thout
such an advantage. It was their general opinion, that this ceremony was an
engagement to lead a more virtuous and regular life; that it recommended
them to the peculiar protection of the goddesses (Ceres and Proserpine,)
to whose service they devoted themselves; and procured to them a more
perfect and certain happiness in the other world: whilst, on the contrary,
such as had not been initiated, besides the evils they had to apprehend in
this life, were doomed, after their descent to the shades below, to wallow
eternally in dirt, filth, and excrement. Diogenes the Cynic believed
nothing of the matter,(71) and when his friends endeavoured to persuade
him to avoid such a misfortune, by being initiated before his
death--"What," said he, "shall Agesilaus and Epaminondas lie amongst mud
and dung, whilst the vilest Athenians, because they have been initiated,
possess the most distinguished places in the regions of the blessed?"
Socrates was not more credulous; he would not be initiated into these
mysteries, which was perhaps one reason that rendered his religion
suspected.

Without this qualification none were admitted to enter the temple of
Ceres;(72) and Livy informs us of two Acarnanians, who, having followed
the crowd into it upon one of the feast-days, although out of mistake and
with no ill design, were both put to death without mercy. It was also a
capital crime to divulge the secrets and mysteries of this feast. Upon
this account Diagoras the Melian was proscribed, and had a reward set upon
his head. It very nearly cost the poet AEschylus his life, for speaking too
freely of it in some of his tragedies. The disgrace of Alcibiades
proceeded from the same cause. Whoever had violated this secresy, was
avoided as a wretch accursed and excommunicated.(73) Pausanias, in several
passages, wherein he mentions the temple of Eleusis, and the ceremonies
practised there, stops short, and declares he cannot proceed, because he
had been forbidden by a dream or vision.(74)

This feast, the most celebrated of profane antiquity, was of nine days'
continuance. It began the fifteenth of the month Boedromion. After some
previous ceremonies and sacrifices on the first three days, upon the
fourth in the evening began the procession of "the Basket;" which was laid
upon an open chariot slowly drawn by oxen,(75) and followed by a long
train of the Athenian women. They all carried mysterious baskets in their
hands, filled with several th