The most important of these brotherhoods were connected with the name of Orpheus, the mythical musician and seer. The origin of the Orphic sects is indeed very obscure. Apparently, however, they sprang up or became influential in the sixth century before Christ, and were connected in some way with Dionysus. They seem to have represented a reform of Dionysiac practice. At any rate, they continued that interest in the future life which the worship of Dionysus had already cultivated. Orphism is especially important because it taught men to expect in the future life not only rewards but also punishments. The soul after death, according to Orphic doctrine, was subject to an indefinite succession of reincarnations, not only in the bodies of men, but also in those of animals. These reincarnations were regarded as an evil, because the body was thought of as a prison-house of the soul. At last, however, the righteous soul attains purification, and, escaping from the succession of births, enters into a blessed existence. Related in some way to the Orphic sects were the brotherhoods that owned Pythagoras as their master. But the relation between the two movements is not perfectly plain. At any rate, both Orphism and Pythagoreanism stand apart from the official cults of the Greek states. Even within those cults, however, there were not wanting some elements which satisfied more fully than the ordinary worship of the Olympic gods the longing of individual men for contact with the higher powers and for a blessed immortality. Such elements were found in the "mysteries," of which far the most important were the mysteries of Eleusis.[134] The Eleusinian Mysteries originated in the worship of Demeter that was carried on at Eleusis, a town in Attica some fifteen miles from Athens. When Eleusis was conquered by Athens, the Eleusinian cult of Demeter, far from suffering eclipse, was adopted by the conquerors and so attained unparalleled influence. Characteristic of the cult as so developed was the secrecy of its central rites; the Eleusinian cult of Demeter became (if it was not one already) a mystery-cult, whose secrets were divulged only to the initiates. The terms of admission, however, were very broad. All persons of Greek race, even slaves--except those persons who were stained with bloodguiltiness or the like--could be admitted. As so constituted, the Eleusinian Mysteries were active for some ten centuries; they continued until the very end of pagan antiquity. [134] On the Eleusinian Mysteries and the cult of Demeter and Kore-Persephone, see especially Farnell, _op. cit._, iii, pp. 29-279.