Personal Divinity, but, holding fast to the anthropomorphic principle, say with the divine Poet': 1. That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds and fusing all Is faith as vague as all unsweet; And we shall sit at endless feast, Enjoying each the other's good; What vaster dream can hit the mood Of Love on earth? But to return to the Mysteries, and to the question, What was seen there? The priest at Pheneos, and also apparently at Eleusis, put on the mask of Demeter Kidaria. The Kidaria was an Oriental head-dress 2 distinguished by a peculiar peak or prominence in front, closely connected with and probably being a species of the horned head-dresses still worn as tokens of rank, wifehood, etc., in parts of Syria. Demeter being a purely Aryan divinity, is never, so far as I am aware, represented as horned; but in her phase as Kidaria, wearing the peaked or pointed head-dress, an Oriental addition to the goddess, she approaches as nearly to Artemis Tauropolos, or to Astarte, as the anthropomorphic principles of Hellas will allow. It seems, so to speak, to be the result of taking the Semitic bull in her lap. Kidaris is also the name of an Arkadian dance, so that it is sufficiently 1 A term applied by Mrs. Browning to the Laureate. Vide Contemporary Review, Dec. 1873, 160. 2 In Hebrew Keter (Esth. vi. 8); in Kaldeo-Assyrian Kudurri (vide Records of the Past, v. 112). 3 Athen. xiv. 7. 3 parentage to Earth and Darkness. Thus, when appearing, they rise from the gloom of the Under-world, Phoberopes Of-terrific-aspects,2 and Ophio-plokamoi Snaky-haired. 'Aischylos,' says Pausanias, was the first who [to his knowledge] represented them with snakes in their hair;'4 and he notices that neither their statues nor those of any of the Infernal Divinities were dreadful in appearance, a striking illustration of the Hellenik clinging to the anthropomorphic principle, which I have so frequently occasion to notice as an important rule in distinguishing the origin of divinities. Now Aischylos was accused of having divulged the secrets of the Mysteries, and of incorporating incidents from them in his Plays; 5 he too provided masks and stage dresses, and is said to have himself inserted various peculiar choral-dances. He also wrote a play entitled The Eleusinians, which is supposed to have formed the third in the Trilogy of the Thebais, and to have been the sequel of the Hepta epi Thebas.' Almost every word of the Play is lost, but the subject would give tempting opportunities to an Epopt who was at all inclined to reveal the secrets of the Sekos. It is hardly necessary to allude in detail to his Eumenides; suffice it to remind the reader that he represented the Erinyes as black-bodied, blood-dripping beings, with snakes entwined in their hair, dwelling in evil darkness in Tartaros below the earth. He calls them wingless,' but Euripides more naturally represents them as wing-bearing,' and on the Vases they sometimes appear with wings and sometimes without. Again, they are torch-connected and torch-bearing powers, and so are described as being delighted with the blazing 1 Oid. epi Kolon. 40. 2 Orph. Hymn. lxx. 10. 3 Ibid. lix. 12. Paus, i. 28. Aristot. Ethik. iii. 1; Aelian, 、 torch," which is 'sunless,' 2 as being in the Under-world, and Athene promises to send torches to the lower regions, apparently in their honour. Thus a Fury is represented on a Vase as bearing two spears in one hand and a large and fiercely blazing torch in the other; and in another representation of the enthroned Persephone in Hades,' a Fury stands on her right hand, with two large torches.5 So Ovid, Tristis Erinnys Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces. Lastly, the Furies had a terrible malignant dance, which they accompanied by a weird, mind-destroying hymn.6 It is especially called an 'un-Bakchik dance,' as being joyless and accompanied with groans and weeping, and their incantations, like those of the mediaeval witches, made healthy life wither away, thus being the exact opposite to Dionysos Karpios or Erikepeios. Their forms, Empousa-like, appear to change. As it showed like an ox, a mule, a woman, or with a fire-blazing visage; 9 so they are winged and wingless, Gorgon-like and unGorgon-like, dog-faced1o and woman-faced."1 Speaking of the connection between the Furies and the Mysteries, Thomas Taylor observes: There is a passage in the Cataplus of Lucian which very much corroborates my opinion: “Tell me, Cynic, for you are initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries, do not the present particulars appear to you similar to those which take place in the Mysteries? Cyn. Very much so. See then, here comes a certain torch-bearer, with a dreadful and threatening countenance. Is it, therefore, one of the Furies?" It is evident from 1 Eumen. 994. 2 Ibid. 365. 3 Ibid. 974. 4 Smith, Class. Dict. 272, 5 Ibid. Smaller Class. Dict. 313. Ais. Eumen. 316 et seq. 7 Eur. Orestes, 319. 8 Ais. Eumen. 319. 9 Aristoph. Bat. 288 et seq. 10 Eur. Orestes, 260. 11 Ais. Eumen. 47. X this passage that the Furies in the Mysteries were of a terrible appearance." The Kataplous, or Sailing-to-shore, like the Batrachoi, describes a voyage across the Styx. 'It is a circumstance remarkably singular, that the Pythagorean philosopher Numenius was, as well as Pausanias, deterred by a dream from disclosing the Eleusinian Mysteries. When delusive faith succeeded to scientific theology, and divine mystery was no more, it then became nccessary to reveal this most holy and august institution. This was done by the later Platonists.'2 Thus we are informed that in the most holy of the mysteries before the presence of the god certain terrestrial daemons are hurled forth,' and that these spectres appeared in the shape of dogs, like the dog-faced chthonian Furies in their uncouth hateful dance. The dog, in general, mythically represents all utterly senseless and carnal desires,' like Kerberos, the hell-hound, and Seirios, the dog-star of ruin the Greek 3 notion of the dog being throughout confused between its serviceable fidelity, its watchfulness, its foul voracity, shamelessness, and deadly madness.'5 St. Croix, following Dion Chrysostomos, A.D. 50-117, and others, speaks similarly, observing that the eyes of the Mystics were powerfully affected by alternate light and darkness, while a multiplicity of phantoms appeared before them having the figures of dogs and other monstrous forms, and that the sights and sounds were so terrible that Ploutarchos compared initiation with death agony. These forms are the fleet-hounds of raging madness,' the tire 1 Taylor, Pausanias, iii. 221; vide also his remarks on Orph. Hymn, lxx. in his Mystical Hymns of Orpheus, 135 et seq. 2 Taylor, Pausanias, iii. 200. Taylor's own views have been already alluded to. Sup. II. iii. 6. 3 Proklos, Comment. on the First Alkibiades. 4 Pletho, On the Oracles, apud Tavlor, Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries. 5 Ruskin, Queen of the Air, i. 23. Frag. apud Lobeck, Aglaoph, i. 126. 7 Recherches, 214. 8 Eur. Bak. 977. 3 less ever-pursuing, fury-dogs,' prototypes of the hellhounds and were-wolves of later ages. Material daemons actually appeared to the Initiated previous to the lucid visions of the Gods themselves.'2 Sometimes terrible apparitions astonished the trembling spectators. As I am not writing a treatise on the Mysteries, but only alluding to them incidentally in connection with Dionysos, it is unnecessary to consider how the scenic apparatus was managed, and what was the amount of scientific knowledge of the stage manager and his assistants. It is now sufficiently recognised that the so-called supernatural is, in a great variety of instances, merely the natural misunderstood; and the Mysteries of Eleusis, like the egg of Columbus, were doubtless very simple when once fully comprehended. Nor need I further refer to that part of the exhibition which related to the Two Goddesses, merely observing that, especially in earlier times, their whole legendary history was symbolically represented, and perhaps more or less acted, on the Eleusinian stage, as Clemens says, 'Deo and Kore are now become a mystic drama; and the wandering and the rape and their grief Eleusis shows by torchlight.' confining ourselves to Dionysos and his share in the celebration, it is necessary to remember carefully the difference between the earlier and the later stages in the Mysteries, and especially in a Dionysiak connection. The entry of Dionysos the Mystic's on the stage, and the 1 Ais. Eumen. 127. 2 Taylor, Dissertation on the Eleusinian Mysteries, 43. Potter, Antiquities of Greece, i. 448; and similarly, dread spectres were to be seen at times in the Hellenik temples of Uasi. (cf. Paus. x. 32). But not in all. A hasty and heedless logic argues that, eg. because it is admitted that there have But, been many pseudo-miracles, therefore 5 Dvâvâ-mâtar or Demeter. |