Chapter XLII: Part II: 1\15: See above, chap. v, p. 162 f (3)

[170\15: From an earlier period (_ca._ third century B.C.), _Ep._ 44: ~ê\n ho su/neunos e/sterxen me\n zô=san epe/nthêsen de\ thanou=san. phô=s d' e/lip' eudai/môn, pai=das pai/dôn epidou=sa~. Fine also are 67 and 81b. But something like them appears even late: 647, 5-10; 556: a priestess of Zeus congratulates herself ~eu/teknon astona/chêton e/chei ta/phos; ou ga\r amaurô=s dai/mones hêmete/rên e/blepon eusebi/ên~.--To recover for a moment the taste of the old robust spirit we may remind ourselves of Herodotos' story of Tellos the Athenian, the happiest of mankind. He was born in a prosperous city, had fine children and saw the children of all these children, none of whom died. And his happy life was crowned by a noble end. In a battle of the Athenians against their neighbours he was successful in putting the foe to rout and then he himself fell while fighting, so that his country buried him in the place where he fell and honoured him greatly. (Hdt. i, 30. Herodotos' Solon does indeed assign the second prize of happiness to Kleobis and Biton and their fortunate end: c. 31. A changed attitude to life makes itself felt in their story.)]

[171\15: Mundus senescens, Cyprian, _ad Demetr._ 3 ff. The Christians lay the blame for the impoverishment and decay of life on the heathen. The latter in turn blame the recently arrived and now dominant Christianity for the unhappiness of the time: Tertull., _Apol._ 40 ff.; Arnob. 1; Aug., _CD._ It was already a vulgare proverbium--Pluvia defit, causa Christiani sunt, _CD._ ii, 3. The Emp. Julian found ~tê\n oikoume/nên hô/sper lipopsuchou=san~ and wished ~tê\n phthora\n tê=s oikoume/nês stê=sai~, Liban., _Or._ i, p. 617, 10; 529, 4.--The Christians returned the compliment: the reason why everything in nature and the life {579} of men was going awry is simply paganorum exacerbata perfidia (_Leg. Novell. Theodos. ii_, i, 3, p. 10 Ritt.).]

[172\15: We know of a certain Nikagoras Minuc. f. (significantly enough an ardent admirer of Plato) temp. Const. ~da|dou=chos tô=n hagiôta/tôn Eleusi=ni mustêri/ôn~, _CIG._ 4770. Julian, even as a boy, was initiated at Eleusis: Eunap., _V. Soph._, p. 53 (Boiss.). At that time, however, in miserandam ruinam conciderat Eleusina, Mamert., _Act. Jul._ 9. Here again Julian seems to have restored the cult. Valentinian I, on the point of abolishing all nocturnal festivals (see _Cod. Theod. iii_, 9, 16, 7), allowed them to continue when Praetextatus Procons. of Achaea represented to him that for the Greeks ~ho bi/os~ would be ~abi/ôtos, ei me/lloien kôlu/esthai ta\ sune/chonta to\ anthrô/peion ge/nos hagiô/tata mustê/ria kata\ thesmo\n ektelei=n~, Zosim. iv, 3. (Praetext. was a friend of Symmachus and, like him, one of the last pillars of Roman orthodoxy: _princeps religiosorum_, Macr., _S._ i, 11, 1. He was himself _sacratus Eleusiniis_, and _hierophanta_ there: _CIL._ vi, 1779; probably the ~Praite/xtatos ho hieropha/ntês~ of Lyd., _Mens._ 4, 2, p. 148 R. [p. 65 W.], is the same person.) In 375 A.D. we hear of a Nestorius (probably the father of the Neoplatonic Plutarch) as ~hierophantei=n tetagme/nos~ at the time (Zos. iv, 18). In 396 during the _hierophantia_ of a ~patê\r tê=s Mithriakê=s teletê=s~ (whose oath should have excluded him from that office) the temple of Eleusis was destroyed by Alaric, incited thereto by the monks who accompanied him (Eunap., _VS._, p. 52-3). The regular holding of the festival must then have come to an end.--Evidence of later celebration of the Eleusinia is not forthcoming. The expressions of Proclus, which Maass regards as "certainly" proving that the festival was still being held in the fifth century (_Orpheus_, 15), are quite insufficient to the purpose. Proclus speaks of various sacred ceremonies of initiation from which we ~memathê/kamen~ something: of a ~phê/mê~, i.e. written tradition, of certain unspecified Eleusinian ~theolo/goi~; of what the Eleus. mysteries ~hupischnou=ntai~ to the _mystai_ (just as we might speak in the present tense of the permanent content of Greek religion). These passages prove nothing: whereas the imperfects which he uses elsewhere clearly show that neither temple nor festival existed any longer in his time. (He speaks, _in Alc._, p. 5 Crz., of what used to be in the temple of Eleusis and still more of what formerly occurred ~en toi=s Eleusini/ois hieroi=s--ebo/ôn ktl.~, _in Ti._ 293 C.) The festival moreover cannot have gone on without the temple and its apparatus.]

[173\15: The Orphic hymns in the form in which we have them all belong as it seems to one period, and that can hardly have been earlier than the third century A.D. They are all composed for practical use in the cult, and that presupposes the existence of Orphic communities (see Schöll, _Commun. et coll. quib. Graec._ [_Sat. Saupp._], p. 14 ff.; Dieterich, _de H. Orph._).--It must be admitted that they were not purely and exclusively Orphic communities for which the poems were written. These hymns, called "Orphic" a potiori, make use in parts of older Orphic poetry (cf. _H._ 62, 2 f., with [Dem.] 25, 11).]

[174\15: Probably all these cults promised immortality to their _mystai_. This is certain in the worship of Isis (cf. Burckhardt, _Zeit Constantins d. G._^2, p. 195 ff.). Apul., _M._ xi, 21-3, alludes to symbolic death and reawakening to everlasting life as the subject of the ~drô/mena~ in the Isis mysteries. The initiated is thus _renatus_ (21). In the same way the mystai of Mithras are said to be _in aeternum renati_: _CIL._ vi, 510; 736. Immortality must certainly have been promised. Acc. to Tert., _Pr. Haer._ 40, the mysteries of Mithras {580} included an _imago resurrectionis_. By this the Christian author can only understand a real ~ana/stasis tê=s sarko/s~. Did these mysteries promise to their ~ho/sioi~ a resurrection of the body and everlasting life? This belief in the ~ana/stasis nekrô=n~ (always a difficulty for the Greeks: _Act Ap._ xvii, 18; 32; Plotin. 3, 6, 6 fin.) is in fact ancient Persian (Theopomp. _fr._ 71-2; Hübschmann, _Jb. Prot. Theol._ v, p. 222 ff.), and probably came to the Jews from Persia. It is possible then that it may have been the essential idea of the Mithras mysteries.--Hopes of immortality as they appeared to the _mystai_ of Sabazios are illustrated by the sculptures of the monument of Vibia (in the Catac. of Praetextatus), and of Vincentius: numinis antistes Sabazis Vincentius hic est. Qui sacra sancta deum mente pia coluit (Garrucci, _Tre Sepolcri_, etc., tab. i-iii, Nap. 1852).--It is difficult to see why Christian archeologists should regard this Vincentius as a Christian. He calls himself a worshipper of "the gods" and an _antistes Sabazii_ (there cannot be the slightest objection to giving this meaning to numinis antistes Sabazis. The difficulties raised by Schultze, _Katakomben_, 44, are groundless: Sabazis = Sabazii is no more objectionable or doubtful than the **genitives Clodis, Helis: see Ritschl, _Opusc._ iv, 454-6. The arrangement of words, _n. a. Sab._, is due to the exigencies of metre.]

[175\15: ~hê o/rexis tou= agathou= eis he\n o/ntôs a/gei kai\ epi\ tou=to speu/dei pa=sa phu/sis~, Plot. 6, 5, 1. ~pa/nta ore/getai ekei/nou kai\ ephi/etai autou= phu/seôs ana/gkê| . . . hôs a/neu autou= ou du/natai ei=nai~, 5, 5, 12; 1, 8, 2. ~pothei= de\ pa=n to\ gennê=san~ (the ~nou=s~ desires the ~prô=ton~, the ~psuchê/~ the ~nou=s~): 5, 1, 6.]

[176\15: ~hai e/xô tou= aisthêtou= geno/menai (psuchai/)~, Plot. 3, 4, 6. In death ~ana/gein to\ en hêmi=n thei=on pro\s to\ en tô=| pa/nti thei=on~, Porph., _V. Plot._ 2. Return ~eis patri/da~, Plot., 5, 9, 1.]

[177\15: 2, 9, esp. § 16 ff.]

[178\15: ~to\ me\n ga\r aischro\n enanti/on kai\ tê=| phu/sei kai\ tô=| theô=|~, 3, 5, 1.]

[179\15: Flight from the ~en sô/mati ka/llos~ to the ~tê=s psuchê=s ka/llê~, etc., 5, 9, 2. And again in the fine treatise, ~p. tou= kalou=~, 1, 6, 8. Though even here it is in a different sense from that in which Plato speaks in the _Symp._ of the ascent from ~kala\ sô/mata~ to ~kala\ epitêdeu/mata~, etc. Plotinos protests energetically against the idea that his own sense of beauty makes him any the less ~pheu/gein to\ sô=ma~ than the hatred of beauty cultivated by the Gnostics: 2, 9, 18. He too waits here below, only a little less impatiently, for the time when he will be able to say farewell to every earthly habitation: ib.]

[180\15: ~. . . kai\ hou/tô theô=n kai\ anthrô/pôn thei/ôn kai\ eudaimo/nôn bi/os apallagê\ tô=n tê=|de, bi/os anê/donos tô=n tê=|de, phugê\ mo/nou pro\s mo/non~, 6, 9, 11 fin.]

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