Initiation in the principles of this Samothracian ceremonial was thought so necessary an accomplishment for every hero and every prince, that no aspirant to those distinctions ever ventured upon his destination, without first paying a visit to that religious rendezvous. The solemnity, attaching to the ritual there performed, was not greater than the veneration paid to the place itself. All fugitives found shelter within its privileged precincts, and the name of _sacred_ was assigned it, as the ordinary characteristic of such sanctuaries.[347] “There are,” says the Scholiast upon Aristophanes, “two orders of mysteries celebrated in the course of the year, in honour of Ceres and _the Virgin_--the lesser and the greater; the former being but a sort of purification and holy preparation for the latter.”[348] Who the Virgin was, however, none but the _initiated_ ever presumed to investigate, the practice observed in respect to her, being the same as that which influenced the other ordinances of antiquity: and which made Strabo himself declare, that “_all that can be said concerning the gods must be by the exposition of old opinions and fables; it being the custom of the ancients to wrap up in enigma and allegory their thoughts and discourses concerning nature, which are, therefore, not easily explained_.”[349] Proclus also says: “In all initiations and mysteries, the gods exhibit themselves under many forms, and with a frequent change of shape; sometimes as light defined to no particular figure; sometimes in a human form; and sometimes in that of some other creature.”[350] With the clue, however, already afforded, we need not be deterred from approaching her fane. The allegorical name, under which they disguised her, was that of _Proserpine_: whom they represent “so beautiful that _the father of the gods himself became enamoured of her, and deceived her by changing himself into a serpent, and folding her in his wreaths_.”[351] This was the _Greek perversion_ of the narrative. They had received it from the Pelasgi, under the garb of a _conception_, by _serpentine insinuation, in a virgin womb_: and, the grossness of their intellects not allowing them to comprehend the possibility of an _emanation_, yet giving unqualified credence to the record, they degraded altogether the _religiousness_ of the thought, and supposed that the Almighty, to effectuate his design, had actually assumed the _cobra di capello_ form! So austere was the rule, by which those mysteries were protected, that Æschylus but _barely escaped discerption within the theatre_, for an imagined disrespect to their tendency. Nor was it but on the plea of ignorance and _un_-initiation, that he did ultimately obtain pardon.[352] This insuperable barrier to the curiosity of the profane, engendered in their conduct a corresponding reaction, and, as the _fox_ did to the _grapes_, what they could not themselves compass, they strove all they could to vituperate!