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MYSTERIES MYTHOLOGY 115 They comprised a long series of ceremonies, concluding with complete initiation or perfec- tion. The fundamental legend on which the ritual seems to have been based was the search of the goddess Demeter or Ceres for her daugh- ter Proserpine, her sorrows and her joys, her descent into Hades, and her return into the realm of light. The rites were thought to prefigure the scenes of a future life. The same symbol was the foundation of the Thes- mophoria, which were celebrated exclusively by married women, rendering it probable that initiation into it was designed to protect against the dangers of childbirth. . The Orphic and Dionysiac mysteries seem to have de- signed a reformation of the popular religion. Founded upon the worship of the Thracian Di- onysus or Bacchus, they tended to ascetic rather than orgiastic practices. Other mysteries were those of Zeus or Jupiter in Crete, of Hera or Juno in Argolis, of Athena or Minerva in Ath- ens, of Artemis or Diana in Arcadia, of Hec- ate in JEgina, and of Rhea in Phrygia. The worship of the last under different names pre- vailed in divers forms and places in Greece and the East, and was associated with the or- giastic rites of the Corybantes. More impor- tant were the Persian mysteries of Mithra, which appeared in Rome about the beginning of the 2d Christian century. They were prop- agated by Chaldean and Syrian priests. The austerity of the doctrine, the real perils of ini- tiation which neophytes were obliged to en- counter, the title of soldier of Mithra which was bestowed upon them, and the crowns which were offered to them after the combats preceding every grade of advancement, were among the peculiarities which gave to these rites a military and bellicose character; and Roman soldiers eagerly sought initiation into them. The fundamental dogma of the Mithraic doctrine was the transmigration of souls under the influence of the seven planets, over whose operations Mithra presided. The whole fra- ternity of the initiated was divided into seven classes or grades, which were named succes- sively soldiers, lions, hysenas, &c., after animals sacred to Mithra. The sacrifice of the bull was characteristic of his worship. On the monuments which have been found in Italy, the Tyrol, and other parts of Europe, inscribed Deo Mithra Soli Invicto, Mithra is usually rep- resented as a young man in a flowing robe, surrounded with mystical figures, seated on a bull, which he is pressing down, or into which he is plunging the sacrificial knife. A dog, a serpent, a scorpion, and a lion are arranged near him. Nothing is certain concerning the signification of this scene. After the adoption of some of the ideas connected with other religious systems, as those of the Alexandrian Serapis, the Syrian Baal, and the Greek Apollo, the Mithra worship disappeared in the 5th or 6th century. See Creuzer, Synibolik und My- thologie (1810-'12), translated into French with elaborate annotations by Guigniaut and others (1825-'36) ; Sainte-Croix, Recherches historiques et critiques sur les mysteres du paganisme, edited by Sylvestre de Sacy (1817) ; Seel, Die Mithra- Geheimnisse wdhrend der vor- und ur- christlichen Zeit (1823); Limbourg-Brouwer, Histoire de la civilisation morale et religieuse des Grecs (1833-'41) ; Lajard, Recherches sur le culte public et les mysteres de Mithra (1847-'8) ; Maury, Eistoire des religions de la Grece an- tique (1857) ; and Preller, Romische Mythologie (2d ed., 1865), and Griechische Mythologie (3d ed., 1872). MYSTERIES, mediaeval dramas. See MIEA- CLES AND MORALITIES. MYTHOLOGY (Gr. (iWo^ a saying, and Tfyog, discourse), the science of myths. The ancient Greeks applied the term pvdoi to all classes of narratives, but especially to their religious and poetic traditions of gods, heroes, and remark- able events, and hence pvdokoyia, mythology, came to be a synonyme of apxaioXoyia, archae- ology. Though mythology is still understood to embrace all the traditions and legends of a people, especially of ancient peoples, yet it is more commonly confined to accounts of and researches into primitive polytheistic religions. There are myths of all nations, and among uncivilized races they are still current and in course of formation. Max Mtiller's recent work on comparative religion and mythology (" In- troduction to the Science of Religion," Lon- don, 1873), with an essay on the philosophy of mythology, is the first successful attempt at laying before the English public the results of the speculations of German scholars on this subject. German literature has of late pro- duced an extensive array of works which under- take to describe the probable processes of the evolution of mythology, or religion, or moral and religious sentiments in general. Such are Caspari's Urgeschichte der Menschheit (Leipsic, 1873), Hellwald's Culturgeschichte in Hirer na- turlicJien Entwickelung (Augsburg, 1874 et seq.), and Peschel's Volkerlcunde (Leipsic, 1874). Max Miiller says : " There is this common fea- ture in all who have thought or written on mythology, that they look upon it as some- thing which, whatever it may mean, does cer- tainly not mean what it seems to mean ; as something that requires an explanation, wheth- er it be a system of religion, or a phase in the development of the human mind, or an inevi- table catastrophe in the life of language." Ac- cording to some, mythology is history changed into fable ; according to others, fable changed into history. Some discover in it the precepts of moral philosophy enunciated in the poetical language of antiquity ; others, a picture of the great forms and forces of nature, particularly the sun, the moon, and the stars, the changes of day and night, the succession of the seasons, and the return of the years. According to this last theory, to understand the origin and sig- nificance of myths, one must enter into the childlike spirit of those who conceived them. Man instinctively turns to the light. In the