Eleusis, the sanctuary of the Mysteries of Demeter and Kore

About twenty kilometres from Athens, on the bay facing the island of Salamis, lies Eleusis, today Elefsina. For almost two thousand years it hosted the most famous Mysteries of the Greek world, dedicated to Demeter and her daughter Kore, also called Persephone. Every year thousands of initiates, men and women, free and enslaved, provided they spoke Greek and were not stained with blood, passed through the gates of the sanctuary. Yet we know very little of what they saw inside, because the silence imposed on initiates was kept with remarkable faithfulness.

The myth at the origin of the cult

The main source is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, probably composed between the seventh and sixth centuries BC. It tells of the abduction of Kore by Hades, lord of the underworld, and of her mother's long wandering in search of her. Arriving at Eleusis disguised as an old woman, Demeter was welcomed into the house of King Celeus. Finally revealing herself as a goddess, she asked for a temple to be built and taught the inhabitants her rites.

The myth also explains the cycle of the seasons. Since Kore had eaten a few pomegranate seeds in the realm of the dead, it was decreed that she would spend part of the year there and the rest with her mother. Demeter's grief coincided with the bare earth, her daughter's return with the rebirth of the fields. The Eleusinian cult thus wove the fate of grain together with a more personal hope, concerning the destiny of the soul after death.

The procession and the Telesterion

The Greater Mysteries were celebrated in the Attic month of Boedromion, between September and October. After purification rites, including a ritual bath in the sea, the procession left Athens and followed the Sacred Way to the sanctuary. The cult was administered by two Eleusinian families, the Eumolpidae, from whom the hierophant came, and the Kerykes. In spring the Lesser Mysteries were held at Agrae, by the Ilissos, and were considered a preparatory stage.

The heart of the sanctuary was the Telesterion, a large square hall rebuilt several times, with rows of steps along the walls and a forest of internal columns. At its centre stood the Anaktoron, a small chamber accessible only to the hierophant. In the archaeological area one can still see a cave associated with Pluto, which tradition linked to the passage between the world of the living and that of the dead.

The secret and the end of the Mysteries

Revealing the Mysteries was a very grave crime. In 415 BC Alcibiades was accused of having parodied them in a private house, and the scandal weighed on his political career. Ancient writers allude to things said, things shown and things done, but none describes the climax of the rite precisely. Cicero, himself an initiate, wrote in De legibus that Athens had produced nothing better than those mysteries.

The end came with the late Christian empire. Theodosius' edicts against pagan cults, at the close of the fourth century, struck Eleusis too, and according to the sources Alaric's Goths devastated the sanctuary in 396. Today the ruins and the archaeological museum allow visitors to retrace the plan of the Telesterion, the propylaea and the Sacred Way, restoring the image of one of the most revered places of antiquity.