The Eleusinian rites breathed quite a different spirit from the ordinary religion of the Greek, and as soon as they were over he resumed his enjoyment of the present world. There were games and theatrical performances on the last day before leaving Eleusis, and on the way back to Athens there were many ebullitions of mirth and wit, owing to the reaction from the unwonted solemnity and gloom. We have a token of the sacredness attaching to the rites in the fact that one of the most solemn oaths which could be taken was in the name of Demeter and her daughter. It was regarded as an extreme aggravation of the guilt of Calippus, the Syracusan, who compassed the death of Dion, Plato’s friend, that, when he was suspected of a hostile design and challenged by Areté, Dion’s wife, he denied with an oath and went into the sacred grove, touching the purple robe of the goddess, and taking a lighted torch in his hand. To make the crime still worse, it was perpetrated on the very day sacred to these goddesses when the Coreia were celebrated, and it was through their initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries that the two men had become acquainted--showing how little impression may be made on some minds by the most solemn rites of religion. The Mysteries were open to women as well as to men, but not to slaves or Persians, or infamous persons such as murderers whose guilt had not been expiated. [Illustration: THE HALL OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF THE MYSTERIES, ELEUSIS In the distance is the island of Salamis, looking on the Bay of Eleusis. In the foreground are remains of shafts of columns which supported an upper story over the Great Hall.] CHAPTER XI ATHENS AND ITS DEMOCRACY THE history of Athens is scarcely less interesting from a political than from an artistic and architectural point of view. It affords the first example of a thoroughly organised democracy, and as such it has much to teach the nations of modern Europe, both in the way of encouragement and warning.