"The Pythagorean Order was simply, in its origin, a religious fraternity... and not, as has sometimes been maintained, a political league. Nor had it anything to do with the "Dorian aristocratic ideal." Pythagoras was an Ionian, and the Order was originally confined to Achaian states. Nor is there the slightest evidence that the Pythagoreans favoured the aristocratic rather than the democratic party. The main purpose... was to secure for... members a more adequate satisfaction of the religious instinct than... the State religion. It was... an institution for the cultivation of holiness. ...[I]t resembled an Orphic society, though it seems that Apollo, rather than Dionysos, was the chief Pythagorean god. That is doubtless why the Krotoniates identified Pythagoras with Apollo Hyperboreios. ...[H]owever, an independent society within a Greek state was apt to be brought into conflict with the larger body. The only way in which it could then assert its right to exist was... by securing the control of the sovereign power. The history of the Pythagorean Order... is, accordingly, the history of an attempt to supersede the State..."