret rites began. We have some allusions: ‘wandering to and fro’, terror in the dark, and sudden ‘amazement’ (Plut. Fr. 178 Sandbach); the Telesterion opened to admit the crowd, there were things ‘done’ by the hierophant and the priestesses, presumably in the dark, dimly lit by the torches of the torchbearer (daduchos); at some point a huge fire blazed up in the middle, ‘under’ which the hierophant was seen officiating. Persephone was called from the dead and somehow ‘appeared’, the hierophant exhibited the ear of corn, and proclaimed the birth of a divine child. The construction of the Telesterion gives some guidance to imagination, with steps rising on all four sides for the onlookers, and the anaktoron, a small rectangular building slightly off-centre with a door at its side, where the hierophant had his throne. ‘Thrice fortunate he who has seen these orgia,’ the shouts proclaimed. Yet we remain outside the circle of those who ‘knew’. Dances outside the building must have followed throughout the night, and there were bull sacrifices which guaranteed a copious feast even here.
The Mysteries became part of the prestige of Athens and retained their authority, and their identity, for about one thousand years. They make strange company in the age of Euripides and Socrates. It remains for us to speculate how the Greeks succeeded in this very special festival in finding sense and ‘better hopes’ against the apparent senselessness of death.