Although we have no reason to believe that there was formal teaching at Eleusis, we have abundant evidence of the convictions of the initiates. They clearly enjoyed peace of mind and happiness, and they believed that in the future life their blessedness would be secure, and that they could dance in the sacred dance, while the uninitiate would be wretched. As the Homeric hymn to Demeter promised: “Blessed is he among mortal men who has seen these rites.”[88] And Pindar, at the beginning of the fifth century, declared: “Happy he who has seen these things, and then goes beneath the earth. For he knows the end of life and its Zeus-given beginning.”[89] Sophocles too says: “Thrice blessed are they who have seen these rites and then go to the house of Hades, for they alone have life there; but all others have only woe.”[90] In the Frogs of Aristophanes the chorus of mystae sing: “For we alone have a sun and a holy light, we who were initiated and who live toward friends and strangers with reverence towards the gods.”[91] And finally I would offer you the evidence of an inscription set up in the third century of our era by an Eleusinian hierophant: “Verily glorious is that mystery vouchsafed by the blessed gods, for death is no ill for mortals, but rather a good.”[92] There were branches of the Eleusinian mysteries established in the Peloponnesus, of which that at Andania in Messenia is best known to us through a long inscription happily preserved.[93] But it never rivalled Eleusis. Of the other mysteries dating from an early period, those of Samothrace were most important and influential, being second only to the Eleusinian. Herodotus tells us that the Samothracians got these mysteries from the Pelasgians; among modern scholars it has been the fashion to regard the two male divinities there worshipped, the Kabeiroi, as Phoenician in origin; but whatever the source from which they sprang, in the period in which they are known to us neither the gods nor the mysteries betray foreign elements. With the Kabeiroi were associated Demeter and Kore, and in general the mysteries seem to have resembled those of Eleusis. As elsewhere the initiates were of two grades, mystae and epoptae; there were “things done” and “things said,” and the assurance of safety here and hereafter was equally potent. Branches were established, notably in Thebes, as early as the middle of the sixth century B.C.