The earliest Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes of Syros;[8] but Pythagoras, who is said to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent. Pythagoras is not believed to have invented the doctrine nor have imported it from Egypt. Instead he made his reputation by bringing the Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia, and creating societies for its diffusion.