Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/140

128 M Y S M Y S goddesses. Demeter ceases to be directly connected with the life of the year, and affects it only through the fortunes of her daughter. It is an important point that the vehement self-forgetting enthu siasm characterizing devotees who feel their complete dependence on their deities can be traced from the beginning in the worship of the mother of all earthly life. This enthusiasm was increased by the next stage in the development of the Mysteries, the fusion of the cults of Demeter- Persephone and of Dionysus. It is uncertain how and when this fusion began ; it is certain that it was not com pleted till after the union of Eleusis and Athens. 3. The worship of Dionysus can be traced in two phases. The cultus of the wine-god with simple rural character, rude and gross symbolism, was the religion of uneducated peasants, its chief seat being in the borderland of Attica and Boeotia. Another form of the religion of Dionysus with its orgiastic enthusiasm and its mystic character penetrated into Greece from Thrace, was accepted at Delphi alongside of the Apolline worship, 1 and established itself at Eleutherte and on Mount Parnassus, where the women of Phocis and Attica united in the rites and revels of the god every second winter. The Dionysus of Eleutherne was carried to Athens when the places were united, and the worship of Dionysus Eleuthereus was one of the most splendid and most impressive in the state ; under its shelter grew the Attic drama. The unification of the Attic land required as its pledge and com pletion the unification of the Attic religion. A common religion bound together every association in Greece ; a people united poli tically, yet divided religiously, was an unintelligible idea to the ancient mind. When, through the decay of the Megarian power, the Eleusinian valley was incorporated in the Attic state, the wor ship of the Eleusinian goddess was established under the Athenian acropolis, and the whole land united in her worship. Eleusis always occupied a peculiarly independent position in Attica ; it retained its own cultus in its own hands, and it had, like Salamis, the right of issuing coins. 2 It seems to have been only at a late date that the religious fusion was completed, and the relation be tween the Eleusinian and Attic religions was conceived in a very different style from the crude fictions by which at an earlier time Poseidon and Apollo had been incorporated in the Attic state religion. 3 The political and religious system which produced peace among the warring sections of the Attic people was due to Solon. His friendship with the mystic Epimenides, an historical fact encrusted with much legend, shows the tone in which the religious part of the task was executed. But the work of Solon would not have proved efficient if it had done more than formulate and legalize the actual tendencies of the country. Especially in religion the system was growing before Solon and continued to grow after him. To this period i.e., the 6th century B.C. and to the spirit of mysticism which was so strong in Attica and in Greece generally at this time we must attribute the final moulding of the Eleusinian ritual. According to the mystic theory, the multitude of deities are merely forms of the ultimate single divine nature dividing itself into male and female to become the origin of life on the earth. This theory was that of the Orphic theology, and many facts show that the Orphic theology moulded the Eleusinian ritual. Dionysus, under the mystic name lacchus, was identified with the son of Demeter, Plutus, the prosperity that she bestows on the world. Eleusis and Athens were united in one mystic ritual, part of which was performed in Athens, part on the road from Athens to Eleusis, and the most important rites in Eleusis. The process by which the shrines along the Sacred Way became connected with the religion of Demeter and lacchus was doubtless gradual ; but the outlines of the system were certainly complete before the battle of Salamis (Herod., viii. 65). Not only in the Eleusinian ritual, but throughout Attic religion, a tendency to mix the cult of Athena with that of Demeter can be traced. They are very often enshrined in the same temple. In the autumn the holy ploughings were performed in the Rharian plain, at Sciron, and under the acropolis by the ftovfvyys. Demeter in her anger wears the yopyoveiov on her breast ; she was so represented in the colossal statue at Eleusis, a fragment of which is now in Cambridge. The religious thought which expressed itself in this way obviously identified Demeter with Athena. Again, we find through Attic art and literature in the 5th century B.C. a tendency to mix Apollo and Dionysus, to show an Apollo Cisseus, a Dionysus Melpomenus, to invoke SeWora <pia.(f>ve BaK^e TTCLICLV ATr6ov efiXvpe. Apollo and Dionysus .shared the presidency of Delphi. 4 The tendency which Gerhard has proved to represent Demeter and Cora as undistinguishable springs from the same mystic system. The identification of Artemis 1 Apollo ruled at Delphi for nine months of the year, Dionysus for the other three. 2 Kohler in Mittheil. Inst. Ath., iv. 250. 3 The god HoffeiSuv Fanjoxos xa.1 Epex^f^, a fiction of the state religion ; Apollo, a son of Athena and Heph;estus in Attic legend; cf. Hurpocr. on 6ebs Trarpyos with Cic., N. I)., iii. 22. 4 ur., Ion, 1075 sq. and Persephone, which .ffiscliylus makes, was probably taught at Eleusis (Hymn, 1. 440). If material existed to study the ritual of the shrines along the Sacred Way, we should find abundant examples of the working of the mystic system. Pausanias tells that the cultus of Apollo in the pass of Dafni grew into a worship of Demeter, Cora, Athena, and Apollo. Again, in reference to the worship of the hero Cya- mites on the Sacred Way, he says that those who have been initiated at Eleusis, or who have read the Orphic books, will understand his religious silence. The same writer 5 mentions that Orphic hymns were used in the Eleusinian ritual, and Preller has conclusively proved the great influence exerted by Orphic teaching at Eleusis. Through this close connexion of Orphism with the Eleusinian Mysteries, we understand how, when the family of the Dadouchi died out in the 4th century B.C., the office was not filled up from the closely related family of the Ceryces, but given to the Lyconmhx:, who held in their hands the Orphizing mystic cultus of Phlya. If there had not been a great similarity between the ritual of Eleusis and of Phlya, it is inconceivable that the high office of SpSoDxos should have been given to a family unconnected with Eleusis. It is easy to trace the same mystic tendency in later time. In the Alexandrine period it was usual to identify Isis with Demeter, and even to maintain that the Eleusinian Mysteries were derived from Egypt. In later times the Neo-Platonic philosophy acquired influence at Eleusis, and hence we find that, according to Porphyry, the hierophant represented the "demiurgos." There is every reason to believe that the Bacchic rites can be traced through Thrace to Phrygian influence, and that the spirit of Orphism was that of the Oriental Phrygian cultus. Moreover, the most holy and perfect rite in the Eleusinian Mysteries was to show an ear of corn mowed down in silence, 6 and this was a symbol of the Phrygian Atys. Now Clement describes in great detail a mystic ceremony, some parts of which he attributes to Phrygia, though the general tone of the passage rather refers it to Eleusis ; some of the grossest details of this ceremony are expressly referred to Eleusis by other Christian writers. 7 These facts lead to the belief (1) that Clement purposely mixes up two ceremonies which were similar to one another, Phrygian and Eleusinian Mysteries ; (2) that this scene was acted at Eleusis on the eve of Boedr. 23 ; (3) that it was intro duced under the influence of the Orphic mystic philosophy. Know ing that the Phrygian rites were decried by many who praised the Eleusinian, Clement delights to emphasize points of resemblance between them. The details given in the long account of Clement fully justify the invectives of the Christian writers. It is, however, easy to understand the answer that the Neo-Platonic philosophers who admired the Mysteries would make to their assailants. Reli gion places men face to face with the actual facts of life ; when the mind is exalted and ennobled by intense religious enthusiasm it is able to look with pure insight at phenomena of life in which the vulgar unpurified mind sees nothing but gross materialism. The language of religion is plainer and more direct than the language of common life. Those who distinguished between the character of the Eleusinian and Phrygian rites might say that the same symbolism can be looked at with gross eyes or with idealized eyes, and might quote the contrast between the Aphrodite of Praxiteles and its rude Phoenician prototype ; the attitude, the position of the hands is the same, but the whole meaning is changed. It is unnecessary to enter into the question whether the Mys teries go back to a primitive " Pelasgic " religion, or are borrowed from Oriental religion. All that gives elevation and ideality to them was added by the Hellenic genius. But that spirit of enthu siastic self-abandonment which made the /xtkrrcu forget themselves in the divine nature never belonged to the true Hellenic tempera ment ; the Mysteries were an attempt of the Hellenic genius to take into its service the spirit of Oriental religion. It is impossible here to speak of the other Mysteries ; subjects of similar nature are referred to under MITHRAS, ORPHEUS, PHRYGIA. The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most perfect example of the type in Greece ; but our scanty information leads to the belief that all Hellenic Mysteries tried more or less successfully to attain the same results. Those non-Hellenic Mysteries which found their way into Greece from the 5th century B.C. onwards are of course excluded from this statement. 8 ( W. M. RA. ) MYSTERY, or MIRACLE PLAY. See DRAMA, vol. vii. p. 413. MYSTICISM is a phase of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, which from its very nature is hardly suscep tible of exact definition. It appears in connexion with the endeavour of the human mind to grasp the divine essence or the ultimate reality of things, and to enjoy the blessed- 5 Paus., i. 14 ; ix. 27. 6 Philosophumena, ed. Miller, v. 8, p. 115. 7 Cl., Protr., p. 11 ; see quotations in Lobeck, p. 199 sq. 8 On these non-Hellenic Mysteries see Foucart, Assoc. Relig.