Πρὸς οὐρανίους Διὸς Ὠρομάσδου θρόνους θεοφιλῆ ψυχὴν προπέμψαν; cf. l. 33: Οὐρανίων ἄγχιστα θρόνων.
[27]. Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 87.
[28]. Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 333.—An inscription discovered in a mithreum at Dorstadt (Sacidava in Dacia, CIL, III, 7728, cf. 7729), furnishes, if I rightly understand, another proof of the relation existing between the Semitic cults and that of the Persian gods. It speaks of a "de[orum?] sacerdos creatus a Pal[myr]enis, do[mo] Macedonia, et adven[tor] huius templi." This rather obscure text becomes clear when compared with Apul., Metam., XI, 26. After the hero had been initiated into the mysteries of Isis in Greece, he was received at Rome in the great temple of the Campus Martius, "fani quidem advena, religionis autem indigena." It appears also that this Macedonian, who was made a priest of their national gods (Bel, Malakbel, etc.) by a colony of Palmyrenians, was received in Dacia by the mystics of Mithra as a member of their religion.
[29]. At Venasa in Cappadocia, for instance, the people, even during the Christian period, celebrated a panegyric on a mountain, where the celestial Zeus, representing Baalsamin and Ahura-Mazda, was formerly worshiped (Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, 1894, pp. 142, 457). The identification of Bel with Ahura-Mazda in Cappadocia results from the Aramaic inscription of Jarpuz (Clermont-Ganneau, Recueil, III,
p. 59; Lidzbarski, Ephemeris für semit. Epigraphik, I, pp. 59 ff.). The Zeus Stratios worshiped upon a high summit near Amasia was in reality Ahura-Mazda, who in turn probably supplanted some local god (Studia Pontica, pp. 173 ff.).—Similarly the equation Anahita = Ishtar = Ma or Cybele for the great female divinity is accepted everywhere (Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 333), and Ma takes the epithet ἀνίκητος like Mithra (Athen. Mitt., XVIII, 1893, p. 415, and XXIX, 1904, p. 169). A temple of this goddess was called ἱερὸν Ἀστάρτης in a decree of Anisa (Michel, Recueil, No. 536, l. 32).
[30]. The Mithra "mysteries" are not of Hellenic origin (Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 239), but their resemblance to those of Greece, which Gruppe insists upon (Griech. Mythologie, pp. 1596 ff.) was such that the two were bound to become confused in the Alexandrian period.
[31]. Harnack (Ausbreitung des Christentums, II, p. 271) sees in this exclusion of the Hellenic world a prime cause of the weakness of the Mithra worship in its struggle against Christianity. The mysteries of Mithra met the Greek culture with the culture of Persia, superior in some respects. But if it was capable of attracting the Roman mind by its moral qualities, it was too Asiatic, on the whole, to be accepted without repugnance by the Occidentals. The same was true of Manicheism.
[32]. CIL, III, 4413; cf. Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 281.
[33]. Cf. the bibliography at the head of the notes for this chapter.
[34]. As Plato grew older he believed that he could not explain the evils of this world without admitting the existence of an "evil soul of the world" (Zeller, Philos. der Griechen, II, p. 973, p. 981, n. 1). But this late conception, opposed as it is to his entire system, is probably due to the influence of Oriental dualism. It is found in the Epinomis (Zeller, ibid., p. 1042, n. 4), where the influence of "Chaldean" theories is undeniable; cf. Bidez, Revue de Philologie, XXIX, 1905, p. 319.