CHAPTER VI
THE RELIGION OF MITHRA
Of all the oriental religions which attracted the devotion of the West in the last three centuries of the Empire, that of Mithra was the most powerful. It is also the system which for various reasons has the greatest interest for the modern student. It is perhaps the highest and most striking example of the last efforts of paganism to reconcile itself to the great moral and spiritual movement which was setting steadily, and with growing momentum, towards purer conceptions of G.o.d, of man"s relations to Him, and of the life to come. It is also the greatest effort of syncretism to absorb, without extinguishing, the G.o.ds of the cla.s.sic pantheon in a cult which was almost monotheistic, to transform old forms of nature worship and cosmic symbolism into a system which should provide at once some form of moral discipline and real satisfaction for spiritual wants. In this effort, Mithraism was not so much impeded by a heritage of coa.r.s.e legend as the worships of Pessinus and Alexandria. It was indeed sprung from the same order of religious thought as they. It could never detach itself from its source as a cult of the powers of nature.(3003) But the worship of the Sun, with which Mithra was inseparably connected, was the purest and most natural form of devotion, if elemental powers were to be worshipped at all. And heathendom tended more and more under the Empire to fix its devotion on the source of all light and life. The Sun was to Plato the highest material symbol of the Infinite Good. Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism regarded him as the sacred image of the power beyond human ken.(3004) "Before religion," it has been said, "had reached the point of proclaiming that G.o.d must be sought in the realm of the ideal and the absolute outside the world of sense, the one rational and scientific cult was that of the Sun."(3005) Heliolatry also harmonised with absolutism in the State, as the old Persian kings and their imitators, the emperors of the third century, clearly perceived. The great temple of the Sun, which Aurelian, the son of a priestess of the deity, founded in the Campus Martius, with its high pontiffs and stately ritual, did honour not only to the great lord of the heavenly spheres, but to the monarch who was the august image of his power upon earth and who was endued with his special grace.(3006) The power of Mithra in the fourth century lay in the fact that, while it was tender and tolerant to the old national worships, and never broke with the inner spirit of heathenism, it created an all-embracing system which rose above all national barriers, which satisfied the philosophic thought of the age in its mysticism, and gave comfort and a hope of immortality through its sacraments.
Mithra was one of the most ancient and venerable objects of pagan devotion, as he was one of the last to be dethroned. In faint outline he can be traced to the cradle of the Aryan race.(3007) In the Vedas he is a G.o.d of light, and, as the G.o.d of truth, who hates all falsehood, he has the germ of that moral character which grew into a great force in the last age of his worship in the West. In the Avestas, the sacred books of the religion of Iran, which, however late their redaction, still enshrine a very ancient creed, Mithra has the same well-defined personality. He is the radiant G.o.d who seems to emerge from the rocky summits of eastern mountains at dawn, who careers through heaven with a team of four white horses; yet he is not sun or moon or any star, but a spirit of light, ever wakeful, watching with a thousand eyes, whom nothing can escape and nothing deceive.(3008) And so, while he gives warmth and increase to the earth, and health and wealth to men, he is also from the beginning a moral power. He confers wisdom and honour and a clear conscience and concord. He wages a truceless war with the evil powers of darkness, and guards his faithful soldiers against the craft of the enemy. He is the friend and consoler of the poor; he is the mediator between earth and heaven; he is the lord of the world to come.(3009) But his place in the Zoroastrian hierarchy was not always equally high. At one time he was only one of the _yazatas_, who were created by the supreme Ormuzd.(3010) But Mithra has still the attributes of guardian and saviour; he is approached with sacrifice, libation, ablution, and litany, as in the latest days of his power in the West. And again a higher place is given to him; he is the vicegerent of the remote, ineffable Ormuzd, the mediator through whom the supreme power crushes evil demons, and wages war with Ahriman; he is invoked in the same prayers side by side with the Supreme. The Great Kings, especially the later, regard Mithra as their special guardian, swear by him in their most solemn oaths,(3011) and call upon him in the hour of battle. If he was the G.o.d of the humble and afflicted, he was also the G.o.d of the prince and warrior n.o.ble, and so we shall find him at the end.
The Persian conquest of Babylon had lasting effects on the religion of Mithra. There he encountered a sacerdotal system which had its roots in an immemorial civilisation. The conquerors, as so often happens, were to some extent subdued by the vanquished.(3012) Syncretism set in; the deities of the two races were reconciled and identified. The magical arts and the astrolatry of the valley of the Euphrates imposed themselves on the purer Mazdean faith, and never relaxed their hold, although they failed to check its development as a moral system. Ormuzd was confounded with Bel, Mithra with Shamash or the Sun-G.o.d. The astral and solar lore, the faith in mystic numbers, which had been cultivated in Babylonia through many generations, took its place in the theology of Mithra, and they have left their mark in many a chapel on the Danube and the Rhine. Yet Mithra, identified with the Sun at Babylon, was never absorbed in the cult of the solar deity in the West.(3013) On many of the later inscriptions Mithra and the Sun are mentioned side by side as equals and allies. Yet the connection of Mithra with Babylon is never forgotten either by Greeks or Romans. Claudian connects him with the mysteries of Bel.(3014) The priest who, with many weird rites, in a waste sunless spot beside the Tigris, conducts Menippus to the underworld, wears the dress of Media, and bears the name Mithrobarzanes.(3015)
With the destruction of the Persian empire and the diffusion of Magian influence in Asia Minor, the worship arrived at its last stage before entering on the conquest of the West. The monarchs of Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, and Commagene, who claimed descent from the Achaemenids, were politic or enthusiastic votaries of the religious traditions of Iran.(3016) While they reverenced Ormuzd and Anaitis, Mithra was their special patron, as he was to Artaxerxes.(3017) Mithra"s name appears constantly in the names of royal houses, such as Mithradates and Mithrobarzanes. The inscription on the tomb of Antiochus of Commagene, who boasted of his descent from Darius the son of Hystaspes, records the endowment of solemn Persian rites, and combines the names of Ormuzd and Zeus, of Apollo and Mithra.(3018) In the submergence of national barriers which followed the fall of the Persian monarchy, and under the influence of Greek philosophy, that process of syncretism began in Asia Minor which was destined to produce such momentous results in the third and fourth centuries. But the Mazdean faith, strong in its a.s.sociations with the ancient sources of spiritual enlightenment in the East, never succ.u.mbed to the western paganism. The cla.s.sical G.o.ds might be admitted to the Mazdean heaven; Zeus might be confounded with Ormuzd; Anaitis might find an a.n.a.logue in Artemis Tauropolus. But the ancient name of Mithra was never profaned in the liturgy by any translation.(3019) It was chiefly perhaps in Phrygia and Lydia that alien worships produced a lasting effect in modifying the Persian theology. The pure morality of the Mithraist creed might seem to have little in common with the orgies of the devotees of Attis and the Great Mother. But religious sentiment has a miraculous power both to reject and to trans.m.u.te. The costume and Phrygian cap of Attis appear on all the monuments of Mithra to the end. And, although it is a subject of debate, the taurobolium, that baptism of blood which was the most impressive rite of the later paganism, was, in all probability, early borrowed by Mithra from the ritual of Phrygia.(3020) The pine, the emblem of immortality, which is so prominent in the scenes of mourning for Attis,(3021) also has a place in the sculptured remains of the Persian chapels. And the t.i.tle Menotyrannus, a t.i.tle of Attis, which is given to the Persian G.o.d on many slabs, recalls his pa.s.sage through the same region.(3022) But Greek art had a more powerful and enduring effect on the future of Mithra than any of these accretions. Probably the ancient Persian faith recoiled from any material image of its divine powers,(3023) although here also a.s.syria may have corrupted its purity. But when h.e.l.lenic imagination began to play around the Mazdean G.o.ds, the result was certain. The victorious Mithra was clothed with human form, and his legend was fixed for ever by some nameless Pergamene artist, who drew his inspiration from the "steer-slaying Victory" of Athens.(3024) The group in which the youthful hero, his mantle blown back by the wind, with a Phrygian cap upon his head, kneels on the shoulder of the bull, as he buries his poniard in its throat, was for four centuries reproduced in countless chapels from the mouth of the Danube to the Solway. That symbolic scene, conveying so many meanings in its hieratic rigidity, became to the pious Mithraist what the image of the Divine Figure on the Cross has been for so many centuries to the devout Catholic.
The revelation of the spread of Mithra worship in the Roman Empire is one of the greatest triumphs of modern archaeology. Only faint notices of the cult are found in Herodotus, Xenophon, and Strabo.(3025) Quintus Curtius knew the Persian G.o.d as the soldier"s special patron, inspiring courage in battle.(3026) From the verses in the _Thebaid_ of Statius we may conclude that he knew something of the service in Mithra"s grottoes, and that he had seen the figure of the "bull slaying" G.o.d.(3027) Plutarch knows Mithra as the mediator between Ormuzd and Ahriman.(3028) Lucian had probably seen the rites in his native Samosata; he knew the figure with the candys and tiara, and, from the sneer at the G.o.d"s ignorance of Greek, he may perhaps have heard the old Mazdean litany.(3029) But he had probably little notion of the hold which Mithra had already obtained on the farthest regions of the West. Still less had he any prevision of his great destiny in the third and fourth centuries. Literature, down to the Antonine age, teaches us little of the character and strength of the worship. Without votive inscriptions and the many ruins of his chapels, along with the indignant, yet anxious, invective of the Christian apologists, we should never have known how near the Persian G.o.d came to justifying his t.i.tle of the "Unconquered."
It is impossible to fix the precise date when the worship of Mithra first crossed the Aegean. The silence of inscriptions must not indeed be taken as proving that he had no devotees in Italy before the Flavian age. A famous pa.s.sage in Plutarch"s life of Pompey would seem to refer the first appearance of the worship in the West to the conquest of the pirates of Cilicia by Pompey, in 70 B.C.(3030) A religion of the alien and the slave may well have been long domiciled in Italy before it attracted general notice. And there may have been humble worshippers of Mithra at Rome or Puteoli even in the days of Julius Caesar. The Mithraist inscription of the time of Tiberius is now admitted to be a forgery.(3031) But from his reign may probably be dated the first serious inroads of the cult. Under Tiberius, Cappadocia was incorporated in the Empire, and Pontus under Nero; Commagene, the home of Jupiter Dolichenus, who was a firm ally of Mithra, was finally absorbed in the reign of Vespasian.(3032) The official organisation of these districts, and the constant intercourse established between central Asia Minor and the capital, must have opened many channels for the importation of new forms of devotion from the East. Almost in the very year in which Statius was penning his verses about Mithra in the _Thebaid_, a freedman of the Flavian house erected a tablet to the G.o.d on the Esquiline,(3033) and soldiers of the East carried his mysteries to the camps on the Danube. The 15th Legion, which had fought under Corbulo against the Parthians, and taken part in the conquest of Palestine in 70 A.D., in the first years of the reign of Vespasian, established the worship of Mithra at Carnuntum in Pannonia, which became henceforth the sacred city of Mithra in the West.(3034) In 102 A.D. a marble group was dedicated by the slave of a praetorian prefect of Trajan.(3035) It is probable that at Ostia we have records of the cult from the year 162.(3036) The Mithraeum, found under the church of S. Clement at Rome, has yielded an inscription of the last years of Antoninus Pius. That emperor erected a temple to Mithra at Ostia.(3037) Rome and Ostia were probably the earliest points in Italy invaded by the Persian worship. All the conditions were favourable to an early and rapid propagation of the cult in the capital of the world. Soldiers from the East would be serving in the garrison, or settled after their release from service. Eastern slaves swarmed in all the great houses, including that of the emperor. A large proportion of the dedications are made by men of servile origin, and the very name of the dedicator would often be enough to indicate his nationality. More than 100 inscriptions, more than 75 pieces of Mithraist sculpture, with the ruins of many chapels of the G.o.d, attest his powerful influence at Rome.(3038) Ostia which, since the reconstruction of Trajan, had overshadowed Puteoli, was hospitable to all alien rites.(3039) The port had at least four temples of Mithra in the second century, and it is significant of the alliance between the two worships, that a Mithraeum there was built close to a shrine of the Great Mother,(3040) and that members of the college of the Dendrophori sometimes made offerings and dedications to Mithra.(3041) The remains at Ostia disclose some other indications of the prevailing syncretism. The Roman Sylva.n.u.s has a niche in one Mithraeum, and, in another, Saturn and Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Venus, are figured beside the purely Eastern symbols of the planets and the signs of the zodiac.(3042)
The inner secret of that rapid propaganda we shall never fully know. But we can discover with tolerable certainty the kind of people who carried the gospel of Mithra to the most remote parts of the western world. The soldiers were his most zealous missionaries.(3043) Drafted from Cappadocia or Commagene, and quartered, far from his home, in a camp on the Danube or in the Black Forest, the legionary clung to the worship of his native East, and was eager to admit his comrades to fellowship in its rites. The appearance of Mithraism in certain places can be traced directly to the quartering of a legion which had been recruited from the countries which were the original home of the worship. Officers of eastern birth on promotion pa.s.sed into other corps, and extended the influence of the East.(3044) Centurions retiring from active service became apostles of the movement in the places where they settled. Syrian merchants, who were still found at Orleans in the time of the Merovingians, with all the fanaticism of their race popularised their native worships in the ports of Italy, Gaul, along the coasts of the Adriatic, and among the centres of commerce on the Danube or the Rhine.(3045) The civil servants of the emperor, clerks and commissaries of every degree, procurators and agents of great estates, who were often men of servile origin, have left many traces of their zeal in spreading the Persian worship both throughout Italy and in countries north of the Alps.(3046) The slave cla.s.s probably did as much for the glory of Mithra as any other.(3047) It was largely drawn from Cappadocia, Pontus, and Phrygia, those regions where the religion of Mithra had taken deep root before it pa.s.sed into Europe. And, like the Christian, the religion of Mithra was, at the outset of its career, a religion of the poor and humble. It was only in the second century that it achieved the conquest of the court and the educated cla.s.ses. It was probably through slaves that it found its way into remote corners of Apulia, Lucania, or Etruria.(3048)
The stages in the spread of the Mithraist rites throughout Italy cannot be clearly traced. But in the second century the cult was established not only in Campania, Capreae, and Ischia, but in lonely country places in Southern Italy.(3049) It had spread to a circle of towns around Rome-Lanuvium, Alba, Velitrae, Labici, and Praeneste.(3050) Borne by traders, imperial officers or slaves, it followed the line of the great roads to the north. Thus we can trace its march along the Via Ca.s.sia through Etruria, at Volsinii, Arretium, and Florence.(3051) It arrived at Pisa probably by sea. Along the Flaminian Way, it may be followed through Interamna, Spoletium, and Sentinum to Bononia. At Nersae, in the Aequian territory, the cult must have been of some antiquity in 172 A.D.(3052) For, in that year the treasurer of the town, a man probably of the slave cla.s.s, restored a chapel which had fallen into ruins. The roll of the patrons of a Mithraist society at Sentinum has come down to us, with the names of slaves or freedmen among its members.(3053) In Gallia Cisalpina the traces of Mithra are less frequent. Milan, already growing to its great destiny in the fourth century, and Aquileia, are the chief seats of the Persian cult. Aquileia has yielded a large number of inscriptions.
From its situation at the mouth of the Po, as the great _entrepot_ for the trade between the Adriatic and the Danubian provinces, it must have powerfully stimulated the diffusion of the worship.(3054) It is curious, however, that the pa.s.ses of the Alps have yielded richer booty to the investigator in this field than the plains of Lombardy. In the mountain valleys leading to Rhaetia and Noric.u.m, as well as in those above the Italian lakes, many relics of this far-spreading religion have been given to the light.(3055) A temple of Mithra has been discovered near Trent, in the valley of the Adige. In the Tyrol and Carinthia sacred grottoes, buried among woods and rocks, have disclosed bas-reliefs, sculptured with the traditionary figures of Persian legend. They were probably frequented by the faithful down to the reign of Valentinian.(3056) Throughout Noric.u.m and Pannonia imperial functionaries or agents of private enterprise, procurators, clerks of the treasury, custom-house officers, or eastern freedmen and slaves, have left many traces of their devotion to the Persian G.o.d.(3057) Thus, everywhere along the great roads which radiated from Aquileia to the markets or strong places upon the Danube, the votary of Mithra would find in the days of the Antonines many a shrine, stately or humble, where he could refresh his piety by the way.
The Greek provinces have yielded but few memorials of the worship of Mithra. But, from the mouth of the Danube to the north of England his triumphant march can be traced, with only a break here and there. He follows the line of the rivers or the great roads, through the frontier camps or the centres of Roman commerce. Firmly seated at Tomi and the ports of the Black Sea, Mithra has not left many traces, so far as exploration has gone, in Thrace and Macedonia.(3058) Nor have the Moesias as yet contributed many monuments, although at Troesmis and Oescus, along the great military road, bas-reliefs and inscriptions have been brought to light.(3059) Next to Pannonia and the territory of the Upper Rhine, Dacia was the province where Mithraism seems to have reached its greatest popularity in Europe.(3060) In the year 107, after six desolating and often doubtful campaigns, Dacia was resettled and organised by Trajan.(3061) Its depopulated fields were colonised with immense ma.s.ses of men from all parts of the Roman world. Probably there has seldom been such a _colluvies gentium_ a.s.sembled. And, among these alien settlers, there were many from Edessa, Palmyra, and those regions of the East where Mithra or his kindred deities had their earliest and most fervent worshippers.(3062) In the capital of the province, Sarmizegetusa, an excavated Mithraeum has afforded fifty bas-reliefs and inscriptions.(3063) The colony of Apulum can show the remains of at least four temples. And Potaissa and other places, with names strange to English ears, have enriched the museums.
Pannonia abounds with interesting remains of Mithra, not only in the great seats of Roman power on the Danube, but in places far in the interior.
And in this province can be distinctly traced not only the progress of the military propaganda, but the dates, with approximate accuracy, when the mysteries of Mithra were first introduced.(3064) Aquinc.u.m and Carnuntum were the chief seats of the Persian worship on the Danube. In the former town, the G.o.d had at least five chapels in the third century. There were at least four in the territory of Carnuntum, one of them being closely connected with that of the allied deity, Jupiter Dolichenus of Commagene.(3065) The original votaries of the reign of Vespasian had been contented with a rude grotto, partially formed by the configuration of the rocks, the intervals being filled in with masonry.(3066) This structure in the third century was replaced by a more stately edifice at the expense of a Roman knight.(3067) There can be little doubt that the spread of Mithraism in Pannonia was chiefly the work of two Legions, the II.
Adjutrix and XV. Apollinaris, both largely recruited from Commagene or Cappadocia.(3068) The bricks of a Mithraeum at Carnuntum bear the stamp of the 15th Legion, and the inscriptions contain several dedications by soldiers of the two corps.(3069) The 15th Legion, which was quartered on the Danube in 71 or 72, had fought under Corbulo against the Parthians, and had borne a part in suppressing the Jewish revolt of 70 A.D. We may be sure that the gaps in its ranks were filled by eastern recruits.(3070) The soldiers of other corps, such as the Legions XIII and XIV, Geminae Martiae, caught the religious enthusiasm, and took part in the erection of buildings and in monumental offerings.(3071) It was probably through officers, transferred from the Danube, that the worship was introduced into the camp of Lambaesis in Numidia. There is a tablet of the third century to Mithra in that camp, dedicated by a prefect of the 3rd Legion, who was born at Carnuntum.(3072) In Noric.u.m and Rhaetia, the military propaganda seems to have been less vigorous than in Pannonia. But a corner of the former province was once guarded by a corps from Commagene, which has left traces of its presence in the name of a town on the Danube and in some monuments to Mithra.(3073) In Rhaetia his remains are singularly scanty.(3074) But when we come to the _Agri Dec.u.mates_ and the region of the Upper Rhine, we find ourselves in a district once more teeming with relics of Mithra. Not only has this region given to the light the largest number of his chapels,(3075) but the bas-reliefs found in their ruins surpa.s.s all others in their dimensions and the completeness of their symbolism. The tauroctonus group of Osterburken is regarded as the masterpiece of Mithraist art in its complex variety and the vivid and masterly skill of the execution.(3076) Many of the German inscriptions to Mithra are offered by simple citizens. But, from the number dedicated by soldiers also, c.u.mont may be right in tracing the diffusion of the worship once more to military zeal. It is true, the legions quartered in Germany did not contain any considerable number of recruits from the East. But they were in constant communication with the camps upon the Danube, where oriental influences were strong. It is significant that the earliest inscription to Mithra yet found in Germany, of the year A.D. 148, is that of a centurion of the 8th Legion, which was quartered in Moesia from 47 till 69, and which during that time had frequent communications with the East. The legion was in 70 removed from Moesia to Upper Germany.(3077) It is probable that, however it was introduced, the worship of Mithra may have found its way into the valley of the Neckar, and even to the Lower Rhine, before the end of the first century. Coins of Trajan have been found in the temple at Friedberg;(3078) a series of coins from Vespasian to M. Aurelius has been recovered from a temple in the neighbourhood of Cologne.(3079) From Cologne the line of conquest may be followed to Boulogne, the station of the British fleet. Thence the cult pa.s.sed easily to London, which, in the time of Tacitus, was a centre of great commercial activity.(3080) The legions probably carried the worship to the great camps of Caerleon, Chester and York. At all the guardposts of the great rampart of Hadrian, there were chapels of the eastern G.o.d, and the inscriptions show that the officers at this remote outpost of the Empire maintained a warm devotion to the religion of their native East.(3081)
The regions of the western world on which Mithra, from whatever causes, seems to have made least impression were Western Gaul, Spain, and North Africa.(3082) Syrian merchants, slaves, or soldiers, had established the worship at Lyons, Arles, and Narbonne. But Elusa is the only place in Aquitaine where traces of it have been found. In Spain, the legionaries carried it only to a few remote frontier posts in Asturia or Gallicia.(3083) The African garrisons, recruited largely from the surrounding country, remained true to their native deities, and the few inscriptions to Mithra at great military strongholds, like Lambesi, are probably due to the devotion of some of the higher officers, who had been transferred to these distant quarters from Syria or the Danube.(3084)
If we try to explain the fascination of this religion of central Asia for western minds, we must seek it partly in its theological system, partly in its ritual and clerical organisation, still more in its clear promise of a life beyond the grave. In these characteristics, Mithraism differed profoundly from Graeco-Roman paganism, and seemed, in the eyes of the Christian apologists, to be a deceptive imitation of the rites and doctrines of the Christian Church. Inspired with the tendency or ambition to gather many races into its fold, Mithraism was a compound of the influences of very different ages, and offered many footholds for the faith or superst.i.tion of the lands which it traversed in its march. It drew, from points widely severed in time and place, doctrine or symbolism or rite, from the ancient lands of the Aryan race, from the mountain homes of the Persians, from Babylon and Phrygia and Commagene, from the philosophy of Greece, and the mythologies of all the peoples among whom it came. Yet it never to the end ceased to be a Persian cult. In the Divine Comedy of Lucian, as it may be called, Mithra, even when he is admitted to Olympus, cannot speak in Greek.(3085) His name is never disguised or translated. On many of his inscriptions the names of the old Mazdean pantheon, such as Ahriman, the power of evil, still figure.(3086) The mystic beasts which are always present in the sacred scene of the tauroctonus, the lion, the dog, the snake, the scorpion, had all a hieratic meaning in Persian theology.(3087) The cave, which was the immemorial sanctuary of the worship, amid all the mystic meanings attached to it by later Neo-Platonist speculation, carried the mind back to Zoroastrian symbolism.(3088) The _petra genetrix_, which is figured on so many sacred slabs on the Danube and in Upper Germany, goes back to the very cradle of the worship.(3089) The young G.o.d, emerging from the spires of rock, round which a serpent coils itself, is the first radiance of the upspringing sun, as on high, lonely peaks it flashes and broadens to the dawn. The great elemental powers, sun and moon, ocean, the winds and seasons, are generally grouped around the central piece, in forms borrowed from cla.s.sic art.(3090) Fire and water are always present; no chapel was without its fountain.(3091) And the tradition of the astral lore of the Euphrates can be seen in the signs of the zodiac which encompa.s.s the sacred scene of mystic sacrifice in the chapels on the Upper Rhine.(3092) The very letters of the name of Mithra, expanded into Meithras, according to S. Jerome, like the mystic word Abraxas, yielded to ingenious calculation the exact number of days in the year.(3093) It is difficult for us to conceive how these frigid astronomical fancies should form a part in a religious system which undoubtedly from the beginning had a profound moral effect on its adherents. Yet it is well to remember that there was a time when the mystery of the stellar s.p.a.ces, and the grandeur and beneficence of the sun, were the most awful and impressive things in human experience. The cold scrutiny of the telescope has long since robbed the heavenly orbs of their mystic power over human destiny. Yet even now, a man who has not been imbued with the influence of modern science, may, on some calm, starlit summer night, travel back in imagination to the dreams of the early star-gazers on the Ganges or the Euphrates, and fancy that, in the far solitary splendour and ordered movement of those eternal fires, which shine so serene and pitiless on this small point in the universe, there may be forces to guide or signs to predict the course of mortal destiny. Nor was it an altogether unworthy dream, which floated before the minds of so many generations, that in those liquid depths of s.p.a.ce, where, in the infinite distance, the radiance of widely-severed constellations blends into a luminous haze, might be the eternal abode of spirits who, after their sojourn in the flesh, have purged themselves of earthly taint.(3094)
The relative influence of Babylon and ancient Iran in moulding the theology of Mithraism, has long been a subject of controversy. The opposing schools, represented by Lajard and Windischmann,(3095) have been discredited or reconciled by saner methods of criticism, and wider archaeological knowledge. It is now seen that while Babylonia has left a deep impress on the creed of Mithra, yet the original Aryan or Persian elements still maintained their ascendency. Mithra, in his long journey, came under many influences; and he absorbed many alien ideas from the cults and art of the many lands through which he travelled. His tolerance, indeed, was one great secret of his power. But, while he absorbed, he a.s.similated and trans.m.u.ted. He remained the G.o.d of Persia, while he gathered into his creed mystic elements that might appease the spiritual cravings of the western world.(3096) His system came to represent the best theological expression of the long movement of pagan mysticism, which, beginning with the mythic names of Orpheus and Pythagoras, organised in the cla.s.sic mysteries, elevated and glorified by the genius of Plato, ended, if it has ended, in the Neo-Platonic movement which offered a last resistance to the Christian church. The central ideas of that theory of life and death were presented to the neophyte in the mysteries of Mithra, and one of the last expounders of the Platonic creed, in the reign of Theodosius, had probably been initiated in one of the last chapels of the worship.(3097) In that vision of human destiny, of the descent and ascent of the human soul, the old Orphic doctrine is united with the star-lore of the Euphrates. Travelling towards its future prison-house in the flesh, the spirit which leaves the presence of Ormuzd descends by the gate of Cancer, through the spheres of the seven planets, and in each acquires a new faculty appropriate to its earthly state. The Mithraist discipline and sacraments prepare it for the ascent after death. When the soul at last leaves its mortal prison, it has to submit to a great judgment in the presence of Mithra, and if it pa.s.s the ordeal, it may then return through the seven spheres, at each stage divesting itself of those pa.s.sions or earthly powers, which it had taken on for a time in its downward journey.(3098) Finally, through the remote gate of Capricorn, its sublimated essence will pa.s.s back again to ecstatic union with the Supreme. It is thus that the East and West, Orphic mysteries and Chaldaean astrology, combined to satisfy the craving for a moral faith and the vision of another world.
The religion of Mithra probably achieved its highest victory through an ethical theology, typified and made concrete to the average worshipper by an elaborate symbolism in rite and sculptured scene. But it had also a cosmic theology. Mithra, in virtue of his moral power, became in the end the central figure. But in nearly all his chapels can be discovered a divine hierarchy, in which, for ages, he did not hold the foremost rank.
The highest place is given to Infinite Time, without s.e.x or pa.s.sions, or properly without even a name, although in order to bring him within the vulgar ken, he may be called Cronus or Saturn and imaged in stone as a lion, wrapped in the coils of a snake.(3099) He is the author of life and death; he carries the keys of heaven, and in his limitless sway, he is identified with the unbending power of Fate. Like other cosmic systems of the East the Mazdean explained the universe by a succession of emanations from the Infinite First Cause.(3100) From his own essence, Cronus engendered Earth and Heaven, whom mythologers may call Jupiter and Juno, and they in turn give life to Ocean. Jupiter, as in cla.s.sical mythology, succeeded to the power of Cronus, and gave to the world the Olympian deities, along with Fortune, Themis, and the Fates. In the hemisphere of gloom and evil, another order was engendered by Infinite Time, which is represented by Ahriman, or, in the fancy of more western lands, by Pluto and Hecate. The evil spirits, who are their progeny, like the t.i.tans of Greek legend, have tried to storm Olympus, and been hurled back to the under world.(3101) There they still retain their power to plague and corrupt the race of men; but, by means of incantation, and sacrifice, their malice may be turned aside. In this daemonology Mithraism joined hands with the new Platonism, of which Plutarch, as we have seen, was one of the earliest apostles, and the affinity between them continued to the last age of paganism.(3102) But it was in its divinisation of the elemental powers and heavenly bodies that this religion probably obtained its most powerful hold on an age profoundly fatalist and superst.i.tious.
The strife of the four elements figures under animal symbolism on innumerable sculptures of the chapels of Mithra, around the image of the bull-slaying G.o.d.(3103) The divine fire which sparkles in the stars, and diffuses the warmth of life in animal or plant, blazed perpetually on the altar of the crypt.(3104) The sun and moon are seldom missing from these slabs. In the great masterpiece of Mithraic art at Osterburken, the two deities occupy opposite corners of the tablet.(3105) The sun-G.o.d, with a cloak floating from his right shoulder, is urging his four-horse team up the steep of heaven, and over the car floats Phosphorus, as a naked boy, bearing a torch in each hand. On the opposite side, Selene, crowned with the crescent and erect in her car, is urging her team of oxen downwards towards the gloom. On another piece, also found in the heart of Germany, there is an impressive scene, in which Mithra and the Sun, arrayed in eastern costume, stand side by side over a huge slaughtered bull. The sun G.o.d is handing to Mithra a bunch of grapes, which he receives with a gesture of admiration.(3106)
The most popular, and the least wholesome, element, which Mithraism borrowed from Babylon, was the belief in planetary influence. The seven planets became the arbiters of human destiny, and their number acquired a hieratic significance.(3107) The days of the week and the seven princ.i.p.al metals were consecrated to them. The various grades of initiation into the mysteries of Mithra found a correspondence in the intervals of the seven spheres.(3108) The soul, in descending to its earthly tenement for a season, pa.s.ses through their successive realms, and a.s.sumes appropriate faculties in each, just as, on its release and ascension, it divests itself of them, one by one, as it returns to the region of ethereal purity. But the astral doctrine, introduced into the system of Iran from Chaldaea, was a dangerous addition to the creed. It was a fatal heritage from ages of benumbing superst.i.tion, and, while it gave an immense impetus to the progress of the solar cult, it counterbalanced, and, to some extent, neutralised its more spiritual and salutary doctrines.(3109) A co-ordinate evil power, side by side with the beneficent Creator and Preserver, and his revealer and mediator, a host of daemons, tempting to sin, as well as visiting men with calamity, an iron Fate at the centre of the Universe, whose inevitable decrees are at once indicated and executed by the position and motions of the planets-all this gloomy doctrine lay like a nightmare on the human mind for many ages, and gave birth to all sorts of evil arts to discover or avert or direct the pitiless forces which controlled the fate of man. This is the dark side of Mithra worship, and, in this evil tradition from Babylon, which partially overlaid the purer creed of Persia, we may find some explanation of the strange blending of dark superst.i.tion with moral earnestness which characterised the reaction of Julian, the votary of the Sun, and the patron of Maximus.
But, although the deification of the great elemental powers and the mingled charm and terror of astrology gave the religion of Mithra a powerful hold on the West, there were other and n.o.bler elements in his system which cannot escape the candid enquirer. The old unmoral, external paganism no longer satisfied the spiritual wants of all men in the second century. It is true the day will probably never come when the religion of many will not begin and end in solemn, stately rite, consecrated to the imagination by ancient use, and captivating the sense by scrupulously ordered ceremonial. The ritualist and the puritan conception of worship will probably always exist side by side, for they represent two opposite conceptions of religion which can never entirely blend. And certainly in the days of M. Aurelius the placid satisfaction in a sumptuous sacrifice, at which every word of the ancient litany was rendered to the letter, was still profoundly felt by many, even by the philosophic emperor himself.
But there were other ideas in the air. Men heard from wandering preachers that G.o.d required other offerings than the "blood of bulls and the ashes of a heifer," that the true worship was in the sacrifice of a purified spirit.(3110) Platonist and Pythagorean, even when they might reverently handle the ancient symbolism of ritual, were teaching that communion with the Infinite Father was only possible to a soul emanc.i.p.ated from the tyranny of sense. Moreover, as we have seen, the new Platonism was striving to create some mediatorial power between the world of sense and the Infinite Spirit, transcending all old materialistic fancies of the Divine.(3111) This Platonic daemonology, indeed, from the Christian point of view, was a very crude and imperfect attempt to bridge the gulf. And it had the graver fault that it was really a revival of the old mythology.
Yet it was also an attempted reformation. It was an effort to introduce a moral influence into paganism. It was an effort to subst.i.tute for physical and naturalistic conceptions a moral theory of the government of the world. That was surely an immense advance in religious history, and foreshadowed the great revolution which was to launch the western world on a new spiritual career. The hosts of sister spirits, whom Maximus of Tyre imagines as surrounding and sustaining the life of men, involved in the darkness and sorrow of time, are a conception strange to the old paganism.
And the need of mediatorial sympathy, of a sympathetic link, however slight, with the dim, awful Power, ever receding into more remote and mysterious distances, was also connected with the need of some a.s.surance, or fainter hope, of a life beyond the tomb. To that hope the old cla.s.sical paganism afforded only slight and shadowy nutriment. Yet, from hundreds of sepulchral inscriptions the yearning, often darkened by a doubt, appeals with pathetic force. Apart, in fact, from the crowd of mere antiquarian formalists and lovers of spectacle, there were, we believe, a great ma.s.s who longed for some channel through which they might have the faintest touch of sympathy with the Infinite Spirit; for some promise, however veiled in enigmatic symbolism, that this poor, puzzling, ineffectual life should not close impotently at death.
In all the Mazdean pantheon, it has been remarked, Mithra was the only divine figure that profoundly affected the religious imagination of Europe. Who can dare at this distance to pierce the mystery? But we may conjecture that the ascendency is partly due to his place as mediator in the Persian hierarchy, partly to the legends, emblazoned on so many slabs, of his miraculous and Herculean triumphs; but still more to the moral and sacramental support, and the sure hope of immortal life which he offered to his faithful worshippers. Mithra came as a deliverer from powers of evil and as a mediator between man and the remote Ormuzd. He bears the latter office in a double sense. In the cosmic system, as lord of light, he is also lord of the s.p.a.ce between the heavenly ether and the mists of earth. As a solar deity, he is the central point among the planetary orbs.(3112) In the ubiquitous group of the slaughtered bull, Mithra stands between the two Dadophori, Cautes and Cautopates, who form with him a sort of Trinity, and are said to be incarnations of him.(3113) One of these figures in Mithraic sculpture always bears a torch erect, the other a torch turned downwards to the earth. They may have a double significance.
They may figure the ascending light of dawn, and the last radiance of day as it sinks below the horizon. They may be taken to image the growth of solar strength to its midsummer triumphs, and its slow decline towards fading autumn and the cold of winter. Or again, they may shadow forth the wider and more momentous processes of universal death and resurgent life.
But Mithra also became a mediator in the moral sense, standing between Ormuzd and Ahriman, the powers of good and evil, as Plutarch conceives him.(3114) He is the ever victorious champion, who defies and overthrows the malignant demons that beset the life of man; who, above all, gives the victory over the last foe of humanity.
The legend of Mithra in hymn or litany is almost entirely lost. But antiquarian ingenuity and cultivated sympathy have plausibly recovered some of its meanings from the many sculptural remains of his chapels. On the great monuments of Virunum, Mauls, Neuenheim, and Osterburken, can be seen the successive scenes of the hero"s career. They begin with his miraculous birth from the "mother rock," which was familiar to Justin Martyr, S. Jerome, and many of the Fathers.(3115) The dedications _petrae genetrici_ abound along the Danube, and the sacred stone was an object of adoration in many chapels.(3116) A youthful form, his head crowned with a Phrygian cap, a dagger in one hand, and a torch in the other, is pictured emerging from an opening rock, around which sometimes a serpent is coiled.
Shepherds from the neighbouring mountain gaze in wonder at the divine birth, and presently come nearer to adore the youthful hero, and offer him the firstlings of their flocks and fields.(3117) And again, a naked boy is seen screening himself from the violence of the wind in the shelter of a fig tree; he eats of its fruit and makes himself a garment from the leaves.(3118) In another scene, the sacred figure appears in full eastern costume, armed with a bow from which he launches an arrow against a rock rising in front of him.(3119) From the spot where the arrow strikes the stone, a fountain gushes forth, and the water is eagerly caught in his upturned palms by a form kneeling below. Then follow the famous scenes of the chase and slaughter of the mystic bull. At first the beast is seen borne in a skiff over an expanse of waters. Soon afterwards he is grazing quietly in a meadow, when Mithra comes upon the scene. In one monument the hero is carrying the bull upon his shoulders; in others he is borne upon the animal"s back, grasping it by the horns. Or again, the bull is seen in full career with the hero"s arms thrown around his neck. At last the bull succ.u.mbs to his rider"s courage, and is dragged by the hind-legs, which are drawn over his captor"s shoulders, into a cavern where the famous slaughter was enacted.(3120) The young G.o.d, his mantle floating on the wind, kneels on the shoulder of the fallen beast, draws back its head with his left hand, while with the other he buries his dagger in its neck.(3121) Below this scene are invariably sculptured the scorpion, the faithful dog, and the serpent lapping the flowing blood. The two Dadophori, silent representatives of the worlds of light and gloom, one on each side, are always calm watchers of the mystic scene. But the destruction of the bull was not a mere spectacle of death. It was followed by a miracle of fresh springing life and fertility, and, here and there, on the slabs are seen ears of corn shooting from the tail of the dying beast, or young plants and flowers springing up around.(3122) His blood gives birth to the vine which yields the sacred juice consecrated in the mysteries. Thus, in spite of the scorpion and the serpent, symbols of the evil powers, who seek to wither and sterilise the sources of vitality, life is ever rising again from the body of death.(3123)
Mithra"s mysterious reconciliation with the Sun is figured in other groups.(3124) Mithra, as usual, in eastern costume, has, kneeling before him, a youthful figure either naked or lightly clad. The G.o.d touches the head of the suppliant with some mysterious symbol, and the subject of the rite raises his hands in prayer. The mystic symbol is removed, and Mithra sets a radiant crown on the suppliant"s head. This reconciliation of the two deities is a favourite subject. In the sculpture of Osterburken, they ratify their pact with solemn gestures before an altar. Their restored harmony is commemorated in even more solemn fashion. In one monument the two are reclining on a couch at a solemn agape, with a table before them bearing the sacred bread, which is marked with the cross, and both are in the act of raising the cup in their right hands.(3125)
The legend of Mithra, thus faintly and doubtfully reconstructed from the sacred sculptures, in the absence of express tradition, must probably for ever remain somewhat of an enigma. It has been, since the third century, the battle-ground of ingenious interpreters. To enumerate and discuss these theories, many of them now discredited by archaeological research, is far beyond the scope of this work. It is clear that from the early Chaldaean magi, who, to some extent, imposed their system on Iranian legend, down to the Neo-Platonists, the G.o.d and his attendants were treated as the symbols of cosmic theory. The birth from the rock was the light of dawn breaking over serrated crests of eastern hills.(3126) The cave, which was always piously perpetuated in the latest Mithraist architecture, was the solid vault of heaven, and the openings pierced in its roof were the stars shining through the celestial dome.(3127) The fountain which rose in every chapel, the fire on the altar, the animals surrounding the bull, represent the powers of nature in their changes and conflict. The young archer, causing water to spring from the rock by a shot from his bow, marks the miraculous cessation of prehistoric dearth, as the bull leaping from a skiff perhaps commemorates a primaeval deluge.
The slaying of the bull, the central scene of all, may go back to the exploits of the heroic pioneers of settled life, a Hercules or a Theseus, who tamed the savage wilderness to the uses of man. It had many meanings to different ages. To one occupied with the processes of nature, it may have symbolised the withering of the vegetative freshness of the world in midsummer heats, yet with a promise of a coming spring. To another it may have meant a victory over evil spirits and powers of darkness.(3128) Or it may, in the last days, have been the prototype of that sacramental cleansing which gave a.s.surance of immortal life, and which seemed to the Fathers the mockery of a Diviner Sacrifice.
There can be no doubt that Mithra and his exploits, in response to a great need, came to have a moral and spiritual meaning. From the earliest times, he is the mediator between good and evil powers; ever young, vigorous, and victorious in his struggles, the champion of truth and purity, the protector of the weak, the ever vigilant foe of the hosts of daemons who swarm round the life of man, the conqueror of death. His religion, in spite of its astrology, was not one of fatalist reverie; it was a religion of struggle and combat. In this aspect it was congenial to the virile Roman temperament, and, above all, to the temperament of the Roman soldier, at once the most superst.i.tious and the most strenuous of men.(3129) Who can tell what inspiration the young heroic figure, wearing an air of triumphant vigour even on the rudest slabs,(3130) may have breathed into a worn old veteran, who kept ceaseless watch against the Germans in some lonely post on the Danube, when he spent a brief hour in the splendour of the brilliantly lighted crypt, and joined in the old Mazdean litany? Before him was the sacred group of the Tauroctonus, full of so many meanings to many lands and ages, but which, to his eyes, probably shed the light of victory over the perilous combats of time, and gave a.s.surance of a larger hope. Suddenly, by the touch of an unseen hand, the plaque revolved,(3131) and he had before him the solemn agape of the two deities in which they celebrated the peaceful close of their mystic conflict. And he went away, a.s.sured that his hero G.o.d was now enthroned on high, and watching over his faithful soldiers upon earth.(3132) At the same time, he had seen around him the sacred symbols or images of all the great forces of nature, and of the fires of heaven which, in their motions and their effluences, could bring bane or happiness to men below. In the chapels of Mithra, all nature became divine and sacred, the bubbling spring, the fire on the cottage hearth, the wind that levelled the pine tree or bore the sailor on his voyage, the great eternal lights that brought seed-time and harvest and parted day from night, the ever-welling vital force in opening leaf and springing corn-ear, and birth of young creatures, triumphing in regular round over the malignant forces which seem for a time to threaten decay and corruption. The "Unconquered Mithra"
is thus the G.o.d of light and hope in this world and the next.(3133)
The ancient world was craving for a promise of immortality. Mithraism strove to nurse the hope, but, like the contemporaneous Platonism and the more ancient Orphic lore, it linked it with moral responsibility and grave consequences. Votaries were taught that the soul descended by graduated fall from the Most High to dwell for a season in the prison of the flesh.(3134) After death there is a great judgment, to decide the future destiny of each soul, according to the life which had been led on earth.(3135) Spirits which have defiled themselves during life are dragged down by Ahriman and his evil angels, and may be consigned to torture, or may sink into endless debas.e.m.e.nt. The pure, who have been fortified by the holy mysteries, will mount upwards through the seven spheres, at each stage parting with some of their lower elements, till, at last, the subtilised essential spirit reaches the empyrean, and is received by Mithra into the eternal light.
But the conflict between good and evil, even on this earth, will not last for ever. There will be a second coming of Mithra, which is to be presaged by great plagues. The dead will arise from their tombs to meet him. The mystic bull will again be slain, and his blood, mingled with the juice of the sacred Haoma, will be drunk by the just, and impart to them the gift of eternal life.(3136) Fire from heaven will finally devour all that is evil. Thus the slaughter of the bull, which is the image of the succession of decay and fructifying power in physical nature, is also the symbol and guarantee of a final victory over evil and death. And, typifying such lofty and consolatory truths, it naturally met the eye of the worshipper in every chapel. It was also natural that the taurobolium, which was originally a rite of the Great Mother, should be absorbed, like so many alien rites and ideas, by the religion which was the great triumph of syncretism. The baptism of blood was, indeed, a formal cleansing from impurity of the flesh; but it was also cleansing in a higher sense. The inscriptions of the fourth century, which commemorate the blessing of the holy rite, often close with the words _in aeternum renatus_.(3137) How far the phrase expressed a moral resurrection, how far it records the sure hope of another life, we cannot presume to say. Whether borrowed from Christian sources or not, it breathes an aspiration strangely different from the tone of old Roman religion, even at its best. There may have been a good deal of ritualism in the cleansing of Mithra. Yet Mithra was, from the beginning, a distinctly moral power, and his worship was apparently untainted by the licence which made other heathen worships schools of cruelty and l.u.s.t. His connection, indeed, with some of them, must at times have led his votaries into more than doubtful company; Sabazius and Magna Mater were dangerous allies.(3138) Yet, on the whole, it has been concluded that Mithraism was a gospel of truth and purity, although the purity was often a matter of merely ceremonial purification and abstinence.
The day is far distant when the ma.s.s of men will be capable of the austere mystic vision, which relies little on external ceremonies of worship.
Certainly the last ages of paganism in the West were not ripe for any such reserved spirituality. And the religions which captivated the ages that preceded the triumph of the Catholic Church, while they strove to satisfy the deeper needs of the spirit, were more intensely sacerdotal, and more highly organised than the old religions of Greece and Rome. Probably no small part of their strength lay in sacramental mystery, and an occult sacred lore which was the monopoly of a cla.s.s set apart from the world.(3139) Our knowledge of the Mithraic priesthood is unfortunately scanty, and the ancient liturgy has perished.(3140) But inscriptions mention an _ordo sacerdotum_; and Tertullian speaks of a "high pontiff of Mithra" and of holy virgins and persons vowed to continence in his service.(3141) The priestly functions were certainly more constant and exacting than those of the old priestly colleges of Greece and Rome. There were solemn sacraments and complicated rites of initiation to be performed. Three times a day, at dawn, noon, and evening, the litany to the Sun was recited.(3142) Daily sacrifice was offered at the altars of various G.o.ds, with chanting and music. The climax of the solemn office was probably marked by the sounding of a bell.(3143) And turning on a pivot, the sacred slab in the apse displayed, for the adoration of the faithful, the scene of the holy feast of Mithra and the Sun after their reconciliation. The seventh day of the week was sacred to the Sun, the sixteenth of each month to Mithra, and the 25th of December, as marking the sun"s entrance on a new course of triumph, was the great festival of Mithra"s sacred year.(3144)
Initiation in the mysteries, after many rites of cleansing and trial, was the crowning privilege of the Mithraist believer. The gradation of spiritual rank, and the secrecy which bound the votaries to one another in a sacred freemasonry, were a certain source of power. S. Jerome alone has preserved for us the seven grades through which the neophyte rose to full communion. They were Corax, Cryphius, Miles, Leo, Perses, Heliodromus, and Pater.(3145) What their origin was who shall say? They may correspond to the seven planets, and mark the various stages of the descent of the soul into flesh, and its rise again to the presence of G.o.d. According to Porphyry, the first three stages were merely preliminary to complete initiation. Only the Lions were full and real communicants,(3146) and the t.i.tle Leo certainly appears oftenest on inscriptions. The dignity Pater Patrum, or Pater Patratus, was much coveted, and conferred a real authority over the brethren, with an official t.i.tle to their reverence.(3147) The admission to each successive grade was accompanied by symbolic ceremonies, as when the Miles put aside the crown twice tendered to him, saying that Mithra was his only crown.(3148) The veil of the Cryphius, and the Phrygian bonnet of the Perses, have a significance or a history which needs no comment. Admission to full communion was preceded by austerities and ordeals which were made the subject of exaggeration and slander. The neophyte, blindfold and bound, was obliged to pa.s.s through flame. It was said that he had to take part in a simulated murder with a blood-dripping sword. On the sculpture of Heddernheim a figure is seen standing deep in snow. These ceremonies probably went back to the scenes and ages in which mutilations in honour of Bellona and Magna Mater took their rise. They may also have been a lesson, or a test of apathy and moral courage.(3149) But the tales of murder and torture connected with these rites have probably no better foundation than similar slanders about the early Christian mysteries.(3150)
The votaries of Mithra, like those of Isis and other eastern deities, formed themselves into guilds which were organised on the model of ordinary sodalities and colleges. As funerary societies, or under the shelter of Magna Mater, they escaped persecution. They had their roll of members, their council of decurions, their masters and curators.(3151) And, like the secular colleges, they depended to a great extent, for the erection of chapels and the endowment of their services, on the generosity of their wealthier members and patrons.(3152) One man might give the site of a chapel, another a marble altar; a poor slave might contribute out of his _peculium_ a lamp or little image to adorn the walls of the crypt.(3153)
One undoubted cause of the success of Mithra in the West was the spirit of fraternity and charity which was fostered in his guilds. The hopeless obscurity and depression of the plebeian and servile cla.s.ses had some alleviation in companies where, for the moment, the poor and lowly-born found himself on an equality with his social superiors. Plebeians and the slaves had a great part in the propagation of the eastern worships, and especially that of the G.o.d of Light.(3154) In his mysteries and guilds the highest dignities were open to them.(3155) Moreover, from the size of the chapels it is clear that the congregations were generally small, so that the members of lower social importance were not lost in a crowd.(3156) Growing numbers were accommodated, not by enlarging, but by multiplying the shrines.
In the sacraments of Mithra, Tertullian and other Apologists perceived a diabolic parody of the usages of the Church.(3157) The _acceptio_ of the neophytes, the _sacramentum_, in which they were pledged to secrecy and holy service, the sign or brand made on the brow of the Miles, the ablutions or baptism with holy water, as in the rites of Isis, whatever their origin, could not fail, in an age of death-struggle for supremacy, to arouse the suspicions and fears of the champions of the Church.(3158) Finally, the consecrated bread and mingled water and wine, which were only offered to the higher grades, may well have seemed the last and worst profanation of the most solemn Christian rite. The draught from the mystic cup, originally the juice of Haoma, was supposed to have supernatural effects. It imparted not only health and prosperity and wisdom, but also the power to conquer the spirits of evil and darkness, and a secret virtue which might elude the grasp of death.(3159)
The temples in which these rites took place repeated for ages the same original type. Mithra and his cave are inseparable ideas, and the name _spelaeum_, _antrum_, or _specus_, remained to the end the regular designation of his chapels.(3160) In country places, grottoes or recesses on the side of a rocky hill might supply a natural oratory of the ancient type.(3161) But, in the centre of great towns, the skill of the architect had to simulate the rude structure of the original cavern. Entering through an open portico, the worshipper found himself in an antechapel, through which he pa.s.sed into another chamber which was called the _apparatorium_, where the priests and neophytes arrayed themselves in their robes or masques before the holy rites.(3162) Thence they descended by stairs to the level of the cave-like crypt, which was the true sanctuary. On each side there ran a bench of stone, on which was ranged the company of the initiated.(3163) The central aisle led up to the apse, against the walls of which was set the sculptured scene of the slaying of the bull, surrounded by the symbolic figures and emblems of Chaldaean star-lore, with altars in front.(3164) This was the holiest place, and, from some remains, it would seem to have been railed in, like the chancel of one of our churches.(3165) The neophyte, as he approached, must have been impressed by a dazzling scene. On either side the congregation knelt in prayer. Countless lamps shed their brilliant light on the forms of ancient h.e.l.lenic G.o.ds, or on the images of the mighty powers of earth or ether(3166)-above all, on the sacred scene which was the memorial of the might of the "unconquered." The ancient rhythmic litany was chanted to the sound of music; the lights came and went in startling alternations of splendour and gloom. The draught of the sacred cup seemed to ravish the sense. And the votary, as in the Isiac vision in Apuleius, for a moment seemed borne beyond the bounds of s.p.a.ce and time into mystic distances.(3167)
The Persian cult owed much of its success to imperial and aristocratic favour. The last pagan emperor of the West, the last generation of the pagan aristocracy, were devotees of the Sun-G.o.d. It is a curious thing that even under the early Empire Mithraism seems never to have suffered from the suspicion and persecution with which other alien worships had to contend.(3168) Its close league with the cult of the Great Mother, which, since the second century B.C., had been an established inst.i.tution, may have saved Mithra from official mistrust. He also emerged into prominence in the age in which imperial jealousy of guilds and colleges was visibly relaxing its precautions.(3169) A more satisfying explanation may perhaps be found in the sympathy of the Flavian dynasty(3170) and the princes of the third century for the religious ideas of the East, and in the manifest support which heliolatry lent to growing absolutism and the worship of the Caesars.
The apotheosis of the emperors began even in the time of the first Caesar, who rose to the highest divine honours before his death. But it was long a fluctuating and hesitating creed. The provinces, and particularly the cities of Asia Minor,(3171) were more eager to decree temples and divine honours to the lord of the world than even the common people of Italy. The superst.i.tious ma.s.ses and the soldiery, indeed, were equal to any enthusiasm of flattery and superst.i.tion. But the cultivated upper cla.s.s, in spite of the effusive compliance of court poets,(3172) having but little belief in any Divine Powers, were not likely to yield an easy faith to the G.o.dhead of a Claudius or a Nero.(3173) The emperors themselves, belonging to this cla.s.s, and often sharing its fastidious scepticism, for a time judiciously restrained a too exuberant devotion to their person.(3174) The influence of Herod may have filled t