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I adore Phryne, astonishing with her nude body the old men of the Areopagus; making the thousands of pilgrims gathered on the Eleusinian strand shout with enthusiasm when they saw her white form surge from among the veils, like the moon from behind the clouds. I believe in the promise of her bosom more than in the power of the gods."
At the command of the chief, some of the natives advanced and placed a quantity of bananas, bread-fruits, and other vegetables at the Pilot's feet; the priests then came forward and knelt down before him, and seemed to worship after the fashion of the ancients when they paid their devotions to the Eleusinian goddess, or the statue of Apollo.
True, not every story ran to Democrates’s credit, but Hermippus knew the world, and could forgive a young man if he had occasionally spent a jolly night. Democrates seemed to have forsworn Ionian harp-girls now. His patriotism was self-evident. The Eleusinian saw in him a most desirable protector in the perils of war for Hermione and her child.
Laura Glyde started up. "A religion? I never " "Yes, you did," Miss Van Vluyck insisted; "you spoke of rites; and Mrs. Plinth said it was a custom." Miss Glyde was evidently making a desperate effort to recall her statement; but accuracy of detail was not her strongest point. At length she began in a deep murmur: "Surely they used to do something of the kind at the Eleusinian mysteries "
Alcibiades was charged with insulting these religious rites, and although the proof of his offense was quite doubtful, yet he suffered for it for years in exile and misery, and it must be allowed that he was the most popular man of his age." In Greece, the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries was in the hands of the Emolpidae, one of the oldest and most respected families of antiquity.
"Let us now closely examine how far the Eleusinian and Bacchanalian feasts resembled the Christian Agapae whether the latter, modified and altered a little according to the change which would take place in the taste of the age, originated from the former, or were altogether from a different source.
Thus did the Greeks begin all things with lustration and end with libation, each day, each feast, all their solemn treaties, their ceremonies, and sacred festivals. But, like all else Eleusinian, this libation must be sui generis, emptied from two bowls, the one toward the East, the other toward the West.
Some people have days on which they eat onions, what you might call "retreats," or their "Thursdays." The act is in the nature of a religious ceremony, an Eleusinian mystery; not a breath of it must get abroad.
In ancient Greece the names of the priests and other high officials who had to do with the performance of the Eleusinian mysteries might not be uttered in their lifetime.
But a treaty afterward concluded with the Eleusinians confirmed the ascendency of Athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laid the foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries. Upon the dim and confused traditions relative to Ion, the wildest and most luxuriant speculations have been grafted prolix to notice, unnecessary to contradict.
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