It appears that Alexander did not pay the highest respect possible to these reverend fooleries; they are indeed very apt to be despised by heroes. He revealed the secret to his mother Olympias, but he advised her to say nothing about it--so much are even heroes themselves bound in the chains of superstition. "It is customary," says Herodotus, "in the city of Rusiris, to strike both men and women after the sacrifice, but I am not permitted to say where they are struck." He leaves it, however, to be very easily inferred. I think I see a description of the mysteries of the Eleusinian Ceres, in Claudian's poem on the "Rape of Proserpine," much clearer than I can see any in the sixth book of the "Æneid." Virgil lived under a prince who joined to all his other bad qualities that of wishing to pass for a religious character; who was probably initiated in these mysteries himself, the better to impose thereby upon the people; and who would not have tolerated such a profanation. You see his favorite Horace regards such a revelation as sacrilege:-- _.... Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum_ _Fulgarit arcanæ sub iisdem_ _Sit trabibus, vel fragilem que mecum_ _Solvat phaselum_.--HORACE, book iii, ode 2. To silence due rewards we give; And they who mysteries reveal Beneath my roof shall never live, Shall never hoist with me the doubtful sail. --FRANCIS. Besides, the Cumæan sibyl and the descent into hell, imitated from Homer much less than it is embellished by Virgil, with the beautiful prediction of the destinies of the Cæsars and the Roman Empire, have no relation to the fables of Ceres, Proserpine, and Triptolemus. Accordingly, it is highly probable that the sixth book of the "Æneid" is not a description of those mysteries. If I ever said the contrary, I here unsay it; but I conceive that Claudian revealed them fully. He flourished at a time when it was permitted to divulge the mysteries of Eleusis, and indeed all the mysteries of the world. He lived under Honorius, in the total decline of the ancient Greek and Roman religion, to which Theodosius I. had already given the mortal blow.