Part Two “Through Elysium with Virgil” deals with the Mystery Schools of Elysium and what it meant to enter into these Mysteries. As with the previous part, I have re-written it in third person, to respect copyright laws, however still attempting not to alter the mood created by the one who originally penned these pages. Emperor Augustus.

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Augustus remained in Samos until Spring. The Parthian settlement brought him peace of mind and the Emperor was preoccupied by matters of interest and pleasure. An ambassador from India brought him a tiger and the Emperor delighted in its beauty. Some folk wanted him to display this ferocious striped cat in battle or in the public arena, but Augustus refused to do so. The tiger’s caged beauty disturbed and delighted him at the same time; he would not have it made sport of by the mob, however.

In Spring Augustus crossed the seas to Athens. The weather was good and the flowers blossomed: wisteria and jasmine creeping up walls, mingling their scent with that of roses. Virgil awaited on Augustus. His face was gaunt with pain and he looked ill, but the two men ate lamb and drank retsina and as the days grew longer and warmer, it appeared that Virgil’s health improved.

Augustus was delighted to be able to discuss poetry and philosophy with one such as Virgil. “It was in pursuit of knowledge – the quest which alone distinguishes men from brutes – that we traveled to Eleusis to be admitted to the Mysteries” (pg. 295 to 296).

“Our Roman Gods are either familiar, with local habitations, and a long heritage, or they appeal to the mad light of Reason. We do of course retain some aspects of our ancient religion, the origins of which are unknown … but these are hallowed for us by their long association with our ancestors, even wild ceremonies like the feast of the Lupercal when men dress in skins of wolf and goat and run around the Palatine Hill whipping every woman they meet to cure her of her barrenness, the Festival of Lupercal was time-honoured or it would have disgusted the Romans.” The fact that their ancestor had practices it for so long detracted from its brutality. They no longer believed in its efficacy but it had become a sport for Rome and in respect of their culture they continued celebrating it.

“We continue it because it is good for men to act as their fathers did” (296). Augustus tells us that Roman religion was a matter of duty and reciprocal obligation. It was in his words, “informed with light”. He mentions that Roman Gods were merely the Olympian Gods under different names: Jupiter = Zeus, Juno = Hera, Diana = Artemis, Mars = Ares. He tells us that Greek religion is rich in mystery cults and that these are mostly female oriented, unlike those of Rome. He mentions the Greek mystery schools speak with a strange sort of music that addresses parts of ones nature which Romans do not deal with. For this reason he says, had it not been for Virgil, he would never have made it to Eleusis.

Augustus recounts how they approached the small valley late one afternoon. It was small and verdant and the pines glowed green in the golden light of the dying Apollo. “Soon he would decline below the mountains and leave the Earth to the Goddess. The beauty of scene caught at his heart and he was impressed by the silent reverence of the hordes of worshipers. “My doubts were allayed: there was no fearful frenzy here.” (296)

At the gate of the chapter house, a priest asked them what they had come seeking and Virgil replied that they sought “the Truth”. They were bid to enter. Their clothes were taken from them and they bathed and were perfumed and anointed with sweet fragrant oils and were given saffron-coloured robes to wear. All of this happened in reverential silence. All that was heard in the crowded rooms, was the shuffling of feet and the rustle of vestments.

“You must clear your mind of the past if you wish the vision of the future as the pure water of the Springs, maintaining the rule of silence.” Augustus observed Virgil and in watching g the old poet empty himself of everything began to understand something about the poetic spirit. Of everything excepting the desire to imbibe knowledge.
On the third night they were led out into the dark and as they proceeded between the lines of torches held by initiates “the moon was up and the temple of the Goddess of Mysteries shone candid in its pure light. Shadows dappled the earth which was still warm under our bare feet” (297)

The chanting grew more resonant, strange, wilder, as if it came from the great distance. A priestess bearing a flamen raised in her hand, stood at the portico of the Temple and asked if they were ready. Her question was followed by a chorus of assent.

The priestess whispered “here, is neither life nor death, past nor future, but the eternal present. Here is neither rich nor poor, bond nor free, but the immortal soul. Here, for a passage of time, that belongs to all time, we offer you escape from the thralldom of the body, and union with the Goddess who is the primal source of life, from which all things grow, without whom is dearth and death.” (297)

The torches were extinguished. The crowd mounted the steps and entered the Temple by the light of the moon and were then escorted to the sanctuary.

The rites that happened there and the promises that were there made, are secret. But in the name of Rome’s children, Augustus is compelled to write about the illumination he received.

The Emperor spoke to Virgil about the Mysteries. Virgil expressed his concern about having to leave this world in a short while, and that his poem would not be finished. He asks Augustus to promise that should he die before his literary work was finished that he’d destroy the Aeneid.

He said to Caesar “We do not die forever. Everything, sky, land, sea, sun, stars and moon, are strengthened by the Spirit and enlivened by Mind. Spirit is the life-force, mind the conscious intelligence. All create things – man, beasts, fish – all derive their life from Spirit and Mind. What strength they have is the strength of fire and comes like fire of heaven. Their weakness resides in the body’s evil and those earthly parts which are corruptible by death. The body itself is not evil but it contains evil. It is the cause of fear and desire and of sorrow and joy. Because we are chained to the body, we cannot look open-eyed on free air, ass the Gods can. Even when we pass from this earth, dying as we call it all the evil and ills of the body do not pass from the soul for long habit has engrafted them on it. So souls must endure retribution and be punished for their old offences. The punishments are numerous and diverse- they must be, as sins are. Each one of us finds a world of death suited to ourselves. Fire, wind, or water cleanses us in the Shades. We are at last set free to wander the Elysian Fields till the last corruption has been removed, and our eyes are clear, and we become a spark of elemental fire. Then, finally, the Divine Spirit calls us in along procession to the river Lethe that we may visist the sky’s vault purged of memory and then in time feel a desire to enter bodily life again. For that we do so.” (298 and 299)

Augustus then remembers the prophetic passage in the Aeneid which states that “Augustus Caesar, son of God, will bring back the Golden Age of Italy and in lands where Saturn reigned.
Listening to Virgil, Augustus knew they had to consecrate their restored Republic, the New Order of Rome, by a ceremony which would join its future to its past; this would be done by holding the Secular Games again.

The Sibyl had announced the coming reign of Apollo and the time was ripe. In his work, Virgil (under divine inspiration) promised Rome and Age of Gold.

Some of those whom had frequented the Pythagorean Academy maintained that after four hundered and forty years, the body and soul lived in their former state and that society returned to its former condition. The holding of the Secular Games would proclaim and prove the regeneration of the world, just as the Elysian Mysteries promised the regeneration of the soul.

On his last night Virgil muttered something about failure and reproached the Gods that they had not granted him the necessary time to complete his literary work. He reiterated his request that Augustus should destroy the manuscript, unworthy as it was of the genius of Rome. He died just before dawn. His last words were “peace, longing, destiny, the Shades glimmer before me…” pg302

“So died the best and rarest man I have ever known. I could not pretend that I could enter that secret world of poetic magic where he communed with spirits that gave birth to the world, and shape its course … of all men I have known, Virgil most completely exemplified what we mean by virtue; he was everything that may become a man.” (Pg302)

The executors of Virgil’s will were horrified at the prospect of destroying his last work and asked advice of Augustus. Caesar respected Virgil. Caesar Augustus also respected Virgil’s will, but he was torn between the promised made to his friend on his deathbed, to give him peace as he died in delirium and still obsessed by his by his innate perfectionism, and his own loyalty to Rome and all Romans’ right to know their destiny and from whence they came. He chose to have the work published and take the responsibility of not having followed Virgil’s instructions on himself as it would have been equally wrong to destroy that wonderful work of truth and mystery.

Augustus wondered if in the Shades Virgil would withdraw on seeing him, just as Dido turned her back on Aeneas who had obeyed the Gods, and in so doing, destroyed Dido, the Queen of his dreams, in order to fulfill his destiny.

Augustus states that he suffered for Rome. The Fates tore his sons, Gaius and Lucius, from him and he wondered if that had been the awful price he was destined to pay for foreswearing Virgil.

Reference and quotes from:
Augustus by Allen Massie
Recommended reading:

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/e/eleusis.html