O you of many names, glory of the Cadmeian bride, offspring of loud-thundering Zeus! You who watches over famed Italia, and reigns, where all guests are welcomed, in the sheltered plain of Eleusinian Deo! O Bacchus. (Sophocles. Antigone 1115-1120)
Haply by the shores loved of Apollo, haply by that torch-lit strand where the Great Goddess cherish dread rites for mortals, on whose lips the ministrant Eumolpidae have laid the precious seal of silence; (Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus 1048-1053)
But for your mysteries which speech may not profane, you shall mark them for yourself, when you come to that place alone; and when you are coming to the end of life, disclose them to your heir alone; let him teach his heir; and so thenceforth. (Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus 1526-1534)
And then he called his daughters, and bade them fetch water from some fount, that he should wash, and make a drink-offering. And they went to the hill which was in view, Demeter’s hill who guards the tender plants, and in short space brought that which their father had enjoined; then they ministered to him with washing, and dressed him, as use ordains. (Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus 1595-1602)
Weep no more maidens; for where the kindness of the Dark Powers is an abiding grace to the quick and to the dead, there is no room for mourning; divine anger would follow. (Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 1750-1753)
This way – hither, this way! – for this way does Guiding Hermes lead me, and the goddess of the dead. (Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus 2556-1558)
Thrice happy are those of mortals, who having seen those rites depart for Hades; for to them alone is it granted to have true life there; to the rest all there is evil. (Sophocles Fragment 719)
