Secrets at Eleusis and Athens
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
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127
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
Elefsis,
Attica,
Greece
Friday, November 21, 2008
We saw the Cave of Pluto where Hades was said to have arisen from the underworld to abduct Persephone to be his wife [I grow weary of the rape euphemisms in Greek mythology] with the approval of Zeus.
Greeks would come here to be inducted into a mystery cult that might be the best kept secret in all of antiquity. To this day, we don't really know what was shown, told, and enacted here at Eleusis, we only know that it had to do with the worship of Demeter and that initiates were threatened with death if they revealed any of the secrets.
A stray dog accompanied us around the site. The sunlight was reflecting off a camera lens onto the ground, and the dog got playful and started digging for it in the dirt. Indy stopped his lecture and said, "No illegal excavations allowed here!"
My favorite piece in the Museum of Eleusis was the caryatid from the propylaia (the entrance gate), a gigantic marble sculpture of a woman wearing a gorgon aegis and some kind of box on her head that contained the sacred objects of the mystery cult. This sculpture, created in the first century BCE, held up one of the front columns of the propylaia.
That night, the girls threw a raucous party. Groom's fiancee is here visiting, and Wedding Belle has been missing her fiance who departed after fall break. So the girls threw them a surprise joint bachelorette party. I was very happy to be included in the invitation, and I was present for part of it, but like the Eleusian mystery cult, I'm not allowed to disclose what happened under penalty of death.
