The Eleusinian mysteries & rites. - The Masonic Trowel

62 ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES AND RITES
plain to see which should first complete his allotted
task.
The ancient sanctuary in which the Mysteries
were celebrated was burnt by the Persians in 480
or 479
B.C., and a new sanctuary was built—or,
at least, begun—under the administration of Pericles.
Plutarch says that Coroebus began the Temple of
Initiation at Eleusis, but only lived to finish the lower
rank of columns with their architraves ;
Metagenes,
of the ward of Xypete, added the rest of the entabla-
ture and the upper row of columns, and that Xenocles
of Cholargus built the dome on the top. The long
wall, the building of which Socrates says he heard
Pericles propose to the people, was undertaken
by Callicrates. Cratinus satirized the work as
proceeding very slowly :
—
Stone upon stone the orator has pil'd
With swelling words, but words will build no walls.
According to some writers the Temple was planned
by Tetinus, the architect of the Parthenon, and
Pericles was merely the overseer of the building.
We are told by Vitruvius that the Temple at Eleusis
consisted at first of one cell of vast magnitude,
without columns, though it was probable that it was
meant to be surrounded in the customary manner ;
a prostyle, however, only was added, and that not
until the time of Demetrius Phalereus, some ages
after the original structure was erected. It is