CHAP. XV. ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. 323 



were so prevalent with the Gods, that their ene- 

 mies were defeated and put to flight as far as 

 Chalcis : whence it was sometimes called XaX«<. 

 ^iKou ^Kuy^oL. Another sacrifice, called Zrjixia, ' the 

 mulct,' was offered as an expiation of any irregu- 

 larities which happened during the solemnity. At 

 the beginning of the festival, all prisoners com- 

 mitted to gaol for smaller faults, that is, such as 

 did not render them incapable of communicating 

 in the sacrifices and other parts of divine worship, 

 were released." 



The Eleusinian mysteries, the most noted so- 

 lemnity of any in Greece, were also instituted 

 in honour of Ceres ; and from their being derived 

 from Egypt, it may not be foreign to the present 

 subject to introduce some account of their mode of 

 celebration in Greece.* " They were often called, 

 by way of eminence, Muo-rvjpia, * the mysteries,' 

 without any other note of distinction ; and so 

 superstitiously careful were they to conceal these 

 sacred rites, that if any person divulged any part 

 of them t, he was thought to have called down the 

 divine judgment upon his head, and it was ac- 

 counted unsafe to abide in the same house with him. 

 He was even apprehended as a public offender, 

 and put to death. Every thing contained a mys- 

 tery : Ceres herself (to whom, with her daughter 

 Proserpine, this solemnity was sacred) was not 

 called by her own name, but by the unusual title 

 of A;/Q£<a, which seems to be derived from a^Sog, 



* Potter's Grecian Antiq. vol. i. p. 449. 



t Conf. Herodot. ii. 171. &c. ; and Hor. Od.iii. 2. 26. 



Y ^ 



