As to the actual details of what went on at the long-drawn-out festival itself our knowledge hardly extends beyond the most external circumstances, and is even so most incomplete. A few notices in late and often untrustworthy writers give us a very inadequate picture of what took place inside the great temple of initiation and of the essential Mystery. The secret which was committed[19\6] to the Mystai and Epoptai has been well kept. Considering the enormous number of worshippers indiscriminately admitted to the festival, this would, indeed, have been a real miracle, if the secret to be kept had taken the form of dogma expressed in concept and words and capable of being communicated verbally to others. Since the labours of Lobeck, however, drastically reducing to order the confusion of opinions on this subject, no reasonable person believes that this was the case. It was difficult to let out the "secret" for there was essentially no secret to let out. Profanation could only come through actions, through "the Mysteries being acted",[20\6] as they were in the year 415 in the house of Poulytion. The Mystery was a dramatic performance, or, more strictly, a religious Pantomime, accompanied by sacred songs[21\6] and formal speeches; a representation, as Christian authors let us see, of the Rape of Korê, the wanderings of Demeter, and the final reunion of the goddesses. This in itself would not have made the mysteries remarkable; a similar dramatic reproduction of the circumstances attending the life of a god, which had led to the foundation of the festival in question, was a very widespread cult-practice in Greece; it was part of the festivals of Zeus, Here, Apollo, Artemis, Dionysos, and, above all, of other festivals in honour of Demeter herself. But the Eleusinia was distinguished from all other such festivals, even from the equally secret festivals of Demeter known as the Thesmophoria and the Haloa, by reason {223} of the hopes which it inspired in the minds of the initiated. The Hymn to Demeter tells us that the pious worshipper of the Goddess at Eleusis might hope for riches upon earth and a better fate after death. Later authorities also speak of the success in this life which initiation at Eleusis gave good ground for expecting. But far more emphatic are the statements, made by innumerable witnesses from Pindar and Sophokles onwards, that only they who have been initiated into these mysteries may entertain a joyful expectation of the life to come. To them only is it granted to have real "life" in Hades; nothing but evil awaits others in that place.[22\6]