The names of Orpheus and Musæus (as well as that of Pythagoras,[46] looking at one side of his character) represent facts of importance in the history of the Grecian mind—the gradual influx of Thracian, Phrygian, and Egyptian, religious ceremonies and feelings, and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries,[47] schemes for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to anglicize the Greek word, which contains in its original meaning no implication of the ideas of excess to which it was afterwards diverted) in honor of some particular god—distinct both from the public solemnities and from the gentile solemnities of primitive Greece,—celebrated apart from the citizens generally, and approachable only through a certain course of preparation and initiation—sometimes even forbidden to be talked of in the presence of the uninitiated, under the severest threats of divine judgment. Occasionally such voluntary combinations assumed the form of permanent brotherhoods, bound together by periodical solemnities as well as by vows of an ascetic character: thus the Orphic life (as it was called) or regulation of the Orphic brotherhood, among other injunctions partly arbitrary and partly abstinent, forbade animal food universally, and on certain occasions, the use of woollen clothing.[48] The great religious and political fraternity of the Pythagoreans, which acted so powerfully on the condition of the Italian cities, was one of the many manifestations of this general tendency, which stands in striking contrast with the simple, open-hearted, and demonstrative worship of the Homeric Greeks. [46] Herodotus believed in the derivation both of the Orphic and Pythagorean regulations from Egypt—ὁμολογέουσι δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι (ii. 81). He knows the names of those Greeks who have borrowed from Egypt the doctrine of the metempsychosis, but he will not mention them (ii. 123): he can hardly allude to any one but the Pythagoreans, many of whom he probably knew in Italy. See the curious extract from Xenophanês respecting the doctrine of Pythagoras, Diogen. Laërt. viii. 37; and the quotation from the Silli of Timôn, Πυθαγόραν δὲ γοήτος ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν, etc. Compare Porphyr. in Vit. Pythag. c. 41. [47] Aristophan. Ran. 1030.— Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾽ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε, φόνων τ᾽ ἀπέχεσθαι· Μουσαῖος τ᾽, ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς· Ἡσίοδος δὲ, Γῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους· ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος Ἀπὸ τοῦ τιμὴν καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν, πλὴν τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι χρήστ᾽ ἐδίδασκεν, Ἀρετὰς, τάξεις, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν; etc. The same general contrast is to be found in Plato, Protagoras, p. 316; the opinion of Pausanias, ix. 30, 4. The poems of Musæus seem to have borne considerable analogy to the Melampodia ascribed to Hesiod (see Clemen. Alex. Str. vi. p. 628); and healing charms are ascribed to Orpheus as well as to Musæus. See Eurip. Alcestis, 986.