All this suggests Egypt as the origin of the Mysteries. The oldest were those celebrated in the island of Samothrace, near the coast of Asia Minor. Here Orpheus is reputed to have come and founded the Bacchic Mysteries; while another legend reports him to have been killed by the Bacchantes for wishing to substitute the worship of Apollo for that of Dionysos. This latter story, taken in connection with the civilizing influence ascribed to Orpheus, indicates his introducing a purer form of worship. He reformed the licentious drunken rites, and established in place of them a more serious religion. He died a martyr to this purer faith, killed by the women, who were incited to this, no doubt, by the priests of the old Bacchic worship. The worship of Dionysos Zagreus, which was the Orphic form of Bacchism, contained the doctrines of retribution in another life,--a doctrine common to all the Greek Mysteries. It would seem probable, from an investigation of this subject, that two elements of worship are to be found in the Greek religion, which were never quite harmonized. One is the worship of the Olympian deities, gods of light and day, gods of this world, and interested in our present human life. This worship tended to promote a free development of character; it was self-possessed, cheerful, and public; it left the worshipper unalarmed by any dread of the future, or any anxiety about his soul. For the Olympic gods cared little about the moral character of their worshippers; and the dark Fate which lay behind gods and men could not be propitiated by any rites, and must be encountered manfully, as one meets the inevitable. The other worship, running parallel with this, was of the Cthonic gods, deities of earth and the under-world, rulers of the night-side of nature, and monarchs of the world to come. Their worship was solemn, mysterious, secret, and concerned expiation of sin, and the salvation of the soul hereafter. Now, when we consider that the Egyptian popular worship delighted in just such mysteries as these; that it related to the judgment of the soul hereafter; that its solemnities were secret and wrapped in dark symbols; and that the same awful Cthonic deities were the objects of its reverence;--when we also remember that Herodotus and the other Greek writers state that the early religion of the Pelasgi was derived from Egypt, and that Orpheus, the Thracian, brought thence his doctrine,--there seems no good reason for denying such a source. On the other hand, nothing can be more probable than an immense influence on Pelasgic worship, derived through Thrace, from Egypt. This view is full of explanations, and makes much in the Greek mythology clear which would otherwise be obscure.