suggests, to apply to the mysteries of Cybele[1]. It appears then that the final act or stage of initiation consisted in the secret admission of the worshipper to the bed-chamber of the goddess. Such ritual can have borne only one interpretation. It clearly constituted a promise of wedded union between the initiated and their deity. Viewed in this light even the emasculation of the priests of Cybele may more readily be understood; it may have been the consecration of their virility to the service of the goddess, a final and convincing pledge of celibacy in this life, in return for which they aspired to be blest by wedlock with their goddess hereafter.
The mention of the goddess' bed-chamber in the above passage is of considerable interest. The [Greek: pastos] (or [Greek: pastas]) in relation to a temple meant the same thing as it often meant in relation to an ordinary house, an inner room or recess screened off, and in particular a bridal chamber. Such provision for the physical comfort of the deity was probably not rare. Pausanias tells us that on the right of the vestibule in the Argive Heraeum there was a couch ([Greek: klinê]) for Hera[2], and he seems to speak of it as if it were a common enough piece of temple furniture. So too at Phlya in Attica, where were held the very ancient mystic rites 'of her who is called the Great,' there was a bridal chamber ([Greek: pastas]), where, it has rightly been argued, there 'must have been enacted a mimetic marriage[3].' Again Clement of Alexandria speaks of a [Greek: pastos] of Athena in the Parthenon, and makes it quite clear by the story which he relates that he understood the word in the sense of bed-chamber. The story is also for other reasons worth recalling, because it shows how the religious conception of marriage between men and gods was readily extended to the worship of other deities than those whose mysteries we have sought to unravel, and at the same time furnishes the only case known to me in which that mystic belief was prostituted to the base uses of flattery. The occasion was the reception accorded by the
- ↑ Psellus (Quaenam sunt Graecorum opiniones de daemonibus, 3, ed. Migne) refers the formulary to the rites of Demeter and Kore. But I cannot agree with Miss J. Harrison (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 569) as to the importance of Psellus' testimony in any respect. He appears to me to give no more than a résumé of information derived from Clement's Protreptica, misunderstood and even more confused.
- ↑ Paus. II. 17. 3.
- ↑ Miss J. Harrison, op. cit. p. 536, commenting on Philosophumena, ed. Cruice, v. 3.
