history, when the restrictions as to admission began to be relaxed, and in proportion to that relaxation, their essential religious character disappeared, they became but a ceremony, their splendour being their principal attraction, until finally they degenerated into a mere superstition. Julian strived in vain to infuse new life into the vanishing cult, but it was too late—the Eleusinian Mysteries were dead.

The Athenians were pious in the extreme, and throughout the period that initiation was limited to that race the reputation of Eleusis was maintained, although pilgrims from various and remote parts of the world visited it at the season of the Mysteries. When the Eleusinian Mysteries were taken to Rome, as they were in the reign of Hadrian, they contracted impurities and degenerated into riot and vice; the spirituality of their teachings did not accompany the transference or it failed to be comprehended. Although the forms of initiation were still symbolical of the original and noble objects of the institution, the licentious Romans mistook the shadow for the substance, and while they passed through all the ceremonies they were strangers to the objects for which they were framed.

In A.D. 364, a law prohibiting nocturnal rites was published by Valentinian, but Praetextatus, whom Julian had constituted governor of Achaia, prevailed on him to revoke it, urging that the lives of the Greeks would be rendered utterly unsupportable if he deprived them of this, their most holy and comprehensive festival. Much has been made by some writers of the fact that the ceremonies were held at night, but in the early days of Christianity also it was the custom for Christians to forgather either at night or before daybreak, a circumstance which led to their assemblies being known as antelucani and themselves as lucifugæ or "light-haters," by way of reproach. About the beginning of the fifth century Theodosius the Great prohibited and almost totally extinguished the pagan theology in the Roman Empire, and the Eleusinian Mysteries suffered in the general destruction. It is probable, however, that the Mysteries were celebrated secretly in spite of the severe edicts of Theodosius and that they were partly continued through the dark ages, though stripped of their splendour. It is certain that many rites of the pagan religion were performed under the dissembled name of convivial meetings, long after the publication of the Emperor's edicts, and Psellius informs us that the Mysteries of Ceres existed in Athens until the eighth century of the Christian era and were never totally suppressed.

The Festival of the Greater Mysteries—and this was, of course, by far the more important—began on the 15th of the month of Boedromion, corresponding roughly with the month of September, and lasted until the 23rd of the same month. During that time it was unlawful to arrest any man present, or present any petition except for offences committed at the Festival, heavy penalties being inflicted for breaches of this law, the penalties fixed being a fine of not less than a thousand drachmas, and some assert that transgressors were even put to death.