A Repeated Allusion to Pindar and the Eleusinian Mysteries in Anaxilas’ Comic Fragments?

Anaxilas in fragments 25 and 30 K.-A. deliberately alluded to Pindar’s fragment 137 S.-M. and the mystery references it contains, but at the same time completely redesigned the sense of the Pindaric phrase for a strong comic effect.

Labor XII

This chapter explores Heracles’ defeat of Cerberus. After providing a brief overview of Heracles’ presence—or rather absence—in the retellings of the Cerberus myth, it focuses on four ways in which the intricacies of the Labor are explored. Concentrating on the Homeric Iliad, the intertwining of Heracles’ Labor with the underworld journey of Theseus and Pirithous, the introduction to the myth of Heracles’ initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the Labor’s representation in Euripides’ Heracles, the chapter shows how the myth is a mechanism through which ancient mythmakers explore what it means to be a hero. Heracles—godlike and superhuman, mighty and outmoded, humanized and blessed—is seen through his conquering of Cerberus either as being precisely what more contemporary heroes should not be or as embodying the very contradictions and blurred boundaries that Cerberus’ defeat creates.

The Mysteries and the League

In early 303 BC Demetrius Poliorcetes consolidated his hold over the Peloponnese, and then made the unusual request that the Athenians allow him accelerated initiation into the religious cult known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. This was made possible by an extraordinary alteration of the Attic calendar, and in nine days he passed through the three stages of a ritual which normally took nineteen months. By 302, after a great deal of diplomatic activity, he called a congress of all Greek city states and formed a Hellenic League aimed at deposing Cassander from the Macedonian kingship, but he was recalled to Asia by his father Antigonus to participate in the Ipsus campaign.

Plato and the Language of Mysteries

Despite Plato’s repeated criticism of both µῦθοι and mystery cults, Orphism/Pythagoreanism and the Eleusinian Mysteries feature frequently in his dialogues. This paper uncovers the reason why, and the context in which, Plato employs motifs and language associated with these cults. Prevailing explanations in scholarship are shown to apply in some instances but not others, and to be largely insufficient in providing an underlying reason for Plato’s use of mystery cults in general. Through a detailed examination of various mystery motifs in the dialogues, this paper argues that Plato has simply borrowed from religion what he could not achieve with philosophy alone: emotional appeal.