Kerenyi translates the fragments on a papyrus from an oration of the time of Hadrian. “I was initiated long ago (or: elsewhere). Lock up Eleusis, (Hierophant,) and put the fire out, Dadouchos. Deny me the holy night! I have already been initiated into more authentic mysteries…. (I have beheld) the fire, whence (…And) I have seen the Kore. (Cited in Kerenyi Eleusis p. 83-84)
The Council and the People have decreed: Democrates, son of Sunieus of Colonus, proposed the motion: Whereas, the chosen stewards of the mysteries for the year of the archon Diocles have offered to Demeter and Kore and the other gods, as is customary, for the Council and the People and the children and wives, all the offerings which are appropriately to be made during the year, and also the preliminary offering…; and have further provided, at their own cost, the conveyance for the use of the sanctuaries, and have voluntarily turned over to the Council the amount set aside for their use as the expense of the conveyances, and have also provided for the procession to the sea and for the reception of Iacchos in Eleusis, and similarly for the mysteries before Agra, which took place twice in this year, during the celebration of the Eleusinian games; and have moreover sent a steer as sacrifice for the Eleusinian games, giving the six hundred and fifty members of the Council their share of the flesh; and beyond all this have delivered the accounts to the office of the treasury and the metroion (the Athenian state archives in the temple of Cybele), and have rendered their account before the court, in accordance with the laws; and out of their own funds have provided for everything else connected with the sacrifice, in order to show themselves agreeably disposed toward the Council and the People, thus setting an example for those who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the public welfare and showing that they can count upon the proper gratitude, by good fortune. Let the Council decree that the presiding officers who are to preside at the next assembly of the people shall place this matter on the agenda and present the decree of the Council to the People, that the Council has agreed to honor the stewards of the mysteries in the year of the archon Diocles, Thrasykles (son of …) of Auridae, and Nicetes, son of Nicetes of Pergase, and to crown them both with myrtle because of their piety toward the gods and their unselfishness toward the council and the People; and to set before them other popular honors in the future, if they show themselves to be worthy of them; finally, that the secretary for the Prytany is to have this decree inscribed upon two columns of stone and set them up, one in the court of the sanctuary at Eleusis, the other on the Acropolis. For the (cost of) inscribing …
(Cited in Grant, F. C. Hellenistic Religions p. 15-16)
Beautiful indeed is the Mystery given us by the blessed gods: death is for mortals no longer an evil, but a blessing. (Inscription at Eleusis, cited in S. Angus. The Mystery Religions And Christianity, p. 140)
I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me to drink of the ever-flowing spring on the right, where the cypress is, for I am the child of Earth and starry Heaven. (From Eleuthernai in Crete, second century B.C., now in the National Museum in Athens.)
“It was as though I were a stranger to myself.” (Sopater?. Michael B Cosmopoulos. Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults. New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 178.)
