Unit 4 · Mystery Rites of the Ancient World

Eleusis is a town in Greece, about 13 miles west of the city of Athens. Long ago, Eleusis had a sanctuary. A sanctuary is a holy place with temples and altars. Strong walls kept it apart from the busy world outside.

Every year, people came to Eleusis for secret rites called the Mysteries. A rite is a set of holy actions done in a special order. Only people who had joined could see the most secret part. A person who joins through a special ceremony is called an initiate.

The Mysteries lasted more than a thousand years. Historians have strong evidence for them from the 500s BCE to the late 300s CE. Some think they began even earlier. Very few traditions in history have lasted that long.

The Greeks told a myth about two goddesses. A myth is an old story about gods or heroes. Demeter was the goddess of grain, the plants that give us bread. Her daughter was named Persephone. One day, Hades, king of the land of the dead, carried Persephone away.

Demeter searched everywhere for her daughter. She was so sad that she stopped helping plants grow. Fields turned brown. People had no grain to eat. At last, Zeus, the king of the gods, sent a messenger to bring Persephone back.

But Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds in the land of the dead. So she had to go back for part of every year. When she returned to her mother, Demeter was happy and the fields grew green. Many people later read this as a story about the seasons.

We know the myth from an old poem called the Hymn to Demeter. A hymn is a song or poem that praises a god. Nobody knows who wrote this one. Scholars think it was made about 2,600 years ago, around 600 BCE.

In the poem, sad Demeter wanders to Eleusis. She is dressed as an old woman, so no one knows her. The people of Eleusis are kind to her. Later, she tells them to build her a temple. There she teaches the leaders of the town her holy rites.

The hymn says the rites must not be told to others. It also says the people who have seen them are happy, or blessed. So the poem gives two big ideas at once: keep the secret, and the secret brings hope.

Many Greek holy events were only for citizens of one city. Eleusis was different. Men and women could join. Rich and poor people could join. Even enslaved people could join. This made the Mysteries very unusual.

There were a few rules. A person had to understand Greek, so they could follow the words of the rites. A person who had killed someone could not join. Everyone else was welcome to begin.

Joining took steps. First, a person took part in smaller rites in the spring. Then, months later, they could come to the great rites in the autumn. Each new initiate had a guide who had already been through it. This guide was called a mystagogue.

The great rites came each autumn and lasted several days. First, the people gathered in Athens. They washed in the sea to make themselves clean for the goddess. Then came the most famous day: the long walk.

A procession is a large group walking together for a special reason. Thousands of people walked the road from Athens to Eleusis. This road was called the Sacred Way. It was about 13 miles long. Walkers carried torches, sang songs and called out to the gods.

The walk took most of the day. The crowd reached Eleusis as darkness fell. Walking together made strangers feel like one big group. Tired feet, shared songs and bright torches all became part of the memory.

At Eleusis stood a huge hall called the Telesterion. It was built so thousands of people could be inside at once. Rows of stone steps ran along the walls. In the middle was a small, special room.

The high priest was called the hierophant. The word means one who shows the holy things. On the most secret night, he showed the initiates something. People said there was bright light after darkness. But nobody wrote down exactly what was shown.

Initiates also drank a special drink made of barley and mint, called the kykeon. In the myth, Demeter drank it at Eleusis. Some modern writers have guessed that a mold from grain was in the drink and changed how people felt. Many historians doubt this, and no proof has been found.

Every initiate made a vow of silence. A vow is a serious promise. They could say that they had joined. They could say that it made them happy. But they could not tell what was shown or said inside the hall.

The city of Athens made this a law. Telling the secret, or making fun of the rites, was a serious crime. In 415 BCE, some rich young men were accused of acting out the Mysteries at private parties. The whole city was upset.

One man accused was Alcibiades, a famous general. He was away at war when Athens called him home for trial. He ran away to an enemy city instead. The story shows how much the people of Athens cared about the secret.

Many writers in ancient times were initiates. They wrote that the Mysteries were beautiful and gave people hope. But when they came to the secret part, they stopped. Their silence is a kind of evidence, too. It shows how strong the promise was.

A travel writer named Pausanias visited Greece around 160 CE. He described many temples in detail. At Eleusis, he wrote that a dream warned him not to describe what was inside the walls. So he did not.

Around 200 CE, a Christian teacher named Clement of Alexandria wrote against the old religions. He claimed to tell some secret words of the rites. Historians use his words with care. He was an enemy of the rites, and enemies do not always report fairly.

Around 370 BCE, a woman named Ninnion gave a gift to the goddesses of Eleusis. It was a painted clay tablet, a flat board with a picture on it. People gave gifts like this to say thank you to the gods.

The tablet was buried for a very long time. Archaeologists found it at Eleusis in 1895. An archaeologist is a person who studies the past by digging up and looking at old things. Today the tablet is in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

The picture shows people walking with torches toward the goddesses. It is one of the rare pictures of the Mysteries that survive. It shows the way in. But it does not show the final secret. The picture keeps the secret, too.

Why would thousands of people walk 13 miles each year? One big reason was hope. The Greeks worried about what happens after death. The Hymn to Demeter said initiates would have a better share. Many people believed it.

Another reason was belonging. That is the feeling of being part of a group. At Eleusis, a farmer and a rich lord walked the same road. They kept the same secret. For a few days, they were all initiates together.

Later, even famous Romans came to join. The Roman speaker Cicero was an initiate. He wrote that the Mysteries helped people live well and face death with more hope. Some Roman emperors joined, too.

By the 300s CE, Greece was part of the Roman Empire. Many people in the empire had become Christians. The emperors were Christian, too. They began to make laws against the old religions.

In 392 CE, Emperor Theodosius passed a law against the old rites. A few years later, in 396 CE, an army led by a man named Alaric wrecked the sanctuary at Eleusis. After more than a thousand years, the Mysteries came to an end. We call this kind of change a decline.

Today you can visit Eleusis. You can walk among the broken stones of the great hall. There is a small museum. But the secret went away with the last initiates. It is one of the best-kept secrets in history.

About 1,900 years ago, some men in Roman towns met in secret to worship a god called Mithras. In pictures, Mithras is a young man. He wears a soft, pointed cap and a cape that flies out behind him. The most famous scene shows him holding down a bull.

This bull scene was in almost every meeting place. Two helpers with torches stand beside Mithras. One holds his torch up. The other holds his torch down. The Sun and the Moon often watch from above. Members knew what the scene meant. They did not write it down for us.

The name Mithra came from Persia, a land far to the east. But scholars disagree about how much of this religion came from Persia. Many now think it was mostly made in the Roman world, using a Persian name. This is a debate, and it is not settled.

A meeting place for Mithras is called a mithraeum. More than one are called mithraea. Many were built underground or in dark rooms with no windows. Members wanted the room to feel like a cave. In their story, Mithras killed the bull in a cave.

Most mithraea were long and narrow. A raised bench ran down each side. Members lay or sat on the benches to share a ritual meal, a meal eaten as part of worship. At the far end was the bull scene, often lit by lamps. Most rooms held only a few dozen people.

The members left no holy book behind. So how do we know all this? We learn from the rooms, the carvings and paintings, and words carved on altars. We also learn from writers who did not like the religion. Each kind of clue tells part of the story.

Most scholars agree that only men joined the groups of Mithras. Many were Roman soldiers. Others were traders, government workers and enslaved or freed men. Inside the mithraeum, rich and poor members ate together at the same benches.

Mithraea have been found across the Roman Empire. They stretch from Britain in the west to Syria in the east. Soldiers moved from place to place. So did each merchant, a person who buys and sells goods. They seem to have carried the religion with them.

One mithraeum in Syria has a carved date. Archers from the Roman army set it up around 168 CE. This kind of carved writing is called an inscription. Inscriptions help us know who the members were and when they met.

San Clemente is a church in Rome. The church you walk into today was built in the 1100s. In 1857, an Irish priest named Joseph Mullooly began to dig beneath it. He found an older church underneath, from the 300s.

Below that church were even older Roman buildings. In 1867, the diggers found a mithraeum down there. It had been built in the early 200s. But water kept flooding the lowest layer. A tunnel to drain the water was finished in 1914. Only then could the mithraeum be fully dug out.

Today, visitors walk down stairs through three layers of time. At the bottom, they can see the benches and the altar of Mithras. They can still hear water running nearby. Digging carefully to study the past like this is called an excavation.

Ostia was the port city of ancient Rome, near the mouth of the river Tiber. Ships brought grain and goods there. Many mithraea have been found in Ostia. One of them is named for a man called Felicissimus.

In 1940, archaeologists Guido and Raissa Calza dug up this mithraeum. It was built in the second half of the 200s CE. Its floor is a mosaic, a picture made of many tiny pieces of stone set close together.

The mosaic is divided into seven panels, one after another. Each panel stands for one grade, or rank, of members. Each has its own symbols and its own planet. An eighth panel names Felicissimus. It is like a ladder that members climbed, step by step.

Other evidence agrees with the floor at Ostia. There were seven grades. In order, they were Raven, Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Runner of the Sun, and Father. The Father was the highest grade. He led the group.

Each grade had a planet. Romans counted seven moving lights in the sky as planets, including the Sun and the Moon. The Raven went with Mercury. The Soldier went with Mars. The Persian went with the Moon. The Runner of the Sun went with the Sun. The Father went with Saturn.

What did members do to move up a grade? We do not know for sure. The members kept that secret, and few clues survive. The grades show one clear idea, though. Belonging to the group meant growing, one step at a time.

The London Mithraeum was built around the middle of the 200s CE. It stood near a small river called the Walbrook. Over hundreds of years, it was buried under mud and newer buildings. People forgot it was there.

In 1954, archaeologists W. F. Grimes and Audrey Williams dug at the site. On 18 September, the last planned day of the dig, they found the marble head of Mithras. Long lines of people came to see the temple. Many people argued that it should be saved.

The stones were moved and put back together nearby. Later, the temple was rebuilt again, on the spot where it was first found. It opened to visitors in 2017. When people build something again from its old parts, we say they reconstruct it.

Pythagoras was born on Samos, a Greek island, more than 2,500 years ago. As a grown man, he moved west to a Greek city called Croton. Croton is in southern Italy. Many Greeks lived in cities there.

In Croton, Pythagoras became a teacher. People came to learn from him and to live by his rules. His followers formed a brotherhood, a close group who treat each other like family. Later writers say some women were followers, too. Many shared their meals and their way of life.

Pythagoras wrote no books that survive. His followers were called Pythagoreans. They studied numbers, music and how to live a good life. They kept some of their teachings inside the group.

Later writers describe strict rules for the brotherhood. They say new members had to stay silent for a long time, some say five years. They listened and learned before they could speak in the group. This kind of silence is a way to show discipline, or self-control.

The group also had short sayings to live by. People called them things heard, because members learned them by listening. One famous rule was: do not eat beans. Even in ancient times, people argued about why. Nobody is sure today.

A Roman writer, Cicero, said Pythagoreans ended arguments with a short phrase: He himself said it. That meant Pythagoras had said so, so the matter was closed. Some people admired this loyalty. Others thought people should give reasons, not just names.

The Pythagoreans believed numbers were the key to the whole world. They studied music this way. A shorter string plays a higher note. A string half as long plays a note that sounds the same, only higher. We call that an octave. The two lengths make a ratio of 2 to 1.

You may meet the Pythagorean theorem in math class. It is about a right triangle, a triangle with one square corner. Square the two short sides and add them. You get the square of the long side. For sides 3 and 4, that is 9 plus 16, which makes 25, or 5 times 5.

But the theorem is older than Pythagoras. A clay tablet from ancient Babylon, called Plimpton 322, lists number sets that fit this rule. It was made more than a thousand years before him. Nobody knows if Pythagoras himself proved the rule.

Most of what we read about Pythagoras was written 600 to 800 years after he lived. Writers such as Iamblichus, around 300 CE, collected old stories. Some stories may be true. Others grew bigger with each telling. A story that is told for a long time but cannot be proven is a legend.

One legend says a member named Hippasus shared a math secret with outsiders. In the story, the group punished him. Historians treat this as a legend. It comes only from late writers, and no earlier record backs it up.

Some things are better supported. The historian Polybius wrote in the 100s BCE that Pythagorean meeting places in southern Italy were burned. So the group seems to have faced real anger from its neighbors. But even Polybius wrote hundreds of years later, and the dates are still debated. Historians call a source written long after the events a late source.