Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/253

231 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 231 found a support in a belief in these deities appears from the fable of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. Every year, at the time of harvest, Persephone was supposed to be carried from the world above to the dark dominions of the invisible King 1 of Shadows ('Ato^e), but to return every spring, in youthful beauty, to the arms of her mother. It was thus that the ancient Greeks described the disappearance and return of vegetable life in the alternations of the seasons. The changes of nature, however, must have been considered as typifying the changes in the lot of man ; otherwise Persephone would have been merely a symbol of the seed committed to the ground, and would not have be- come the queen of the dead. But when the goddess of inanimate nature had become the queen of the dead, it was a natural analogy, which must have early suggested itself, that the return of Persephone to the world of light also denoted a renovation of life and a new birth to men. Hence the Mysteries of Demeter, and especially those cele- brated at Eleusis (which at an early period acquired great renown among all the Greeks), inspired the most elevating and animating hopes with regard to the condition of the soul after death. " Happy" (says Pindar of these mysteries)* " is he who has beheld them, and de- scends beneath the hollow earth; he knows the end, he knows the divine origin of life;" and this praise is repeated by all the most dis- tinguished writers of antiquity who mention the Eleusinian mysteries. But neither the Eleusinian nor any other of the established mysteries of Greece obtained any influence upon the literature of the nation, since the hymns sung and the prayers recited at them were only intended for particular parts of the imposing ceremony, and were not imparted to the public. On the other hand, there was a society of persons who performed the rites of a mystical worship, but were not exclusively attached to a particular temple and festival, and who did not confine their notions to the initiated, but published them to others, and com- mitted them to literary works. These were the followers of Orpheus (ot 'Op<pitcoi) ; that is to say, associations of persons, who, under the "■uidance of the ancient mystical poet Orpheus, dedicated themselves to the worship of Bacchus, in which they hoped to find satisfaction for an ardent longing after the soothing and elevating influences of reli- gion. The Dionysus to whose worship these Orphic and Bacchic rites were annexedt, was the Chthonian deity, Dionysus Zagreus, closely connected with Demeter and Cora, who was the personified expression not only of the most rapturous pleasure, but also of a deep sorrow for the miseries of human life. The Orphic legends and poems related in great part to this Dionysus, who was combined, as an infernal deity, with Hades ; (a doctrine given by the philosopher Heraclitus as the f Ta 'O^ixa xaXtoftiva xcci Bax^iKcc. Herod, xi. 81.
 * Thren. fr. 8, ed. Boeckh.