DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9184#0404
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CHAPTER XIII.
ELEUSIS AND THE MYSTERIES.
As no branch of Greek religious usage is more
worthy of study than the Mysteries of Eleusis, so
scarcely any presents greater difficulties to the investi-
gator. The ancients, it is notorious, threatened with
heavy penalties those who should divulge any secret
connected with the Mysteries ; therefore the ancient
writers tell us but little of them, nor do inscriptions
and works of art do very much towards filling up the
blank. And the little information which reaches us by
means of stray hints of writers of classical times, or
the violent polemical treatises of early Christian fathers
and Pagan writers of the decline, has been greatly
distorted by modern authors who cannot in this
matter lay aside the odium theologicum. This theolo-
gical bias acts in entirely opposite directions according
to the character of the writer. Leaving aside the pre-
judice of those who like Warburton supposed the Greek
mystic rites to retain scraps of a primitive revelation
made to mankind in ancient days, a theory now en-
tirely out of date, we shall find other disturbing pre-
occupations. Some modern writers inclined to rational-
ism are much predisposed to imagine that something
far higher and nobler than ordinary Greek polytheism
was taught to those initiated at Eleusis and Samothrace,
that doctrines such as the unity of God and the high
CHAPTER XIII.
ELEUSIS AND THE MYSTERIES.
As no branch of Greek religious usage is more
worthy of study than the Mysteries of Eleusis, so
scarcely any presents greater difficulties to the investi-
gator. The ancients, it is notorious, threatened with
heavy penalties those who should divulge any secret
connected with the Mysteries ; therefore the ancient
writers tell us but little of them, nor do inscriptions
and works of art do very much towards filling up the
blank. And the little information which reaches us by
means of stray hints of writers of classical times, or
the violent polemical treatises of early Christian fathers
and Pagan writers of the decline, has been greatly
distorted by modern authors who cannot in this
matter lay aside the odium theologicum. This theolo-
gical bias acts in entirely opposite directions according
to the character of the writer. Leaving aside the pre-
judice of those who like Warburton supposed the Greek
mystic rites to retain scraps of a primitive revelation
made to mankind in ancient days, a theory now en-
tirely out of date, we shall find other disturbing pre-
occupations. Some modern writers inclined to rational-
ism are much predisposed to imagine that something
far higher and nobler than ordinary Greek polytheism
was taught to those initiated at Eleusis and Samothrace,
that doctrines such as the unity of God and the high