This chapter compares Philicus’ Demeter of ca. 275 BC (which, at the time of writing, I followed all scholars since Medea Norsa in classifying as a hymn) with the Delphic paeans of Philodamus (ca. 340 BC) and Limenius (between 128 and 108 BC). It argues that Philicus’ poem locates the exchange between Iambe and the Demeter not at Eleusis but at Prospalta, where a cult of Demeter and Persephone is attested, and that it may have proposed a role for that cult in the development of ritual αὶσχρολογία in Attica. The interest in Attic cults shown by a Corcyrean domiciled in Alexandria matches Callimachus’ decision to compose his very Attic Hecale. By contrast the Delphic paean of Philodamus is focussed chiefly on its place of performance and monumental inscription, albeit setting Dionysus’ arrival at Delphi, where he is be honoured alongside Apollo with cyclic choruses, in a wider geographical frame. Geography is important for the paean of Limenius too, offering a very Athenian version of Apollo’s reaching mainland Greece and proceeding to Delphi, a version appropriate for the Pythais from Athens by which we know it to have been performed.

The shape and form of boundary walls around and within Greek sanctuaries, and the impact those boundaries had on the experience of the ritual happening within, have attracted little scholarly attention, especially in comparison to work on the powerful impacts of other elements of sanctuary architecture, and architecture more widely. This article, using the case study of the high temenos walls and those of the Telesterion temple structure of the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, explores the active impact these walls had on particularly the sight- and sound-scapes engaged with by participants. As such it argues for the crucial importance of these walls at Eleusis in creating the intensity, emotion, power, and conviction of the ritual experience of the Mysteries for participants.

The chapter aims to show that Plato’s engagement with mystery cults – the Eleusinian mysteries and Orphic cults in particular – can illuminate centrally important topics of Plato’s philosophy, including his conception of the philosophical life, its relation to the human good, the role of memory in the knowledge of the Forms, and the soul’s kinship to the divine. It explores why and how Plato presents philosophy as the true initiation which can fulfil the promise of the mystery cults to offer the best human life and afterlife. It analyses why and how Plato describes the knowledge of the Forms on the model of the direct encounter with the divine at the culmination of a mystery ritual. It further suggests that the ‘birth’ announced at the highest point of the Eleusinian mysteries can shed new light on the role of ‘giving birth’ at the culmination of the philosophical life in the Symposium. Finally, it shows how Pythagorean and Orphic focus on memory offered Plato a framework to develop his account of the relationship between the soul and the divine Forms, reincarnation, and the fate of our soul in the afterlife.

Besides providing a brief illustrated account of Athens’ influential and widely disseminated Athena/owl silver coinage, this chapter surveys the huge silver mining and processing industry of southeast Attika, the role of coinage in the public and private economies of Athens and in international trade, and the minting of a bronze coinage for use at the Eleusinian festival.