Persons guilty of homicide, whether intentional or accidental, were excluded from the society of man and the worship of the gods until certain rites had been performed. In earlier times, a chief or king might officiate in the ceremony of purification, but later it was intrusted to priests, or to persons supposed to be specially marked for the favor of heaven by holiness of life. In case of public calamity, such as plague, famine, or defeat in war, whole cities or states underwent the process of purification, with a view to appease the supposed wrath of the gods for some hidden or open crime.
=27.= Among other foreign observances were the ecstatic rites in honor of various divinities. Such were the Bacchanalian dances, celebrated at Thebes and Delphi, in honor of Dionysus, in which troops of women spent whole nights upon the mountains in a state of the wildest frenzy, shouting, leaping, clashing noisy instruments, tearing animals to pieces and devouring the raw flesh, and even cutting themselves with knives without feeling the wounds. Those who abandoned themselves freely to this excitement were supposed to secure the favor of the god and escape future visitations, while those who resisted were punished with madness.
[Illustration: MAP OF ANCIENT GREECE and the ÆGEAN SEA.]
=28.= Among the most solemn rites were the Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis in honor of Demeter and Perseph´one. These could only be approached by a long and secret course of preparation, and it was a crime even to speak of them in the presence of the uninitiated. They commanded the deepest reverence of the Greeks, and the participants were regarded as more secure than others, both in temporal and spiritual perils. When exposed to shipwreck, passengers commonly asked each other, “Have you been initiated?”
The Eleusinian Mysteries, at least in their earlier form, are supposed to have been a remnant of the old Pelasgic worship, and thus “grounded on a view of nature less fanciful, more earnest, and better fitted to awaken both philosophical thought and religious feeling” than the Hellenic mythology.
=29.= Another custom adopted from abroad was the formation of secret societies, whose members bound themselves by ascetic vows, and the obligation to perform, at fixed seasons, certain solemnities. Such were the Orphic, and afterward the Pythagorean brotherhoods. Those who entered upon the “Orphic Life,” as it was called, promised to abstain wholly from animal food, except the mystic sacrificial feast of raw flesh, and wore white linen garments like the Egyptian priests. Though worshipers of Dionysus, the Orphic brotherhood abstained from all wild and unseemly demonstrations, and aimed at the most severe simplicity and purity of life and manners. Their reputation for wisdom and holiness was abused by certain impostors, who used to visit the houses of the rich and offer to release them from the consequences both of their own sins and those of their forefathers, by sacrifices and expiatory songs prescribed in the Orphic books.