being bid far distant, he was led to the very adytum! But how is the reader of Apuleius disappointed by the turn which the story now takes! "Thou wilt perchance enquire now, O inquisitive reader, what was then said and done? I would tell thee were it lawful for me to speak: thou shouldst know were it lawful for thee to hear! But I will not torment thee with a long delay, for perhaps thy curiosity is of a religious kind. Hear, therefore, but believe the truth. I approached the border of death I touched the threshold of the invisible world: I return whirled through every element. I saw the sun shining in the fullest splendour at midnight: I stood before the gods, both heavenly and infernal, and worshipped them close at hand : behold I have told thee that which thou hearest, but which it does not follow that thou canst understand; and whatever I have confessed may be divulged without sacrilege.” — He then describes his symbolic dress. And we learn from the Plutus of Aristophanes, that the garb in which the candidate was initiated was worn by him to shreds, and then was deemed so holy that it was devoted to Ceres in return.* His right hand held a lighted torch, his head was filleted with palm-leaves. Thus adorned like a sun, and standing like an expressive statue, the external draperies of the temple are suddenly shot back, and he stands forth in the presence of the waiting populace. Three days are apparently consumed, and the fourth was happily called the natal day, the teleioi, or mystæ, being then born to the longsought discovery. He, after stating his indescribable happiness, repairs to Rome, and still the worshipper of Isis, there he finds her temple in Campus Martius, exclaiming with unsurpassed elegancy, "Fani quia advena, religionis autem indigena"! He being then devoted to the priesthood, had other initiations to pass: but these cannot affect an ordinary case. There are other books which cast glimpses on these rites, especially the poets. To these I shall find occasion afterwards to refer: I shall now only mention Catullus. Did his other qualities bear any proportion to his beauty of style, I would quote from him,-in their absence I must forbear; and yet his Atys * Lin: 845. has its admirers as a specimen of purity and a fable of immortality! The Mysteries were of so dread a character, that we might fancy that all was most serious in the pilgrimage to them. But there was a gate at Athens where banter was quite licensed on all who passed it on their way to them. Indeed the Athenian would never lose his jest. In Aristophanes' Wasps we may learn that this was directed chiefly, if not exclusively, against those who were hastening for initiation. Philocleon says of Bdelucleon, "I will banter him, it was his way with me, ere I was of the mysteries." The Festival of Isis was annual: admission to her mysteries was confined to that period, except by extraordinary dispensation.+ Much favour was necessary to enjoy this privilege. Warburton dilates very rashly when he says, in his Divine Legation, that the mysteries "were universally aspired to;" "that men, women, and children ran to be initiated." All this we must doubt from the extreme improbability that any secresy should be preserved, if the secret were so freely communicated. And all joined in reprobating any betrayal; thus Horace, "Vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum Vulgarit arcanæ, sub iisdem Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum A supposed reference to these mysteries, in one of the tragedies of Eschylus, nearly cost him his life. Alcibiades was accused of mimicking them in his revels, that he had even travestied the part of the hierophant, that he had initiated some of his drunken associates. The informers had more than his vices, with none of his virtues and talents; but whether the cause, or pretext, of hatred, he never rose quite above the infamy of the charge. Harpocrates, the god of silence, with his hand on his mouth, always stood in the porch of these temples. The candidate had, we think, to go through the following trials. Having Lin: 1562. Herodotus.-Urania. Speech of Dicæus to Demaratus. 2 Carm lib. iii. been under regimen of abstinence and general restraint, having passed the day among the most exciting pageants and ovations, he was at night-fall summoned into the delubrum amidst an awful darkness and silence. Longinus has observed, "that to swear an oath in a common manner, impresses us with no sense of greatness: that depends upon the place, the spirit, the crisis, and the cause."* All was contrived to inspire this dread. Even Hercules seems long to have laboured under it, and the Dramatist very artfully gives the best account of his abduction of Cerberus, by supposing that his imagination became morbid by his contemplation of the spectacles unfolded in his initiation. In the Furens, Amphitruon asks him whether he brought off the three-headed monster by the use of bribe, or in fair fight? He answers, "In fair fight, but most fortunately I saw the inner rites of the Mystagogues!" His wits are diseased, and he confounds the false and the real. Is not his extrication of Theseus, also, but the rescue of the monarch from the cells of Eleusis, where he had been confined for contempt of these rites ? It is not easy to determine all the forms of initiation. They were often most trying to the nerve of the candidate. Faber, in his most excellent work, "the Origin of Pagan Idolatry,” has quoted from Clemens Alexandrinus a passage which contains a formula required of the aspirant to these mysteries: "I have drunk the medicated liquor." Does not this imply an exciting, fortifying, draught? It appears that the most ghastly phantoms crossed the scene, hideous spectres rose from the ground, the noise of storms was heard, thunders rolled along, and the dogs of hell bayed in their loudest fury. The candidate was sometimes compelled to rush through ordeals of fire and cataracts of water. He was left to the deepest darkness, "in Stygian cave forlorn." The trials were both real and imaginative. A mimic Avernus was always there, and the epoptes was launched in a small galley upon it. He was whirled upon it to and fro. That galley was called the Baris, and it landed its navigator at last on the island or myrtle-grove of the blessed. Probably the doctrine of the Metamorphosis was taught them by the machinery * Sect: 16. of animal disguises and vizards: while that of the Metempsychosis was figured in the pleasant perceptions of their later course and final resting-place. A light, of which all spoke in perfect rapture, was diffused. That was the type of joy. Whatever was the reward, it was, however, painfully earned and the ecstacy of the ultimatum, perhaps, consisted not so much in the actual acquirement as in the close of a formidable adjudication, and in the enrolment among a privileged order. Four principal officers appeared. The first was the Mithras, always of one family, the Eumolpidæ, in which distinctive line it continued twelve hundred years. He was the hierophant, wearing a crown, selected for his appearance, and especially for the sonorousness of his voice. He regulated each scene and explained each lesson. The second was the Bearer of the Torch, who was charged to see that all were suitably purified. The third was the Pontifex at the altar, sometimes called Epibomius, there being very frequent oblations. The fourth was the Herald. Xenophon, in narrating the defeat of the Thirty Tyrants by Thrasybulus, describes Cleocritus, herald of the Mystæ, as remarkable for the loudness of his voice. He has now cried, Off ye profane. Woe to any intruder! Livy, in his thirty-first book, mentions that two Acarnanian youths ignorantly entered the temple of Ceres, being uninformed in that religion, at the same time with others. But eagerly enquiring about what they saw, they were immediately betrayed: and though it was certainly unintentional on their part, the antistes, on account of the "infandum scelus," sentenced them to death. The ceremonies begin. The misery of irreligion is pourtrayed by apparitions of those who lived impious lives. They are heard uttering bitter cries. Tartarus is opened with all its terrific retributions. There spread out the Elysian fields. The bowers of blissful immortality bloom to the eye, and the forms of the virtuous are descried reposing in them. There are many processions, celebrating the history of the goddess. Soft sounds come wafted from the distance, until we hear the full-toned ode. Affairs of Greece, lib. ii. If the Batrachoi of Aristophanes preserve any subject of these musical rhythms, we are not left without some relic and suggestion of what the Mystæ sung:* Let the Pipe reverberate through the porch,— Now breathe forth the mystic fume of the Torch! Iacchus, Iacchus, O, Evohe, God of these seats, we call on Thee! Come with the fruitful myrtle-wreath crowned,— To thy Mysta's holy and graceful strain! Like a heavenly star with far-darting ray Ceres! thou queen of the hallowed rite,— Iacchus ! companion of pomp and vow! But there were certain doctrines taught which must have been accompanied by sensible illustrations. Three days could not be spent in only shows.-That of the Transmigration, was doubtless one. The strangest fancy was when men professed to remember their original, or any stage of their course before their human existence. Pythagoras stoutly maintained that he was Euphorbus in the Trojan war. Herodotus states that the Egyptians believed that, on the dissolution of the body, the soul immediately enters * Lin: 320–380. |