CHAPTER III.

AN EXAMINATION OF VIRGIL'S SIXTH BOOK OF THE ENEID; IN WHICH IT

IS SHOWN, THAT THE ALLEGORICAL DESCENT OF ENEAS INTO HELL, IS NO OTHER THAN AN ENIGMATICAL REPRESENTATION OF HIS INITIATION INTO THE MYSTERIES.

We have seen in general, how fond and tenacious ancient paganism was of this extraordinary rite, as of an institution supremely useful both to society and religion. But this will be seen more fully in what I now proceed to lay before the reader; an examination of two celebrated pieces of antiquity, the famous Sixth Book of Virgil's Eneid, and the Metamorphosis of Apuleius. The first of which will show us of what use the mysteries were esteemed to society; and the second, of what use to religion.

An inquiry into Eneas' adventure to the shades, will have this farther advantage, the instructing us in the shows and representations of the mysteries; a part of their history, which the form of this discourse upon them hath not yet enabled us to give. So that nothing will be now wanting to a perfect knowledge of this most extraordinary and important institution.

For the descent of Virgil's hero into the infernal regions, I presume, was no other than a figurative description of an initiation; and particularly, a very exact picture of the spectacles in the Eleusinian mysteries; where everything was done in show and machinery; and where a representation of the history of Ceres afforded opportunity of bringing in the scenes of heaven, hell, elysium, purgatory, and what ever related to the future state of men and heroes.

As the Eneid is in the style of ancient legislation, it would be hard to think that so great a master in his art should overlook a doctrine, which, we have shown, was the foundation and support of ancient politics; namely, a future state of rewards and punishments. Accordingly he hath given us a complete system of it, in imitation of his models, which were Plato's vision of Erus, and Tully's dream of Scipio. Again, as the lawgiver took care to support this doctrine by a very extraordinary institution, and to commemorate it by a rite, which had all the allurement of spectacle, and afforded matter for the utmost embellishments of poetry, we cannot but confess a description of such a scene would add largely to the grace and elegance of his work; and must conclude he would be invited to attempt it. Accordingly, he hath done this likewise, in the allegorical descent of Eneas into hell; which is no other than an enigmatical representation of his initiation into the mysteries.

Virgil was to represent a perfect lawgiver, in the person of Encas;

now, initiation into the mysteries was what sanctified his character and ennobled his function. Hence we find all the ancient heroes and lawgivers were, in fact, initiated.

Another reason for the hero's initiation, was the important instructions he received in matters that concerned his office.

A third reason for his initiation, was the custom of seeking support and inspiration from the god who presided in the mysteries.

A fourth reason for his initiation, was the circumstance in which the poet has placed him, unsettled in his affairs, and anxious about his future fortune. Now, amongst the uses of initiation, the advice and direction of the oracle was not the least. And an oracular bureau was so necessary an appendix to some of the mysteries, as particularly the Samothraciau, that Plutarch, speaking of Lysander's initiation, there expresses it by a word that signifies consulting the oracle; on this account, Jason, Orpheus, Hercules, Castor, and (as Macrobius says) Tarquinius Priscus, were everyone of them initiated into those mysteries.

All this the poet seems clearly to have intimated in the speech of Anchises to his son:

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Carry with you to Italy the choisest of the youths, the stoutest hearts. In Latium you have to subdue a hardy race, rugged in manners. But first, my son, visit Pluto's infernal mansions, and, in quest of an interview with me, cross the deep floods of Avernus."

A fifth reason was the conforming to the old popular tradition, which said, that several other heroes of the Trojan times, such as Agamemnon and Ulysses, had been initiated.

A sixth, and principal was, that Augustus, who was shadowed in the person of Eneas, had been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries.— (Suet. Oct. cap. xciii.)

While the mysteries were confined to Egypt, their native country, and while the Grecian lawgivers went thither to be initiated, as a kind of designation to their office, the ceremony would be naturally described in terms highly allegorical. This was, in part, owing to the genius of the Egyptian manners; in part, to the humour of travellers; but most of all, to the policy of lawgivers; who, returning home, to civilize a barbarous people, by laws and arts, found it useful and necessary (in order to support their own characters, and to establish the fundamental principle of a future state) to represent that initiation, in which they saw the state of departed mortals in machinery, as an actual descent into hell. This way of speaking was used by Orpheus, Bacchus, and others; and continued even after the mysteries were introduced into Greece, as appears by the fables of Hercules, Castor, Pollux, and Theseus's descent into hell. But the allegory was generally so circumstanced as to discover the truth concealed under it. So Orpheus is said to go hell by the power of his harp: that is, in quality of lawgiver; the harp being the known symbol of his laws, by which he humanised a rude and barbarous people. So again, in the lives of Hercules and Bacchus, we have the true history, and the fable founded on it, blended and recorded together. For we are told, that they were in fact initiated into the

Eleusinian mysteries; and that it was just before their descent into hell, as an aid and security in that desperate undertaking. Which, in plain speech, was no more, than that they could not safely see the shows, till they had been initiated. The same may be said of what is told us of Theseus's adventure. Near Eleusis there was a well, called Callichorus; and, adjoining to that, a stone, on which, as the tradition went, Ceres sat down, sad and weary, on her coming to Eleusis. Hence the stone was named Agelastus, the melancholy stone. On which account it was deemed unlawful for the initiated to sit thereon. "For Ceres, (says Clemens) wandering about in search of her daughter Proserpine, when she came to Eleusis, grew weary, and sat down melancholy on the side of a well. So that, to this very day, it is unlawful for the initiated to sit down there, lest they, who are now become perfect, should seem to imitate her in her desolate condition." Now let us see what they tell us concerning Theseus's descent into hell. "There is also a stone," says the scholiast on Aristophanes," called by the Athenians, Agelastus; on which, they say, Theseus sat when he was meditating his descent into hell. Hence the stone had its name. Or, perhaps, because Ceres sat there weeping, when she sought Proserpine." All this seems plainly to intimate, that the descent of Theseus was his entrance into the Eleusinian mysteries. Which entrance, as we shall see hereafter, was a fraudulent intrusion.

Both Euripides and Aristophanes seem to confirm our interpretation of these descents into hell. Euripides, in his Hercules furens, brings the hero, just come from hell, to succour his family, and destroy the tyrant Lycus. Juno, in revenge, persecutes him with the furies; and he, in his transport, kills his wife and children, whom he mistakes for his enemies. When he comes to himself, he is comforted by his friend Theseus; who would excuse his excesses by the criminal examples of the gods; a consideration, which, as I have observed above, greatly encouraged the people in their irregularities; and was therefore obviated nithe mysteries, by the detection of the vulgar errors of polytheism. Now Euripides seems plainly enough to have told us what he thought of the fabulous descents into hell, by making Hercules reply, like one just come from the celebration of the mysteries, and entrusted with the aporreta. "The examples," says he, "which you bring of the gods, are nothing to the purpose. I cannot think them guilty of the crimes imputed to them. I cannot apprehend, how one god can be the sovereign of another god. A god, who is truly so, stands in need of no one. ject we then these idle fables, which the poets teach concerning them." A secret, which we must suppose, Theseus had not yet learnt.

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The comic poet, in his Frogs, tells us as plainly what he too understood to be the ancient heroes' descent into hell, by the equipage, which he gives to Bacchus, when he brings him in, inquiring the way of Hercules. It was the custom, at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, as we are told by the scholiast on the place, to have what was wanted in those rites, carried upon asses. Hence the proverb, Asinus portat mysteria ; accordingly the poet introduces Bacchus, followed by his buffoon servant,

Xanthius, bearing a bundle in like manner, and riding on an ass. And lest the meaning of this should be mistaken, Xanthius, on Hercules's telling Bacchus, that the inhabitants of Elysium were initiated, puts in, and says, "And I am the ass carrying mysteries." This was so broad a hint, that it seems to have awakened the old scholiast; who, when he comes to that place, where the chorus of the initiated* appears, tells us, we are not to understand this scene as really lying in the Elysian fields, but in the Eleusinian mysteries.

Here then, as was the case in many other of the ancient fables, the pomp of expression betrayed willing posterity into the marvellous. But why need we wonder at this in the genius of more ancient times, which delighted to tell the commonest thing in a highly figurative manner, when a writer of so late an age as Apuleius, either in imitation of antiquity, or perhaps in compliance to the received phraseology of the mysteries, describes his initiation in the same manner: "I approach to the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned from it, being carried through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with a splendid light; and I manifestly drew near to the gods beneath, and the gods above, and proximately adored them." Eneas could not have described his night's journey to his companions, after he had been let out of the ivory gate, in properer terms, had it been indeed to be understood as a journey into hell.

Thus, we see, Virgil was obliged to have his hero initiated; and that he had the authority of fabulous antiquity to call his initiation a descent into hell. And surely he made use of his advantages with great judgment; for such a fiction animates the relation, which, delivered out of allegory, had been too cold and flat for epic poetry.

Had an old poem, under the name of Orpheus, entitled, "A descent into hell," been now extant, it would, perhaps, have shown us, that no more was meant than Orpheus's initiation; and that the idea of this sixth book was taken from thence.

But further, it was customary for the poets of the Augustan age to exercise themselves on the subject of the mysteries, as appears from Cicero, who desires Atticus, then at Athens, and initiated, to send to Chilius, a poet of eminence, an account of the Eleusinian mysteries; in order, as it would seem, to insert into some poem he was then writing. Thus it appears, that both the ancient and modern poets afforded Virgil a pattern for this famous episode.

Even Servius saw thus far into Virgil's design, as to say, that many things were delivered according to the profound learning of the Egyptian theology. And we have shown that the doctrines taught in the inysteries, were invented by that people. But though I say this was our poet's general design, I would not be supposed to think he followed no other guides. Several of the circumstances are borrowed

The resemblance between the practices of masonry and those of the ancient mysteries, is too striking not to be noticed. Here we have the chorus of the initiated; in masonry, we observe the apprentice's, the fellow craft's, and the master mason's chorus or song; that is, songs adapted to each degree.-Edit.

from Homer; and several of the philosophic notions from Plato; some of which will be taken notice of, in their place.

The great manager in this affair is the sibyl; and, as a virgin, she sustains two principal and distinct parts; that of the inspired priestess, to pronounce the oracle; and that of hierophant, to conduct the initiated through the whole celebration.*

For, as we have observed, the initiated had a guide or conductor, called Hierophantes, Mystagogos, indifferently of either sex, who was to instruct him in the preparatory ceremonies, and lead him through, and explain to him, all the shows and representations of the mysteries. Hence Virgil calls the sibyl Magna Sacerdos, and Docta Comes, words of equivalent signification. And as the female mystagogue, as well as the male, was devoted to a single life, so was the Cumaan Sibyl, whom he calls Casta Sibylla. Another reason why a priestess is given to conduct him is, because Proserpine presides in this whole affair. And the name of the priestess in the Eleusinian mysteries shows that she properly belonged to Proserpine, though she was called the priestess of Ceres. "The ancients," says Porphyrius, "called the priestesses of Ceres, Melissai (bees), as being the ministers or hierophants of the subterraneous goddess, and Proserpine herself, Melitodes.

It was for this reason that these female hierophants were called Melissai, as is well observed by the Schol. on Pind. in Pyth. the bee being, among the ancients, the symbol of chastity.†

Quod nec concubitu indulgent, nec corpora segnes

In Venerem solvunt.

The first instruction the priestess gives Eneas, is to search for the golden bough, sacred to Proserpine.

Under this branch is concealed the wreath of myrtle, with which the initiated were crowned, at the celebration of the mysteries.-(Schol. Aristoph. Ranis.)

The golden bough is said to be sacred to Proserpine, and so we are told was the myrtle; Proserpine only is mentioned all the way; partly because the initiation is described as an actual descent into hell, but principally because, when the rites of the mysteries were performed, Ceres and Proserpine were equally invoked, but when the shows were represented, then Proserpine alone presided. Now this book is a representation of the shows of the mysteries. The quality of this golden bough, with its lento vimine, admirably describes the tender branches of myrtle. But the reader may ask, why is this myrtle-branch represented to be of gold? Not merely for the sake of the marvellous, he may be assured. A golden bough was literally part of the sacred equipage in the shows of the mysteries. For the branch, which was sometimes

This remark can apply only to the show and representations of the lesser mysteries, at the conclusion of which the office of female hierophant ends, if we can judge by the duty imposed upon the sibyl by Virgil, as will appear further on.-Edit. †The bee, or rather bee-hive, among the masonic symbols, is considered an emblem of industry, for which there is probably some authority in antiquity.-Edit.