Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/568

 that death, while it involves a parting from friends in this upper world, is also the means of drawing nearer, in an union as it were of wedlock, to the denizens of the lower world. The locus classicus for this conception is the Antigone. Throughout the latter part of that play, when once the doom of Antigone has been pronounced, the thought of her death as a wedding, and of the rock-hewn tomb where she is to be immured as a bridal-chamber, finds repeated and emphatic expression.

Of course it may be said that Antigone was the promised bride of Haemon, and that the poet in speaking of her tomb as a bridal-chamber was seeking to accentuate the pathetic contrast between her hopes and her destiny. That is true; but perhaps it is not the whole truth; perhaps Sophocles rather utilised the evident pathos of the situation for the purpose of covert allusion to doctrines which were in themselves unspeakable, such as Herodotus would have passed over with the words [Greek: eustoma keisthô]. For we must not forget that the majority of an Athenian audience, initiated as they naturally would be in the Eleusinian mysteries, were familiar with religious teachings of which none might make explicit mention in the pages of literature open to the profane, but at which a poet might well hint in words which beneath their superficial meaning hid a truth intelligible to such as had ears to hear. Aeschylus indeed had once ventured too far in his allusions to the mysteries ; but there is no improbability, or rather there is on that account an increased probability, in the supposition that a discreet and veiled allusion to unspeakable doctrines was permitted to the Tragic poet. Let us turn to the actual passages of the Antigone.

The first suggestion of the thought comes ironically enough, though it is but a faint suggestion, from the lips of Creon, who to Ismene's exclamation, "Wilt thou indeed bereave thine own son of her?" retorts "'Tis Hades' part to arrest this wedding ." The thought is taken up later by the Chorus, who, after their hymn in honour of unconquerable Love, revert to words of pityin these two lines (viz. [Greek: sterêseis têsde] and [Greek: tousde tous gamous]); but the lines follow closely on that in which Creon bids Ismene speak no more of Antigone as [Greek: hêde], and an ironical stress might well be laid by Creon on the word [Greek: tousde] as he uses it, which would suggest to his audience its antithesis [Greek: tous ekei gamous].]