ABSTRACT
In September 128, five years after his initiation into the first grade, Hadrian took part in the Mysteries at Eleusis again. Once more he joined the mystae for the ritual bath in the sea, the three days fasting and the procession from Athens, with the statue of Iacchus going before. This time they could cross the stately new bridge over the Cephisus which the imperial mystes had had built. With the crowded throng in the telesterion he would wait all night for the climax of the rites, when a great fire was lit and the hierophant cried out “The Mistress has borne a sacred child!” and showed the initiates the great mystery, an ear of corn, cut in silence. So, at least, a Christian writer two generations later claimed: that was all that the secret rituals amounted to. All the same, the symbolism of death and rebirth is clear enough. Those who were ready to be moved would be affected. Hadrian, now an epoptes, one who had seen the mystery, may well have felt himself reborn to a new life. This is the inference to be drawn from a remarkable coin-issue, one of the cistophori struck in Asia Minor. Hadrian is shown standing with a corn-sheaf in his right hand, with the legend ‘Hadrianus Aug[ustus] p[ater] p[atriae]’, followed by the letters ren. This can only mean ‘renatus’, ‘reborn’; the ears of corn denote the Mysteries of Demeter. On the obverse Hadrian’s Roman exemplar is portrayed with the simple legend ‘Imp. Caesar Augustus’. The first Princeps was the only emperor before Hadrian to have been initiated; and he had likewise advertised the fact on the Asian cistophori with a reverse depicting ears of corn. 1
