There is no reason to suppose any specific difference between the
observances of the Eleusinian festival and the accustomed usages of
the Greek religion; nocturns, libations, quaint purifications,
processions--are common incidents of all Greek worship; in all
religious ceremonies there is an element of dramatic symbolism; and
what we really do see, through those scattered notices, [123] are
things which have their parallels in a later age, the whole being not
altogether unlike a modern pilgrimage. The exposition of the sacred
places--the threshing-floor of Triptolemus, the rocky seat on which
Demeter had rested in her sorrow, the well of Callichorus--is not so
strange, as it would seem, had it no modern illustration. The
libations, at once a watering of the vines and a drink-offering to
the dead--still needing men's services, waiting for purification
perhaps, or thirsting, like Dante's Adam of Brescia, in their close
homes--must, to almost all minds, have had a certain natural
impressiveness; and a parallel has sometimes been drawn between this
festival and All Souls' Day.
And who, everywhere, has not felt the mystical influence of that
prolonged silence, the mystic silence, from which the very word
"mystery" has its origin? Something also there undoubtedly was,
which coarser minds might misunderstand.
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