Mithras

Andrew Fear

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781138499799
• eBook ISBN: 9780429957970
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Mithras explores the history and practices of the ancient mystery religion Mithraism, looking at both literary and material evidence for the god Mithras and the reception and allure of his mysteries in the present.

The genesis and spread of Mithraism remain highly controversial. This book examines our current state of knowledge on the pre-classical Indo-Iranian god, Mitra, and argues that Mithraism was a product of Mitra's encounter with the religious thought of the classical world. It then charts the life history of Mithraism in the Roman Empire, exploring the social background of its initiates and the reasons for their attraction to the religion. The rituals and beliefs of the cult are as mysterious as its origins; in studying Mithraic "caves" and paintings found in some Mithraic temples, we can better understand and reconstruct the rituals the Mithraists practiced. While "bull-slaying", or tauroctony, lies at the core of the Mithraic mythos, this volume explores other incidents in the god's life depicted in ancient art, including his miraculous birth and his banquet with the sun, as well as the disconcerting lion-headed "enveloped god". After a fall from grace in the post-classical world, Mithras has resurrected himself in the present, establishing himself as one of the most recognisable if elusive gods of antiquity.

Mithras provides a fascinating study of this complex god that will be of interest to scholars and students of Roman and Late Antique religion, mystery cults, as well as those working on society and religion in antiquity more broadly.

KEY THEMES

2 TEMPORA SOLISThe Life of a Religion

DOI: 10.4324/9780429491467-4

The impact Mithras has had on the imagination not just of academics, but also a broader public, is remarkable given that the attested lifespan of his cult is no more than around 350 years. Unlike the Olympian gods, Mithras only emerges from the shadows in the Imperial Roman period; indeed, the bulk of our material comes from the later part of that period and, in some ways, Mithraism is best seen as a product of the Late Roman Empire which is when, judging by the remains it has left, the cult was at its height. Those remains disappear before the demise of the Western Roman Empire and no trace of the god has been found in the kingdoms that replaced that empire nor in the Byzantine world. Perhaps his absence in this latter region is not surprising as although archaeology shows that while Mithraism did spread across the entire empire, when its traces are plotted, we can see that they are by no means evenly distributed. With the exception of Italy, the bulk of our finds run in a diagonal band from Britain along the Rhine and down the Danube and Balkans to the Black Sea. Gaul and Spain yield finds, but they are surprisingly small in number. Tire eastern provinces of the empire too, particularly in what is now Turkey, and those to the south of the Mediterranean are equally sparse in Mithraic remains. When the cult becomes visible, it does so across the whole empire, so it is impossible to trace routes of diffusion with confidence. Nor is it easy to divine who was most active in spreading the religion either in terms of their professions or ethnic backgrounds. However, the “band” of finds, running as it does through northern frontier areas of the empire, suggests that the army was receptive to the cult and may have been instrumental in its diffusion. This chapter will deal with the cult as it was known and established in the Imperial period.

Mithraism was a mystery religion in more senses than one, as both its beginning and end were “mysterious" in the modern sense. Our first literary attestation of the religion does not come until the end of the first century AD, and itself is not a firm reference, but rather a learned allusion in the Thebaid of the poet Statius. The Thebaid is grounded in Greek mythology dealing with the wars fought over Thebes by the brothers Eteocles and Polyneices in the distant past. Anxious to display his erudition, Statius ends the first book of his poem with a prayer to the sun by Adrastus who recites a long (and anachronistic) list of deities syncretised with the sun god. After “Crop-giving Osiris) the list ends with “Mithra who twists resisting horns beneath the rocks of Perseus's cave”¹ This is an unambiguous reference to the tauroctony or bull-slaying which lay at the centre of the mythos of Mithras. The allusion however is a little strange: Mithras's sacrifice did take place in a cave and the cult was believed to be Persian (Perseus is often used as a synonym for the Persians in classical poetry), but depictions of Mithras performing his sacrifice never show him twisting the horns of the bull as he kills it. This is poetic license, poetic ignorance, or maybe a clever way for a member of the cult to avoid giving away too much. At all events, Statius wanted his readers to be impressed by his learning and so would have hoped that they understood his allusion. Thus the Thebaid, which was published in AD 92, but perhaps begun a decade earlier, points not to the beginning of the cult, but rather to a time when it was established well enough for its distinguishing traits to be recognised by the educated, reading public. Given that Mithraism was not a sect given to public demonstrations that would have taken some time, so it is realistic to say that it should have been present in Rome for at least two generations prior to Statius's poem. If so, although Statius is our earliest witness to the religion, it may be that we can find an earlier chronological reference to it in the accounts given by the first-century polymath Pliny and the third-century historian Dio of the visit of Tiridates, the king of Armenia, to Rome in AD 66. The arrival of this Eastern potentate in the city seems to have caused a stir at the time and was a major political triumph for the young emperor Nero. The reason for Tiridates's visit was for the king to make obeisance to Rome and so mark in the clearest possible way to the Roman public that this key frontier zone had passed from the rival Parthian empire's sphere of influence into that of their own. Neither Dio nor Pliny though, both of whom disliked Nero, were content to record it as such. In Dio's version, Tiridates, who outshines Nero at every turn, becomes the hero of the visit. The king was a worshipper of Mithras as he makes clear, saying to Nero “I have come to you to worship you, my god, as I do Mithras.”² This conceit could simply have been clever oriental flattery, as Tiridates will have known that the young emperor already had a strong interest in the sun god, or equally it could have been carefully devised Roman propaganda based on that interest. At all events, after receiving Tiridates, Nero treated his new “friend” to a theatrical performance in a theatre completely decked out in gold and featuring a curtain showing a gold-embroidered Nero as a sun god riding in a chariot surrounded by stars. Tiridates could have guessed right, but these decorations do not seem a coincidence. Intriguingly, just before being received by the emperor, Tiridates had been feted at a show of gladiatorial games in Puteoli where Dio tells us he shot two bulls dead. The Mithraic theme is stressed more strongly in Pliny's version of events. Unlike Dio, Pliny shows a marked dislike of both Tiridates and Nero (whom in another context he described as the poison of mankind). His distaste for Tiridates centres on the king's religion and in his account Tiridates is not merely a worshipper of Mithras, but one of his priests, a magus. The magi had a strong reputation for practising magic in the classical world (their name has given this word to the English language) and Pliny detested magic with a passion, attacking it continually in his encyclopaedic work, the Natural History. Along with other magi whom he had brought in his entourage, Tiridates, we are told, “initiated” Nero into his mysteries at “magical banquets") magicae cenae. However, because “even after giving [Tiridates] a kingdom, Nero was unable to obtain this art [i.e. magic]from him” the young emperor soon became disillusioned and denounced the whole business as “detestable, unless, and inane”³ Pliny here manages both to have his cake and eat it. Nero is blackened by being interested in magic and magic is then presented as something so ridiculous that even the likes of Nero could see through it. Perhaps though we can see beyond Pliny's rhetoric to what really happened. Nero was intrigued by the magi, but expected instant results from their rites. When this failed to materialise, he rapidly lost interest in the subject. In short, we have a typical teenage flirtation with the occult. More interesting is the possibility that others too were intrigued, but, unlike the emperor, retained their curiosity. The notion of a “magical feast” is particularly noteworthy as a key part of Mithraism’s rituals involved a sacred meal. Was Tiridates was a Mithraist in the sense of being a member of the cult that was to spread through the empire, or even responsible for bringing it to Rome? Perhaps. Mithras was a god native to Armenia and his worship there could have been quite different from the rites later practiced by the Mithraists. However, the fact that the emperor was initiated into the religion does suggest that some kind of private ceremony, and thus mystery cult, was involved. Tiridates and his magi may have brought something new to Rome, or, given that there is likely to have been a community of their compatriots, or near compatriots, in Rome, the king's stress on his god could simply have awakened interest in something that was already there. Such a group, can, as we will see, be related to a “prehistory” for the cult. If Tiridates's visit did highlight his beliefs, it could have engendered a desire to develop these ideas in a more Roman manner. Possible parallels for such a development are the way that intellectuals in the seventeenth century used pre-existing ritual material from medieval craft guilds to develop “speculative” as opposed to “operative” Freemasonry, and the nineteenth-century development of theosophy out of Hinduism. Prior to AD 66, our trail runs cold and before considering Cumont's view that Mithraism had a prehistory before this point, we shall first turn to its attested development in the Imperial period.

To find evidence for Mithraism we must look to archaeology and, above all, to epigraphy. Our main literary sources for the Roman Empire are simply not interested in specific religious practices. To take Freemasonry again as a parallel, many eminent Victorians were Freemasons, but this would not be apparent from general histories of that period as it is simply of no concern to their authors. The same is true of Roman historians and Mithraism. Mentions do occur in Christian texts, as for their readers Mithraism was a matter of direct concern, being regarded as a rival to, and grotesque parody of, the Christian faith. But outside this small circle, no one gave the matter much thought. This was all the more so because the cult aroused no animosity and thus provided no index of character, either good or bad, to the Roman mind. Mithraism was not an exclusive religion and its worshippers happily venerated other deities whose statues are to be found in mithraea, thus the cult was not thought to potentially antagonise the gods in the way that Christianity was believed to do. Although some rumours of dubious practices seem to have circulated, they were nowhere near strong enough to provoke the Rome state into outlawing or persecuting the god's worship. The way the cult was organised has also helped to preserve its anonymity. Mithraic groups were seemingly kept deliberately small and while small groups can be influential, they are often much less visible in the historical record than ones which organise on a larger scale. And, of course, in the end Mithraism lost. In fact, its adherents probably never thought that there was a religious war to be won until it was too late. A defeated and disappearing group is likely to leave far fewer records behind than the victors and this is true of the cult. Indeed, it is perhaps questionable whether the Mithraism's credo or mythos ever generated the amount of written material produced by early Christianity.

When dealing with archaeology, we are hostages to the vagaries of what time has preserved and what has been discovered. This can change rapidly and is likely to change again in the future. Mithraea were never large and eschewed monumentally. Nor was much or large ritual equipment needed for the cult's work. Thus, it could easily have existed for some time before it became visible to us. Our first archaeological traces slightly predate the Thebaid, and, overall, it seems that Mithraism had already spread across the empire by the time that poem was being read. Currently, our earliest datable remains are those of a mithraeum discovered in 1973/4 in the town of Caesarea Maritima in Lebanon. Pottery found here dates its foundation to the last quarter of the first century AD at the latest.⁴ To the north at Aezanitis/Savcilar in ancient Phrygia, modem central Turkey, no mithraeum has been discovered, but a Greek inscription dedicated by Midon, the son of Solon, to Helios Mithras, “Mithras the Sun" was found in a garden in the town in 1924. Sadly, this stone has no firm archaeological context, it is however firmly dated. Midon tells us he made his dedication “in our year 162”⁵ This is a reference to the “era” established by Sulla after his conquests in the region, so we can date the inscription precisely to AD 77/8.

An even earlier site has potentially been found at the town of Doliche, modern Dülük, in Commagene, just north of Turkey's border with Syria. Here there are two shrines which make use of natural caves. Both are unquestionably mithraea used by the cult – the bull-slaying scene is carved into the living rock at the end of the temples. In one, a statue of a lion-headed god was found in a niche to the left of the bullslaying scene. Sadly, the shrines' overall state of preservation is poor as both caves were vandalised after they were abandoned. A coin of Antiochus IX Eusebes (who ruled from c.f 15 to 96 BC), found in the levelling material used on the floor of one of the shrines, suggests that it was constructed at the very latest by the fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Series Foreword
• WHY MITHRAS?
• KEY THEMES
• MITHRAS AFTERWARDS
• Bibliography
• Index