The Visigoths move southward into Greece, where …

Years: 396 - 396
January

The Visigoths move southward into Greece, where they destroy the cult center of Eleusis, whose prestige has begun to fade as Christianity gains in popularity.

Julian had been the last emperor to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Theodosius’s closure of the sanctuaries by decree in 392 as part of his effort to suppress Hellenist resistance to the imposition of Christianity as a state religion is reported by Eunapios, a historian and biographer of the Greek philosophers.

Eunapios had been initiated by the last legitimate Hierophant, who had been commissioned by the emperor Julian to restore the Mysteries, which had by then fallen into decay.

According to Eunapios, the very last Hierophant was a usurper, "the man from Thespiae who held the rank of Father in the mysteries of Mithras."

The last remnants of the Mysteries are wiped out in 396, when Alaric, King of the Goths, invades accompanied by Christians "in their dark garments", bringing Arian Christianity and desecrating the old sacred sites.

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