Ancient Greek city famous as the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Situated in the fertile plain of Thria about 14
miles (23 km) west of Athens, opposite the island of
Salamis, Eleusis was independent until the 7th century
BC, when Athens annexed the city and made the
Eleusinian Mysteries a major Athenian religious festival.
After the Peloponnesian War, when the Thirty Tyrants
were expelled from Athens and briefly occupied Eleusis,
the city was again independent (403), but Athenian
hegemony was restored within two years. The Gothic
leader Alaric destroyed Eleusis in AD 395, and the site
remained deserted until the 18th century, when it was
revived as the modern town of Eleusis (Greek Lepsina),
now an industrial suburb of Athens.
The Greek Archaeological Society, excavating the site
after 1882, laid bare the whole of the sacred precinct,
which included the Great Propylaea, a 2nd-century-AD
copy of the central building of the Propylaea on the
Acropolis of Athens. It also traced its extensions at various
periods and revealed successive stages in the structure of
the Telesterion, or Hall of Initiation, first built in late
Mycenaean times, before 1000 BC.