That the mysteries preached a higher morality than that of the current standard is not proved. That they exercised a direct and elevating influence on the individual character is nowhere explicitly maintained, as Diodorus (v. 49) maintains concerning the Samothracian. But on general grounds it is reasonable to believe that such powerful religious experience as they afforded would produce moral fruit in many minds. The genial Aristoph anes (Frogs, 455) intimates as much, and Andocides (De myster. p. 36, § ; p. 44, § 125) assumes that those who had been initiated would take a juster and sterner view of moral innocence and guilt.
Besides the greater mysteries at Eleusis, we hear of the lesser mysteries of Agrae on the banks of the Ilissus. Established, per haps, originally by Athens herself at a time when Eleusis was independent and closed her rites to strangers, they became wholly subordinated to the greater, and were put under the same management and served merely as a necessary preliminary to the higher initiation into them. Sacrifice was offered to the same great goddesses at both; but we have the authority of Duris (Athenae, 253d), the Samian historian, and the evidence of an Attic painting, called the pinax of Nannion', that the predomi nant goddess in the mysteries at Agrae was Kore. And this agrees with the time of their celebration, in the middle of Anthesterion, when Kore was supposed to return in the young corn. Stephanus (s.v. "Aypa), drawing from an unknown source, declares that the Dionysiac story was the theme of their mystic drama ; an isolated statement with nothing to confirm or in terpret it.
The influence of Eleusis in early times must have been great, for we find offshoots of its cult, whether mystic or not, in other parts of Greece. In Boeotia, Laconia, Arcadia, Crete and Thera, Demeter was called Eleusinia, meaning in all probability "god dess of Eleusis." The initiation rites of Demeter at Celeae near Phlius, at Lerna in Argolis, and at Naples, were organized after the pattern of the Eleusinian. But of these and the other Deme ter mysteries in the Greek world, there is little to record that is certain and at the same time of primary importance for the history of religion. The Arcadian city of Pheneus possessed a mystery that boasted an Eleusinian character and origin, yet in the record of it there is no mention of Kore, and we may suspect that, like other Demeter-worships in the Peloponnese, it belonged to a period when the goddess was revered as a single personality and Kore had not yet emanated from her. We know much more of
the details of the great Andanian mysteries in Messenia, owing to the discovery of the important and much-discussed Andanian inscription of 91 B.C.'. But what we know are facts of secondary importance only. We gather from Pausanias (4. 33. 4; cf. 4. I. 5.
and 4. 26. 8; 4. 27. 6) that the rites, which he regards as second in solemnity and prestige to the Eleusinian alone, were conse crated to the Mey CtXat Nat (the great goddesses) and that Kore enjoyed the mystic title of Hagne, "the holy one." The inscrip tion has been supposed to correct and to refute Pausanias, but it does not really controvert his statements, which are attested by other evidence ; it proves only that other divinities came at 'Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. iii. p. 242, Pl. xvi.
a later time to have a share in the mysteries, such as the ME-y6.Xot Not who were probably the Cabeiri (q.v.). It is clear that the Andanian mysteries included a sacred drama, in which women personated the goddesses. The priestesses were married women, and were required to take an oath that they had lived "in relation to their husbands a just and holy life." We hear also of grades of initiation, purification-ceremonies, but of no sacra ment or eschatologic promise; yet it is probable that these mysteries, like the Eleusinian, maintained and secured the hope of future happiness.
The Eleusinian faith is not wholly unattested by the grave inscriptions of Hellas, though it speaks but rarely on these. The most interesting example is the epitaph of a hierophant who proclaims that he has found that "death was not an evil, but a blessing'." Of equal importance for the private religion of Greece were the Orphic mystic societies, bearing a Thraco-Phrygian tradition into Greece, and associated originally with the name of Dionysus, and afterwards with Sabazius also and the later cult-ideas of Phrygian. The full account of the Dionysiac mysteries would demand a critical study of the Dionysiac religion as a whole, as well as of the private sects that sprang up under its shadow. It is only possible here to indicate the salient characteristics of those which are of primary value for the history of religion.