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Alcibiades was publicly accused of having profaned and divulged the Eleusinian mysteries. The charge was denied by Alcibiades, who demanded an immediate trial. It was eluded by his enemies, who preferred to have the charge hanging over his head, in case of the failure of the enterprise which he had projected. It consisted of one hundred triremes, with a large body of hoplites.
He had condemned, with the consent of the most rational Pagans, the license of nocturnal sacrifices; but he immediately admitted the petition of Prætextatus, proconsul of Achaia, who represented, that the life of the Greeks would become dreary and comfortless, if they were deprived of the invaluable blessing of the Eleusinian mysteries.
I do assure you I never saw him in my life do not know him even by correspondence and yet, whether through fellow-feeling for Eleusinian mysteries, or whether through the more generous motive of appreciation of his powers, I am very sensitive to the thousand and one stripes with which the assembly of critics doth expound its vocation over him, and the 'Athenaeum, for instance, made me quite cross and misanthropical last week.
After his return, Triptolemus built a magnificent temple to Ceres in Eleusis, and established the worship of the goddess, under the name of the Eleusinian mysteries, which, in the splendor and solemnity of their observance, surpassed all other religious celebrations among the Greeks. There can be little doubt of this story of Ceres and Proserpine being an allegory.
Hermippus feasted the whole company,—the crowd at long tables in the court, the chosen guests in a more private chamber. “Nothing to excess” was the truly Hellenic maxim of the refined Eleusinian; and he obeyed it. His banquet was elegant without gluttony. The Syracusan cook had prepared a lordly turbot. The wine was choice old Chian but well diluted.
G.W. Hinkle, is a universal favorite, while the Senate House, standing under the shadow of the lighthouse, has the advantage of being the nearest to the beach of all the hotels. Both are ample and hospitable hostelries, where you are led persuasively through the Eleusinian mystery of the Philadelphia cuisine.
The word itself conveys the idea that the law particularly had offences against public worship in view; and this is confirmed by the fact that a number of such offences—from the felling of sacred trees to the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries—were treated as asebeia.
'My dear Claude, what between the Burgundy and your usual foolishness, you seem very much inclined to divulge the Eleusinian mysteries. 'I can't well do that, my beauty, seeing that, if you recollect, we were both turned back at the vestibule, for a pair of naughty children as we are. 'Do be quiet! and let me enjoy, for once, my woman's right to the last word!
Why, then, you ask, if they were so pure and full of meaning, why was not such a man as Socrates one of the Initiated? The reason, reader, was simply this: What the Eleusinia furnished to Greece, that Socrates furnished to himself. That man who could stand stock-still a whole day, lost in silent contemplation, what was the need to him of the Eleusinian veil? He had his own separate tragedy also.
She was indeed a he: for it was a youth in woman's dress who played the rollicking part of Iambe, and it was Alexander's friend and comrade Diodoros who had represented the daughter of Pan and Echo, who, the legend said, had acted as slave in the house of Metaneira, the Eleusinian queen, when Demeter took refuge there.
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