=The Peril in the Greek Political Situation: Persia and Carthage.= It must be remembered that the Greek cities never united into a nation. They were always fighting among themselves. We have already pointed out the civil disturbances between the oligarchy and the democracy throughout the land. These internal troubles continued to the end of Greek history. In this period there was added to these internal troubles a critical external situation which threatened the existence of Greece itself. The sixth century was a momentous one for Greece. In both the east and the west there arose mighty empires that threatened to wipe out its civilization. “The expansion of the Persian power (on the one hand) had suspended a stone of Tantalus over Hellas, and it seemed likely that Greek civilization might be submerged in an Oriental monarchy.”[6] Cyrus had laid the foundation of Persia by taking Media in 550 B. C., Lydia in 546 B. C., Babylonia in 538 B. C.; Egypt was added by Cambyses in 528 B. C.; and Darius organized the great Persian possessions in his long reign from 528 to 486 B. C. On the west, Carthage was threatening the Greek cities of Sicily, and at the close of this period was acting in conjunction with Persia to obtain possession of the Mediterranean. =The Peril in the New Religion: The Mysteries and Pythagoras.= Already in the seventh century B. C. the political society of Greece felt that it was under the wrath of the gods because of some unatoned guilt. “The earth is full of ills, of ills the sea,” sang the poet. Religious depression became universal. Dissatisfied with the old polytheism, especially as expressed in the theogony of Hesiod, the Greek in the sixth century B. C. began to interpret it according to his present need. Among the masses there appeared the craving for immortality and for personal knowledge of the supernatural. The desire to solve the mystery of life by a short road became universal. Men looked to rites to purify them from the guilt of the world and for gaining personal contact with the world of shades. This new religion became pan-Hellenic. It is called the Mysteries or the Orgia. By Mysteries is not meant societies founded on some occult intellectual belief, as the name might suggest. The Mysteries were based on cult (ceremony), and not on dogma. The special ceremonies were those of initiation and purification. They were supposed to purify the participant and put him in a new frame of mind. The soul would then be protected from the malicious spirits to which it was constantly exposed. The ceremonies are reported to have been attended sometimes by more than thirty thousand people. They consisted of processions, songs, dances, and dramatic spectacles. The most important of the Mysteries were the Orphic and the Eleusinian.