"Whether or not we accept the hypothesis of direct influence from Persia on the Ionian Greeks in the sixth century, any student of Orphic and Pythagorean thought cannot fail to see that the similarities between it and Persian religion are so close as to warrant out regarding them as expressions of the same view of life, and using the one system to interpret the other. The characteristic preoccupation of Pythagoreanism with astronomy and the contemplation of the heavens becomes transparently clear, when we see it in the light of notions like , , and ."