The Religious Thought of the Greeks, from Homer to the Triumph of Christianity

by Clifford Herschel Moore

But let us follow Apuleius’ hero through his later experiences. The morning after his secret initiation Lucius was clothed in twelve sacred articles of dress and placed on a wooden dais in the middle of the shrine before the statue of the goddess; over him was thrown a linen garment, richly embroidered in various colors with marvellous animals, with Indian dragons and hyperborean gryphons. In his right hand was put a lighted torch, while on his head was placed a garland of palm leaves, which stood out like the rays of the sun. Then the curtains were drawn back and the neophyte was displayed to the assembled people. The meaning of this ceremony also is evident: by initiation Lucius had become one with the god, and therefore this exhibition of him is the epiphany of the initiate as the Sun God. The last is clearly indicated by the garland of palm leaves which represented the rays of the sun. The meaning of the dress is obscure to us, but naturally it was effective in the impression which it made on the wearer and on those who viewed him. After this epiphany certain minor rites followed on the next day, completing the initiation of Lucius into the first degree, that of Isis.

After continuing for some days enjoying the inexpressible bliss afforded him by the sight of the goddess and receiving the blessings which her power bestowed, Lucius set out from Corinth for Rome in obedience to a vision which the goddess had granted him. There, when a year had rolled round, he was divinely warned that he was to advance to the second degree, that of the invincible Osiris; and shortly after this he was ordered in like manner to take the highest degree of initiation; henceforth he was a priest and an official in the sacred association. For the second and third degrees the same days of preparation were required as for the first, and like ceremonies were performed. When the final initiation had been undergone, Lucius was marked by a shaven head, and apparently also by a sign branded on his forehead, as one who had consecrated his life to Isis.[291]

This is a brief summary of the fullest account which we possess of an initiation into any of these oriental mysteries. We see from it not only how the initiate was given the satisfaction of feeling that he had seen divinity face to face—a vision by which he obtained a foretaste of the final knowledge of god and received assurance of his own salvation; but also how his religious life was constantly fed and supported by daily religious services, by matins and vespers in the temple. In these his emotions were stimulated and his consecration renewed by a ritual made impressive through every means which an immemorial history had sanctified and by every suggestion which an elaborate symbolism could give. He realized that he had become a member of a body set apart from the rest of the world. The members of this holy company were called “the consecrated ones,” sacrati. They had been born again indeed through initiation into the Isiac life. The term reborn, renatus, is used frequently of the initiates, the day of whose initiation was often referred to and celebrated as their birthday.

More widely spread and more powerful than the religion of Isis was the religion of Mithras. Into the details of its early history we may not now go, but we must limit ourselves to a few points only. Mithraism had its origin in Persia, yet it was greatly influenced by the ancient theology of the Chaldeans and by Babylonian astrology, as well as later by the more barbarous religions of Asia Minor, whither it was carried by Persian colonists during the last three centuries before the Christian era. The Romans first came into contact with it during Pompey’s campaign against the pirates of Cilicia in 67 b.c., but the soldiers seem not to have been greatly impressed at that time, for it was about a hundred and fifty years later that Mithraism began to be influential in the West. Soldiers, traders, and slaves all aided in its spread. For the most part it followed in the steps of the Syrian gods, with whom it was closely associated. Along the borders of the Roman Empire, at the military stations on the Danube, on the Rhine, and by Hadrian’s Wall in Britain inscriptions and ruined chapels still attest the popularity of the cult; there are few Roman military centers in Europe, outside of Greece, or in the African provinces, which have not given evidence of its existence. In the ports of Italy, Puteoli and Ostia, in Rome, and in all the chief cities of the West, traders and slaves introduced the Persian religion; and the cult attracted many Roman citizens; it found favor with the imperial house, especially from Commodus to Diocletian. In fact during the second and third centuries Christianity found in Mithraism its chief rival.

Mithras himself was an extremely ancient divinity known to the ancestors of both the Iranian and Indian peoples. In early Zoroastrianism he had no place, but later appeared as one of the inferior divinities. Under the manifold influences to which Persian Mazdaism was exposed, the position of Mithras gradually rose in importance. The details of the theology at the time the religion became known to the Romans cannot be determined, but it seems evident that the main features were these: the Mazdaists conceived of the world as a battleground in which the powers of light and of righteousness were ever fighting against the powers of darkness and of evil; at the head of the powers of light was Ahura Mazda, Oromasdes, or, to use the form more familiar to us, Ormuzd; opposed to him was Ahriman, the archfiend and adversary, lord of the world of darkness, who with his demons was thought to strive continually to spread evil in the world; midway was Mithras whose function was to help mankind and to hasten the destruction of wickedness. So far as we can judge from the sculptured monuments, Mithras in the sacred myths was not identified with the sun, yet it is clear that he was regarded by the Roman devotees as the chief divinity of light. This position was the more easily assured him by the fact that he had been originally such a god, so that the Chaldeans had identified him with Shamash, their solar divinity, just as the Greeks in Asia Minor had made him equivalent to their sun god, Helios. Later philosophy too lent its aid in that it took the sun as the supreme symbol of divinity. On Roman dedications Mithras is often called simply “The Invincible Sun,” Sol Invictus.

For all its exotic character Mithraism could offer nothing essentially new in point of theology which would attract devotees, nor could it win them simply by its elaborate and distinctive ritual. The characteristic which distinguished it from the other religions of its time save Christianity was the thoroughgoing dualism to which I have just referred—I mean that dualism which divided the world into two opposing armies, the one the legions of light and righteousness, the other the forces of sin and darkness. The evil principle was deified in the same way as the principle of good. It is quite true that the Greeks and other peoples had conceived of evil powers, like the Titans for example, but nowhere was the opposition between the two made so sharp or the conflict regarded as so constant. In the cosmic struggle the Mithraist believed man shared; for he too, the microcosm, was both good and evil, so that the same battle had to be waged within him as everywhere in the world. This religion, then, was able to supply a strong moral motive for the individual: he was bound to struggle continually against the powers of sin to aid in bringing about the final victory of the powers of righteousness, and he was taught that in this struggle Mithras gave the faithful constant aid.

Mithraism therefore was well suited to stir and energize the individual in a time when the ancient fibre of the Romans was relaxing and when the signs of social and economic decay were evident. In the first three centuries of the Empire, as we have already had occasion to observe more than once, the loss of political power and the weakening of the satisfactions which a vigorous society can give, led men to search for other rewards and assurances than those of this world; in the mystic philosophies and religions they found their strength and hope. No oriental pagan cult had so much to offer as Mithraism. Its compelling system of ethics, the high ideal of moral purity which it inherited from its Persian source, the fraternity which its associations fostered, and the confidence which the promise of Mithras’ aid gave the individual, all combined to extend its sway to the westernmost boundaries of the Roman Empire and to maintain its power until it was forced to yield before the victorious advance of a nobler faith.

The Mithraic worship was carried on in small chapels which would seldom hold as many as a hundred worshippers at once, so that when the number of devotees was considerable more than one chapel was required. No less than five have been found at Ostia, the seaport at the mouth of the Tiber, and in the capital some sixty have been discovered. These structures were generally half-subterranean, recalling the sacred cave of the Mithraic legend. Before each was a pronaos, an anteroom, from which steps led down to the chapel proper. Through the middle of this ran an aisle flanked on either side by a raised platform for the devotees. In the floor were often represented the signs of the Zodiac, which played an important part in the belief. The farther end of the chapel contained a relief which always reproduced the same scene in the type which some Pergamene sculptor had established in the Hellenistic period. The god Mithras was shown in the act of slaying the sacred bull; subordinate figures and creatures were also represented, and on some reliefs a series of scenes from the sacred legends formed a frame for the central representation. We can readily understand something of the effect produced on the mind of the neophyte when he was first introduced into the lighted chapel from the darkness without. The rows of worshippers on either side, the symbolic figures and signs, and especially the sacred relief which was doubtless brightly illuminated, must have all combined to stimulate acutely the tiro’s imagination, already stirred by his anticipations.

There were seven grades of initiation, each with its symbol and magic name. The first stage was that of the Raven (corax), the second that of the Hidden One (κρύφιος), and the third that of the Soldier (miles). These first three degrees seem to have been preliminary, so that the initiate was not admitted to full participation in the privileges of the sacred community until he had been inducted into the fourth degree, the Lion (leo). The succeeding degrees were the Persian (Persa), the Courier of the Sun (ἡλιοδρόμος), and the Father (pater); the head of a number of Mithraic communities was apparently the Pater Patrum. Each stage had its proper initiatory ceremonies, admission to which required abstinence, lustrations and ablutions, and many symbolic acts. The courage and constancy of the neophyte were tested; oaths were administered to him; a seal was set on his forehead; he was bound to secrecy; and doubtless many other vows were required. The candidate for the degree of the Soldier was presented with a crown which he was expected to thrust aside and to say that Mithras was his only crown. He was made to feel that he had enlisted for a sacred warfare against the powers of evil and to realize that perfect purity was the goal toward which the faithful must strive. Apparently the culminating point of the tests and trials which the neophyte underwent was a symbolic death in which he died at the hands of the priest and rose again into a new and purified existence. Such rites are common in similar mysteries, but there is some reason to suspect that in Mithraism the symbolic act had an especially terrifying nature.

The religious life of the devotees was fed by meetings held in the half-underground chapels. A part of the services evidently consisted of a sacred communion, which, with consecrated cup and loaf, recalled the sacred meal which Mithras had once celebrated with the Sun after he had completed his service upon the earth. This is shown on a relief discovered some years since at Konjica in Dalmatia, in which Mithras and the Sun are shown reclining at table, where they are served by attendants, one of whom wears a Phrygian cap, another a mask of a crow, a third that of a lion, while the head of the fourth is hopelessly mutilated.[292] It was believed that this mystic communion on earth gave the devotees strength and wisdom, that it imparted the power necessary to combat the emissaries of evil, and conferred immortality upon those who partook of it. The parallelism with the Christian eucharist is self-evident, and it is not strange that the church fathers claimed that the Mithraists had stolen from Christianity.