In Herodotos' account of the hero cult for Adrastos, as reformed by Kleisthenes of Sikyon, there is no explicit reference to a lament, but the ritual character of the tragic dances for Adrastos' pdthea (sufferings) is emphasised (Hdt. 5.67). Elsewhere, annual laments as part of heroes' festivals were common: the Thebans lamented Leukothea, but were warned by Lykourgos that if she were a goddess, it was not right to mourn her as mortal; and if mortal, it was not right to pay her divine honours. Achilles was mourned with beating of the breast and lamentation by the women of Kroton, Elis and Thessaly; and at Corinth there was an annual festival, known as 'the festival of mourning' for Medea's children, which included the same 'ritual and divine lament' as for Melikertes. Similarly the daughter of Klytias, king of Megara, who married a certain Bakchios of the royal clan of the Bakchiadai of Corinth, died at an early age, and so the Megarians were made to send their young men and girls to Corinth in order to mourn her. The threnos was probably sung antiphonally, with one choir of boys and one of girls.
Besides the hero cults, many of which continued throughout antiquity, lamentation is known to have played a part in the Dionysiac and Orphic tradition and in the Eleusinian and later mysteries. As early as the sixth century B. C. the tragic dances for Adrastos were transferred to Dionysos, and we are also told that Orpheus attached to the worship of Dionysos the singing of threnoi. Not much is known about the nature of these laments in the classical period, but later Christian writers are more explicit. Clement, at the end of the second century A. D., describes the mystic drama at Eleusis about Demeter and Kore as it was performed in his own day, mentioning mourning as an important and integral part of it. Eusebios of Caesarea (fourth century A. D.) may have exaggerated some of the activities that went on during the mysteries in his account, but his mention of threnoi, supported as it is by other evidence, cannot be dismissed. But it is Firmicus Maternus, a converted Roman senator, whose vigorous attack on Oriental and other mystery cults, written in about A. D. 345, affords the most complete account of the mystic lamentation:
Nocte quadam simulacrum in lectica supinum ponitur et per numeros digestis fletibus plangitur; deinde cum se ficta lamentatione satiaverint, lumen infertur: tunc a sacerdote omnium qui flebant fauces unguentur, quibus perunctis sacerdos hoc lento murmure susurrat:
0appeiT? jiijaTai toC 0eo) aeocoaiievo'o • eaxai yap iipiv ?k tcovcov acaxripia.
Take courage, initiates, for the god is saved,
And there shall be for us deliverance from sufferings!
De errore prof, relig. 22
This account may not be significant for our knowledge of lamentation in the mystery cults of antiquity, but it shows that in the fourth century A. D., at the dawn of the Byzantine period, there still survived a mystic, ritual lamentation over the image of a god, followed by the lighting of lamps and the joyful cry of salvation and deliverance from suffering.
The lament was therefore as important in religious and mystic ritual as it was in poetry and myth. Further, in the mysteries its associations with crop fertility became fused with the belief that it was a means of salvation and deliverance. The secret pdthea made the mortal initiate into a god, as is affirmed in the following Orphic text inscribed on a gold tablet for burial with the dead (from Thurii in S. Italy, fourth to third centuries B. C.):
Xaipe, 7ia0cbv to 7id0ri|ia' to 8’ oottco 7ipoa0e enenovQEK;,
0eo(; eyevoo dv0pc67uoo. Kern Of 32f. 3-4
Hail, you who have suffered the suffering, which you had not yet suffered before.
From man you have become god.
The descent of god or hero to the Underworld no longer symbolised only the burial of the crops underground, but a journey deliberately undertaken to combat Hades and save mankind from death. Finally, the grief of Demeter for Persephone, of mother for child, was a dominant element of the Eleusinian mysteries until the end of antiquity, ritually enacted at the women's festivals.
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