Mithras
From Mythology Wiki
Mithras was the central figure of a syncretic Roman mystery religion that is attested between the 1st-4th centuries. It may have developed a century or two earlier, but had almost certainly died out by the 5th century.
The name Mithras is the Greek nominative form of Mithra, the Zoroastrian yazata that serves as mediator between Ahura Mazda and the earth, the guarantor of human contracts. However, in practice the Roman religion - i.e. the cult of Mithras - had very little to do with Zoroastrianism, and it was primarily the association with Zoroaster (who was romanticized by the Greeks and Romans) that provoked the Romans to suppose that the cult they followed had actually been founded by the prehistoric prophet.
It is nonetheless likely that some of the attributes of Roman Mithras were absorbed from other Eastern cults: for example, the Mithraic emphasis on astrology strongly suggests syncretism with star-oriented Mesopotamian or Anatolian religions. At least some of this synthesis of beliefs may have already been underway by the time the cult was adopted in the West. When the cult was introduced by Roman legions at Dura-Europos after 168 AD, the god assumed his familiar Hellenistic iconic formula.
The mythology surrounding Mithras is not easily reassembled from the enigmatic and complicated iconography. Indeed, the dedicatory inscription on a 2nd-3rd century tauroctony discovered in a Mithraeum at Ostia in the 1790s refers to the "incomprehensible deity": INDEPREHENSIVILIS DEI [1]. Apparently the cult of Mithras did not depend, as Christianity did, on the interpretation of revealed texts considered to be divinely inspired, and the textual references are those of Christians, who mention Mithras to deplore him, and neo-Platonists who interpreted Mithraic symbols within their own world-schemes.[1]
However, we do have a number of dedications from followers of Mithras (mainly addressed to invictus, unconquerable, Mithras), mainly from Roman Britain, the Rhine and Danube area and Italy. These suggest that a large number of his worshippers were low-ranking soldiers (there are very few examples of offerings from higher-ranking soldiers and those may have just been to encourage their men) and slaves, perhaps because a religion with a strict but straight-forward hierarchy allowed them the power they lacked in their everyday lives. Later in the third century Mithraic practices filtered through to the upper classes and it was even used as a mid-ground argument against Christianity.
Some Mithraic myths and symbolism was an adaptation of the beliefs the early Christian Church[2] but this needs to be considered in the context that most, if not all religions influenced each other in some way. The only exception being Judaism (which eventually led to Christianity; after the death of Christ). Of all religions in practice today, Judaism is by far the oldest.
[edit] Notes
- ↑ Franz Cumont, Textes et mounuments figurés rélatifs aux mystères de Mithra vol. II (Brussels) 1896.
- ↑ Wright L.M.'Christianity, Astrology And Myth', (2002),Oak Hill Free Press, USA. ISBN: 0- 9518796-1-8
- Richard Gordon, "Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World, studies in Mithraism and religious art", (contains some seminal essays)
- David Ulansey, "The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras"
- David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World. Oxford University Press 1991. ISBN 0-19-506788-6.
- Vermaseren, M.J. Mithras the Secret God 1963.
