The Genius of Mithraism

Author(s): Arthur Darby Nock

Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 27, Part 1: Papers Presented to Sir Henry Stuart
Jones (1937), pp. 108-113
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
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THE GENIUS OF MITHRAISM
By ARTHUR DARBY NOCK
Since Sir Henry Stuart Jones has included Mithraism among his
many interests, 1 it seems appropriate to offer to him on this occasion
some remarks on its general significance. No phcnomenon in Imperial
paganism has attracted as much attention, and this is natural.
Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum
quis in versamur, quis vivimus rebus, potesse.
Let us make another provisional attempt to determine the pretium
verum of Mithraism.
We see in it something of eastern worship detached from its
native content and developed in a new milieu; apparently it had no
oecumenical organization; certainly it tolerated other gods, and
lent itself to an unchecked local diversification of forms. 2 In all these
respects it was essentially on a par with the other
'
oriental religions
in Roman paganism.' Nevertheless, it differed from them in various
significant ways. The normal exclusion of women and the moral
demands made of the initiate have often been remarked; but that is
not all.
First, the social basis of Mithraism was peculiar. Syrian and
Egyptian cults were commonly carried abroad by Syrian and Egyptian
migrants. Men of other racial origins came to use these rites, but
a native character persisted, and in the western half of the empire
the administration of the ceremonies seems to have remained in the
hands of a clergy which, if not oriental in birth, at least preserved
the appearances of oriental origin, and which, like the priesthoods
of the Near East, seems to have been professional in character and to
have lived by the exercise of religious functions. 2a Cybele's cult was
different, because of its deliberate introduction at Rome in a Roman
form under th-e direction of the quindecimviri. Her conquests in the
western provinces were the conquests of a Roman goddess.
Mithras never acquired civic status or a place among the sacra
publica.3 But he was not carried by groups of emigrant Iranians.
His worship had indeed entered the Greek world on a national basis,
starting, as it must have done, with groups of Persians who remained in
1
Article in J. Hastings, Encyclopaedia o1 Religion
and Ethics viii, 752 ff.; Quarterly Revieuw ccxxi
(I914), I03 ff.
2
C/. E. Wuist in P-W s.v. ' Mithras, col. 2I45 f.;
Nock in Gnomon vi (I930), 33 ff.
2a The priests of cult societies for the Syrian
deities need not have been professional.
3
Julian is speaking in terms of his own personal
devotion when he says of the Romans, Orat.
iv,
p. I55 B: et aost /LeTa TOUJTO <atesbR U'S KaL -OV
MWpepaz
T7L/LAW/LEP KacL dyyocEPv
HXfcp TeTpacT?7pLKOS d&yw aT,.
epd' veb-repa.
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THE GENIUS OF MITHRAISM lO9
Asia Minor after the victories of Alexander ; an indication of this
remains in the use of ' Perses ' as the title for the fifth grade of
initiation. 3a Nevertheless, the Mithraism which reached the western
world was a new thing, created by fusion in Asia Minor; the
Mithraism which came to Dura-Europos was brought first by
Palmyrene archers4 and secondly by Roman soldiers-not by
Parthians.5 In general, the cult was carried by pirates, soldiers,
functionaries, traders, and slaves, who had learned this derivative of
Persian belief, and it did not travel on a national basis. The spread
of religious ideas, Jewish in origin, by the Christians is in fact analogous,
and 'nama' in Mithraism corresponds to 'Amen.'
Furthermore, Mithras in the western world does not seem to
have had a priestly caste or a professional clergy. We do not find any
special terminology except that of the grades of initiation-never
magus, and nothing comparable with profeta, pastophorus, gallus,
fanaticus,-but
instead sacerdos, antistes, hieroceryx, and the normal
words for men holding office in a collegium. Our inscriptional records
mention a pater (an initiate of the highest grade) or a sacerdos or
antistes as the person in charge. 6 Cumont left it an open question
whether there was or was not some priestly order in Mithraism as a
whole.
I
The evidence is scanty. In a late Roman dedication we find the
ordo sacerdotum honouring the pater patrum. 8 May we not suppose
that the priestly office was, sometimes at least, annual, and that the
ordo, like the ordo Augustalium, was composed of men who had held
it ? This would be clear, if we could be sure of the reading ' sac(er-
dote) it(erum) ' in a votive inscription found in the Mithraeum of
Deutsch-Altenburg: Mommsen and Cumont both treat it as uncer-
tain,
9
while Kubitschek, who checked the text later, makes no com-
ment. 10 A second indication, again unfortunately open to question, is
afforded by a text from Dorstadt in Dacia: ' [Invic]to S[oli deo ge]ni-
tori [P. Ael.
Art]emidorus
de [c(?) . . . . . .] sacer(dos) creatus a Pal-
[myre]nis
do(mo) Macedonia et
adve[nitor
huius templi pro se et suis
fecit.' 1 1 Cumont is now inclined to restore'
de[orum]
sacerdos,' and to
suppose that this man was made a priest of the Palmyrene gods.
12
But
3a
Mr. Le Roy Campbell of Yale University,
who kindly read this article in proof, makes an
alternative suggestion which may well be right-
that ' Perses ' is an artificial piece of archaism in-
vented to give atmosphere.
4Rostovtzeff, Rdm. Mitt. xlix, I934, I94
ff.
Cumont, CR Ac. Inscr. I934,
go
ff., suggests that
these men may have learned Mithraism from the
Hadrianic garrison of Palmyra. This is possible;
but see below for Palmyrenes in Dacia apparently
worshipping Mithras.
We know very little as to the type of religion
prevalent in Parthia during this period. Cumont,
Riv. fil.
lxi
(933),
I45 ff., has shown reason for
believing that the Tiridates who visited Nero knew
something like our Mithraism; but in general we
may suspect that ritual practices such as were
common in the Achaemenid period predominated.
6 Cumont, Textes et monuments ii, 535 f.; add
from the Mithraeum at Gimmeldingen, '. . . fanus
consacra(tus) per Potentianum patrem' [A.D. 325
J. Leipoldt, Die Religion des Mithra (H. Haas,
Bilderatlas zur Religionsgeschichte, Lief. xv), p. xix].
Les mystei-es de Mithra,
I70.
8
CIL vi, 2I5i:ITextes ii, p. 96, inscr. i8;
cl.
p. II8, inscr. I4 '. . . sacerdoti . . . sacerdotes.'
9
CIL iii, 44I7=Textes ii, p. I47, inscr. 372.
10
CIL iii,
P.
1770-
G1 CIL
iii,
7728.
12
Les religions orievtales dans le paganisnoe
romain,4 276, n. 39.
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110 ARTHUR DARBY NOCK
'deorum sacerdos 'is a very strange phrase, 13 and it is easier to imagine
that these Palmyrenes made a man from Macedonia priest of Mithras
-whose cult had an extra-national basis-than to envisage them
making him priest of Malachbel and similar gods. Consequently we
may prefer Cumont's earlier supplement
de[curio
(?)
],14
and
interpret sacerdos as sacerdos Mithrae. If this is right, we have
another indication against the existence of anything like a priestly
order or caste ; for creatus implies the choice of an ordinary man to
perform priestly functions whether for a year or longer. If there
had been individuals held to possess an inherent fitness to conduct
priestly ministrations, and if a congregation chose at will from among
them, as in effect it chooses Episcopalian clergy in the United
States,
we should expect some such word as adscitus.
We cannot have any great confidence in the interpretation of
these and other data, 15 and we must sulppose that custom varied in
different times and places, 16 but we may provisionally conclude that
a Mithraic collegium selected its priestly officials after the manner of
other collegia, and that ,uayo& and
vyoua0cxo&
had no equivalent in the.
west. If this is so, there.must have been at least two important
stages in the evolution of MVithraism. The first is indicated by the
word cys6uoIocx
in an inscription at Ariaramneia in Cappadocia ; for
ysuYyoa
implies that a.man who was not a magos by birth could
become one by some ceremonial and could thus acquire competence to
perform Magian rites. 17 The second stage abandoned the appearance
of Magianism. In any case, whatever were the functions performed
by sacerdos or antistes, 18 the initiations, which were the most solemn
part of Mithraic life, were in the hands of the pa ter. 1 9 Further, the
whole community of initiates were sacrati.
Secondly, the other oriental religions in Roman paganism had
two principal expressions in worship: (a) a cult-drama, in which. the
sacred story of man's deliverance was annually set forth in action
before all who cared to attend ; (b) initiations, in which those who
were found worthy were one by one subjected to ceremonies which,,
either at once or by stages, produced a new spiritual condition and a
new relationship to the gods. (a) was normally an integral part of
the cult, and, although the deities concerned were also approached
in the ordinary way by processions, sacrifices, votive offerings, hymns,
and prayers, the cult-drama was probably performed wherever there
was a substantial temple. (b) was for the relatively few, and there is.
13
I can quote only CIL x, i560 (Puteoli)-
'servitor deorurn,' which does not profess to be an
official title, and vi, 377 pater
deoru orniuniss.
14
Textes ii, p. I34, inscr. 257.
'5 The term 'privati' in a dedication in the
Mithraeum at Bingen (published by I-I. Finke in
RGK, xvii Bericbt, 1927, 75) seems to be in contrast
with the higher grades of initiation; another text
from Bingen (ibid. p. 74) mentions a pater sacrorumsi
and a matricarius.
16
Thus at Rome we find an antistes who is le
and has not yet reached the highest grade (Textes.
ii, p. IoI, inscr.
45).
17
Cf. Nock in Jackson-Lake, Beginnings of
Christianity v,
I77.
18
The two terms are clearly synonymous.
19
Cumont, Harvard Theological Review xxv!
('933), I55.
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THE GENIUS OF MITHRAISM I I I
no reason to suppose that it existed in every temple of Isis or Cybele
or the Syrian deities. 2 0
Now Mithraism, so far as we know, had nothing corresponding
to the cult-drama ; in fact the essential mystery-idea of a deity
annually doing or suffering something was absent. Mithras was not
born annually and did not die annually: he had created once; in the
present he helped and saved; in the end he would inaugurate the new
order which would last for ever. Although the Greek idea of cycles
could be superimposed, the original Iranian basis of Mithraism
involved a concept of history akin to that of the Jews ; semel Christus
-natus est. On the other hand, Mithraism, outside Asia Minor,
always included initiations. Accordingly, while the range of popular
devotion to Mithras was thus limited, his worship had a more inturned
and intense character. That it remained a private cult was no
accident.
Thirdly, Mithraism had its own cosmogony and eschatology,
and the bas-relief which met the eye in every Mithraeum set this
cosmogony in the centre of things.2' This may well have been an
asset in Imperial times, when cosmogony gained a new interest from
an incoherent but widespread mood of questioning and of spiritual
anxiety, 22 and the tendency to value non-Greek wisdom as of fabulous
antiquity was very strong. So we see a multiplication of ' barbarian '
cosmogonies ; four in our Hermetic literature, a fifth
'
Hermetic
'
one presupposed by Sanchuniathon as quoted by Philo of Byblus;
the Phoenician cosmogony of Sanchuniathon himself; those quoted
by Damascius, Dubitationes et solutiones i, 32I $f. (ed. Ruelle) from
the Babylonians, the Magi, the Sidonians and the Egyptians.
Mithraism was unique in that it told of the end as well as of the
beginning. Further, other mystery-religions could be interpreted
by the use of Greek philosophic concepts ; but in
Mithraism,
as in
Judaism and Christianity, there was what seemed a core or
philosophy.23
Fourthly, the myth of Mithras was quite different from the
myths of the other oriental gods who were attracting attention
at the same time. The worshipper of Attis and Adonis was concerned
only with the god's death and with the subsequent turning of sorrow
into joy; for Osiris there was also a tradition of his earthly rule
and of his introduction of civilized order into human life. Each of
these gods had a birth-story, and the birth of Osiris had in Egypt a
liturgical commemoration in the Pamylia. But none of these gods
had a Vita, as Mithras had, a chain of actions each of which was an
event in the world's drama. This Vita throughout represented
2 0
Cl.
Nock, Conversion, 38 ff.,
56
ff.
21 M. P. Nilsson, Deutsche Literaturzeitung,
1933, col. 253, has pointed to the attractive power
of Mithraic cosmogony.
22
C/. Nock, in Gnosnon xii (1936), 6Io if.
23
At the same time we must
distinguish
between
Mithraism as a religion on the one hand and the
literary dissemination of Iranian ideas on the other -
I hope to return to this topic elsewhere.
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I112 ARTHUR DARBY NOCK
vigorous heroic achievement. Attis and Adonis had a distinctly
feminine aspect in art and story; Osiris had an air of age. All three
were for a time worsted, although they ultimately triumphed;
Mithras was throughout inictus. 24 So, while the cult of Mithras
could give some satisfaction to the anxious questing mood of the time,
it spoke also the language of another and a more Roman mood'-
the instinct for unsparing exertion in the face of mighty obstacles.
This may have contributed to the god's popularity in the higher ranks
of the army. I suspect that this note of energy was more important
than the note of revelation. Julian was a keen Mithraist and looked
to Mithras as moral guide, Commander and redeemer: but for
insights concerning the universe he turned to his philosophic teachers
and to the doctrines enshrined in the new synthetic mysteries which
were associated with the Chaldaic Oracles. 25
Mithras had a character which was all his own. A man might
hope to be delivered as Attis, Adonis, and Osiris were delivered
he might hope to be delivered by them; but we can hardly suppose
him to have desired to be like them. On the other hand, a man
could follow Mithras, not only as leader but also as exemplar. An
Ostian dedication has the noteworthy phrase ' antistes dei iubenis (sic)
inconrupti Solis invicti
Mithra[el.'
2 6 Mithras had from of old been
god of justice and truth as well as god of light. In the Graeco-Roman
world one feature of his story perhaps acquired a new importance.
Unlike the gods of Greece and the gods of Rome as seen in the light
of Greek ideas, and the gods of Syria and Egypt who had come into
the picture, Mithras had no erotic mythology. It may be that the
god thus drew to himself some of that sentiment glorifying sexual
abstinence which is illustrated in the Greek novel (above all in
Heliodorus) and in the Historia Jugusta.27
Fifthly, the *representation of supernatural personages in art
made a deep impression on the ancients, just as it did on the men of
the Middle Ages ; the pictorial theology of Villon's mother is an
instructive illustration. Artemidorus tells how people dreamed of the
gods and saw them in one or other of the familiar art-types. Now
Mithraism had an iconography which, in spite of differences, is on the
24
On this epithet L. Berlinger, Beitrage zur
inoj/iziellen Titulatur der rdnmischen Kaiser (Diss.
Breslau, i935),
zo ff., has some very valuable remarks
and has properly stressed the importance of
Heracles. The art-cycle of Mithras' achievements
has a certain analogy to the 'HpaKVVoU 7rpd4eLW, as
they are called in the 'Tabula Iliaca' (0. Jahn,
Griecbische Bilderchroniken, 43).
25 The barbarian cosmogonies quoted by philoso-
phers under the Empire (as earlier by Aristotle)
are given as interesting illustrations; only at the
lower intellectual level of the Hermetica is one a
dogma.
26
CIL xiv, 66; cf. Cumont, CRAc. Inscr. I934,
ro6, on the term 'Kepatot, as applied to initiates at
Dura.
27E.g.
fita Opilii Macr. 12 (savage punishments
of sexual offences); fita Pescenii 6.6 ' rei veneriae
nisi ad creandos liberos prorsus ignarus '-an
interesting contrast with the concubine of Marcus
Aurelius. On the Greek novel and its ethical
sentimentalism ci. M. Braun, Griechischer Roman
at. hellenistiscke Geschichtschreibustg, 35, n. I, 62 ff.
and index s.v. 'Gewissen';
on popular morality,
cf. S. Reinach, Arch. Rel.-Wiss. ix (I906), 312 ff.
I suspect that certain scruples at the popular level
fused in a measure with the salvationism which
spread downwards from Pythagorean and Platonic
circles;
cf.
Gnomon xii
(936),
6Io f.
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THE GENIUS OF MITHRAISM 113
whole curiously consistent. 28 This is not in itself peculiar; Sabazios,
Nemesis and Isis had types which are found everywhere, and the
representation of a goddess between two riders is found all over the
eastern half of the empire and sporadically in the west. Nevertheless,
Mithraic iconography is very significant, because it emphasized so well
both the cosmogonic and the heroic aspects of the sacred story. Apart
from the appearance of Phaethon in the Dieburg Mithraeum, there is
no progressive Hellenization, but rather a fixity which is almost creedal.
In this, as in the two stages of organization discussed earlier, we must
see the work of a definite individual or individuals.
Sixthly, while Mithras was originally a god of light and not a
Sun god, and while in legend and art Helios is different from him
and, in fact, subordinate, Mithras was nevertheless solar in the e yes
of the people and in dedications he was very commonly equated with
Sol. So was Sarapis-but the link was less close. The appeal of
Mithraism was therefore re-inforced by very widespread and powerful
trends the philosophic heliocentric piety which meant so much to so
many; the universal acceptance of a solar calendar 2
9
the Syrian
solar cults ; natural piety towards the Sun as the source of light and
life. 3 0 Mithraism drew from this far more than it contributed.
The Sol invictus who came to Rome with Aurelian was Syrian and not
Iranian: this was the god whom Constantine's ancestors, strengthened
perhaps by a background of Thracian beliefs, accepted.
Mithraism had thus ideas, power, intensity and qualities which
differentiated it from its natural rivals. Without a hierarchy, without
the control of the quindecimviri, it retained its characteristic forms over
a wide range. But it showed its strength only in part of the empire. We
can easily be misled by the devotion which the last circles in Rome
showed towards Mithras ; his cult and the taurobolium were, so to
speak, the forms of paganism which seemed to them most deeply laden
with emotion; Julian's example probably counted for something.3'
Suppose that Christianity had perished early, whether as a result
of a consistent persecution or by being swallowed up in the general
religious and cultural atmosphere of the time: we should not then have
had a Mithraic world. We might have had a world in which Mith-
raism itself was the special devotion of a few but in which it had been
otherwise absorbed in a solar piety grafted on the normal observances
of ancient paganism, with perhaps some mild diffusion of a higher
nmoral tone. There was, if anything, less chance of the Roman Empire
turning Mithraic than of seventeenth-century England turning
Quaker. To say this is not to under-estimate Mithraism or Quakerism.
28
C/. F. Saxl, Mithras; L. Deubner, Gronion
ix
(I933), 37Z
ff.; and note the phrase in a Mithraeum
at Ostia, deum vetusta religione in velo formatum'
(of Caelus): G. Calza, N. d. Sc. 1924, 73.
29 C/. M. P. Nilsson, Arch. Rel.-Wiss. xxx
('933), I4I ff.
3 0
Cf.
Nock, JTS xxxvii (1936), 305.
31
For a nev monument of the period found in
Rome cf. R. Paribeni,
N. d. Sc. 1933, 478 ff.; it must
be Mithraic, but the sun god, as Paribeni remarks,
resembles Juppiter Ileliopolitanus more than
Mithras.
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