in Grecian antiquity, a festival kept in honour of Ceres, every fourth year by some states, but by others every fifth. The Athenians celebrated it at Eleusis, a town of Attica; whence the name.

It was celebrated with a world of ceremony, and persons of both sexes were initiated in it; it being deemed impious to neglect doing so. The mysteries were of two sorts; the lesser, and the greater; whereof the former were sacred to Proserpine, Ceres's daughter; and the latter to Ceres herself. According to Lactantius, they consisted in a mystical representation of what mythologists teach of Ceres; tho' some of the Christian fathers will have the great mystery, or secret, which they were forbidden by law, upon pain of death, to divulge, to have been the representation or figures of both male and female privities, which were handed about and exposed to the company.

ELUOTHERIA, another festival celebrated at Platæa, by delegates from almost all the cities of Greece, in honour of Jupiter Eleutherius, or the assertor of liberty.

It was instituted in memory of the victory obtained by the Grecians, in the territories of Platæa, over Mardonius, the Persian general left by Xerxes with a mighty army to subdue Greece.