two classes: the "Pure", that is those who had been initiated at Eleusis, and the innumerable multitude of the uninitiated. Only for the members in {226} communion with the mystery of Eleusis was salvation assured. Salvation was theirs as a reversionary right, but salvation such as theirs was a privilege and could only be obtained by participation in the bounteous festival of the Athenian State and in its ceremonial. Centuries of large-minded tolerance in admitting to the mysteries extended this privilege to an immense number of Greeks (and of Romans, too, in later times). But the prospect of a blessed hereafter never became a matter of course; not as man, not even as a virtuous and pious man did such a privilege come to anyone. It was granted solely to the member of the Eleusinian religious society and the participator in the divine service of the goddesses.[27\6] What were the means employed to impress this hope--this certain expectation rather--of a blessed hereafter in Hades upon the Mystai? We must frankly admit that we cannot, unfortunately, say anything definite in answer to this question. Only to the suggestion that these hopes were grounded upon _symbolic_ representations of any kind may we give a decided denial. And yet this is the generally accepted opinion. "Symbols" there may have been, as an assistance to the dramatic or pantomimic representation of the Rape and Return of Korê;[28\6] but hardly in any other sense than that of typical _condensations_--the part being put for the whole, or the whole understood in the part--of scenes impossible to represent in their entirety. It is true that with the lapse of centuries, and in the absence of any official written interpretation of the inner meaning and intention of the ritual many of these symbols became unintelligible--a disadvantage which belonged to all other departments of Greek religion as well. As soon as independent reflexion on matters of religion began to arise, many sorts of allegorical or symbolical interpretations began to be applied to the details of the performances at the mysteries. Does it follow from this that the mysteries of the Earth divinities, as some are inclined to believe, bore a symbolical or allegorical character from the outset, and differed in this respect from all other Greek worship of the gods?[29\6] Similar interpretations were applied by philosophers or would-be philosophers to the fables of the gods in Homeric or popular mythology; the mysteries did not by any means hold a peculiar position in the minds of connoisseurs of myth-interpretation in antiquity. If a "deeper meaning" was attached by preference to the performances at Eleusis, that only shows that much in these performances was no longer understood, or in its real meaning no longer satisfied the spirit of the philosophic centuries. But it shows also that for this {227} festival of unexampled splendour, where night and the injunction of secrecy awakened awed