The Roman Cult of Mithras

The God and His Mysteries

Manfred Clauss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351540780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

First published in 2001. The Mithras cult first became evident in Rome towards the end of the first century AD. During the next two centuries, it spread to the frontiers of the Western empire. Energetically suppressed by the early Christians, who frequently constructed their churches over the caves in which Mithraic rituals took place, the cult was extinct by the end of the fourth century. Since its publication in Germany, Manfred Clauss's introduction to the Roman Mithras cult has become widely accepted as the most reliable and readable account of this fascinating subject. For the English edition, Clauss has updated the book to reflect recent research and new archaeological discoveries.

The God and his Mysteries

CHAPTER 5

The growth of the cult

The Earliest Evidence

The earliest securely dated evidence for the cult of Mithras does not stem from Italy but from the provinces; in each case, however, in connection with people originally from Italy. An important example is the dedication of a centurion of the cohors XXXII voluntariorum avium Romanorum from Nida, behind the Wetterau-limes in Germania Superior (Heddernheim/Frankfurt am Main), that is, a unit recruited, unlike most auxiliary units, from among Roman citizens – primarily Italians at this period (V 1098). The cohort was stationed in Nida only until the end of the first century AD, when it was transferred to Ober-Florstadt, a little further to the North-East. The inscription is thus probably to be dated before about 90. A cavalryman named Tacitus dedicated his votive altar in the same mithraeum sometime before 110 (V 1092). This example shows that the new cult quickly found support among soldiers: his altar is admittedly dedicated to Fortuna, but carries on the reverse a relief of Mithras dragging the bull. A second mithraeum was built in Nida CAD 100, which suggests that the cult had already become successful. The date is fixed by the coarse-ware pottery found in the temple.³⁶

We also have a terminus ante quern for an inscription from Carnuntum in Pannonia Superior (Bad Deutsch-Altenburg, Austria) dedicated by a centurion from Italy serving in the hgio XV Apollmaris (V 1718). This legion was stationed at Carnuntum until about the end of the reign of Trajan (98–117). The first evidence for the cult in Moesia Inferior is a dedication of CAD 100 by a slave in the service of an Italian customs-farmer, found at Novae (Steklen, Bulgaria) (V 2269).

The mysteries thus reached both the Rhine and the Danube from Italy. It was soldiers recruited in Italy, and persons in the service of Italian customs-farmers or other Roman citizens from Italy, who carried the new cult to the provinces. We may compare, for example, the process whereby Italians pushed into Dalmatia (the western Balkans) in the first two centuries of the Empire, or the colonisation of Dacia (Romania) that began with Trajan’s conquest.

A passage by the poet Statius, written about AD 90, evidently alludes to some Mithraic relief in a mithraeum at Rome. Apollo as a Sun-god is equated with Mithras ‘who beneath the rocks of a Persic cave twists the renitent horns’ (Theb. 1. 719–20). Some aspects of the myth of Mithras were already so well known in Rome by this time that Statius’ audience could make some sense of the god’s name and what he was doing.

One of the earliest datable inscriptions from the capital, Rome, is to be found on a free-standing sculpture of Mithras slaying the bull (fig. 105), dedicated by a slave who cannot have lacked financial means: Akimus Ti(beri) Cl(audi) Liviani ser(vus) vil(i)c(us) Sol(i) M(ithrae) v(otum) s(olvit) d(onum) d(edit) (V 594). Alcimus was the slave-administrator of one Ti. Claudius Livianus, who is probably to be identified with the praetorian prefect under Trajan, so that the votive is to be dated to the first quarter of the second century AD. This dedication is important for another reason too. It shows that Sol and Mithras were already identified with one another in one of the earliest known inscriptions. It is also worth noting the mention by name of the praetorian prefect. Such a mention does not of course imply that he had been initiated into the mysteries, but it certainly would not have been possible for the slave to dedicate such a monument without his master’s knowledge. We can take it that he had approved of members of his slave-household being admitted to the cult of Mithras. We know nothing about the early legal status of such congregations, but we can hardly assume that a religion which very soon won adherents in the army, and in the clerical grades of the imperial administration, was long left unregulated. It must very quickly have been recognised as an approved cult (religio licita).

The cult spread from Italy, then. In view of the sheer amount of evidence found there, we can probably point specifically to the area of Rome and Ostia. The cult in Rome retained some peculiarities well after the first century AD, though we have no firmly datable monuments from the early period. Among these idiosyncrasies we can list the term spekeum, ritual cave, for the mithraeum, which was not replaced by the word templum as quickly as in the provinces (p. 42). The iconographie evidence also suggests that in Rome greater emphasis was laid, and over a longer period, on the bull-slaying itself than elsewhere. Whereas in Italy only one monument in ten alludes to additional themes from the myth, in the provinces one in four does so.

Expansion

By the middle of the second century AD the cult had penetrated virtually the whole extent of its later territory. The number of mithraea increased constanrly, and as a result the epigraphic evidence begins to multiply. Mithraism had by this time long transcended its early social catchment and had begun to find adherents from a wider spectrum. Slaves became freed-men, soldiers after their retirement became prosperous civilians; and no doubt both groups ascribed their social advancement, among other things, to their god (p. 142).

From the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–80), and particularly from that of his son Commodus (180–92), we find in mithraea inscriptions dedicated pro salute imperatoris Caesans, for the health and safety of the emperor. Such expressions, often associated with the fulfilment of vows, were one of the most characteristic forms of the imperial cult.³⁷ They stress the emperor’s rôle as guarantor of peace and security, and in this connection invoke Mithras as the source of these blessings. There could thus develop a close link between personal religious obligations and the imperial cult. Over the long term, Mithraic votive-inscriptions that name the emperor, and thus assume the dignity of a quasi-official act, could not have been dedicated without the authorities’ knowledge. That is especially true in the case of dedicators who were soldiers, administrative slaves belonging to the customs-farmers, or imperial slaves and freedmen.

We may cite here the example of an inscription from Histria in Moesia Inferior (in the Dobrogea, Romania) that lists the founders of the mi-thraeum there: the fact that it is dated by the (imperial) priesthood of the legate, who was also the city’s patron, gives the text a quasi-official character (V 2296). The openness of Mithraic votives in this connection can further be illustrated by an example from Immurium in Noricum (Moosham, Austria). Here a benefactor’s name has been erased, probably at the time when local opponents were eliminated during the widespread political conflicts of AD 196.³⁸ Such gestures were of course also a mark of the congregation’s loyalty towards the emperor.

Under Commodus, invictos, Invincible, became part of the semi-official imperial titulature, an epithet that Mithras had borne from the very beginning. The parallel induced a centurion of a veúüatio Brittonum stationed at Volubilis in Mauretania Tingitana (Morocco) to put up an inscription at his own expense for Mithras, invictos (deus), pro salute et incolumitate Imperatmis Caesaris Lucii Aelii Aurelii Commodi pii invicti felicis Herculis Romani, ‘for the safety and deliverance of the Emperor (Comma-dus), dutiful, invincible, favoured of god, the Roman Hercules’.³⁹ Similar considerations may have influenced the dedicator of an inscription from Rome, a priest of Sol Invictus who offered an altar to Silvanus salvis Aug[g(ustis)] invictis, ‘in view of the safe preservation of the invincible emperors’ (V 502). Both inscriptions imply a parallelism between Imperator invictus and Invictus Sol, which may well have smoothed the way for their complete identification in the formula Sol Invictus Imperator. Dedications D(eo) S(oli) I(nvicto) Imp(eratori) have actually been found in mithraea, for example on the cult-relief set up by C. Amandinius Victor, a military bucinator (bugler) at Durnomagus (Dormagen) on the Rhine in Lower Germany (fig. 46).⁴⁰

There is no doubt that it was a self-identification with Hercules the Invincible that prompted Commodus to take the epithet invictus. The notion, however, was by no means exclusively associated with one god alone, and many Mithraists, like the centurion at Volubilis, must certainly have taken advantage of the indeterminacy of the vague invictus in the imperial titulature to associate it with their god. And so, from the second half of the second century up to the fourth, we find the emperor ever more frequently included in the group of those for whose sake a statue or a votive-inscription was dedicated to Mithras (p. 39).

Such texts were sometimes cut for special occasions. Two imperial freedmen, for example, set up an inscription at Rome in honour of the return of Septimius Severus from his Parthian expedition in AD 202, pro salute et reditum et victorias (!), ‘for his safe return and victories’ (V 407). A priest of the cult, together with other members, had a temple built for Deus Sol Invictus, adorned with the god’s statue, also on the occasion of the emperor’s safe return from war (V 626).

It is, I think, significant that we come across inscriptions of this kind from all over the Roman empire where Mithraism is represented, offered by dedicants from all the social groups that favoured the cult. Two semi of the colonia of Carnuntum in Pannonia Superior, L. Septimius Valerius and L. Septimius Valerianus, jointly dedicated both a relief and an altar, and had the mithraeum restored (V 1659, 1661). The altar they erected to honour Septimius Severus, the relief for him together with his son Caracalla. The occasion for these gestures was no doubt their having been freed by the emperor. To have become seviri, presidents of a college of priests composed of freedmen, they must quickly have made good in the provincial city. In recommending their imperial benefactor to Mithras, they saw a fitting means of demonstrating their loyalty to the imperial house to which they owed their citizenship.

The cult of Mithras never became one of those supported by the state with public funds, and was never admitted to the official list of festivals celebrated by the state and the army – at any rate, in so far as the latter is known to us from the Feríale Duranum, the religious calendar of the units at Dura-Europos in Coele Syria; the same is true of all other mystery cults too. This of course does not exclude the possibility that the emperors and their circle may have felt a more than casual personal sympathy for the cult, but they certainly tolerated, perhaps even encouraged, their subjects’ adherence. We can point to a connection, at least at the individual level, between state cult and the mysteries of Mithras in those cases in which initiates were also provincial high priests or city famines. The same point can be made about the equestrian sacerdos of the domus Augusta under Commodus, who in addition was a Mithraic pater, Father.⁴¹

Sol Invictus Mithras was a god of the contract and of loyalty, and thus pre-eminently congenial to the political order. The fit became still closer when Sol Invictus was heralded, at first sporadically under different emperors, then loudly and persistently from Commodus and the Severans. The emperor himself became the vice-gerent of the sun-god, he was invictus, comes and conservator. He thus assumed the same epithets, ‘invincible’, ‘companion’, ‘protector’, that Mithras, the invincible sun-god, had long made his own. In parallel to this process occurred the astonishi...