Such were the games in which the Roman visitors to Corinth were allowed to take part; and we will now proceed to confer on the reader the privilege once peculiar to the inhabitants of Athens, by initiating him into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Their celebration lasted several days, the first of which was occupied in getting together the mystæ, or initiated, whose qualification consisted in their having sacrificed a sow--an act less worthy of a priest than of a pork-butcher. On the second day the mystæ went in solemn procession to the sea-coast, where they took a bath, by way of wetting the public curiosity. On the third day they went through the interesting ceremony of a fast, which, to the looker-on, must have been a somewhat slow process. The fourth day was devoted to the carrying about of a basket containing poppy seeds; and this literally seedy procession was closed by a number of women, each holding in her hand a mystic case, the contents of which were in no case allowed to be visible. On the fifth day the mystæ went, with lighted torches, to the temple of Demeter, at Eleusis, where they spent the night; but the torches throw no light upon what they were looking for. The sixth was the grandest day of all, and was employed in carrying about a statue of the son of Demeter; in whose honour the mysteries were held; because, when wandering about in search of her daughter, she had supplied corn--though nobody can say how she carried it about with her--to the inhabitants of Athens. During the night of this important day the mystæ were taken, in the dark, to see what nobody appears to have seen at all; and we are therefore spared the trouble of describing it. On the seventh day the initiated returned to Athens, and stopped on their way at a bridge over the Cephisus, from which they indulged in jests at the passers-by; and the obscurity of the jokes would, no doubt, if they had come down to us, have been thoroughly in keeping with the mysteries they were intended to celebrate. Such were the games and mysteries to which the Romans were admitted in Athens and Corinth, though they had, at about this time, established among themselves a sport exceeding in ferocity the scratchings and bitings of the Greek Pancratiastæ, or the ear-flattening and nose breaking efforts of the Corinthian pugilists.