Profana: the mysteries in Greek and Roman literature
Keywords: intertextuality
Greek literature
poetry
mysteries
Roman literature
ancient religion

This thesis explores the relationship between the Mysteries and Greco-Roman literature from the 6th century BCE to the 1st century CE. The study of the mystery cults of ancient Greece and Rome--the Eleusinian mysteries, Bacchic cult, and the Orphic tradition—has largely been confined to the historical reconstruction of their secret rites, exclusive communities, doctrines, and experiences; current scholarship has treated ancient literature, both poetic and philosophic texts, merely as documentary sources on the mysteries and mined them for data. I reverse this approach, deploying what we know about the mysteries to identify and understand the function of such religious experiences within their literary contexts. I use the mysteries as a lens to explore questions of knowledge creation and exchange, and knowledge communities, in literature from Pindar to Plato to Ovid. The few existing studies on the influence of the mysteries on literature have been confined to single authors or works, largely ignoring the interactions and parallels in cultic references between texts; indeed, none has addressed mystery cults in relation to Hellenistic and Roman poetry beyond Virgil and Lucretius. My research addresses these gaps, bringing a variety of poetic and philosophical texts into conversation to explore the valence of mystery cults in ancient literary and philosophical discourse.
This thesis argues first that in poetry the mysteries shape the narrative by creating an emotional landscape of ritual, myth, and/or doctrine. Second, the mysteries allow authors to claim privileged and ritualized knowledge, authority, and effectiveness for their creative activity, drawing ritual and mystic strategies into their sphere of activity. Third, the mysteries are a useful lens to examine intertextual dynamics and conversely intertextuality is a useful lens to study the diachronic influence of the mysteries. Finally, in light of the mysteries’ particular concern with the afterlife they provide a fitting reservoir of imagery for poetic self-reflection on persistence and immortality.
Chapter 1 overviews the Eleusinian and Bacchic mysteries and the Orphic tradition with a focus on their eschatological aims and strategies. Three intertwined strands of mystic goals and functions are delineated: exclusive and extraordinary experiences, transformative and transitional effect, and concern for life and death. The remaining chapters study how these appear in literature according to three thematic streams: memory, madness, and mortality. Chapter 2 studies the use of mystic memory, especially as concerns poetic memory and intertextual dynamics. Chapter 3 examines divine enthusiasm, ecstasy, and epiphany in literature; of particular interest are the transformative and epistemological functions of divine possession. Chapter 4 is concerned with how the concept of practised eschatology is transferred to poetry, especially in the motif of poetic katabasis.
This represents the first diachronic study of the mysteries in literature, bringing to light the continuity and changes of their literary afterlife, while illuminating conversations and influences across time and genres. By shifting the discourse on the mysteries to literature, a new perspective to intertextual studies is offered. In tracing new intertextual relationships between texts which appear under the lens of the mysteries and examining how the mysteries contribute to intertextual dynamics, this thesis opens a new direction for the study of both the mysteries and intertextuality.