Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/597

 those who had looked on the great drama of Eleusis? What was meant by that prospect of being 'god-beloved and sharing the life of gods'? How came it that the assembly of the initiated believed their salvation to lie in the union of Hades and Persephone, represented in the persons of hierophant and priestess, in the subterranean nuptial-chamber? What was the bearing of the legend dramatically enacted upon these hopes and prospects and beliefs? Surely it taught that not only was there physical life beyond death, but a life of wedded happiness with the gods.

And the same doctrine seems to be the motif of many other popular legends and of mysteries founded thereon; its settings and its harmonies may be different, but the essential melody is the same. At Eleusis Demeter's daughter was the representative of mankind, for she went down to the house of Hades as is the lot of men. But Crete had another legend wherein Demeter was the representative deity with whom mankind might hope for union. Was it not told how Iasion even in this life found such favour in the goddess' eyes that she was 'wed with him in sweet love mid the fresh-turned furrows of the fat land of Crete '? And happiness such as was granted to him here was laid up for all the initiated hereafter; else would there be no meaning in those lines, 'Blessed, methinks, is the lot of him that sleeps, and tosses not, nor turns, even Endymion; and, dearest maiden, blessed I call Iasion, whom such things befell, as ye that be profane shall never come to know .' Surely that which is withheld from the profane is by implication reserved to the sanctified, and to them it is promised that they shall know by their own experience hereafter the bliss which Iasion even here obtained. It was, I think, in this spirit and this belief that the Athenians in old time called their dead [Greek: Dêmêtreioi] 'Demeter's folk '; for the popular belief in the condescension of the Mistress, great and reverend goddess though she was, was so firmly rooted, it would seem, that even to this day the folk-stories, as we have seen, still tell how the 'Mistress of the earth and of the sea,' she whom men still call Despoina and reverence for her love of righteousness and for her