A VISIT TO ELEUSIS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3018, 17 January 1912, Page 106

A VISIT TO ELEUSIS.

By Edith Searle Gbossmann, M.a.

THE SERPENT OF DEMETER. About noon we went to the Museum, which, like the other museums on classic spots in Greece, is a kind of temple of the past. Inside is a relief representing all the Eleusinian deities—Kore, (Persephone), Plou:os, Demeter, &M Dionysius. Beside these are two which still puzzle me inscribed simply, Theos and Thea (<rod and goddess), as if the worshippers recognised some supreme Deity, male and female, above the named gods. The chariot ol the seated Theos is encircled by a snake I looked up La Grande Encyclopedie (which is generally better than our English encyclopaedias) and found: "The snake, son of the earth, and, above all others, a creature of the ground, is the true emblem of the two goddesses (Demeter and Persephone). It draws i.e., in the form of a dragon—the chariot of Demeter, the chariot of Tripholemus. It cods around the sceptre, the arm, or the body of Demeter. and ; takes its place near her throne. In her temple were fed large »;nakes that were That ot tne temple of Eleusis is represented in presence of the daughters of (King) Keleos fathr of (Tripholemus). Another scene shows the priest of the temple caressing the serpent on the knees of Demeter. The question has been asked whether the serpent does not here represent lakchos—i.e., Bacchus, who completes the trinity of deities."

Now while, we stood waiting in the hot sun near the dooi> of the Museum, bv the outer Avail of the sacred enclosure—this is fact, not fable,—a grey snake crept out of the old stones of the walls and swiftly wriggled away, and I imagined it was one of those " great serpents " that were kept in the temple of Demeter. .This was the only snake that I saw in Greece. It was very ancient, this cult of Demeter, and went back, some say, to the Pelasgi.' It had its first home in Crete and in Arcadia. And the old days still endure even in the dust, dead to ■us, and a dream, but not utterly .vanished. Is there any end at all to great and high things? Here they linger, the ruins of Eleusis and its imperishable memories and the land that gave birth to them after centuries "below ground" begins to live again—only it.s new life seems a meaner and lesser thing than its death. When we climbed up tne hill we looked over some factories, where the steam whistle shrieks at noon, and workmen trudge to and fro to work as if Eleusis ■were Halifax. In the hollow of the hill facing the sea are rock tombs, and they were cut out in pre-historic days for the dead who died before Agamemnon. This is the circle of the serpent of Demeter, that renews its skin age by age, and never dies.

THE SHEPHERDS AND THE STEAM WHISTLE.

We climbed to the Akropolis, and beyond to the Frankish, towor, and it was .there that we had the incident with the ishepherd, who wanted the shade for his ipanting sheep, and told us it was not pleasant for us in the place that he wanted, but was pleasant somewhere else. 'So we trudged on to the tiny chapel of the Holy Nikolaos, which was painted in strips of red and yellow, and there we sat on the stone steps and ate lunch. We •were looking over the beautiful bay, at 'one' end of which is the Piraus, and at the other Megara, and in front of us were Salami's and the islands before it. The .sun was still hot, but a fresh breeze rippled the sea. It lay so near below us that we heard the waves rippling at the foot of the cliffs, and looked straight down from the steps of our shrine into clear water. The sail of a little fishing boat rounded and dipped in near view. Peasant women were gathering driftwood on the shore; a sun-browned, barefoot shepherd bov lay dozing at full length in a hollow, with'his crook in his hand ,nd his little flock near. Presently he shook off sleep and went up the hill towards tho ruined wall of a second Frankish tower. There in the black shadow lay another flock, palpitating in their fleece, and beside them lay another brown-faced, blackeyed shepherd youth; and the two youths began a drowsv dialogue, and then fell to fiery words, and suddenly grew drowsy aaa'in and tended their sheep. They tended them as shepherds still do in the East, where they guide their flocks of 14 or 20 or even less, slowly across the plains' in search of scanty herbage or water, or shelter from the heat. Perhaps it was about some pet ewe lamb or ram thev quarrelled, and all but came to blows with their crooks. A green lizardl ran along the broken walls of the old fortifications, and just at that moment a steam whistle shrieked from a brewery down on the plain-the Thrisian Plain, I believe..and hurled us out of Arcadia mto Halifax and Huddersfiold again. These Frankish towers, by the way, are interesting mementoes of a period we are rather apt to overlook, when the Irench lords and barons set up thou- dominion over prostrate Greece, which muddled Shakespeare hopelessly when, relying on his own instinct and imagination, he would write Greek plays without learn.ng Greek history, and amongst other queer fTghts of genius made Theseus a duke.