Eleusinian Mysteries

The Eleusinian Mysteries

Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiated and who has no part in them never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.

Hymn to Demeter, 480-2 (translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, Loeb Classical Library [New York, 1920]. p. 323)

Thrice happy are those of mortals, who having seen those rites depart for Hades; for to them alone is it granted to have true life there; to rest all there is evil.

Sophocles, Frag. 719 (Dindorf) (translation by G. E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961], p. 284)

Happy is he who, having seen these rites, goes below the hollow earth; for he knows the end of life and he knows its god-sent beginning.

Pindar, Frag. 102 (Oxford) (translation by Mylonas, op. cit., p. 285)

Beautiful indeed is the Mystery given us by the blessed gods: death is for mortals no longer an evil, but a blessing.

Inscription found at Eleusis (translation by S. Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity [London, 1925], p. 140)

It was the common belief in Athens that whoever had been taught the Mysteries would, when he died, be deemed worthy of divine glory. Hence all were eager for initiation.

Scholiast on Aristophanes (The Frogs, 158) (translation by S. Angus, op. cit., p. 140)

I purposed to pursue the subject, and describe all the objects that admit of description in the sanctuary at Athens called the Eleusinian, but I was prevented from so doing by a vision in a dream. I will, therefore, turn to what may be lawfully told to everybody.

Pausanius, I, 14, 3 (translation by Frazer)

My dream forbade me to describe what is within the wall of the sanctuary; and surely it is clear that the uninitiated may not lawfully hear of that from the sight of which they are debarred.

Pausanius, I, 38, 7 (translation by Frazer)

And the synthema (password) of the Eleusinian mysteries is as follows: ‘I fasted; I drank the kykeon; I took out of the chest; having done my task, I put again into the basket, and from the basket again into the chest.’

Clement of Alexandria, Protrptikos, II, 21. [For the interpretations of this sacred formula, cf. George E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, pp. 294-305)

The Phrygians, the Nassene says, assert that God is a fresh ear of cut-wheat, and following the Phrygians the Athenians, when they initiate in the Eleusinia exhibit in silence to the epoptai the mighty and marvelous and most complete epoptic mystery, an ear of cut-wheat.

Hippolytus, Philosophoumena, V, 8

Aristotle maintains that it is not necessary for the initiated to learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put in a certain frame of mind by becoming worthy candidates.

Synesius, De Dione, 10. (Cf. Jeanne Groissant, Aristotle et les Mysteries, Paris, 1932)