The Eleusinian mysteries & rites. - The Masonic Trowel

72 ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES AND RITES
and unprecedented, though when the letter was
read, Pythodorus, a torch-bearer, was the only
person who ventured to oppose the demand, and
his opposition was entirely ineffectual. Stratocles
procured a decree that the month of Munychion
should be reputed to be and called the month of
Anthesterion, to give Demetrius the opportunity
for the initiation into the first degree. This was
done, whereupon a second decree was issued by which
Munychion was again changed into Boedromion,
and Demetrius was admitted to the Mysteries of
the next degree. Philippides, the poet, satirized
Stratocles in the words :
" The man who can con-
tract the whole year into one month," and Demetrius,
with reference to his lodging in the Parthenon, in
the words :
" The man who turns the temples into
inns and brings prostitutes into the company of the
virgin goddess."
The design of initiation, according to Plato, was
to restore the soul to that state from which it fell,
and Proclus states that initiation into the Mysteries
drew the souls of men from a material, sensual,
and merely human hfe and joined them in communion
with the gods.
" Happy is the man," wrote Euripides,
" who hath been initiated into the Greater Mysteries
and leads a Hfe of piety and religion," and Aristo-
phanes truly represented pubhc opinion when he
wrote in The Frogs : " On us only does the sun
dispense his blessings ;
we only receive pleasure from