It is this fable of the underground course of the Alpheus that Coleridge alludes to in his poem of Kubla Khan:--
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."
Many beautiful temples were dedicated to Ceres and Proserpina, both in Greece and Italy; and their yearly festivals, the Cerealia and Thesmophoria, were celebrated with great pomp.
To commemorate her long search for her daughter, Ceres instituted at Eleusis the Eleusinian Festivals and Mysteries. The Festivals were held in February and September. The lesser festival, in February, represented the restoration of Proserpina to her mother; the greater, held in September, lasted nine days and represented the abduction of Proserpina. All classes might participate in these festivals. The Mysteries of Eleusis were witnessed only by the initiated, and were surrounded with a veil of secrecy that has never been fully withdrawn. The initiates passed through certain symbolic ceremonies from one degree of mystic enlightenment to another till the highest was attained. The Mysteries apparently resembled the ceremonies of the modern masonic orders.
The following stanzas are from Swinburne's "Garden of Proserpine":--
"We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful, Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure.
"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be, That no life lives forever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."
Besides Pluto, god of the Infernal Regions, the Greeks also worshiped Plutus, a son of Ceres and Jason, who was known exclusively as a god of wealth. Abandoned in infancy, he was reared by Pax, goddess of peace, who is often represented as holding him in her lap. Because Plutus would bestow his favors only upon good and worthy mortals, Jupiter deprived him of his sight; and he then distributed his wealth indiscriminately.
Virgil thus describes the crowd of spirits that wait to be ferried by Charon across the river:--