Eleusis

A town in ancient Greece near Athens that hosted the most famous mysteries in the ancient world (see MYSTERY RELIGIONS). The Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated in the fall during our months of September and October. Originally only Athenians could participate. Later, all Greeks were admitted to the mysteries, and later still people throughout the Roman empire. At the beginning of the mysteries, participants gathered at Athens for an assembly. Then they bathed in the ocean and fasted for three days. After this they marched in a procession from Athens to Eleusis. At the front of the procession was an image of the god Iacchos. No one knows precisely what happened when the participants reached Eleusis, but participants had to give a password to enter the hall of the mysteries, and they spent all night in the hall. Toward the end of the night they received some sort of revelation. Taking part in the mysteries was supposed to give people a better afterlife. The mysteries of Eleusis had some connection to the story of Demeter and her daughter Kore or Persephone. When the god of the underworld, Hades, abducted Persephone, her mother Demeter, the goddess of crops, went into mourning, and the plants on earth died. Eventually Demeter found her daughter in the underworld and negotiated her release. But because Persephone had eaten some seeds of a pomegranate, she could only spend six months of the year on the earth, when plant life fl ourished; during the other six months, when Kore was in the underworld, plants died. As a result, most scholars connect Kore with the seasonal growth of vegetation. In fact, ancient rumors suggest that the revelation in Eleusis had something to do with an ear of grain. In any case, in the early 390s C.E. the Roman Emperor Theodosius, a Christian, outlawed the mysteries. In 395 invaders sacked Eleusis. The mysteries disappeared forever.