The Eleusinian Mysteries and The Sixth Book of the Aeneid

Many people suspect that Book Six of Vergil’s Aeneid contains a great deal of information about the Eleusinian Mysteries. See, for example, Thomas Taylor’s essay on “The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries”:
http://www.sacred- texts.com/ cla/ebm/ebm05. htm:

Dr. Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, has ingeniously proved, that the sixth book of Virgil’s Æneid represents some of the dramatic exhibitions of the Eleusinian Mysteries; but, at the same time, has utterly failed in attempting to unfold their latent meaning, and obscure though important end. By the assistance, however, of the Platonic philosophy, I have been enabled to correct his errors, and to vindicate the wisdom of antiquity from his aspersionsby a genuine account of this sublime institution; of which the following observations are designed as a comprehensive view.

The famous Sixth Book contains one of the more humorous passages in all of epic poetry. When Aeneas pleads for the Sibyl to help him to visit his dead father in Hades:

Grant me to see the face, and hear the voice
Of my loved sire once more; point me the way,
Unbar the sacred portals!

The Priestess of Hecate replies:

Descent to Hell is easy — day and night
Wide open stands the gate of darksome Dis,
But to retrace your steps, and mount again
Into the upper air is hard indeed.

But of course, as everyone knows the Sibyl grants to Aeneas what he needs both to go and visit Anchises, and to “mount again into the upper air”.

If you want to know more about the connections between the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Aeneid, then you might wish to take a look at this other post in which I go into the matter in greater detail, and with more sources: Luck on Warburton on Vergil on Eleusis (AND Luck on Gibbon on Warburton on Vergil on Eleusis).