“wheel of birth,” and it was for the better attainment of this end that the Orphics were organised in communities. Religious associations must have been known to the Greeks from a fairly early date;[176] but the oldest of these were based, at least in theory, on the tie of kindred blood. What was new was the institution of communities to which any one might be admitted by initiation.[177] This was, in fact, the establishment of churches, though there is no evidence that these were connected with each other in such a way that we could rightly speak of them as a single church. The Pythagoreans came nearer to realising that. Footnote 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. Footnote 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. Footnote 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. Footnote 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_. Footnote 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.” [Sidenote: Philosophy as a Way of Life.]