ATHENS). By what steps the mysteries grew in importance and fame we do not know, but certainly Peisistratus paid attention to them, while Pericles found them highly important and made them more so. Decrees of his time' proclaim a holy truce for pilgrims to the festival and invite the subject-allies of Athens to send first-fruits of corn, a part of his imperial policy. The pvcrruths crnmis at Eleusis is of his date.
At least from the 5th century onwards, Athens was in charge of the organization and external control of the mysteries, the management being in the hands of the archon basileus and a committee of four epimeletai (overseers) and a paredros (as sessor). The State, as elsewhere in Greece, controlled the Church. But the priesthood was Eleusinian. Two ancient clans, the Euniolpidai (see EUMOLPUS) and the Kerukes (see HERALD) performed the whole ceremony between them; it appears that in the 4th century the Kerukes died out and the Lukomidai of Phlye took their place, perhaps bringing with them a tendency to Orphism. From the Eumolpidae was chosen the hierophant, who was so holy that his personal name was no longer used when once he was appointed, and he alone might enter the innermost shrine,—or perhaps, for the details are obscure, he and a priestess. Demeter and Kore had also each a hierophantis or female hierophant ; considering that the Thesmophoria (q.v.) was entirely in the hands of women, it is not surprising that they took part in the mysteries also. The Kerukes, afterwards the Lukomidai, chose the octbaxos or torch-bearer, who ranked next after the hierophant, from their number.
Turning now to the celebration itself, we can only sketch the more salient features here. On the 13th of Boedromion, the Attic month corresponding roughly to our September, the Ephebi (q.v.) marched out to Eleusis, and returned to Athens the next iTo be distinguished from the Eleusinia, an important festival, but not connected with the mysteries, see Revue des etudes grecques, xxxii., p. 462.
Sylloge, 3rd. ed. 21 (=1.G. i. i) ; 83, 3o ff.
day, bringing with them the "holy things" ((eat) to the "Eleu sinion" in the city; these teat probably included small images of the goddesses. The i6th was the day of the Iowa's, the gathering of the catechumens, when they met to hear the address of the hierophant, called the This was no sermon, but a proclamation bidding those who were disqualified or for some reason unworthy of initiation to depart. The legally quali fied were all Hellenes and subsequently all Romans above a certain—very youthful—limit of age, women, and as it appears even slaves; barbarians, and those uncleansed of some notorious guilt, such as homicide, were disqualified. We are sure that there
was no dogmatic test, nor would time allow of any searching moral scrutiny, and only the Samothracian rites, in this respect unique in the world of classical religion, possessed a system of confessional. The hierophant appealed to the conscience of the multitude; but we are not altogether sure of the terms of his proclamation, which can only be approximately restored from late pagan and early Christian writers. We know that he de manded of each candidate that he should be "of intelligible speech (i.e., Hellene) and pure of hand"; and he catechized him as to his condition of ritualistic purity— the food he had eaten or abstained from. It appears also from Libanius that in the later period at least he solemnly proclaimed that the cate chumen should be "pure of soul" (Or. Corinth, iv. 356), and this spiritual conception of holiness had arisen already in the earlier periods of Greek religious thought. On the other hand we must bear in mind the criticism that Diogenes is said to have passed upon the Eleusinia, that many bad characters were admitted to communion, thereby securing a promise of higher happiness than an uninitiated Epameinondas could aspire to.
An essential preliminary was purification and lustration, and after the assembly the "mystae" went to the sea-shore (6.Xabe tibarac) and purified themselves with sea-water, and probably with sprinkling of pigs' blood, a common cathartic medium. After their return from the sea, a sacrifice of some kind was offered as an essential condition of but whether as a sacrament or gift-offering to the goddesses it is impossible to determine. On the 19th of Boedromion the great procession started along the sacred way bearing the "fair young god" Iacchus; and as they visited many shrines by the way the march must have continued long after sunset, so that the 2oth is some times spoken of as the day of the exodus of Iacchus. On the way each wore a saffron band as an amulet; and the ceremonious reviling to which the 1.zbarat were subjected as they crossed the bridge of the Cephissus answered the same purpose of averting the evil eye. Upon the arrival at Eleusis, on the same night or on the following, they celebrated a midnight revel under the stars with Iacchus, which Aristophanes glowingly describes.