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On that day, Iacchus used to be carried in procession from Athens to Eleusis, but now the whole ritual was marred, and the Athenians sadly contrasted this celebration of the mysteries with those of former years.
He must know of Deucalion, in whose days the whole world suffered shipwreck, of that single chest wherein were preserved the remnants of the human race, of the new generation born of stones; of the rending of Iacchus, the guile of Hera, the fiery death of Semele, the double birth of Dionysus; of Athene and Hephaestus and Erichthonius, of the strife for the possession of Athens, of Halirrhothius and that first trial on the Areopagus, and all the legendary lore of Attica.
It is reported, that, in the middle of the fight, a great flame rose into the air above the city of Eleusis, and that sounds and voices were heard through all the Thriasian plain, as far as the sea, sounding like a number of men accompanying and escorting the mystic Iacchus, and that a mist seemed to form and rise from the place from whence the sounds came, and, passing forward, fell upon the galleys.
Sopater further alleged that Initiation established a kinship of the soul with the divine Nature, and in the exoteric Hymn to Demeter covert references are made to the holy child, Iacchus, and to his death and resurrection, as dealt with in the Mysteries. From Iamblichus, the great theurgist of the third and fourth centuries A.D., much may be learned as to the object of the Mysteries.
His body was noticed by Queen Artemisia floating amongst the other wreckage, and was by her brought to Xerxes. XV. At this period of the battle it is said that a great light was seen to shine from Eleusis, and that a great noise was heard upon the Thriasian plain near the sea, as though multitudes of men were escorting the mystic Iacchus in procession.
that delicate spirits, as in Matthew Arnold's poem, sigh for the silence and the hush, and rise at length in open rebellion against Iacchus and his maenads, who destroy all the quiet of life and who madden innocent blood with their riot.
How is it possible to better express the At parte ex aliâ florens volitabat Iacchus.... Te quaerens, Ariadna, tuoque incensus amore of the Veronese poet than by the youthful, eager movement of the all-conquering god in the canvas of the Venetian?
Not the young boy-god Iacchus, amidst his nymphs, could, in Grecian frieze or picture, have seemed more the type of the sportive, hilarious vitality of sensuous nature.
The resentment felt upon it was heightened by the time it happened in, for the garrison was brought in on the twentieth of the month of Boedromion, just at the time of the great festival, when they carry forth Iacchus with solemn pomp from the city to Eleusis; so that the solemnity being disturbed, many began to call to mind instances, both ancient and modern, of divine interventions and intimations.
Can one see a field of wheat gathered into sheaves without thinking of the dream of Joseph, or be around a farm at lambing time without smiling to recall the cunning of Jacob? Already were all these things weary and old and romantic when Virgil wrote and admonished the husbandman of times and seasons, of plows and harrows, of mattocks and hurdles, and the mystical winnowing fan of Iacchus.
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