In ancient Greece the names of the priests and other high officials
who had to do with the performance of the Eleusinian mysteries might
not be uttered in their lifetime. To pronounce them was a legal
offence The pedant in Lucian tells how he fell in with these august
personages haling along to the police court a ribald fellow who had
dared to name them, though well he knew that ever since their
consecration it was unlawful to do so, because they had become
anonymous, having lost their old names and acquired new and sacred
titles. From two inscriptions found at Eleusis it appears that the
names of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea;
probably they were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, which were
then thrown into deep water in the Gulf of Salamis. The intention
doubtless was to keep the names a profound secret; and how could
that be done more surely than by sinking them in the sea? what human
vision could spy them glimmering far down in the dim depths of the
green water? A clearer illustration of the confusion between the
incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its material
embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of civilised
Greece.
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