ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

The secret religious rites performed every year in honour of Ceres and Proser pine at the Attic town of Eleusis. To these mysteries all Greeks of both sexes, if unpolluted by crime, were admitted;and as persons thus initiated were considered to bo peculiarly under the protection of the gods and to enjoy their favour, it was a privilege much sought after. It has been thought that many pa ages of ancient cla ical writers refer ina covert manner to these mysteries, and the doctrines disclosed in them: Ihus, the whole sixth book of the JEneid has been inlerpreted by War burton and others as an allegorical exposition of them, a notion controverted by Gibbon in one of his early works. See Mysteries. [s. 406]