List of Illustrations
DRAWN FROM THE ANTIQUE BY A. L. RAWSON.
A description of the illustrations to this volume properly includes the two or three theories of human life held by the ancient Greeks, and the beautiful myth of Demeter and Proserpina, the most charming of all mythological fancies, and the Orgies of Bacchus, which together supplied the motives to the artists of the originals from which these drawings were made.
From them we learn that it was believed that the soul is a part of, or a spark from, the Great Soul of the Kosmos, the Central Sun of the intellectual universe, and therefore immortal; has lived before, and will continue to live after this “body prison” is dissolved; that the river Styx is between us and the unseen world, and hence we have no recollection of any former state of existence; and that the body is Hades, in which the soul is made to suffer for past misdeeds done in the unseen world.
Poets and philosophers, tragedians and comedians, embellished the myth with a thousand fine fancies which were
woven into the ritual of Eleusis, or were presented in the theaters during the Bacchic festivals.
The pictures include, beside the costumes of priests, priestesses, and their attendants, and of the fauns and satyrs, many of the sacred vessels and implements used in celebrating the Mysteries, in the orgies, and in the theaters, all of which were drawn by the ancient artists from the objects represented, and their work has been carefully followed here.
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