The Eleusinian mysteries & rites. - The Masonic Trowel

THE INITIATORY RITES 73
his beams ; we, who are initiated, and perform
towards citizens and strangers all acts of piety and
justice." The initiates sought to imitate the alle-
gorical birth of the god. The epoptae were supposed
to have experienced a certain regeneration and to
enter upon a new state of existence, and they were
fantastically deemed to have acquired a great increase
of light and knowledge. Hitherto they had been
now they had become esoteric
exoteric and profane ;
and holy.
Jevons, in his Introduction to the Study of Religion,
says that no oath was demanded of the initiate, but
that silence was observed generally as an act of
reverence rather than as an act of purposed conceal-
ment. There seems, however, to be conclusive
evidence that an oath of secrecy was demanded of
and taken by the candidates for initiation, at any
rate, into the second and third degrees, if not into
the first degree. Moreover, there are on record
several prosecutions of citizens for having broken
the pledge of secrecy they had given. ^Eschylus
was indicted for having disclosed in the theatre
certain details of the Mysteries, and he only escaped
punishment by proving that he had never been
initiated and, therefore, could not have violated
any obligation. A Greek scholiast says that in five
of his tragedies ^schylus spoke of Demeter and
therefore may be supposed in these cases to have
touched upon subjects connected with the Mysteries,