1. Storage rooms
During the Roman period the lower north terrace of the sanctuary was arranged so as to have practical uses, possibly as a storage place. A series of four rooms, roughly rectangular in plan, open to a courtyard to the east, their back walls facing the Panathenaic Way. Their construction is dated to the 1st cent. AD. A Roman period well, cleaned and reused during the Byzantine period, was discovered east of the complex. Due northwest of the storerooms, in the 2nd cent. AD, a small square peribolos was built, possibly dedicated to Hecate (Miles 1998, 87-88).
2. The inner Propylon
The discovery of the heads of two korai donning the polos (Miles 1998, Cat. ΙΙΙ, 15-16) in the site of the Eleusinion has led scholars to believe that during the Roman period the architectural decoration of the sanctuary was enhanced with an inner propylon, which possibly led from the ‘outer’ to the 'inner’ sanctuary, where no one uninitiated into the mysteries was admitted. With the Caryatids possibly facing east, to the Temple of Demeter and Kore, the Propylon (which is represented, on the basis of other archaeological finds, as in the Doric order, decorated with sculptures pertaining to the Eleusinian rites) is thought to have imitated the similar arrangement and the inner propylon of the sanctuary at Eleusis. The dating of the propylon is not secure, it could be, however, placer in Hadrian’s reign (Miles 1998, 89-91).
3. The sanctuary during the Late Roman Period
Following the invasion of the Heruli (267 AD), the Eleusinion changed form. The Late Roman wall of the city, which now runs along the Panathenaic Way to its east, rested on the foundations of the propylon, incorporating building material taken from it. It is possible that the propylon and other parts of the sanctuary were destroyed by the Heruli. Following the abolition of the propylon, the entrance to the sanctuary would have been situated in the southeast. The stoa of the sanctuary was destroyed later, during the Visigoth invasion, when most of the remainder of the sanctuary was also ruined (396 AD). It is likely that this last destruction signalled the end of the Eleusinian Mysteries, for we know through inscriptions that the mysteries were still performed until the late 4th cent. AD.
