Mythos Christos by Edwin Herbert

Author:Edwin Herbert [Edwin Herbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2015-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

Basilio’s voice snapped him out of it. “Hypatia stated that several emperors had been initiates at Eleusis. But considering they thought themselves divine already, why would they need the Mysteries?”

Lex said, “I suppose like everyone else, they were hedging their bets. Must’ve been some self-doubts about actually being a demigod. They wouldn’t want to miss out on the promise of everlasting life.”

“Si, the promise of eternal life is a powerful draw.”

They arrived at the site and had to park in a lot some distance away amid several tour buses. The place was too crowded just then to attempt a dig. So, armed with the map and measuring tape, they moved to reconnoiter the ruins and get their bearings. Lex attached himself to an English-speaking tour group to see what he could learn.

As the tour guide directed their attention to a sacred grotto she called the Ploutonion, she explained that this was where the god Hades-Pluto had annually returned the maiden Persephone-Proserpine to her mother, Demeter-Ceres.

In her Greek-accented English she ended with, “…and they believed that, like the crops, all beings in death return their discarded bodies to the earth, and their spirits are reborn anew in living flesh.”

Lex wondered if all the tour guides spoke so freely of what the Greeks called metempsychosis, or reincarnation. She referred to the mythos as “the death and resurrection of Persephone.”

When she finished speaking for the moment and the group moved to the next area of interest, Lex apologized to her for arriving late and asked if she’d direct him to the Lesser Propylaea.

The guide pointed and said a bit tersely, “There, just beyond the telestereion. You’ll see the curved marks in the flagstones where for centuries the doors’ stone wheels gouged the rock beneath. The Lesser Propylaea, or little gates, were the original entrance to the sanctuary. The Greater Propylaea were built much later when they added outer temple walls.”

She frowned with annoyance. But Basilio then appeared and handed the woman a twenty Euro note which seemed to assuage her to some degree. He told Lex he didn’t wish to incur anyone’s wrath or suspicion just yet, as the job that lay ahead may provoke enough of each.

The Sicilian reasoned that since the telestereion was the most important central edifice, it should have been recognizably more pillared and porticoed. Sure enough, as they examined the remains of the ruined temple, many fluted columns and intricately carved entablatures were indeed in evidence. Stone blocks and architraves bore eroded reliefs of grain stalks, poppies, grape clusters, and even kistes—sacred chests. The images were once symbols of the cult.

As they moved farther along they found the floor stones deeply etched with curved grooves of which the tour guide had spoken—a telltale signature of long ages of opening and closing the heavy bivalve doors. Lex bent down, sliding his fingers into the gouged rock, worn smooth from centuries of erosion.

“We’re lucky there is still a trace of where these gates had been,” said Lex, opening his Book of Euclid and unfolding the map.

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