The season of the year also gives us a suspicion that this gloominess is brought about because of the disappearance from our sight of the crops and fruits that people in days of old did not regard as gods, but as necessary and important contributions of the gods toward the avoidance of a savage and a bestial life. At the time of year when they saw some of the fruit vanishing and disappearing completely from the tree, while they themselves were sowing others in a mean and poverty-stricken fashion still, scraping away the earth with their hands and again replacing it, committing the seed to the ground with uncertain expectation of their ever appearing again or coming to fruition they did many things like persons at a funeral in mourning for their dead.
(Plutarch, Isis And Osiris 70)
“Thessalus, the son of Cimon, of the township of Lacia, lays information that Alcibiades, the son of Clinias of the township of the Scambonidae, has committed a crime against the goddess Demeter and Persephone, by representing in derision the holy mysteries, and showing them to his companions in his own house. Where, being habited in such robes as are used by the chief priest, Polytion the torch-bearer, and Theodorus, of the township of Phegaea, the herald; and saluted the rest of his company as Initiates And Novices, all which was done contrary to the laws and institutions of the Eulmolpidae, and the heralds and priests of the temple at Eleusis.” He was condemned as contumacious upon his not appearing, his property confiscated, and it was decreed that all the priests and priestesses should solemnly curse him. But one of them, Theano, the daughter of Menon, of the township of Agraule, is said to have opposed that part of the decree, saying that her holy office obliged her to make prayers, but not execrations. (Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 34)
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. For in old time, upon the occasions of their happiest successes, the presence of the shapes and voices of the mystic ceremonies had been vouchsafed to them, striking terror and amazement into their enemies; but now, at the very season of their celebration, the gods themselves stood witnesses of the saddest oppressions of Greece, the most holy time being profaned, and their greatest jubilee made the unlucky date of their most extreme calamity…. While a candidate for initiation was washing a young pig in the haven of Cantharus, a shark seized him, bit off all his lower parts up to the belly and devoured them, by which the god gave them manifestly to understand, that having lost the lower town and seacoast, they should keep only the upper city. (Plutarch, Life of Phocion 28)
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. Others believed that they saw apparitions, in the shape of armed men, reaching out their hands from the island of Aegina before Grecian galleys; and supposed they were the Aeacidae, whom they had invoked to their aid before the battle. The first man that took a ship was Lycomedes the Athenian, captain of the galley, who cut down its ensign, and dedicated it to Apollo the Laurel-crowned. and as the Persians fought in a narrow arm of the sea, and could bring
but part of their fleet to fight, and fell foul of one another, the Greeks thus equaled them in strength and fought with them till the evening forced them back, and obtained, as says Simonides, that noble and famous victory, than which neither amongst the Greek nor barbarians was ever known more glorious exploit on the seas; by the joint valor, indeed, and zeal of all who fought, but by the wisdom and sagacity of Themistocles. (Plutarch. Life of Themistocles 15)
Yet it is more credible, as others write, that there were, before, frequent interviews between them, and that it was by the means of Theseus that Hercules was initiated at Eleusis, and purified before initiation, upon account of several rash actions of his former life. (Plutarch, Life of Theseus 30)
What glory remains to Eleusis, if we are to be ashamed of Eumolpus, who, a migrant from Thrace, initiated and still initiates the Greeks into the mysteries?
(Plutarch, On Exile 607b)
It is no such thing, however; but just as our earth contains gulfs that are deep and extensive, one here pouring in towards us through the Pillars of Heracles and outside the Caspian and the Red Sea with its gulfs, so those features are depths and hollows of the moon. The largest of them is called “Hecate’s Recess,” where the souls suffer and exact penalties for whatever they have endured or committed after having already become Spirits; and the two long ones are called “the Gates”, for through them pass the souls now to the side of the moon that faces heaven and now back to the side that faces earth. The side of the moon towards heaven is named “Elysian plain,” the hither side “House of counter-terrestrial Phersephone.” (Plutarch. On the Face in the Moon. Chapter Twenty-Nine.)
Just as persons who are being initiated into the Mysteries throng together at the outset amid tumult and shouting, and jostle against one another but when the holy rites are being performed and disclosed the people are immediately attentive in awe and silence, so too at the beginning of philosophy: about its portals also you will see great tumult and talking and boldness, as some boorishly and violently try to jostle their way towards the repute it bestows; but he who has succeeded in getting inside, and has seen a great light, as though a shrine were opened, adopts another bearing of silence and amazement, and “humble and orderly attends upon” reason as upon a god. (Plutarch, Progress in Virtue 81e)
The result of soul and body commingled is the irrational or the affective factor, whereas of mind and soul the conjunction produces reason; and of these the former is source of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice. In the composition of these three factors earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnishes mind to man for the purpose of his generation even as it furnishes light to the moon herself. As to the death we die, one death reduces man from three factors to two and another reduces him from two to one; and the former takes place in the earth that belongs to Demeter (wherefore “to make an end” is called “to render one’s life to her” and Athenians used in olden times to call the dead “Demetrians”), the latter in the moon that belongs to Persephone, and associated with the former is Hermes the terrestrial, with the latter Hermes the celestial. While the goddess here dissociates the soul from the body swiftly and violently, Persephone gently and by slow degrees detaches the mind from the soul and has therefore been called “single-born” because the best part of man is “born single” when separated off by her. Each of the two separations naturally occurs in this fashion: All soul, whether without mind or with it, when it has issued from the body is destined to wander in the region between earth and moon but not for an equal time. Unjust and licentious souls pay penalties for their offenses; but the good soul must in the gentlest part of the air, which they call “the meads of Hades,” pass a certain set time sufficient to purge and blow away the pollution contracted from the body as from an evil odor. Then, as if brought home from banishment abroad, they savor joy most like that of initiates, which attended by glad expectation is mingled with confusion and excitement. For many, even as they are in the act of clinging to the moon, she thrusts off and sweeps away; and some of those souls too that are on the moon they see turning upside down as if sinking again into the deep. Those that have got up, however, and have found a firm footing first go about like victors crowned with wreaths of feathers called wreathes of steadfastness, because in life they had made the irrational or affective element of the soul orderly and tolerably tractable to reason; secondly, in appearance resembling a ray of light but in respect of their nature, which in the upper region is buoyant as it is here in ours, resembling the ether about the moon, they get from it both tension and strength as edged instruments get a temper, for what laxness and diffuseness they still have is strengthened and becomes firm and translucent. In consequence they are nourished by any exhalation that reaches them, and Heraclitus was right in saying: “Souls employ the sense of smell in Hades.” (Plutarch. On the Face of the Moon 28)
But as for us, let us not listen to any who say that there are some oracles not divinely inspired, or religious ceremonies and mystic rites which are disregarded by the gods; and on the other hand let us not imagine that the god goes in and out and is present at these ceremonies and helps in conducting them; but let us commit these matters to those ministers of the gods to whom it is right to commit them, as to servants and clerks, and let us believe that demigods are guardians of sacred rites of the gods and prompters in the Mysteries, while others go about as avengers of arrogant and grievous cases of injustice. (Plutarch. On the Obsolescence of Oracles, 416, 13.)
Regarding the rites of the Mysteries, in which it is possible to gain the clearest reflections and adumbrations of the truth about the demigods, and let my lips be piously sealed,” as Herodotus says; but as for festivals and sacrifices, which may be compared with ill-omened and gloomy days, in which occur the eating of raw flesh, rending of victims, fasting, and beating of breasts, and again in many places scurrilous language at the shrines and frenzy and shouting of throngs in excitement with tumultuous tossing of heads in the air. I should say that these acts are not performed for any god, but are soothing and appeasing rites for the averting of evil spirits. (Plutarch. On the Obsolescence of Oracles, 417, 14.)
