e represented. The spectators, at Athens, were a very mixed
assemblage and included the populace, "who remained populace in spite of
any beautiful verses which they might chance to hear." They cared only
to be amused, "just like modern audiences."[1998]

+619. Dramatic taste and usage in worship. Customs derived from the
mysteries.+ About the time of Christ, by syncretism all the religions
took on a dramatic form in their ritual, with liturgies and responses,
on account of the attractiveness of that form for worshipers. The
Christian year was built up as a drama of the life of Christ. The
ceremony of the mass was produced by an application of modes of worship
which, so far as we can learn, were devised and used in the mysteries.
"There is unmistakable evidence that a marriage ceremony of a religious
nature existed, and that this ceremony stood in close relation to a
part of the ritual of the mysteries. In fact, the marriage was, as it
were, a reproduction by the bride and bridegroom of a scene from the
divine life, i.e. from the mystic drama. The formula, 'I escaped evil: I
found better,' was repeated by the celebrant who was initiated in the
Phrygian mysteries; and the same formula was pronounced as part of the
Athenian marriage ceremony. Another formula, 'I have drunk from the
_kymbalon_,' was pronounced by the initiated; and drinking from the same
cup has been proved to have formed part of a ceremony performed in the
temple by the betrothed pair." "It is an extremely important fact that
the human marriage ceremony was thus celebrated by forms taken from the
mysteries; and the conclusion must be that the human pair repeat the
action in the way in which the god and goddess first performed and
consecrated it, and that, in fact, they play the parts of the god and
goddess in the sacred drama. This single example is, as we may be sure,
typical of a whole series of actions."[1999]

+620. The word "god."+ "That man when he dies becomes a god was
considered already in the fourth century B.C. to be part of the teaching
conveyed in the mysteries."[2000] This meant no more than the earlier
notion that when a man died he became a ghost. The word "god" was used
in senses very strange to our ears,[2001] and to quote an expression of
any writer of the beginning of the Christian era in which he uses the
word "god," and to give to that word our sense of it, is to be led into
great error. The age was one which put all its religion in d