Nugae literariae: prose and verse

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ON THE ISI AC MYSTERIES.

actors and actings, grotesque and caricatured. Ηerb-Women,

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a type of Supreme poWer, and Was enchased With the story of the divinest acts. Lucius proceeds to say that he approached thepriest, and instantly devoured the crown os roses. His mei morphosis Was immediately reversed. Covered by one of that

religiolis assembly, the priest congratulates him, being prepared for the miracte by a corresponding vision, that he has arrived atthe haven of peace and the altar of mercy. Ηe invites him toyiold himssis to a furthor initiation. All this may shadow thel ess mysteries. The Shil', ali heing now arrived ut the shore, is to be lautiched ; and it is couerod with significant devices. Givon to the deep, it is hept in sight as long as possibie, and

then the procession re-sorius, and with irrepressibie triumphreturns to the temple. They Who are entilled to enter the

penetralia, lay doWn the divine images in their proper places ;and then the Grammateus, standing besore the door of theshrine, pronounces his blessing on the whole people this Was ter the subjugation os Greece) and releases his auditory by

the salutation, Λαιοις Aφεςις.' Lucius, hoWever, is to be letinio these secreis more adeptiy. The doors of the inner templo, after he has been hept in suspense many d S, are Solemnlyopsened with sacrifice, and certain books of cypher are placedbefore hi in and explaine l. Then, attended by a religiolis guard, he is led to the ballis. Being placed in one, the hi prisest hedews him With the holy Water and thoroughly purisses

him. Ηe is theri conducted, and bid to stand two-thirds of thoday, bosore the image of the deity. Ηe is commanded, in a Wayhe must not declare, to abstain froni any gratiis ins estiris, thatis, Doni any thing but Was absolutely required for subsistence, froni ali flesti os animais, and Dom Wine, for ten days. Whentho day arrived for his access to the sacred presence, the profane

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boing bid far distant, he was led to the very adytum l But hoWis tho reader of Apuleius distippotnted by tho turn whicli tho

long delay, for perhaps thy curiosity is os a religious kind.

especialty the poets. To theso I shali find occasion afterWardsto reser: I shali now only mention Catullus. Did his other qu, lities bear any proportion to his beauty of Style, I Would quoto froni him, in their absence I must forbear; and yet his Atys

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has iis admirers as a specimen os purity and a labie of immor

The Μysteries Were of so dread a character, that we might sancy that ait Was most serious in the piigrimage to them. But there was a gale at Athens Where banter Was quite licen- sed on ali Who passed it on their Way to them. Indosed tho Athenian would novser lose his j est. In Aristophanes' Waspswe may leam that this Was directed chiefly, is not exclusively, against those Who Were hastening for initiation. Philocleon saysos Bdolucleon, I Will banter him, it Was his Way With me, ere Ι Was of the mysteries. Tho Festival of Isis was annuat: admission to her mysteries Was confinen to that period, excepi by extraordinary dispen-Sation. ' Μuch favour Was necessary to enjoy this privilege. Warburton dilates very rashly When he says, in his Divino Legation, that the mysteries se Were universalty aspired to that men, Women, and children ran to be initiatod.V All this Wo must doubi froni the extremo improbability that any secresyshould be preserved, is the secret Were so Deely communicated.

Vetabo, qui Cereris Sacrum Vulgarit arcanae, Sub iisdem Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum Solvat phaselum. et

A supposed referetice to these mysteries, in one of the tragedies of Eschylus, Dearly cost him his lila. Alcibiades Was accused of mimiching them in his reueis, that he had oven travestied the part of the hierophant, that he had initia ted sonis of his drunken associales. The informers had more than his vices, with none of his viriues and talents ; but Whether the cause, orpreteadf, of hatred, he never rose quite above the infamy of thocharge. Harpocrates, the god of silence, with his haud on his mouth, HWays stood in the porch of these temples. The candidate had, me thinh, to go through the folloWing triais. Having

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ON THE ISIAC MYSTERIES.

been under regimen os abstinence and generat restraint, having passed the day among the most eXciting pagemis and OVations, he was at night-sali summoned into the delubrum amidst anawful darkness and silence. Longinus has observed, that to

of greatness : that depend8 Upon the place, the spirit, the crisis, and the cause. Alt was contrived to inspire this dread. Even Hercules seems long to have laboured under ii, and the Dramatist very artfully gives the best account of his abduction os Cerberus, by supposing that his imagination became morbid by his

contemplation of the spectacles unsolded in his initiation. In the Furens, Amphitruon asks him whethor lio brought Osr thothree-headed monster by the use of bribe, or in fair sight 8 Hoans ors, Ιn fair figlit, but most fortunately I saW the inner rites

of the Μystagogues tr His Wits are diseased, and he consolandsthe fiasse and the reat. Is not his extrication of TheseuS, ulso, but the rescite of the monarch Dom the celis of Eleusis, Where he had bson consiliod sor contempt of these rites ΘΙt is not easy to determine ali the sortiis of initiation. Theywere osten most trying to the nerve of the candidate. Faber, in his most excellent Work, the Origin os Pagari Ιdolatry, ' has quoted Dom Clemens Alexandrinus a passage Whicli contains a formula required of the aspirant to these mysteries: I havedrunk tho modicated liquor.' Does not this imply an exciting,

sinali galley upon it. Ηe Was Whirled upon it to and Do. That galloy was called the Baris, and it tanded iis navigator at laston the istand or myrti grove of the bl essed. Probably tho doctrine of the Μetamorphosis Was taught them by the machinery

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of animal disguises and vigards: While that of the Aletempsychosis Was figured in the pleasant perceptions of their lator course and final resting-place. A light, of whicli ali spolio inperfeci rapture, Was disrused. That Was the type of joy. What-ever Was the reWard, it Wa8, hoWeVer, painfully earned: and theecstacy of the ultimatum, perhap8, consisted not so much in the actuat acquirement as in the close of a formidabie adjudication, and in the Enrolment among a privileged order. Four principat ossicers appeared. The sirst was the Μithras, alWays of one family, the Eumolpidae, in Whicli distinctivolino it continuod tWelve hundred years. He Wus the hierophant, Wearing a croWn, Selected for his appea rance, and especialty fortite sonorousness of his Volce. He regulated each scene and explained each lesson. The second was the Bearer of tho Torch, Who was charged to see that sil Were suit ly purified. Thothird was tho Pontifex at the altar, somelimes called Epibomius, there being very frequent oblations. The fourth was tho Herald. Xenophon, in narrating the de at of the ThirtyTyrants by Thrasybulus, describes Cleocritus, herald of tho Mystae, as remarkable for the loudness of his voice. Ηρ has noW cried, Oss ye profane. Woe to any intruder i Livy, in his thirty-srst book, mentions that tWo Acarnanian youilis ignorantly entered the temple of Ceres, being uninformed in that religion, at the fame time With others. But eagerly enquiring out What they saW, they Were immediately betrayed: and though it Was certainly unintentional on their pari, the antistes,

The ceremontes begin. The misery of irreligion is potar-trayed by apparitions of those Who lived implous lives. Theyaro heard ultering bitter cries. Tartarus is opened with ali iis terriso retributions. There spread out the Elysian solds. Thobowors of blissmi immortality bloom to the e, and the fornis of the virtuous are descri ed reposing in them. There are many processions, celebrating the histoxy of the goddess. Sost solaniis como wasted froin the distance, untii We hear the full-tonod odo.

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If thse Batrachoi of Aristophanes preserve any subject of these

But there Were certain doctrines tauot whicli must havo been accompanted by sensibie illustrations. Three days could notbe spent in only shoWS.-That of the Transmigration, Was doubt-

ber their original, or any Stage of their course besore their humaneXistence. Pythagoras Stoutly maintained that he was Euphorbus in the Trojan war. Herodotus states that the Egyptians bellovod that, on the dissolution of the body, the foui immediately enters

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some other animal; and that after USing aS Vehicles every species of terrestriat, aquatic, and Winged creatures, it sinalty enters a second time into a human body. They amrmed that it undergoos ali these changes in the space of three thousand years. In the Traveis of Anacharsis, Barthelemi has collected the consessioris of Empedocles: and as he refers to a book which I have not besnabis to obtain, I Will repeat the quotation: I have appeared, 'says the Sicilian philosopher, successively under the form os a yOUng man, a maiden, a plant, a bird, and a sisti. In one os these transmigrations, I sor some timo Wandered like an uiry phantom in the expanse of the heavens. But suddenly I was severat times precipitated into the sea, throWn again Upon the land, hurled into the sun , and again repelled into Vortices os uir. A pre-adamite idea was also indulged. The foui Was describedas descending to our earth, that being a Sentence VPon Someextr mundane Dailty. Here it Was to resine and then rogain iis sphere. In Μoore s Epicurean ' thereis a beautisul descriptionos tho idea, and stili more of the mechanism whicli depicted it. The young philosopher listened attentively to the hierophant, When he saW near him a lovely male form crouching to thoearth, as subdued by error and Sin. She Soon began to rise, hercounte ance opened in Smiles, She Soared hom earth a pure and spoliess thing, entered a star in Which Were Lindred essencos,untii tho vision dis peared. WordsWorth almost sings a similarstralia, though apparently ahaid to carry it further than inofrst droatiis of childhood. The ode Will be eastly recalled by the ono line of servid boldness : Tho Cataracts blow thoirtrumpeis hom the Steep.V-The progress of the foui Was afavourite conception . Spenser, Bunyan, and Donne followod an idea common to the Pagan idolatry. Cupid and Psyche is amost beautilat comment.

It is generalty pleaded in binals of these initiatioris, thatthey type the purgation of the foui. The poets are citod sortite proo

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ON THE ISIAC MYSTERIES.

Claudian dolinoates in his Descent the fame idea. Taylor most ingeniousty argueS for this opinion, - but What cannot hoprove 8 Cerberus, he gravely states, is the discriminativo part of the foui, of Whicli a dog on account of iis sagacityis an emblem ; and the three heads signify the triplo distinction of this part into the intellectual, dianoetic, and doxastic powers l Hercules dragged the three-headed dog to-day,- intimating that by temperance, continence, and the other Vi tues, he dreW UpWard these three qualities of the foui l Thessare the cathartic virtves, by Whicli our higher nature is r

In those initiations there Would be frequent attempis to explain away the more Singular obserVances. This Would be pariticularly the case as the decay of superstition and the growth of philosophy demanded an extenuation of the fornis. The learnedwould bo told that many of the Egyptiari rules of diet wero buta religio medici, ' the simple precautions of health. Theywould perceive that the molarnings So very common in ali theancient heathen SyStemS,-men and Women rending the air Withshriolis and gashing themSel Ve8,-referred to Some of the great changes of nature. Thus the Phrygians mourned sor Adonis, that is, the sun in iis Winter recession Dom them. Thus tho Parthian Μagi held tho soa to bo sacred, and that to deste iis Walers Was impiety. The use or meming of this tenet Was toprevent emigration, and that part of the Caspian, close to Parthia, Was called Pium Μare. The Wanderings of Ιsis, in pursuit of tho mangled limbs of Osiris, may be but the revolution of ourearth through iis orbit, alWays seeing the sun in the opposite sign of the godiac, never finding more than eleven, itself beingat ways in tho tWolfth. Plutarch describes the Walling, practised in her mysteries, as denoting the burying of the corn-8eed, that

Vide a Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Μysteries, by Thomas Taylor, in the Pamphieleer.

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ON THE ISIAC MYSTERIES.

mother Ceres, may signify the happy reneWal of that season. Every thing in these allusions seems based Upon agriculture. But a truce With these significations : they who have read Lord Bacon's -- Wisdom of the Ancients,V Will perfectly weli under- stand what ingenuity can do With such legends. Isis Was considered, in sine, the goddess of Aoddesses, as Osiris Was the god ofgods, the Demiurgus. She theresere assumes any sorm. She appropriate8 eVery perfection. It was in the pride of this emulation, that Cleopatra clothed herself With the divino robes and badges of the goddess When ste received Alarc Antony. Sherallies her troops With the crepitaculum. Wo shali sind that the philosophers are compelled to gueSSat the mea nings of theso ministrations, and to resine Upon them. The following extracis Doni Plato s Phoedo will sussice. Thediscoui se delivered about these particulars, in the arcana of the mysteries, that We are placed in a certain prison Secured

by a guard, and that it is not proper in any one to Deo himssis

genuine, ieldS Very Scanty information. I bellove it is now at Turin. Her generat inscription Was I am ali that has been, and that inali be, and none among mortias has talion Osr my

Per ego te frugiferam tuam dextram istam deprecor, per laetificas messium caeremonias, Per tacita Sacra ciStariam, et per famulorum tuorum draconum pinnata curricula, et illuminarum