Note:  The translations which appear below are excerpted from copyrighted materials and presented temporarily for teaching purposes under fair use guidelines.  They may not be reproduced or further distributed.
 

1.  Odysseus in Hades:  sacrifice
     Homer, Odyssey 11.34-50  (trans. Richmond Lattimore)

Now when, with sacrifices and prayers, I had so entreated
the hordes of the dead, I took the sheep and cut their throats
over the pit, and the dark-clouding blood ran in, and the souls
of the perished dead gathered to the place, up out of Erebos,
brides, and young unmarried men, and long-suffering elders,
virgins, tender and with the sorrows of young hearts upon them.
These came swarming around my pit from every direction
with inhuman clamor, and green fear took hold of me.
Then I encouraged my companions and told them, taking
the sheep that were lying by, slaughtered with the pitiless
bronze, to skin these, and burn them, and pray to the divinities,
to Hades the powerful, and to revered Persephone,
while I myself, drawing from beside my thigh my sharp sword,
crouched there, and would not let the strengthless heads of the perished
dead draw nearer to the blood, until I had questioned Teiresias.
 
 

2.  Odysseus in Hades:  encounter with his mother Antikleia
     Homer, Odyssey 11.204-224  (trans. Richmond Lattimore)
 

So she spoke, but I, pondering it in my heart, yet wished
to take the soul of my dead mother in my arms.  Three times
I started toward her, and my heart was urgent to hold her,
and three times she fluttered out of my hands like a shadow
or a dream, and the sorrow sharpened at the heart within me,
and so I spoke to her and addressed her in winged words, saying:
“Mother, why will you not wait for me, when I am trying
to hold you, so that even in Hades’ with our arms embracing
we can both take the satisfaction of dismal mourning?
Or are you nothing but an image that proud Persephone
sent my way, to make me grieve all the more for sorrow?”
So I spoke, and my queenly mother answered me quickly:
“Oh my child, ill-fated beyond all other mortals,
this is not Persephone, daughter of Zeus, beguiling you,
but it is only what happens, when they die, to all mortals.
The sinews no longer hold the flesh and bones together,
and once the spirit has left the white bones, all the rest
of the body is made subject to the fire’s strong fury,
but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away.  Therefore
you must strive back toward the light with all speed; but remember
these things for your wife, so you may tell her hereafter.”
 

3.  Odysseus in Hades:  meeting with Achilles
      Homer, Odyssey 11.471-476, 482-491  (trans. Richmond Lattimore)

The soul of swift-footed Achilleus, scion of Aiakos, knew me,
and full of lamentation he spoke to me in winged words:
“Son of Laertes and seed of Zeus, resourceful Odysseus,
hard man, what made you think of this bigger endeavor, how could you
endure to come down here to Hades’ place, where the senseless
dead men dwell, mere imitations of perished mortals?”
[Odysseus replies:]      . . .  “Achilleus,
no man before has been more blessed than you, nor ever
will be.  Before, when you were alive, we Argives honored you
as we did the gods, and now in this place you have great power
among the dead.  Do not grieve, even in death, Achilles.”
So I spoke, and he in turn said to me in answer:
“O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying.
I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another
man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on,
than be a king over all the perished dead.”  . . .
 
 

4.  Demeter establishes her Mysteries
      Homeric Hymn to Demeter 471-482  (trans.  Apostolos Athanassakis)

. . .Swiftly [Demeter] made the seed sprout out of the fertile fields.
The whole broad earth teemed with leaves and flowers;
and she went to the kings who administer the laws,
Triptolemos and Diokles, smiter of horses, and mighty Eumolpos
and Keleos, leader of the people, and showed them the
celebration of holy rites, and explained to all,
to Triptolemos, to Polyxeinos and also to Diokles,
the awful mysteries not to be transgressed, violated
or divulged, because the tongue is restrained by reverence for the gods.
Whoever on this earth has seen these is blessed,
but he who has no part in the holy rites has
another lot as he wastes away in dank darkness.
 
 

For the complete Homeric Hymn to Demeter, translated by Gregory Nagy, go to Diotima.
 
 

5.  The contributions of Athens to civilization
      Isocrates, Panegyricus 28-29

When Demeter came to our land, in her wandering after the rape of Kore, and, being moved to kindness towards our ancestors by services which may not be told save to her initiates, gave these two gifts, the greatest in the world – the fruits of the earth, which have enabled us to rise above the life of the beasts, and the holy rite which inspires in those who partake of it sweeter hopes regarding both the end of life and all eternity, - our city was not only so beloved of the gods but also so devoted to mankind that, having been endowed with these great blessings, she did not begrudge them to the rest of the world, but shared with all men what she had received. The mystic rite we continue even now, each year, to reveal to the initiates; and as for the fruits of the earth, our city has, in a word, instructed the world, in their uses, their cultivation, and the benefits derived from them.
 
 

6.  Pindar, Fragment 102

Blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes beneath the earth; for he understands the end of mortal life, and the beginning (of a new life) given of god.
 
 

7.  Sophocles, Fragment 719

Thrice happy are those of mortals, who having seen those rites depart for Hades; for to them alone is it granted to have true life there; to the rest all there is evil.
 
 

8.  Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 1049-1054  (trans. Robert Fitzgerald)

. . .  Or by that torchlit Eleusinian shore,
Where pilgrims come, whose lips the golden key
Of  sweet-voiced ministers has rendered still,
to cherish there with grave Persephone
Consummate rest from death and mortal ill . . . .
 
 

9.  Plutarch, On the Soul, fragment  (trans. George Mylonas)

The soul [at the point of death] has the same experience are being initiated into great mysteries. . . . At first one wearily hurries to and fro, and journeys with suspicion dark as one uninitiated: then come all the terrors be initiation, shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement: then one is struck with a marvellous light, one is received into pure regions and meadows, with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes: among these he who has fulfilled initiation wanders free, and released and bearing his crown joins in the divine communion, and consorts with pure and holy men, beholding those who live here uninitiated, an uncleansed horde, trodden under foot of him and huddled together in mud and fog, abiding in their miseries through fear of death and mistrust of the blessings there.
 
 

10.  The mystic procession in Hades
        Aristophanes, Frogs 323-353  (trans. Matthew Dillon)

Chorus
                Iacchos, here abiding in temples most reverend,
                Iakchos, O Iakchos,
                come to dance in this meadow;
                to your holy mystic bands
                Shake the leafy crown
                around your head, brimming
                with myrtle,
                Boldly stomp your feet in time
                to the wild fun-loving rite,
                with full share of the Graces, the holy dance, sacred
                to your mystics.
Xanthias
                O reverend mistress daughter of Demeter,
                How sweet that roast pork smells!
Dionysus
                Shut up, if you want to get a piece of sausage.
Chorus
                Awake, for it has come tossing torches in hand,
                Iacchos, Oh Iakchos,
                the light-bringing star of our nocturnal rite.
                Now the meadow brightly burns
                Old men's knees start to sway.
                They shake away their pains
                and the long cycles of ancient years
                Through your holy rite.
                Beaming with your torch,
                lead forth to the flowering stretch of marsh
                the youth that makes your choruses, o blessed one!