Mithras： Master of Mystery - Ronald Hutton

I'll hand over to Ronald, thanks so much. Good evening everybody. At first sight, giving a talk on the cult of Mithras should be an easy task for anybody with some knowledge of the religions of the Roman Empire. It is by far the most famous of the mystery religions of that empire, meaning enclosed societies of worshippers entered by initiation, conducting strictly private rituals and intended to give members a special relationship with a particular god and or goddess. Most of the historical novels that have been set in Roman Britain have featured it. One of the finest bits of Mithraic liturgy in existence was written not by a Roman officer serving on some frontier or a devotee in Rome itself, but by Rudyard Kipling. Here it is from Puck of Pook's Hill, an illustration of which is on the screen, from 1906. Mithras, god of the morning, our trumpets awaken the wall. Rome is above the nations but thou art over all. Now as the names are answered and the guards are marched away, Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day. Mithras, god of the noontide, the heather swims in the heat. Our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet. Now in the unguert hour, now ere we blink and drowse, Mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows. Mithras, god of the sunset, low on the western main, thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again. Now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn, Mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn. Mithras, god of the midnight, here where the great bull dies, look on thy children in darkness, oh take our sacrifice. Many roads thou hast fashioned, all of them lead to the light. Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die, all right. There is also what looks like an impressive amount of historical and archaeological evidence, most collected in two stages by two towering scholars. One was a Belgian, Franz Cumont, who in the later 19th century gathered all the available data for the cult. The other was a Dutchman, Maarten J. Vanasseren, who repeated this work in the mid-20th century. Each in turn dominated Mithraic studies in his time. In the late 20th century, in this as in other historical fields, there has been a multiplication of experts with no one presiding figure and lots of disagreement. There's also been a small addition of new evidence. At present, the total database for a knowledge of Mithras and his mysteries consists of 420 shrines, all now in ruins, around a thousand short inscriptions, most of them dedications of shrines, around 700 images of Mithras killing the bull of darkness, around 400 reliefs showing other bits of his mythology, a few short texts of Egyptian papyri, and a few denunciations of the Mithras religion by Christians. Now this may sound impressive but stop and think for a moment, how much would understand Christianity if all the evidence for it consisted of 420 ruined churches, about a thousand records of who built the church but not what happened there, a few scattered lines of liturgy, around 700 images of the crucifixion, about 400 reliefs showing other scenes from the New Testament without any explanations of them, and a few denunciations of Christianity by Muslim evangelists. The result would leave a scarily large amount of missing knowledge and a huge space for speculation. Differences of interpretation and scholarly conflict would be rife. As a result, in what follows, I shall constantly have to emphasise how much we don't know. Nevertheless, there is still an agreeable amount that is now known. We should start logically enough with the origins of Mithraism. Unfortunately, this is the biggest puzzle of all. The religion sold itself as an exotic importation into the Roman Empire from the Orient. It therefore had much the same status as the Hare Krishna temples, Osho centres, Zen Buddhist monks, and divine light missions in the Western world during the 1970s. Specifically, it claimed to come from Persia or Parthia, Rome's powerful neighbour to the East. Mithras has a Persian name and he wears a Persian costume. One of his initiatory grades is called the Persian. Experts are now seemingly unanimous that the Eastern origin of Mithraism was a fiction. No trace of it has been found in Persia itself and it was very weak in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire that were closest to Persia. Nor did it first appear in them, but in the Western provinces of the Empire. There was a traditional Persian god called Mitra or Mithra, he's on the screen, recorded since the second millennium BC or BCE, but he was not Mithras. He was simply a perfectly straightforward sun god, worshipped publicly all over Persia and northern India. He was an embodiment of conquering light who drove away evil spirits and witnessed promises and encouraged good faith and loyalty. The common name for kings at the eastern end of the Black Sea, Mithridates, means gift of Mithra. The Greeks compared him with their own sun gods, Apollo and Sol. No direct link can be found between him and Mithraism at all. Mithraism appears suddenly in the last decade of the first Christian century in two different places which actually converge on the same origin point. One is Rome itself which can be made clear because the poet Statius referred amiably to the existence of the cult in that decade, the 90s. The other is among soldiers in the northern frontier of the empire at the same time. These soldiers however always came from Italy and have only arrived recently on the frontier. This meant that the almost certain origin point of Mithraism was in Italy and probably at Rome. The shrines there start at dates a few years later but if the cult did begin in Rome it probably did so in private houses and only needed to move out into purpose-built structures after a time. Mithraism was therefore most probably a home-grown Roman religion pretending to be an exotic one which represented the ancient wisdom of an oriental land but absolute proof of that is missing. So how did it spread and where? Its proliferation across the empire was sensationally rapid so that within 50 years it was found the entire length of it from Britain to Mesopotamia. Inside this huge range however it had particular concentrations and this pattern did not alter at all hereafter. It was very weak in the whole eastern half of the empire as said and in all its Mediterranean provinces except Italy. Its strongholds were in Rome and its neighbourhood, eastern Gaul now France, the military garrisons on the Rhine and Danube frontiers and among the soldiers stationed in Britain including London itself. It never received any public recognition or funding and was never put into the official calendar of festivals. Despite this and its exoticism there was nothing subversive or counter-cultural about it at all. It was very politically loyal calling for blessings on the emperor and entirely socially respectable. Two books were actually published about it in the middle of the second century when it reached the full extent of its range. Both appeared in Rome from authors called Pallas and Ebulus. If those books had survived we'd know a lot more about Mithraism but both were lost at the end of the ancient world. The new mystery religion continued to grow until the 250s and then shrank in the face of multiple crises hitting the empire. It had a revival in the early fourth century and then another in the 360s and 370s especially in Rome. It then however hit a rapid and dramatic decline and there is no trace of it after 400. So who belonged to it? The answer is men at least until the fourth century when some women appear in it at least among the few outposts of it in the eastern greek-speaking parts of the empire. Another group that mostly stayed out of it was the social elite until the late fourth century when it suddenly and briefly became fashionable among aristocrats at Rome itself. For most of its history and through all its most successful periods it attracted the middle and lower classes. In other words it was popular among common soldiers and junior officers, imperial civil servants, merchants, ordinary citizens and slaves from wealthy households. In short it appealed to groups who valued authority and wanted social advancement. Surviving prayers inscribed at shrines indicate something of their hopes and ambitions. Slaves naturally wanted to be freed, bureaucrats and soldiers wanted promotion and citizens to get local political success. One man just wanted his son to stay alive in the army. There seems an addition to have been an expectation of salvation for initiates in the next world. Texts record a belief that their souls would ascend to the stars. So what of the shrines to which we can now give their proper name of Mithraea? Famously they are remarkably uniform throughout the empire. The classicist Ken Dowden compared them in size and shape to a modern railway carriage. He said that the comparison is the more apt in that Mithraea also had rows of seats down the side and the occupants seemed to spend a lot of time having drinks and eating fried chicken. The first point to make about them is that they were small, most being under 30 feet in length. They could accommodate about 15 or 20 people sitting down and at most 40 standing up. If a congregation outdrew its Mithraeum, instead of extending it, it would divide and one set build a new one. The point was to have a confined space for a limited number of celebrants within which intense experiences could happen. The Mithraeum was supposed to represent a cave. Where possible it was actually built in a cave. Elsewhere a windowless building was used. Occasionally it had outbuildings such as a kitchen and or a storehouse threaded by doorways to the main structure. On the outside a Mithraeum was completely unremarkable, blending into the surrounding environs. Inside it was unmistakable, as characteristic as a modern Masonic temple. It always had a central nave flanked by parallel benches leading to the altar and the main relief of Mithras. At the opposite end to those flanking the entrance were reliefs or statues of two male figures wearing Mithras's Persian cap. One held an upright torch, the other one a torch turned down. They were named Cautes and Cautopates or Cautophates and are generally thought to symbolise sunrise and sunset. Within this format there was a lot of variety. Floors could be mosaic pavements or beaten earth mixed with pebbles or concrete painted bright red. Seats could be of wood, wickerwork, stone or marble. Some were clearly shaped to hold cushions. The statues and reliefs could be at the end or between the seats. The ceiling could be painted blue with golden stars. Sun Mithra had small metal bells perhaps for ringing during initiation ceremonies or when the main icon was revealed. Rings were put in the ceilings for hanging lamps. There were often side altars to Cautes and Cautophates and sometimes to other deities as well. The walls and spaces between seats were commonly decorated with representations of the seasons and of the zodiac and astronomical figures. What is generally agreed is that the inside space was designed to be a model of the world or the cosmos through which initiates could pass to salvation represented by the god and his altar. The seasons, stars, astronomical symbols and zodiacs have caused some scholars, mainly Roger Beck, Michael Speedle and David Ulanzi, to claim that Mithra were maps of the heavens of great complexity. Each one of these scholars has constructed an elaborate scheme to represent this and each one completely disagrees with the others. This is in itself enough to discourage me from having a personal view on such complex, extended and incompatible speculations or engaging in them myself. What can be said beyond doubt is that the Mithraeum was a place to which to withdraw from the world. The cult had no public ceremonial at all unlike other mystery religions which did stage occasional public processions, rites or plays. The position of the altar deep inside the temple was itself anomalous. The altars of other temples were in open squares outside. Mithraism was the most secretive and private of all the mystery religions, true esoteric religion. What then of its mythology? Here we are wholly reliant on the visual imagery in the Mithraea with a few inscriptions. It's apparent that Mithras was in some way closely connected to the Roman sun god Sol either because the two were identical or because Mithras was Sol's son or his alternative aspect or special creation. What is significant is that Mithraists themselves weren't sure of the answer to this either. And in practice between them they seem to have articulated all of those theological positions. This was after all not an uncommon situation in late antique religion. To take what ended up the biggest example, Jesus Christ was both the son of the Christian god and an incarnation of that god on earth. He, God and the Holy Ghost were at once a single being and three different beings. They were not exactly of the one substance with each other but from the one substance. All that is clear is that Sol is generally old and bearded and Mithras young, energetic and fresh-faced. It's also clear that Mithras was thought to have been born out of a rock although we don't know how or why. He emerged with torch and dagger in his hands to give light to the world and to slay the bull of darkness. Sometimes cauteys and cautophates were present at his birth, sometimes not. Mithras retained an affinity with rocks, his major miracle being to release a spring of water from one by firing an arrow into it. This may have been to prevent a drought, we don't know. His great feat however was to slay the cosmic bull. This was the end point of quite a long process which consisted of finding, chasing and cornering it. There was no standard narrative here, carvers of scenes making one up for themselves as they went along. Combats with monstrous animals by both gods and heroes were a standard part of ancient myth. To kill the bull was Mithras's vital achievement and gave him his main epithet of Invictus, unconquered. There's also no doubt that the bull stands for the night and winter. It is as strongly linked to the moon goddess in art as Mithras to the sun god. Nevertheless, there is nothing evil about it. It simply stands for a part of the cosmos inimical to humans and most life. Its colour is white for moonlight. Its death clearly awakens and fertilises nature. Corn and vines spill from its wound in the iconography and animals, a dog, a scorpion and a snake all feast on its blood or body. It is not clear what these particular animals represent. Mithras always kills the bull with its head raised, perhaps to hear a message from Sol, depicted in the carvings by a raven or a ray of light. Now we turn to ritual. It is clear that the religion was initiatory as well as esoteric, through seven grades corresponding to planetary deities. The basic one was the raven or corax associated with mercury. Masks of ravens have been found that were worn by this grade. The initiation rite to it, which of course brought a person into the religion, was represented in wall paintings and reliefs. The candidate was stripped naked, blindfolded and had his hands tied behind his back. He was then made to kneel for some purpose and after that a sword and perhaps other weapons were held to his chest to threaten him. The blindfold was then removed and he was crowned and at the end the famous relief of Mithras slaying the bull was revealed to him, either by unveiling or illumination or both. There was clearly some kind of rebirth experience going on here and its final end was a formal handshake with the master of the congregation which received the initiate into it. The remaining grades in ascending order were the bridegroom or maiden linked to Venus, the soldier linked of course to Mars, the lion protected by Jupiter, the Persian or moon rider associated with the moon and the sun rider with the solar association the name suggests and finally the father linked to Saturn, father of the Roman deities and also representing Mithras. We are not sure if every one of these had a fresh initiation ceremony. The Christian author Tertullian said there was one for the soldier who was offered and refused a crown crying my crown is Mithras. The pagan writer Porphyry claimed that the lions had honey poured over their hands to purify them. We're not even sure how far the grade system operated in every congregation. We hear a lot of it at Rome but much less in the provinces. Where it did it seems that most members got as far as lion. The master of the Mithraeum was of course a father and there may just have been one father in each. Lions also wore masks and may have roared in ceremonies. They seem to have been expected to adopt an ethical code and then their and for higher grades which involved avoiding the causation of harm or pain to others. Christians grumbled that Mithraic initiates had reputations for honesty and decency that seemed at times superior to their own. Aside from initiations it is hard to tell what other pyrus from the late occurred in a Mithraeum. There's an Egyptian papyrus from the late Roman period which contains a liturgy to Mithras that may or may not have issued from the cult. It is part of a famous collection called the Greek Magical Papyri all from Egypt but written in Greek. This is an assemblage of texts of ceremonial magic for different ends. The so-called Mithras liturgy is unusual among them in that its purpose is not to gain love, money, power or fame but to encounter the god. It may therefore actually come from the Mithraic mysteries but we can never know. It consists of seven successive prayers and contemplations matching the seven grades but never referring to them. The first is a purification by the elements earth, water, fire and air ending with the speaker transforming into a star. The second is a meditation on the sun. For the third the speaker closes eyes and recites the seven names of the sun and then opens them and sees doors parting to reveal the sun god as a young man in a white robe. The fourth prayer is to the seven virgin goddesses of fate and the fifth to the seven guardians of the axes of the cosmos. With the sixth the highest god is seen descending as a giant golden-haired youth in a white tunic and trousers and golden crown. This is soul Mithras and at the seventh prayer the speaker meets him face to face. So the liturgy is really a series of guided visualizations leading to a divine apotheosis and quite effective as such. Here is the second part of the liturgy. Put your right finger into your mouth and say silence, silence, silence. Symbol of the living incorruptible god. Guard me. Silence. Then make a long hissing sound. Next make a popping sound and say mayoi enath fire kecho sai redario tire filba. Then you will see the gods looking graciously upon you and no longer rushing at you but rather going about their own order of affairs. So when you see that the world above is clear and circling and that none of the gods or angels is threatening you, expect to hear a great crash of thunder so as to shock you. Then say again silence, silence. I am a star wandering about with you and shining forth out of the deep oxi oxer faeth. Immediately after you've said these things the sun's disc will be expanded and after you've said the second prayer where there is silence, silence and the accompanying words make a hissing sound and a popping sound twice and immediately you will see many five pointed stars coming forth from the sun's disc and filling all the air. Then say again silence, silence. In case you're wondering about a translation of those strange words and names in the liturgy they're actually gibberish, a technique to enhance a sense of the strange and numinous and foreign in which the magical papyri abound. Really the only other evidence for activity in Mithraea consists of abundant evidence for formal dinners. The initiates seem, according to the available data, to have spent most of their time either initiating or feasting. These meals were regarded as sacred as well as nourishing but by Roman standards they were They were mentioned occasionally in texts but most of the evidence for them is from the Mithraea themselves. It takes two main forms. One is refuse which was buried in special pits under the floor apparently to preserve secrecy. The other is menus which were painted on the walls. They show that the food was served on a table covered in a bull's hide and represented the bounty that sprang from the sacrificed cosmic bull. The basics were bread and wine as for most Mediterranean Romans. In addition however they had beef, pork, mutton, lamb, goat, lots of chicken, hence Kem Dauden's remark, fish, grapes, plums, cherries, nuts, damsons and apples. Some Mithraea as said had their own kitchens attached to prepare all this while elsewhere the food must have been cooked in neighbouring houses. As well as everything else these shrines were, the utensils found on their sites also testified to the activities inside. There's a huge amount of pottery from all this eating and drinking. The other kinds of material object consist of those for lighting and heating as the Mithraea never had windows. Thus they contained braziers for cold weather, pitch and rush torches in brackets, clay lamps fuelled by oil, incense burners and more rarely candle holders. As with other kinds of club throughout history, membership involved regular subscriptions to pay for all the expenses of the cult. One of the side benefits of it was that members were guaranteed a decent funeral to help them get to the afterlife. It is possible but unknown that there were other support mechanisms like sickness and unemployment pay as well. Treasuries occasionally survive at Mithraea that were abandoned in a hurry. They usually contain coins in small denominations showing that subscription rates were quite low and so readily affordable by citizens and even slaves. Slaves and wealthy Roman households were allowed pocket money with which they might eventually buy their freedom if they were thrifty. What then of relations between Mithraism and other kinds of religion? Some scholars have recently pointed out that it appeared when Christianity was first starting to make a widespread impact on the Roman world. They've therefore suggested that it was a pagan response to the Christian religion. There are plenty of similarities which suggest that this might have been so. The society of initiates with a young saviour god standing in a symbiotic relationship with an older god and coming from the east. Whether this is true or not however, Mithraism was a completely different kind of religion to Christianity. Instead of the universal and intolerant missionary faith, it was a closed esoteric religion, long confined to small groups of men. It also existed happily within the wider and older tradition of paganism in general. Indeed, strictly speaking, it wasn't a religion in itself at all but a cult of a particular god within a belief system that embraced many deities of different kinds. A few purist classicists have indeed suggested that there was no such thing as Mithraism and so we should drop the term. Unlike Christians, initiates of Mithras believed firmly in the existence of other kinds of divinity who had equal legitimacy to him. The observation is correct but the inference, in my opinion, is not. I think that we can readily retain the terms Mithraism and Mithraist for the cult and its initiates. Both are well established and convenient. They need not suggest a self-contained religion. What is abundantly clear is that Mithraists not only recognised but embraced other deities. They even did so inside the Mithraea. Ancient deities were expected to be hospitable so that most temples, while dedicated to one main goddess or god, would have shrines to others under the same roof. Mithraea were no exceptions. Favourite guest deities who got statues and or side altars in them were Apollo, another solar god, and local goddesses and gods important to the district. The Olympians were also popular, above all Mercury but also all the others including Venus. Finally we need to ask what happened to Mithraism. It's increasingly clear that when it was revived in the fourth century, after its late third century decline, it underwent important changes. Women were admitted in some areas at least up to the grade of lion and the system itself seemed to have atrophied and disappeared. In Rome especially they seem no longer to have been merely settings for a mystery cult and their doors were thrown open to any pagans who wished to enter and honour Mithras. These visitors were expected to leave a gift of a small coin behind them and many of these accumulated in the shrines as ritual deposits. Between 375 and 400, as said, the whole cult apparently collapsed and disappeared and the majority of known Mithraea ended violently, the buildings being ruined and the cult statues and leafs broken like these on the screen. There are a number of different possible reasons for this. The main one proposed until recently is that this was all the work of Christians who certainly set out to suppress paganism in many parts of the empire in this period. In some cases this was demonstrably the reason for the wreckage of the shrines which had crosses carved on the walls. I think myself that it's probably still the main one. Some scholars however are increasingly disinclined to let Christians do all the work. They've pointed out that Mithraea were as violently dismantled in districts where there is as yet little evidence of a Christian presence. Another culprit they've proposed instead is invading or raiding barbarians. Mithraea were especially common all along the northern frontier where they were situated outside the walls of forts. This would have made them acutely vulnerable to attack when the frontiers collapsed which they did with increasing frequency at this time. Finally it is possible that when congregations pulled out of the district or shrank below a viable level that they themselves decommissioned their places of worship. This would have involved stripping off doors and roofs, burying ritual equipment and smashing cult images to avoid them being used and profaned by non-initiates. All this is possible and it's most likely that a combination of the three factors provides sufficient explanation between them for the fate of the shrines. The key contextualising one however which really spelled the doom of Mithraeism was the triumph of Christianity. It's time to conclude. As ancient pagan cults went Mithraeism was remarkably short-lived. It came and went in 300 years. In that time however it made a great impact on the Western Roman Empire and has had a proportionate one on the modern imagination. Victorian and Edwardian scholars liked it because of its ethical teachings, its affinities with Christianity and its resemblance to Freemasonry, not just in the mostly male membership and the uniform rites and temples across the known world but the formal dinners. Masons like Kipling especially picked up on this parallel but it's fortuitous. All these characteristics of Freemasonry were slowly developed in the 17th and 18th centuries before anything was really known of Mithraeism. They are common features of an esoteric male initiatory tradition. With regard to our own knowledge of Mithraeism it really is a half-full or half-empty choice. We certainly have enough reliable data to draw some confident conclusions as I've tried to illustrate but there's still much that we don't know. This is however a normal situation with respect to ancient religion and even more with respect to prehistoric religion. We probably know more about Mithraeism than of any of the other ancient mystery cults. Our abiding ignorance of much of it can in my opinion be turned to the advantage of novelists, artists and poets. The modern imagination has here enough solid material to provide a basis for reconstruction but also a huge area for free operation for individual creativity. As somebody by nature relentlessly inclined to make the best of whatever we have I'd suggest that this is quite a happy situation in which to be. You've heard what Kipling made of the evidence now if you wish it's your turn.