Individuals in the Eleusinian Mysteries: choices and actions

Abstract

The Eleusinian Mysteries have gripped the imaginations of both ancient candidates for initiation and generations of modern scholars. They are among the most intriguing of ancient cults, as their study raises a variety of questions regarding Athenian politics, religion, philosophy, and soteriology, as well as issues surrounding the continuity of the cult from the Bronze age, through the classical period, and on into the Christian era. The Mysteries attracted individuals who participated as a matter of personal choice, offering an eschatological perspective at a time when the fashion for ‘mystery’ and ‘oriental’ cults had not yet reached the height of its popularity. Initiation by choice means that participation in this public cult, which is administered by the Athenian state, is not purely a matter of tradition, as was the case for other cults attended by citizens or demesmen. At the same time, the Eleusinian Mysteries were open to all those who wished to be initiated and they attracted a large and varied audience. The decision to participate led the initiand to take a series of preparative ritual actions and then on to the various stages of the initiation itself: the preliminary initiation, the muêsis, and, ultimately, the epopteia where the initiand becomes one who has seen.1 How should we understand the combination of the individual aspect with the collective in this cult? While the unique individual is prominent in the Mysteries, they are still, obviously, strongly characterised by socially and politically predetermined expectations. The collective aspect, on the other hand, applies here to various groupings. In what follows, we shall examine the ways in which individual and collective combine. This approach will cast light on the extent to which individuals act and the extent to which they are acted upon, the roles they are expected to play, and the space left for individual initiative. Within the framework of polisor public cults, the Eleusinian Mysteries are indeed an exception. Not only is participation based on personal choice – itself an oddity, since attendance is still regulated by tradition –, but individual initiation promises to change one’s fate in the afterlife. This focus on the individual has been seen