“O Iacchus, O Iacchus, Morning star that shinest nightly, Lo, the mead is blazing brightly, Age forgets its years and sadness, Aged knees curvet for gladness, Lift thy flashing torches o’er us, Marshal all thy blameless train, Lead, O lead the way before us; lead the lovely youthful Chorus To the marshy flowery plain.”[21] Footnote 21: Translated by Rogers. The days at Eleusis were probably only pauses between the “great nights” of the worship of Demeter. The nightly proceedings seem to have consisted of three elements. The first was an imitation of Demeter’s wanderings. The initiates went up and down the shore by the sea, their restless torches appearing from a distance like great “swarms of fireflies.” They sat too upon the Joyless Rock, and by meditation endeavoured to enter into the passion of the Goddess. The second element was some sacrament of food and drink in commemoration of the fact that Demeter was finally persuaded by the merry Iambe to break her fast. Finally came a series of dramatic representations in the great Hall of Initiation, by means of which the divine story was unfolded. It would be a mistake to suppose that if we knew more details about these celebrations we should understand more clearly the influence that they exerted on the minds and spirits of the celebrants. In the mysteries, we are assured by Aristotle, the initiates did not learn anything precisely, but received impressions, were put into a certain frame of mind for which they had been prepared. The value of subtle influences like these can never be apprehended save by those who have been subjected to them. In no age, under no sanction, have men been able to create sacred rites, whether secret or open, that could not be construed as mummery, not only by those of a different age but even by contemporaries who stood outside the circle of the elect. Were every “secret” of the Eleusinian Mysteries to be recovered, we should still be uninitiated into their higher wisdom. We should still be thrown back, as we are at present, upon a vicarious sympathy with those who have borne witness to the quickening of their spirits in the Eleusinian nights. Fortunately this testimony comes from a few of the most gifted among the Greeks. The often quoted statement of Cicero, that initiation taught men not only to live happily but to die with a fairer hope, only repeats what was said by his literary master, Isocrates: “Those who have participated in the mysteries possess sweeter hopes about death and about the whole of life.” Strangely enough, Æschylus, who was born in Eleusis and whose plays in later times were acted there because of their religious character, seems never to have been initiated. But Pindar and Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes harboured personal hopes that those who knew the mysteries were “blessed” in the hour of death and in the life to come.