The Eleusinian mysteries were most highly venerated among the Greeks; so much so that during their celebration hostilities were suspended between opposing armies, while those who witnessed them uninvited or betrayed the secret teaching, or ridiculed them, were executed or banished. So late even as the period of the Roman supremacy the Roman Emperors took an interest in maintaining these mysteries, and some of the early Christian Emperors, like Constantius II. and Jovian, while forbidding nocturnal festivals made an exception of these. The sum of the original Eleusinian doctrine is a myth based upon the rape of Demeter's daughter Persephone by Pluto, all of which is the old story of the seasons and the changes brought about in their regular succession; and as Persephone was ultimately united with Bacchus but returned to the lower world for the winter, we see typified first, the fruitfulness of the Sun God; secondly, the fecundity of the soil, and, thirdly, the resurrection of the body, which having been dropped like the grain into the earth was supposed to rise from it again after a similar fashion. How much this may have to do with present Christian beliefs concerning the resurrection may not be easily decided. Nevertheless it is of interest that the doctrine of the resurrection is of pre-Christian origin and is traceable through heathen teachings, even if having no greater support than the analogy above cited. The central teaching of the mysteries was probably that of a personal immortality analogous to the return of bloom and blossom to plants in the spring.