¹ Mylonas, G. E., The Hymn to Demeter and her Sanctuary at Eleusis (Saint Louis, 1942), 3–5Google Scholar, on archaeological grounds sets the terminus ante quern for the cessation of the Mysteries in the middle or latter part of the 5th century of our era. Nothing, in fact, indicates that the cult persisted after the edict of Theodosius in 391 A.D.

² The thought and to some extent the language of lines 480–482 are paralleled by Pindar, fr. 121 Bowra, Sophocles, fr. 753 Nauck, and Euripides, Here. Fur. 613, but I suspect that all of these passages, including that in the Hymn, are in fact reflections of a promise of felicity solemnly made to the initiates at some point, perhaps during the μύησις. This, as we now know, was performed separately for each individual, and it may therefore have included some instruction. See also note 7, below.

³ IG I² 6 (before 460 B.C.), to be consulted now in the text established by Meritt, B. D., Hesperia 14 (1945), 61–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and IG II² 1078 (ca. 220 A.D.).

⁴ Panegyricus 28.

⁵ Cf. IG I² 76, on the offering of first-fruits to the Goddesses, required of the Athenians and their allies, and urged upon all other Greek states. Will, E., REG 61 (1948), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, dates the inscription late in 422/1 B.C., but refers the proposal to extend what had hitherto been a purely local custom back to 448 or 446 B.C.; on this see, however, the strictures of Robert, J.-L., REG 62 (1949), 102–3Google Scholar. Cf. also the prominence of Triptolemus in Athenian art from the end of the 6th century to about 440 B.C. (Nilsson, M. P., Geschichte d. griech. Religion I [München 1941], 629–30, 761Google Scholar). IG I² 6 (before 460 B.C., probably in connection with the official reorganization of the cult by the State after the Persian wars) formally attests the international importance of the Mysteries at this early period.

The success of the propaganda is more difficult to assess. The claim made by Isocrates (Panegyr. 31) in 380 B.C. that most states send these annual offerings of first-fruits is certainly not borne out by the records of 329/8 B.C. (IG II² 1672, 263 ff.), the only ones available. No doubt the orator is exaggerating (perhaps, as my colleague Professor Carl Roebuck has suggested to me, in terms of what was hoped from the Second Athenian Confederacy), but the records of a single year are not by themselves enough to discredit wholly his explicit statement. The tense political situation during the years after Chaeronea may have played a part, and it may also be significant that from 330 to 326 B.C. Greece was suffering from a severe food shortage. In any case, the repeated κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὲν μαντείαν τὲν ἐγ Δελϕôν of IG I² 76 cannot be mere rhetoric, and the continued support of Delphi is also mentioned by Isocrates (Panegyr. 31): πoλλάκις ἡ Πυθία πρoσέταξεν ἀπpϕέρειν τὰ μέρη τῶν καρπῶν καί πoιεῖν πρòς τὴν πóλιν τὴν ἡμετέραν τὰ πάτρια. Probably recognition of the “obligation” varied widely at all times, and reflected political currents. — The references to the observance in Aelius Aristides (Panath. pp. 167–8 and Eleus. p. 417 Dindorf) are purely literary and prove only that Aristides had read his Isocrates. They do not, pace Tod, M. N., Greek Historical Inscriptions, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1946), 183Google Scholar, attest the survival of the practice “down to Hadrian's reign”: note αἱ παρὰ τῶν ‘Eλλήνεν ἀπαρχαὶ δεῦρ' ἀϕικνoúμεναι καθ' ἓκαστoν ἒτoς τῶν σπερμάτων ἐπὶ τῶν πρoτέρων χρóνων (Panath. 1. c), and the scholiast's mournful comment on the final phrase, ὅτε τὰ τῶν ‘Eλλήνων ἤνθει’ ἐπὶ γὰρ τoῦ Aριστείδoυ ἀπέρρη (read ἀπερρúη).

⁶ Matthiae's proposal to read ' Aθηναίoισι for ἐν ἀλλήλoισι in line 267 is generally and rightly rejected, e.g. by Allen, Halliday, and Sikes, The Homeric Hymns, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1936)Google Scholar, and by Humbert, J. in his Budé edition (1936)Google Scholar. C. Picard, however, accepts the emendation, and argues from it for dating the composition of the Hymn in the mid-sixth century (Revue de Philologie, ser. 3, vol. 4 [1930], 257–65; Revue Historique 166 [1931], 1–76Google Scholar).

⁷ See Allen, Halliday and Sikes, op. cit., lxiv-lxxxii for an excellent summary of the evidence, and, for the Hymn to Demeter in particular, id. 109–10; the only actual citations of the Hymn appear in an Orphic papyrus of the 1st or 2nd century B.C., in Philodemus, and in Pausanias; Apollodorus seems to draw upon it, and several of the Alexandrian poets may have known it (to Allen and Halliday's list perhaps add Philicus: cf. D. L. Page, Greek Literary Papyri [Loeb Library] I, 403—4, but the evidence is slight). Persson, A. W., ARW 21 (1922), 309Google Scholar claims that Isocrates, Panegyr. 28 ff. is dependent upon the Homeric Hymn; on the contrary Isocrates seems here to represent the “canonical” Athenian tradition, which quite ignored inconvenient features of the Hymn. It might be argued that Euripides, Helena 1315 ff., shows an awareness of line 424 of the Hymn. It should however be noted that in the play Athena and Artemis assist Demeter in her search, whereas in the Hymn, as in the later tradition (cf. Diod. 5.3, Paus. 8.31.2) they are companions of Persephone. Some association of the two goddesses with the principals of the story may have been a constant feature of the myth, yet they seem rather out of place in a list of Oceanids, and despite Allen and Halliday the line might be a later addition: so Wilamowitz, , Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin 1931–2) II, 48, n. 1Google Scholar.

⁸ Cf. Allen, Halliday and Sikes, op. cit., 112–4, and Mylonas, op. cit., 10–11.

⁹ The identification of Iacchus with Bacchus, which is found as early as the 40's of the 5th century (Sophocles, Ant. 1150 ff.), was perhaps responsible for the introduction of Dionysus into the circle of Eleusinian deities, at least in popular belief: cf. Nilsson, op. cit., 629 and, for a more generous estimate, based on a study of the vase paintings, of the importance of Dionysus to the cult, Metzger, H., BCH 68–9 (1944–5). 323–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ There is no need here to enter fully the vexed question of whether the Kerykes were originally Athenian or Eleusinian. Picard (Rev. Hist. 166 [1931], 5–7Google Scholar) argues on very tenuous grounds that they were an Eleusinian clan who in the struggle between the two states had gone over to the side of the Athenians. They themselves claimed Athenian descent, though another tradition made Keryx the son of Eumolpus (Paus. 1.38.3). To judge by the evidence of the deme-names no Kerykes were residents of Eleusis at the time of the reforms of Cleisthenes, and this fact would seem to justify the statement of Ferguson, W. S., in Hesperia 7 (1938), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that “The Kerykes were an association, from which residents of the Thriasian plain were excluded, organized or reorganized after the conquest of Eleusis to give other Athenians a worthy share in the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries.” At least one Eleusinian Eumolpid is known (IG II² 1235) but even here the rarity of Eleusinians in the genos may, though it need not necessarily, imply the existence of a pre-Cleisthenic policy of curtailing the native Eleusinian element in the personnel of the cult. If the Eumolpids were originally a guild (cf. Ferguson, W. S., CP 5 [1910], 278–9Google Scholar), it is perhaps unwise, on the evidence, to think of the genos in the classical period as representing a strictly Eleusinian tradition, and in any case it should be noted that in the Homeric Hymn Eumolpus, like Triptolemus, is given no special prominence. It is none the less significant that nothing whatever in the Hymn points to the Kerykes.

¹¹ Perhaps the most striking instance is in lines 265–7, generally referred to the βαλλητúς, though this is hotly contested by Picard (see note 6).

¹² Op. cit., passim.

¹³ Allen, Halliday and Sikes, op. cit., 113.

¹⁴ Actually there is no clear proof that Eleusis was not definitively incorporated into the Athenian state till so late a date, but many bits of evidence, which may be found admirably summarized by Nilsson, in Cults, Myths, Oracles, and Politics in Ancient Greece (Lund, 1951), 37–9Google Scholar, point to this; since it seems to be generally assumed, I have accordingly taken account of the presumed fact in my attempted reconstruction of events. Actually my essential argument is not affected one way or the other, since in any case the Hymn is evidence for a state of affairs in which the cult, if not the city, was free from Athenian influence.

¹⁵ RE, s. v. Mysterien, col. 1212–1217.

¹⁶ See Allen, Halliday, and Sikes, op. cit., Ixxxiii–xcv for a discussion of the nature of the hymns ascribed to Homer. Foucart, P., Les mystères d'Eleusis (Paris, 1914), 261Google Scholar, suggests that the Hymn to Demeter may have been composed for a contest of bards at the agonistic festival of the Eleusinia, but as to the antiquity of this festival, beyond the fact that it existed ca. 500 B.C. (IG I² 5), we have no definite information. It might equally well be argued that the original recital was intended for a celebration of the βαλλητúς (of which the Eleusinia may be a later development: Kern, loc. cit., col. 1215); this would account for the prominence of Demophon in the narrative, and give special point to Demeter's words in lines 263–7.

¹⁷ A. W. Persson, loc. cit., 293; Wilamowitz, op. cit., II 43–4.

¹⁸ JDAI 31 (1916), 313–4Google Scholar. He notes especially that the procession to Athens occurred on the eve of the full moon day, which we should expect to be the chief day of the festival. It may therefore be that the final settlement involved a shift in date for the high days of the rites. For the calendar of the festival in classical times see now Dow, S., HSCP 48 (1937), 111–20Google Scholar.

¹⁹ This seems to be the natural implication of lines 480–2 of the Hymn. The late stories (Apollodorus 2.5.12; Plutarch, Theseus 33) about the adoption of Heracles and the Dioscuri before their initiation suggest (what is in any case probable) that originally the cult was closed to aliens, but provide no safe criterion for the date of the change.

²⁰ The mysteries at Phlya were in honor of Ge (Paus. 1.31.4, Hippolytus, refut. 5.20), and were reputed to be older than the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The Thesmophoria were the most widespread of all Greek cults (Nilsson, M. P., Griechische Feste [Leipzig, 1906], 313Google Scholar), and in all probability existed independently at Athens even before the union with Eleusis. On the other hand since Athena retained even until late times agricultural functions at Athens, and since her festival the Arrhephoria seems to parallel almost exactly the Skira-Thesmophoria, it may well be that at some remote time Athens looked solely to Athena for divine protection of her crops. Of the three ritual ploughings of Attica, that beneath the Acropolis belonged to Athena, that in the Rharian plain to Demeter, and the third, near the ancient border between the states, was sacred to both. This seems to point to a compromise of rival claims (cf. Deubner, L., Attische Feste [Berlin, 1932], 47Google Scholar). — As Allen and Halliday (op. cit., 120–1) remark, some of the ritual references of the Homeric Hymn apply to the Thesmophoria as well as, or even better than, to the Mysteries proper, which may suggest that the two festivals were not always so sharply differentiated as in classical times. — It is perhaps worth noting also that the basic agricultural functions of the Eleusinian divinities were never forgotten, and continued to exert an appeal independent of the Mysteries. See the remarks of Nilsson, M. P. in Eranos 42 (1944), 70–6Google Scholar on the new lex sacra of the mid-fifth century from the Attic deme of Paeania (Peek, W., Ath. Mitt. 66 [1941], 171Google Scholar ff. = Suppl. Epigr. Graecum 10, 38). In the cult practiced at the Eleusinion there, as in that at Marathon, the fertility of the crops is clearly the prime consideration.

²¹ See Kourouniotes, K., ARW 32 (1935), 52–78Google Scholar for the archaeological history, with however the reservations of L. Deubner, Abh. Berlin, Philos.-hist. Kl., 1945/46, nr. 2, pp. 17–9, on the question of a Geometric temple. Noack's conclusions on the antiquity of the cult, though still followed by Allen and Halliday as late as 1936, are outmoded in the light of the more recent discoveries.

²² Mylonas, G. E. and Kourouniotes, K., AJA 37 (1933), 282CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Nothing is said in the Hymn of the discovery of cereal agriculture, which was later so important a part of Athenian cultural propaganda. The account of the Marmor Parium, lines 23–9, is particularly worth noting (for the dependence of the Marmor upon the Atthides cf. Jacoby, F., Atthis [Oxford 1949], 227, n. 5Google Scholar): Eleusis is given its due, with the localization there of the first cultivation of grain and the revelation of the Mysteries, but the prior “invention” of grain by Demeter is significantly set “upon her arrival in Athens.”

²⁴ ARW 32 (1935), 66Google Scholar.

²⁵ This might seem to give a terminus ante quem for the attempt to transfer the cult to Athens, since the words of Andocides make it clear that the Eleusinion is not the sanctuary at Eleusis but that in Athens. Unfortunately the historical implications of the passage cannot be pressed. O. Broneer has argued convincingly (Hesperia 11 [1942], 250–74) for the identity of the Thesmophorion at Athens with the Eleusinion ἐν ἄστει. Presumably the more ancient Thesmophorion was given the broader name Eleusinion at some point in the events after the annexation of Eleusis, but since the two terms were thereafter interchangeable, it may well be that the law of Solon, which Andocides does not profess to quote verbatim, actually used the name Thesmophorion. At the outside the passage would seem to indicate that by the end of Solon's regime, the state was actively interested in the cult, and that the political union had therefore already occurred.