Histories

I understand from the Greeks who live beside the Canakkale Bogazi (strait), Canakkale, Marmara, Turkey, Asia Hellespont and +Black Sea [38,42] (sea) Pontus, that this Salmoxis was a man who was once a slave in +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos, his master being Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus;

then, after being freed and gaining great wealth, he returned to his own country. Now the Thracians were a poor and backward people, but this Salmoxis knew Ionian ways and a more advanced way of life than the Thracian; for he had consorted with Greeks, and moreover with one of the greatest Greek teachers, Pythagoras;

therefore he made a hall, where he entertained and fed the leaders among his countrymen, and taught them that neither he nor his guests nor any of their descendants would ever die, but that they would go to a place where they would live forever and have all good things.

While he was doing as I have said and teaching this doctrine, he was meanwhile making an underground chamber. When this was finished, he vanished from the sight of the Thracians, and went down into the underground chamber, where he lived for three years,

while the Thracians wished him back and mourned him for dead; then in the fourth year he appeared to the Thracians, and thus they came to believe what Salmoxis had told them. Such is the Greek story about him.