Among the earliest names in the literary traditions of Hellas are those of Olen, Pamphos, Musæos and Orpheus,[972] who, for their wisdom, are said to be sprung from the gods. They were sacred bards, whose genius obtained for them an ascendency over the minds of their countrymen. Yet all they attempted, perhaps, was to teach the doctrine of prayer, thanksgiving, sacrifice, which, being afterwards misunderstood, caused them to be confounded with those impostors and incantation-mongers, who, in more recent times, granted absolutions and sold indulgences both to individuals and states, with a hardihood worthy of Giovanni di Medici. Musæos, older probably than Orpheus, though sometimes regarded as his disciple, is said by certain traditions to have been a teacher of ethics, who delivered a body of moral precepts in four thousand verses. His country is unknown,—for he is now represented as an Athenian, now as a Thracian,—but his name and the name of Orpheus and Eumolpos are associated with the expiations, orgies, mysteries, celebrated during many ages in honour of Demeter and Dionysos.[973] We must rest content, however, with very imperfect notions of what they were, for, in looking back at these great men, whom we behold on the edge of the horizon, enlarged like the sun at its setting by misty exhalations, but by the same means rendered dim and obscure, we can form no just idea of their character. Footnote 972: Plato de Repub. t. ii. p. 113. seq. Stallb.—De Legg. t. vii. p. 243. Bek. Athen. i. 24. Paus. ix. 27. 2. Diog. Laert. Proœm. iv. 5. Footnote 973: Muret. in Plat. Rep. p. 699. seq. Cf. Lil. Gyrald. ii. 5. Wolf. Proleg. in Homer. p. 51.