[169]. For the theological views of Anaximander and Anaximenes, see [§ 22] and [30].
[170]. Cf. Herod. i. 170 (advice of Bias); vi. 22 sqq. (Kale Akte).
[171]. On all this, see Rohde, Psyche, pp. 327 sqq. It is probable that he exaggerated the degree to which these ideas were already developed among the Thracians, but the essential connexion of the new view of the soul with Northern worships is confirmed by the tradition over and over again.
[172]. See Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 461. The exaggerated rôle often attributed to priesthoods is a survival of French eighteenth century thinking.
[173]. See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. §§ 453-460, who rightly emphasises the fact that the Orphic theogony is the continuation of Hesiod’s work. As we have seen, some of it is even older than Hesiod.
[174]. For the gold plates of Thourioi and Petelia, see the Appendix to Miss Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, where the text of them is discussed and a translation given by Professor Gilbert Murray.
[175]. This was the oldest name for these “mysteries,” and it simply means “sacraments” (cf. ἔοργα). Orgia are not necessarily “orgiastic.” That association of ideas merely comes from the fact that they belonged to the worship of Dionysos.
[176]. Herodotos mentions that Isagoras and those of his γένος worshipped the Karian Zeus (v. 66), and it is probable that the Orgeones attached by Kleisthenes to the Attic phratriai were associations of this kind. See Foucart, Les associations religieuses chez les Grecs.
[177]. A striking parallel is afforded to all this by what we are told in Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites, p. 339. “The leading feature that distinguished them” (the Semitic mysteries of the seventh century B.C.) “from the old public cults with which they came into competition, is that they were not based on the principle of nationality, but sought recruits from men of every race who were willing to accept initiation through the mystic sacraments.”
[178]. The Phaedo is dedicated, as it were, to Echekrates and the Pythagorean society at Phleious, and it is evident that Plato in his youth was impressed by the religious side of Pythagoreanism, though the influence of Pythagorean science is not clearly marked till a later period. Note specially the ἄτραπος of Phd. 66 b 4. In Rep. x. 600 b 1, Plato speaks of Pythagoras as the originator of a private ὁδός τις βίου.