Search Results: Eleusis

Eleusis was a deme of Athens and most famous for its annual festival of the Mysteries in honour of Demeter and Persephone. The site was also an important fortress protecting Attica and held several other important festivals, notably the Thesmophoria...

Demeter was one of the oldest gods in the ancient Greek pantheon. Demeter was a goddess of agriculture and guaranteed the fertility of the earth. She protected both farming and vegetation. The close connection with the earth was inherited...

The Rites of Eleusis, or the Eleusinian Mysteries, were the secret rituals of the mystery school of Eleusis and were observed regularly from c. 1600 BCE - 392 CE. Exactly what this mystic ritual was no one knows; but why the ancient Greeks...

Kykeon (from the Greek “to mix, stir”) was a beverage of water and barley (sometimes flavored with mint or thyme) popular among the working, 'lower' class of ancient Greece. In Homer's Illiad it is described as a mixture of water, barley...

Statue of the deified Antinous represented as Asclepius, found in the outer court of the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis (Greece) which it apparently adorned, 2nd century CE. (Archaeological Museum of Eleusis)

The upper part of one of the caryatids that flanked the Lesser Propylaea of the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis. The caryatid was made in Attica in about 50 BCE. (Eleusis Museum, Greece)

The Thirty Tyrants (οἱ τριάκοντα τύραννοι) is a term first used by Polycrates in a speech praising Thrasybulus (Arist. Rhet. 1401a) to describe the brief 8-month oligarchy which governed Athens after the Peloponnesian War – roughly late-summer...

Persephone (aka Kore) was the Greek goddess of agriculture and vegetation, especially grain, and the wife of Hades, the ruler of the Underworld. Persephone was an important element of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Thesmophoria festival...

The Greater Propylaea at the Sanctuary of Eleusis (Greece) was a monumental gate probably built by Marcus Aurelius on the same site as an earlier gate from the time of Kimon, c. 170 CE - c. 180 CE.

The Greater Propylaea at the Sanctuary of Eleusis (Greece) was a monumental gate probably built by Marcus Aurelius on the same site as an earlier gate from the time of Kimon, c. 170 CE - c. 180 CE.