We often see it asserted that the belief in a future state of compensation for the good and evil deeds of this world was obtained by the Greeks from the Eleusinian mysteries. In reality the opposite is true; if and in so far as the Greeks ever received or entertained such a belief in future rewards and punishments the mysteries of Eleusis had nothing whatever to do with the matter. We have only to remember the simple fact that the Eleusinian mysteries admitted to initiation, with the single exception of those stained by the crime of murder, Greeks of all sorts without any inquiry into their past life and actions, or even their character. The initiated were promised a blessed life hereafter; a gloomy fate awaited the uninitiated. The difference was not made by goodness or badness; "Pataikion the thief will have a better fate after his death because he has been initiated at Eleusis than Agesilaos or Epameinondas" sneered Diogenes the Cynic. Not political or moral worth but "spiritual" merit alone is decisive. Nor will anyone be very surprised at that. It is so in most religions. But in any case, the idea of a sentence passed on virtue or vice in Hades had been forestalled by the system of rewards and punishments in the lower world which the mysteries had already formulated from quite a different point of view. Where the mysteries were seriously and conscientiously taken they would rather have thrown their weight into the scales against any such idea, if it began to make itself felt, of compensation for good and evil deeds in Hades; they certainly contained nothing that fostered such a belief.