§ 96. We must now enumerate such of the Greeks as have visited Egypt in ancient times, for the acquirement of knowledge and wisdom. The priests of the Egyptians relate, from the records preserved in their sacred volumes, that they were visited by Orpheus and Musaeus, and Melampus and Daedalus; by Homer, the poet, and Lycurgus, the Spartan: by Solon, the Athenian, and Plato, the philosopher: and that Pythagoras, of Samos, also came there, and the mathematician Eudoxus: and Democritus of Abdera, and Oenopides of Chius. All these they identify by some distinct marks, either portraits, or appellations derived from their residences or their works: and they produce evidence from the branches of knowledge, which they respectively cultivated, that they had only borrowed, from the Egyptians, all that acquired them the admiration of their countrymen. That Orpheus had learned of them the greatest part of his mystical ceremonies, and the orgies that celebrate the wanderings [of Ceres], and the mythology of the shades below: for that the rites of Osiris and of Bacchus are the same: and those of Isis extremely resemble those of Ceres, with the change of name only: and the punishments of the impious in Tartarus, and the Elysian plains of the virtuous, and the common imagery of fiction, were all copied from the ceremonies of the Egyptian funerals: that Hermes, the conductor of souls, was, according to the old institution of Egypt, to convey the body of Apis to an appointed place, where it was received by a man wearing the mask of Cerberus, [probably the _Cteristes_ of the temporary nomenclature;] and that Orpheus having related this among the Greeks, the fable was adopted by Homer, who makes the Cyllenian Hermes call forth the souls of the suitors, holding his staff in his hand: Cyllenius now to Pluto’s dreary reign Conveys the dead, a lamentable train! The golden wand that causes sleep to fly, Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye, That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day, Points out the long, uncomfortable way. Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent ... And now they reached the Earth’s remotest ends. And now the gates where evening Sol descends, And Leucas’ rock, and Ocean’s utmost streams, And now pervade the dusky land of dreams; And rest at last where souls unbodied dwell In ever flowery meads of Asphodel, The empty forms of men inhabit there, Impassive semblance, images of air! POPE.