The Legend, however, does not end with the death of the Bull. In the chapel at Heddernheim, the great slab on which the Tauroctony is sculptured in bas-relief is pivoted so as to swing round and display on its other face another scene which we find repeated in a slightly different form on many monuments[[875]]. Mithras and the Sun-God are here shown as partaking of a ritual feast or banquet in which grapes seem to figure. At Heddernheim, the grapes are tendered to the two gods over the body of the dead bull by the two torch-bearing figures Cautes and Cautopates, while on an arch above them various quadrupeds, dogs, a boar, a sheep, and a cow, are seen springing into life. In other monuments, the same scene generally appears as a banquet at which Mithras and Helios are seated side by side at a table sometimes alone, but at others in company with different persons who can hardly be any other than initiates or worshippers[[876]]. That this represents some sort of sacrament where a drink giving immortality was administered seems probable, and its likeness to representations of the Last Supper is sufficient to explain the complaint of Justin Martyr and other Fathers that the devil had set on the Mithraists to imitate in this and other respects the Church of Christ[[877]]. The final scene of all comes when we see Mithras arresting the glorious chariot of the Sun-God drawn by four white horses, and, mounting therein, being driven off by the ray-crowned Helios himself to the abode of light above the firmament[[878]]. In this also, it is easy to see a likeness between representations of the Ascension of Mithras and that of Elijah or even of Christ[[879]].
However this may be, the Legend of Mithras, as thus portrayed, shows with fair closeness the belief of his worshippers as to his place in the scheme of the universe. Mithras was certainly not the Supreme God, a rank in the system filled by Ahura Mazda, or his Latin counterpart, Jupiter Best and Greatest[[880]]. But this being, like the Platonic Zeus and the Gnostic Bythos, was considered too great and too remote to concern himself with the doings of the visible universe, in which Mithras acts as his vicegerent. Whether Mithras was or was not considered as in some sort the double or antitype of the Supreme Being cannot be said; but it is worth noticing that in the Vedas, as among the Hittites, Varuna and Mitra form an inseparable couple who are always invoked together, and that the same seems to have been the case with Ahura Mazda and Mithra in the oldest religious literature of the Persians[[881]]. It may therefore well be that the learned doctors of the Mithraic theology regarded their Supreme Being and Mithras as two aspects of the same god, an idea that, as we have seen, was current at about the same period among the Gnostics. It is, however, impossible to speak with certainty on such a point in the absence of any writings by persons professing the Mithraic faith, and it is highly improbable that the rugged soldiers who formed the majority of the god’s worshippers ever troubled themselves much about such questions. For them, no doubt, and for all, perhaps, but a few carefully-chosen persons, Mithras was the Demiurge or Divine Artizan of the universe[[882]], which he governs in accordance with the laws of right and justice, protecting and defending alike man and those animals and plants useful to him which Mithras has himself created from his own spontaneous goodness. Hence he was the only god to whom they admitted allegiance, and although the existence of other heavenly beings was not denied, it is probable that most of them were looked upon as occupying at the best a position less important to us than that of Mithras himself.
It is probable, moreover, that all the scenes in the Mithraic sculptures in which we have seen the god taking part were considered as being enacted before the creation of man and in some heaven or world midway between the abode of Infinite Light and this earth. That the grotto into which Mithras drags the primordial Bull is no earthly cavern is plain from Porphyry’s remark that the Mithraic cave was an image of the universe[[883]], as well as from the band of zodiacal figures or the arch of rocks which sometimes encloses the bas-reliefs, the sky being looked upon by the Babylonians as a rocky vault. The sun and moon in their respective chariots also appear above the principal scene; and a further hint as to its whereabouts may be found in the fact that the flowing mantle of Mithras is sometimes depicted as spangled with stars, thereby indicating that the scenes in which he appears are supposed to take place in the starry firmament. Hence is explained the epithet of μεσίτης or Mediator, which Plutarch gives him[[884]], and which should be interpreted not as intercessor but as he who occupies a position midway between two places[[885]]. That the higher of these in this case was the Garôtman or abode of Infinite Light of the Avestic literature, there can, it would seem, be no question; but what was the lower?
Although the statement must be guarded with all the reserves imposed upon us in all matters relating to the religion of Mithras by the absence of written documents, it is probable that this lower division of the universe was our earth. The monuments give us with fair certainty the Mithraic ideas as to how life was brought thither; but they tell us little or nothing as to the condition in which the earth was at the time, nor how it was supposed to have come into existence. Porphyry tells us that the “elements” (στοιχεῖα) were represented in the Mithraic chapel[[886]], and we find in some examples of the bull-slaying scenes, the figures of a small lion and a crater or mixing-bowl beneath the belly of the bull, which M. Cumont considers to be the symbols of fire and water respectively; while the earth may be typified, as has been said above, by the serpent, and the fourth element or air may be indicated by the wind which is blowing Mithras’ mantle away from his body and to the left of the group[[887]]. If this be so, it is probable that the Mithraist who thought about such matters looked upon the four elements, of which the ancients believed the world to be composed, as already in existence before the sacrifice of the primordial bull brought life upon the earth; and that the work of Mithras as Demiurge or Artizan was confined to arranging and moulding them into the form of the cosmos or ordered world. As to what was the ultimate origin of these elements, and whether the Mithraists, like the Gnostics, held that Matter had an existence independent of, and a nature opposed to, the Supreme Being, we have no indication whatever.
Of Mithraic eschatology or the view that the worshippers of Mithras held as to the end of the world, we know rather less than we do of their ideas as to its beginning. The Persian religion, after its reform under the Sassanid kings, taught that it would be consumed by fire[[888]]; and, as this doctrine of the Ecpyrosis, as the ancients called it, was also held by the Stoics, whose physical doctrines were then fashionable at Rome, it is probable enough that it entered into Mithraism also. But of this there is no proof, and M. Cumont’s attempt to show that a similar conflagration was thought by the Mithraic priests to have taken place before the Tauroctony, and as a kind of paradigm or forecast of what was to come, is not very convincing[[889]]. Yet some glimpse of what was supposed to happen between the creation of the world and its destruction seems to be typified by a monstrous figure often found in the ruined chapels once used for the Mithraic worship, where it seems to have been carefully guarded from the eyes of the general body of worshippers. This monster had the body of a man[[890]] with the head of a lion, while round his body is twined a huge serpent, whose head either appears on the top of the lion’s or rests on the human breast. On the monster’s back appear sometimes two, but generally four wings, and in his hands he bears upright two large keys, for one of which a sceptre is sometimes substituted; while his feet are sometimes human, sometimes those of a crocodile or other reptile. On his body, between the folds of the serpent, there sometimes appear the signs of the four quarters of the year, i.e. Aries and Libra, Cancer and Capricorn[[891]], and in other examples a thunderbolt on the breast or on the right knee[[892]]. The figure is often mounted on a globe which bears in one instance the two crossed bands which show that it is intended for our earth, and in one curious instance he appears to bear a flaming torch in each hand, while his breath is kindling a flame which is seen rising from an altar beside him[[893]]. It is possible that in this last we have a symbolical representation of the Ecpyrosis. Lastly, in the Mithraic chapel at Heddernheim, which is the only one where the figure of the lion-headed monster was found in situ, it was concealed within a deep niche or cell so fashioned, says M. Cumont, that the statue could only be perceived through a little conical aperture or peep-hole made in the slab of basalt closing the niche[[894]].
M. Cumont’s theory, as given in his magnificent work on the Mystères de Mithra and elsewhere, is that the figure represents that Zervan Akerene or Boundless Time whom he would put at the head of the Mithraic pantheon, and would make the father of both Ormuzd and Ahriman[[895]]. M. Cumont’s opinion, on a subject of which he has made himself the master, must always command every respect, and it may be admitted that the notion of such a supreme Being, corresponding in many ways to the Ineffable Bythos of the Gnostics, did appear in the later developments of the Persian religion, and may even have been known during the time that the worship of Mithras flourished in the West[[896]]. It has been shown elsewhere, however, that this idea only came to the front long after the cult of Mithras had become extinct, that M. Cumont’s view that the lion-headed monster was represented as without sex or passions has been shown to be baseless by later discoveries, and that the figure is connected in at least one example with an inscription to Arimanes or Ahriman[[897]]. M. Cumont has himself noted the confusion which a Christian, writing before the abolition of the Mithras worship, makes between the statues of Hecate, goddess of hell and patroness of sorcerers, and those of the lion-headed monster[[898]], and Hecate’s epithet of Περσείη can only be explained by some similar association[[899]]. At the same time, M. Cumont makes it plain that the Mithraists did not regard these infernal powers Ahriman and Hecate with the horror and loathing which the reformed Zoroastrian religion afterwards heaped upon the antagonist of Ormuzd[[900]]. On the contrary the dedications of several altars and statues show that they paid them worship and offered them sacrifices, as the Greeks did to Hades and Persephone, the lord and lady of hell, of whom the Mithraists probably considered them the Persian equivalents. From all these facts, the conclusion seems inevitable that the lion-headed monster represents Ahriman, the consort of Hecate[[901]].
If we now look at the religious literature of the time when the worship of Mithras was coming into favour, we find a pretty general consensus of opinion that the chthonian or infernal god represented in the earlier Persian religion by this Ahriman, was a power who might be the rival of, but was not necessarily the mortal enemy of Zeus. Whether Neander be right or not in asserting that the prevailing tendency of the age was towards Dualism[[902]], it is certain that most civilized nations had then come to the conclusion that on this earth the bad is always mixed up with the good. Plutarch puts this clearly enough when he says that nature here below comes not from one, but from two opposed principles and contending powers, and this opinion, he tells us, is a most ancient one which has come down from expounders of myths (θεολόγοι) and legislators to poets and philosophers, and is expressed “not in words and phrases, but in mysteries and sacrifices, and has been found in many places among both Barbarians and Greeks[[903]].” The same idea of antagonistic powers is, of course, put in a much stronger form in the reformed Persian religion, where the incursion of Ahriman into the kingdom of Ormuzd brings upon the earth all evil in the shape of winter, prolonged drought, storms, disease, and beasts and plants hurtful to man[[904]]. But this does not seem to have been the view of Ahriman’s functions taken by the older Magism, whence the worship of Mithras was probably derived[[905]]. In Mithraism, it is not Ahriman, as in the Bundahish, but Mithras, the vicegerent of Ormuzd, who slays the mystic Bull, and by so doing he brings good and not evil to the earth. Nowhere do we find in the Mithraic sculptures any allusion to Ahriman as a god of evil pure and simple, or as one who is for ever opposed to the heavenly powers. We do, indeed, find in several Mithraea representations of a Titanomachia where the Titans, represented as men with serpent legs, are depicted as fleeing before a god like the Greek Zeus who strikes them with his thunderbolts[[906]]. But this is not more necessarily suggestive of two irreconcilable principles than the Greek story of the Titans, those sons of Earth who were persuaded by their mother to make war upon their father Uranos, who put their brother Kronos upon his throne, and who were in their turn hurled from heaven by Kronos’ son Zeus. Even if we do not accept the later myth which reconciles Zeus to his adversaries[[907]], the story does not go further than to say that the Titans attempted to gain heaven and were thrust back to their own proper dwelling-place, the earth.
It is in this way, as it would seem, that the lion-headed monster of the Mithraic chapels must be explained. Ahriman, the god girt with the serpent which represents the earth, has rebelled against Ormuzd or Jupiter, and has been marked with the thunderbolt which has cast him down from heaven. But he remains none the less lord of his own domain, the earth, his sway over which is shown by the sceptre which he wields while standing upon it[[908]]. As for the keys which he bears, they are doubtless those of the gates behind which he keeps the souls and bodies of men, as the Orphics said, imprisoned, until he is compelled to release them by a higher power[[909]]. In all this, his functions do not go beyond those of the Greek Hades, with whom Plutarch equates him.
It is however, possible that he was conceived by the Mithraists as occupying a slightly different place in the material universe from that of his Greek prototype. The true realm of Hades was generally placed by the Greeks below the earth, but that of the Mithraic Ahriman may possibly be just outside it. M. Cumont shows many reasons for supposing the lion-headed god to be connected with the idea of destiny[[910]], and in one of the very few contemporary writings which make distinct allusion to the Mithraic tenets, there is something which confirms this view. This occurs in a fragment embedded, as it were, in a Magic Papyrus or sorcerer’s handbook now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris[[911]]. The document itself is probably not, as Prof. Albert Dieterich has too boldly asserted, a “Mithraic Liturgy”; but it is evidently connected in some way with the Mithraic worship and begins with a statement that the writer is a priest who has received inspiration from “the great Sun-God Mithras.” M. Georges Lafaye is of opinion that it narrates in apocalyptic fashion the adventures of the soul of a perfect Mithraist on its way to heaven, and this is probably correct, although it is here told for no purpose of edification but as a spell or charm[[912]]. The soul, if it be indeed she who is speaking, repeatedly complains to the gods whom she meets—including one in white tunic, crimson mantle and anaxyrides or Persian trousers who may be Mithras himself—of “the harsh and inexorable necessity” which has been compelling her so long as she remained in the “lower nature[[913]].” But the Sphere of Destiny or necessity, as we have seen in the Pistis Sophia, was thought to be the one immediately surrounding the earth, and although the document in which we have before met with this idea belongs to a different set of religious beliefs than those here treated of, it is probable that both Gnostic and Mithraist drew it from the astrological theories current at the time which came into the Hellenistic world from Babylon. It is therefore extremely probable that the Mithraists figured Ahriman as ruling the earth from the sphere immediately outside it, and this would agree well with his position upon the globe in the monuments where he appears. It is some confirmation of this that, in another part of the Papyrus just quoted, the “World-ruler” (Cosmocrator) is invoked as “the Great Serpent, leader of these gods, who holds the source of Egypt [Qy, The Nile?] and the end of the whole inhabited world [in his hands], who begets in Ocean Pshoi (i.e. Fate) the god of gods[[914]]”; while the Great Dragon or Outer Darkness in the Pistis Sophia is said to surround the earth. That both orthodox Christians and Gnostics like the Valentinians looked upon the Devil, who, as lord of hell, was sometimes identified with Hades, as the Cosmocrator or World-Ruler requires no further demonstration[[915]], and in this particular as in others the Mithraists may have drawn from the same source as the Gnostic teachers[[916]].
That they did so in a related matter can be shown by direct evidence. Like the Ophites of the Diagram before described, the Mithraists thought that the soul descended to the body through seven spheres which were those of the “planets” Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, the Moon, and the Sun in that order, which Origen, who mentions the fact, says that the Persian theology declared to be symbolized “by the names of the rest of matter,” and also gave for it “musical reasons[[917]].” He further describes the different qualities which the soul in her passage receives from each sphere, and which it seems fair to conclude she gives back to them on her reascension. M. Cumont is no doubt right when he attributes the origin of this tenet to the mathematici or astrologers and says that it too came originally from Chaldaea[[918]]. The seven heavens are also found in many Oriental documents of the time, including the Book of the Secrets of Enoch[[919]] and the Apocalypse of Baruch[[920]]. According to Origen, they were symbolized in the Mithraic chapels by a ladder of eight steps, the first seven being of the metals peculiar to the different planets, i.e. lead, tin, copper, iron, an alloy of several metals, silver, and gold, with the eighth step representing the heaven of the fixed stars[[921]]. The Stoics who held similar views, following therein perhaps the Platonic cosmogony, had already fixed the gate of the sky through which the souls left the heaven of the fixed stars on their descent to the earth in Cancer, and that by which they reascended in Capricorn[[922]], which probably accounts for the two keys borne by the lion-headed god on the Mithraic monuments, and for those two Zodiacal signs being displayed on his body. The other two signs, viz. Aries and Libra, may possibly refer to the places in a horoscope or genethliacal figure which the astrologers of the time called the Porta laboris and Janua Ditis respectively, as denoting the gate by which man “born to labour” enters life, and the “gate of Hades” by which he leaves it[[923]]. If, as Porphyry says, the doctrine of metempsychosis formed part of the Mithraic teaching, the keys would thus have a meaning analogous to the Orphic release from “the wheel[[924]].”