CHAPTER 6: Return to Eleusis
The Archon Basileus in Athens canceled the Mysteries without consultation. The Hierophant was bewildered. "They hold the Olympics but cancel the human race? Oh, for the days when Eleusis was its own independent state! Why do we have to subject the Mysteries to Athens' arbitrariness and political squabbling?"
Melaina heard Kallias sorely complain of not being in Olympia himself, having been recalled at the last moment to retrieve her from Brauron. His four black stallions had been the favorite in the chariot race. The Olympics were in progress even as the Persians murdered, pillaged, and burned throughout Attica.
Still, the Hierophant resisted evacuating Eleusis, and the city awaited its fate as the fires to the west grew closer, refugees streaming past to the Peloponnese. Not all planned to pass through, and the poorer of them, seeing the temple of Demeter as the ultimate refuge, brought their sheep, goats and cows onto temple grounds. The Hierophant couldn't bear turning them away, and still refused to evacuate.
The uncertainty created was whispered throughout the city. "The old man has lost his wits," said some. "Patience, he knows the will of the gods," said others. The poorer residents and slaves, those who could escape their masters, loaded their possessions into wagons, and took refuge in Corinthia beyond the Isthmus. The rich had more at stake. They congregated in the streets and shouted at one another, laughing at their neighbor's indecisiveness and crying over their own.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 10
