What did the Eleusinia mean? Perhaps, reader, you think the question of
little interest. "The Eleusinia! Why, Lobeck made that little matter
clear long ago; and there was Porphyry, who told us that the whole thing
was only an illustration of the Platonic philosophy. St. Croix, too,--he
made the affair as clear as day!"

But the question is not so easily settled, my friend; and I insist upon
it that you _have_ an interest in it. Were I to ask you the meaning of
Freemasonry, you would think _that_ of importance; you could not utter
the name without wonder; and it may be that there is even more wonder in
it than you suspect,--though you be an arch-mason yourself. But in sight
of Eleusis, freemasonry sinks into insignificance. For, of all races,
the Grecian was the most mysterious; and, of all Grecian mysteries, the
Eleusinia were _the_ mysteries _par excellence_. They must certainly
have meant something to Greece,--something more than can ever be
adequately known to us. A farce is soon over; but the Eleusinia reached
from the mythic Eumolpus to Theodosius the Great,--nearly two thousand
years. Think you that all Athens, every fifth year, for more than sixty
generations, went to Eleusis to witness and take part in a sham?

But, reader, let _us_ go to Eleusis, and see, for ourselves, this great
festival. Suppose it to be the 15th of September, B.C. 411, Anno Mundi
3593 (though we would not make oath to that). It is a fine morning at
Athens, and every one is astir, for it is the day of assembling together
at Eleusis. Then, for company, we shall have Plato, now eighteen years
old, Sophocles, an old man of eighty-four, Euripides, at sixty-nine, and
Aristophanes, at forty-five. Socrates, who has his peculiar notions
about things, is not one of the initiated, but will go with us, if we