s the Father of the Gods."[24]

Much instruction was also given in the Mysteries by the archangelic and
other hierarchies, and Pythagoras, the great teacher who was initiated
in India, and who gave "the knowledge of things that are" to his pledged
disciples, is said to have possessed such a knowledge of music that he
could use it for the controlling of men's wildest passions, and the
illuminating of their minds. Of this, instances are given by Iamblichus
in his _Life of Pythagoras_. It seems probable that the title of
Theodidaktos, given to Ammonius Saccas, the master of Plotinus, referred
less to the sublimity of his teachings than to this divine instruction
received by him in the Mysteries.

Some of the symbols used are explained by Iamblichus,[25] who bids
Porphyry remove from his thought the image of the thing symbolised and
reach its intellectual meaning. Thus "mire" meant everything that was
bodily and material; the "God sitting above the lotus" signified that
God transcended both the mire and the intellect, symbolised by the
lotus, and was established in Himself, being seated. If "sailing in a
ship," His rule over the world was pictured. And so on.[26] On this use
of symbols Proclus remarks that "the Orphic method aimed at revealing
divine things by means of symbols, a method common to all writers of
divine lore."[27]

The Pythagorean School in Magna Graecia was closed at the end of the
sixth century B.C., owing to the persecution of the civil power, but
other communities existed, keeping up the sacred tradition.[28] Mead
states that Plato intellectualised it, in order to protect it from an
increasing profanation, and the Eleusinian rites preserved some of its
forms, having lost its substance. The Neo-Platonists inherited from
Pythagoras and Plato, and their works should be studied by those who
would realise something of the grandeur and the beauty preserved for
the world in the Mysteries.

The Pythagorean School itself may serve as a type of the discipline
enforced. On this Mead gives many interesting details,[29] and remarks:
"The authors of antiquity are agreed that this discipline had succeeded
in producing the highest examples, not only of the purest chastity and
sentiment, but also a simplicity of manners, a delicacy, and a taste for
serious pursuits which was unparalleled. This is admitted even by
Christian writers." The School had outer disciples, leading the family
and social life, and the above quot