QUOTE : For two thousand years, maybe more,<br />the ceremonies had been celebrated every autumn in the small town of Eleusis near Athens, becoming more famous and elaborate with the passing years. By Roman times, the mystery temple at Eleusis was a huge building half the size of a foot- ball field, and people came there from the far corners of the ancient world.<br /> <br /> All new initiates had to go through preliminary ceremonies at the river Ilissos in the month of Anthesterion, our February, in which they offered sacrifices, cleansed them-<br />selves in the water, and listened to instruction. A year and a half later, in Boedromion (our September), they marched to Eleusis, arriving at dusk. They entered the temple, and the ceremony of initiation was enacted. No one today knows what it was, but ancient writers agreed that those who passed through it had no fear of death afterward.