[56] Pausanias (iv. 1, 5)—μετεκόσμησε γὰρ καὶ Μέθαπος τῆς τελετῆς (the Eleusinian Orgies, carried by Kaukon from Eleusis into Messênia), ἔστιν ἅ. Ὁ δὲ Μέθαπος γένος μὲν ἦν Ἀθηναῖος, τελετῆς τε καὶ ~ὀργίων παντοίων συνθέτης~. Again, viii. 37, 3, Onomakritus Διονύσῳ ~συνέθηκεν~ ὄργια, etc. This is another expression designating the same idea as the Rhêsus of Euripidês, 944.—
Μυστηρίων τε τῶν ἀποῤῥήτων φάνας Ἔδειξεν Ὀρφεύς.
[57] Têlinês, the ancestor of the Syracusan despot Gelô, acquired great political power as possessing τὰ ἱρὰ τῶν χθονίων θεῶν (Herodot. vii. 153); he and his family became hereditary Hierophants of these ceremonies. How Têlinês acquired the ἱρὰ Herodotus cannot say—ὅθεν δὲ ἀυτὰ ἔλαβε, ἢ αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔχω εἶπαι. Probably there was a traditional legend, not inferior in sanctity to that of Eleusis, tracing them to the gift of Dêmêtêr herself.
The minds of men were prone to the belief that what they were suffering arose from the displeasure of some of the gods, and as they found that the ordinary sacrifices and worship were insufficient for their protection, so they grasped at new suggestions proposed to them with the view of regaining the divine favor.[58] Such suggestions were more usually copied, either in whole or in part, from the religious rites of some foreign locality, or from some other portion of the Hellenic world; and in this manner many new sects or voluntary religious fraternities, promising to relieve the troubled conscience and to reconcile the sick or suffering with the offended gods, acquired permanent establishment as well as considerable influence. They were generally under the superintendence of hereditary families of priests, who imparted the rites of confirmation and purification to communicants generally; no one who went through the prescribed ceremonies being excluded. In many cases, such ceremonies fell into the hands of jugglers, who volunteered their services to wealthy men, and degraded their profession as well by obtrusive venality as by extravagant promises:[59] sometimes the price was lowered to bring them within reach of the poor and even of slaves. But the wide diffusion, and the number of voluntary communicants of these solemnities, proves how much they fell in with the feeling of the time and how much respect they enjoyed—a respect, which the more conspicuous establishments, such as Eleusis and Samothrace, maintained for several centuries. And the visit of the Kretan Epimenidês to Athens—in the time of Solôn, and at a season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having offended the gods—illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new orgies[60] and rites of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing high in the favor of the gods and reputed to be the son of a nymph. The supposed Erythræan Sibyl, and the earliest collection of Sibylline prophecies,[61] afterwards so much multiplied and interpolated, and referred (according to Grecian custom) to an age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong to a date not long posterior to Epimenidês. Other oracular verses, such as those of Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities: the sixth century before the Christian æra was fertile in these kinds of religious manifestations.