Note 139.1 — Chapter V · THE PERIOD AFTER ALEXANDER

The religious brotherhoods.—The same aspiration was also satisfied by the private θίασοι, the guilds of brethren devoted to the special cult of one divinity. These unions belong to the type of the secret religious society which is found in all parts of the world at varying levels of culture. In Greece we have evidence of them as early as the time of Solon; it was probably not till the fifth century that any of them were instituted for the service of foreign divinities; we hear then of the thiasos of the Thracian Goddess, and in the earlier half of the fourth century of the orgiastic fraternity devoted to Sabazios, with which Æschines in his youth was associated. But it is not till the Macedonian period that the epigraphic record of them begins; henceforth the inscriptions are numerous and enlightening concerning their organisation and their wide prevalence throughout the Hellenic world.139.1 Their importance for the history of religion is great on various grounds.