To these ceremonies others were added, obscene to the last excess, and worthy of the god who chose to be honoured in such a manner. The spectators gave into the prevailing humour, and were seized with the same frantic spirit. Nothing was seen but dancing, drunkenness, debauchery, and all that the most abandoned licentiousness can conceive of gross and abominable. And this an entire people, reputed the wisest of all Greece, not only suffered, but admired and practised. I say an entire people; for Plato, speaking of the Bacchanalia, says in direct terms, that he had seen the whole city of Athens drunk at once.(61) Livy informs us,(62) that this licentiousness of the Bacchanalia having secretly crept into Rome, the most horrid disorders were committed there under cover of the night, and the inviolable secresy which all persons, who were initiated into these impure and abominable mysteries, were obliged, under the most horrid imprecations, to observe. The senate, being apprized of the affair, put a stop to those sacrilegious feasts by the most severe penalties; and first banished the practisers of them from Rome, and afterwards from Italy. These examples inform us, how far a mistaken sense of religion, that covers the greatest crimes with the sacred name of the Divinity, is capable of misleading the mind of man.(63) The Feast of Eleusis. There is nothing in all Pagan antiquity more celebrated than the feast of Ceres Eleusina. The ceremonies of this festival were called, by way of eminence, “the mysteries,” from being, according to Pausanias, as much above all others, as the gods are above men. Their origin and institution are attributed to Ceres herself, who, in the reign of Erechtheus, coming to Eleusis, a small town of Attica, in search of her daughter Proserpine, whom Pluto had carried away, and finding the country afflicted with a famine, invented corn as a remedy for that evil, with which she rewarded the inhabitants. She not only taught them the use of corn, but instructed them in the principles of probity, charity, civility, and humanity;(64) from whence her mysteries were called Θεσμοφόρια, and _Initia_. To these first happy lessons fabulous antiquity ascribed the courtesy, politeness, and urbanity, so remarkable amongst the Athenians. These mysteries were divided into the less and the greater; of which the former served as a preparation for the latter. The less were solemnized in the month Anthesterion, which answers to our November; the great in the month Boëdromion, which corresponds to August. Only Athenians were admitted to these mysteries; but of them, each sex, age, and condition, had a right to be received. All strangers were absolutely excluded, so that Hercules, Castor, and Pollux, were obliged to be adopted as Athenians in order to their admission; which, however, extended only to the lesser mysteries. I shall consider principally the great, which were celebrated at Eleusis.