The Eleusinian mysteries & rites. - The Masonic Trowel

102 ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES AND RITES
it starts forth : what
was dead is now aUve ; the
earth, all decked with fresh green, rejoices at the
recovery of her long-lost daughter, and everything
shares in the joy."
Demeter was worshipped in a twofold sense
by the Greeks, as the foundress of agriculture and as
goddess of law and order. They used to celebrate
yearly in her honour the Thesmorphoria, or Festival
of Laws. According to some ancient writers the
Greeks, prior to the time of Demeter and Triptolemus,
fed upon the acorns of the ilex, or the evergreen
oak. Acorns, according to Virgil, were the food
in Epiros, and in Spain, according to Strabo. The
Scythians made bread with acorns. According to
another tradition, before Demeter's time, men neither
cultivated corn nor tilled the ground, but roamed
the mountains and woods in search for the wild
fruits which the earth produced. Isocrates wrote :
" Ceres hath made the Athenians two presents of
the greatest consequence : corn, which brought
us out of a state of brutahty ; and the Mj^steries,
which teach the initiated to entertain the most
agreeable expectations touching death and eternity.'*
The coins of Eleusis represented Demeter in a car
drawn by dragons or serpents which were sometimes
winged. The goddess had two ears of corn in her
right hand or, as some imagined, torches, indicating
that she was searching for her daughter. George
Wheler, in his Journey into Greece, published in