Art. 5.-THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS.

1. Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra. Vol. 1, Introduction; Vol. II, Texts, &c. By Franz Cumont. Brussels: Lamertin, 1896-1899.

2. Les mystères de Mithra. By Franz Cumont. Third edition. Brussels: Lamertin, 1913.

3. Eine Mithrasliturgie. By Albert Dieterich. Second edition, with additions, by Richard Wünsch. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1909.

4. The Religious Life of Ancient Rome. By J. B. Carter. London: Constable, 1911.

And other works.

IN days when Mithras was a less familiar figure than he has since become, Renan wrote that, if Christianity had been arrested in its growth by some mortal sickness, the world would have been Mithraist'; and, if this be thought a paradox, we may at least agree with Dieterich † that Mithraism was the most serious rival faced and conquered by Christianity.

M. Franz Cumont, to whom students of comparative religion in general and of Mithraism in particular owe an incalculable debt, was but twenty-eight years old when the first volume of his 'Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra'-a classic of research, if ever book deserved the name-was published in 1896, to be followed three years later by a second, described as an Introduction critique,' but really an exhaustive historical study of the religion of Mithras. It needs but a glance at the collection of texts and monuments to show that we have here a signal example of the light which archæological discovery throws upon the dark places of our historical and literary record. The texts-Greek, Latin, and Oriental --in which Mithras is named, bulk small beside the six hundred inscriptions set up by his worshippers and the sculptured monuments found in his sanctuaries; and it is to these, in the main, that we owe our knowledge, not only of the geographical diffusion of Mithraism, but also of the symbols and trappings of the cult and—in many

'Marc-Aurèle,' p. 579.

Kleine Schriften,' p. 271.

essential features-the doctrine which they enshrined. For those who cannot afford to study these monuments at first hand, M. Cumont's smaller book, the latest edition of which brings into account the fresh material discovered down to the year 1913, gives an excellent summary of the whole subject.

The cult of Mithras has a long history, but it was only in its latest phase that it acquired the profound significance which enabled it to aspire and almost attain to the dignity of a universal religion. That Mithras was worshipped in primitive times by the undivided Indo-Iranian people is clearly proved by the fact that his name appears in the Vedas as well as in the Avesta ; and, although his rank in the Vedic pantheon was never pre-eminent, his visible manifestation in the heavenly light and his moral attributes as the upholder of truth and justice are the same in both religions. Moreover, the recently discovered cuneiform tablets of Boghaz-Keui have revealed the striking fact that in the fifteenth century B.C. Northern Mesopotamia was inhabited by an Indo-Iranian people, known to their neighbours as Mitanni, who were worshippers of Mithras together with other Vedic divinities such as Varuna and Indra. There is, however, no sign that the specific doctrines of the Iranian religion, associated with the name of Zoroaster, had taken shape at so early a date; and it was his connexion with this system of beliefs that enabled Mithras to enter upon his triumphant career.

This is not the place to examine the difficult problems connected with the origins of Zoroastrianism and the dating of its sacred books; it must suffice to say that by the time of the Achæmenid dynasty we find the dualistic system, in which Ahura the Wise takes the place of Varuna as the upholder of law and order both in the physical and in the moral world, established, with its priesthood and its liturgy, as the religion of the Persian State. The conception of the world-process as a struggle, in nature between Light and Darkness, in man between good and evil-strangely blended, in the early texts, with half-historical, half-symbolical allusions to the ancient strife between Iran and Turan, the Sown and the Wild-was of course the most profound and fruitful of the ideas of Zoroaster; and the world is not likely

to forget the fact. But the propagation of this idea, especially in the west, might have been slow and difficult without the driving force supplied by the political articles of the creed. Ahura-Mazda, it was believed, was not only the lawful ruler of the universe, but the protector of legitimate monarchy amongst men; and the token of his grace was the Hvareno, a kind of aureole or effulgence transmitted from the light invisible, which encircled the head of those kings who ruled by right divine. Now the dispenser of AhuraMazda's grace was none other than Mithras, the most glorious of his creatures and his victorious champion in the visible world-the borderland of light and darkness vainly attacked by the hosts of Ahriman. We do not know at what date this conception of the function of Mithras took shape; it may be significant that, whilst Ahura-Mazda alone appears in the inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, Mithras is coupled with him in those of Artaxerxes Mnemon and his successors. any rate, his eminent position may be inferred from the number of Persian names- of which the most familiar is Mithradates-which betoken the worship of Mithras by their bearers,* and the fact that he is the only Persian divinity named by contemporary Greek authors.†

At

The fall of the Empire of Darius, far from checking the progress of Mithras-worship, gave a fresh impulse to its diffusion; for amongst the mushroom dynasties which sprang from the ruins of Alexander's Empire the cult of a divinity whose favour could turn a military adventurer into a King by right divine' was naturally popular. Mithradates Eupator, the most formidable antagonist overcome by Rome in the last century of the Republic, was but one amongst many who bore that significant name; a visible token of the alliance between Mithras and the Asiatic dynasties remains to this day in the rock-sculptures of Nemrud-Dagh, where we see Antiochus I of Commagene, clad in Persian costume and wearing the tiara, clasping the right hand of Mithras, his protector and ally; and the researches of Rostowzew

* The word 'Hvareno' (v. supra) enters into the composition of such Persian names as that which the Greeks wrote 'Pharnabazus.'

† Herodotus (i, 131) makes the curious mistake of taking Mírpa as a feminine.

(to which further allusion will be made) have shown that Mithraism was adopted as the official creed by the wealthy Scythian princes of the South-Russian steppe.

The westward advance of Mithraism brought it into immediate contact with the Greek world. Hellas itself, as will be seen in the sequel, Mithras was never destined to conquer; and the kingdoms whose rulers professed the creed were not, like those of Antioch or Pergamon, purely or at any rate mainly Hellenic, but were based on a compromise between eastern and western civilisation, in which the former element was the stronger. In the royal line of Commagene the names of Antiochus and Mithradates alternate; but although, in the inscription of Nemrud-Dagh, Antiochus I is careful to call himself Φιλορωμαῖος καὶ Φιλέλλην, and to declare that the images which he has set up are fashioned according to the ancient tradition handed down by Persians and Greeks, the blessed root whence my race is sprung,' there can be small doubt that the Gods of his worship, although they bear the titles 'Zeus-Oromasdes,' 'ApolloMithras-Helios-Hermes' and 'Artagnos-Heracles-Ares,' are simply the Ahura-Mazda, Mithra, and Verethragna of the Zoroastrian religion, with nothing Greek about them but their borrowed titles. So too Mithradates the Great of Pontus, though he traced his lineage both to Alexander and Darius, and found it politically expedient to coquet with Hellenism, represents, as Mommsen pointed out, a national or rather racial reaction of Asiatics against Occidentals, which, at the time of his wars with Rome, was the moving force throughout the Near East-in Judæa and Egypt just as much as in Pontus or Cappadocia.

It was not for nothing, however, that an alliance, albeit a superficial one, had been sealed between Mithras and Apollo. Whatever, in the realm of religious ideas, Persia had to give, in the field of art at least she was the borrower. The familiar Mithraic sculptures, presently to be described in greater detail with reference to the ideas which they embody, tell their tale plainly to those versed in the history of Greek Art. Mithras

* Dittenberger ('Orientis Græci Inscriptiones,' No. 383) points out that in this expression, so awkwardly introduced in the text, both races are to be understood as contributing to the pedigree.

the Bull-slayer-as may be seen even from a cursory inspection of the Heddernheim relief (pl. I), which is a commonplace piece of work-is the lineal descendant of the Sacrificing Victory which adorns the balustrade of the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis of Athens. His costume bears but a remote resemblance to that of the Persians-its distinctive feature is simply the 'Phrygian cap,' which, by the convention of Hellenistic art, was assigned to all Orientals; and his features, in the finer examples which alone preserve some trace of the spirit of their original, are of what archæologists are wont to call the Alexandroid' type. Cumont has observed that the exaggerated pathos of the composition, the realism with which the death-agony of the victim is portrayed, and 'the strange mixture of exaltation and remorse which distorts the features of the slayer' and gives them a kind of morbid grace, all point to the school of Pergamon as that in which the motif was first conceived and embodied in marble.

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*

The faith whose monuments Greek artists were thus summoned to adorn had already received a substantial infusion of elements foreign to the orthodox Zoroastrian creed. Beside the relief already described, most Mithrea possessed a statue in human form, but with a lion's head and encircled by a serpent's coils. The type is Oriental in conception, but Greek in execution; and of its meaning there can be no doubt. It represents the Zervan Akarana (Infinite Time) of Zoroastrianism, identified by the Greeks with Kronos. We do not know precisely what part this divinity played in the mysteries of Mithras; but its importance clearly dates from the period in which Babylonian speculation set to work upon Persian ideas. The powers and elements of Nature retained their places in the creed of the later Magi; but they were overshadowed by the conception of Destiny, inspired by the study of the immemorial and changeless process of the heavenly bodies, whose movements served as the measure of unending Time.† From this conception

* The type is subject to individual variations which make it impossible to assign its creation to a definite date and school.

In the system to which the name of Zervanism has been given, this conception was employed in the resolution of the problem of dualism, Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman were regarded as alike the offspring of Zervan.