Elefsina: Ancient Eleusis in Modern Greece
Eleusis has fascinated both the ancient and modern world. Hosting the Eleusinian Mysteries, the small town 20km west of Athens was a centre of religious devotion for ancient Greeks. Today, the remains of the ancient sanctuary are surrounded by a polluted industrial zone. This stark, often depressing, contrast between ancient and modern has inspired a number of Greek artists to use the myths and ruins of Eleusis as a symbol to question humanity’s impact on the environment.
The Myths and Mysteries
Much still remains hidden about the Eleusinian Mysteries. Each year the goddesses Demeter and Persephone (Kore) were celebrated by worshippers from across the Greek world who were initiated into this faith. A number of such mystery cults existed, but that at Eleusis was by far the most popular. Every year initiates set out from Athens heading for the centre of the sanctuary, a large enclosed hall, the Telesterion. For many this was the culminating moment of their experience, and perhaps their religious life. What happened exactly we do not know. The secret was piously guarded by strict laws and taboos.
Demeter and her daughter Persephone gave the town its meaning. In the myth related in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Persephone was abducted and taken down to Hades. The grieving Demeter, an agricultural goddess, wandered the earth searching for her lost daughter and refused to let anything grow. During her wandering, Demeter stopped in Eleusis. Disguised as an old woman, she was taken in by the town, establishing the enduring connection between the two. Eventually Persephone was returned to Demeter, but as she had tasted food in the underworld she was forced to return there for part of the year.
The death of the natural world Demeter allows during Persephone’s absence neatly provides a mythological rationale for the natural cycle of the seasons with its alternating periods of growth and decay. Other stories reinforced the link between the origins of agriculture, Demeter, and Eleusis. According to some of these, Demeter taught Triptolemus the art of agriculture and consequently the plains around Eleusis were the first place where humans grew crops (Pausanias.1.38). These layers of meaning, and the presence of the goddess, connected to humanity’s first successful interventions in the natural world, and even the cycles of life and death gave Eleusis its significance.
Modern Reality
The contrast with the modern experience of visiting Eleusis is stark. The trip starts well enough. Like the ancient initiates you can follow the Iera Odos, the sacred road, from Athens to Elefsina (Eleusis). However, as you progress the smell of the petrol gets stronger as you move into a landscape of shipyards, cement factories and refineries.
An abandoned oil mill in modern Elefsina.
(Image courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/frigus/19256945748)
Elefsina is one of the few parts of Greece to have a long industrial history. A late 19th century wave of construction saw soap factories and distilleries utilise the abundant agricultural products of the neighbourhood. Factories and chimneys sprung up around the recently excavated ancient sanctuary. Cement plants and a military airport followed in a second industrial wave in the 1950s. Greece also experienced the late 20th century deindustrialisation closing many of those earlier works and adding to Elefsina’s collection of ruins.
Like many an industrial centre Elefsina has been left with a mixed record. The industries once provided much needed jobs but pollution and unemployment remain issues. Despite sitting on the coast, swimming at Elefsina is often not advised.
To a number of twentieth century Greek artists Eleusis became symbolic of the contrast between a supposed ancient meaning and the harsh, industrial, modern reality. The fate of Eleusis offered itself to those wishing to question the world growing around them. Here we will look at three examples: Sikelianos’ poem The Sacred Way, Gatsos’ lyrics for Persephone’s Nightmare, and Koutsaftis’ documentary Agelastos Petra.
Sikelianos’ Iera Odos
In 1935 the poet Angelos Sikelianos wrote The Sacred Way (Iera Odos). The poem takes place on the road to Elefsina which for Sikelianos is “the Soul’s road”, a natural place outside of the world and time. As the traveller makes their way along this sacred road a man dragging along a pair of dancing bears interrupts. Sikelianos sees the bears as Demeter and Kore enchained and enslaved. Demeter forced to dance by man for a coin is a bitter sight, and becomes a symbol “of all primeval suffering”. Only once the sad sight has moved on can the traveller resume their voyage to Eleusis which holds out the hope that in the end the souls of all will find their way.
Eleusis and Demeter offered themselves to Sikelianos as a way to depict the enchaining of the natural world by a harsh and ungrateful humanity. The impact is all the greater as the man with his unfortunate bears appears unthinking and cruel in contrast with the profundity of Eleusis. At the time of writing, the first factories at Elefsina were already half a century old and within a few years a military airport would swallow up much of the plain. But still, while clearly critical of how humanity had treated the natural world, Sikelianos clung to the hope he saw in the myths and mysteries of Eleusis.
Nor was this just a passing acquittance. Sikelianos tried, along with this wife Eva Palmer Sikelianos, to revive aspects of ancient Greek culture, most famously at Delphi. He went on to delivery a series of lectures, his Eleusinian Testament, in Elefsina and when he was married for a second time in 1940, the ceremony was held at the 17th century chapel on the hill above the Telesterion.
Gatsos’ Persephone’s Nightmare
While Sikelianos’s Eleusis retained some hope, there is little on offer in the next example. Forty years on Eleusis had become the scene for a lament for the environmental damage inflicted by the modern world.
Renowned poet and lyricist, Nikos Gatsos provided the words for composer Manos Hadjidakis’ 1976 song Persephone’s Nightmare (O Efialtis tis Persefonis). The striking, and for Gatsos tragic, contrast between the supposed ancient meaning of Eleusis and the modern reality run through the short poem. Gatsos calls on Persephone not to return from the underworld to an Eleusis in which the air, land, and sea are polluted.
The idea of Eleusis as the origin of agriculture is immediately contrasted with the modern cement factories and kilns which kill even the birds flying above. Nor is it just industry hanging heavy over the sanctuary. Tourism had started to take off as a key Greek industry in the 1960s, and, whilst economically welcome, it was not without its social and environmental costs, which have only increased as tourism has boomed in post-crisis Greece.
“There where the initiates joined hands
devoutly before entering the sanctuary
now tourists toss their cigarette ends
and they go to see the brand new refinery.”
via the Gatsos Archive
Persephone’s Nightmare appeared at a key moment in Greek history as the country was in a period of transition. Post-war development came late to Greece but made its mark. Tourism was playing more and more of a role. A far-right dictatorship had only ended two years previously. Gatsos’s Eleusis seems to be a warning to a country in transition that may need to change its path.
Agelastos Petra
In 2000 we again see the striking contrast between ancient and modern Eleusis, and its melancholy consequences. Agelastos Petra (Mourning Rock) is Filippos Koutsaftis’ documentary about Eleusis and the Eleusinians at the end of the twentieth century. Taking its name from the rock Demeter rested on during her search (Hymn to Demeter, 95-100), the film follows the daily lives of a number of inhabitants against a background of the ancient town.
We see continuing development of the town as every new construction encounters archaeology and either goes around it or simply destroys it. The decade of filming from the late 1980s to the end of the 1990s were a period of decline and deindustrialisation. Despite this, even as work has dried up, the refineries continue, and even threaten to expand. However, their impact lingers as factories built over the ruins are abandoned and the region remains rusted and polluted. Koutsaftis does not seem to see any cohabitation between ancient and modern. There was a choice and in Elefsina one was chosen over the other.
“Elefsina is a very big deal for Greece, which transcends the ecology, the economy or politics. It weighs on the consciences of present-day Greeks like the song of sin; the thing we turned our back on…….When the country’s reconstruction began in the 1950s, we turned our back on Elefsina in our haste to become Europe.”
(Filippos Koutsaftis,2023)
Koutsaftis’ Eleusis is much the same as that of Sikelianos and Gatsos. Modern Elefsina has sacrilegiously pushed aside ancient Eleusis, replacing ancient meaning with short-term materialism. There is, however, also a hint of hope as the Eleusinians themselves go about their lives and consciously - or not - display a continuity with their ancient counterparts.
Eleusis as Symbol
In these three examples poets, song writers, and film makers have used the myths and archaeology of Eleusis to question aspects of their society. This was premised on an understanding of Eleusis and its myths as pointing to the origins of agriculture and the Mysteries’ apparent link to the cycles of life and death (though of course the exact meaning of the Mysteries is still disputed). This ancient meaning immediately called into question the modern rush for development and its inherent destruction.
While Eleusis no longer has the same religious meaning, it has become highly symbolic. Its myths have been combined with the town’s modern history to ask questions suitable to the environmental concerns of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This continues to be the case today. In 2023 Elefsina was a European Capital of Culture and its ruins, ancient and modern, housed attempts to understand the town and its history. Once again, Eleusis and its past leant itself to questions on our relationship to the environment. Amongst the stated themes of the year’s programme were: “Demeter-Mother Earth” and “Persephone”.
References
The Homeric Hymns. (2003). tr.Cashford,J, Pengiun Classics
Keeley, E and Sherrard, P. (1996). Angelos Sikelianos : Selected Poems. Bi-lingual edition. Denis Harvey. Limni
Bowden, H. (2023). Mystery Cults in the Ancient World. Thames & Hudson. New York.