Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius

by Samuel Dill

The inner secret of that rapid propaganda we shall never fully know. But we can discover with tolerable certainty the kind of people who carried the gospel of Mithra to the most remote parts of the western world. The soldiers were his most zealous missionaries.[3043] Drafted from Cappadocia or Commagene, and quartered, far from his home, in a camp on the Danube or in the Black Forest, the legionary clung to the worship of his native East, and was eager to admit his comrades to fellowship in its rites. The appearance of Mithraism in certain places can be traced directly to the quartering of a legion which had been recruited from the countries which were the original home of the worship. Officers of eastern birth on promotion passed into other corps, and extended the influence of the East.[3044] Centurions retiring from active service became apostles of the movement in the places where they settled. Syrian merchants, who were still found at Orleans in the time of the Merovingians, with all the fanaticism of their race popularised their native worships in the ports of Italy, Gaul, along the coasts of the Adriatic, and among the centres of commerce on the Danube or the Rhine.[3045] The civil servants of the emperor, clerks and commissaries of every degree, procurators and agents of great estates, who were often men of servile origin, have left many traces of their zeal in spreading the Persian worship both throughout Italy and in countries north of the Alps.[3046] The slave class probably did as much for the glory of Mithra as any other.[3047] It was largely drawn from Cappadocia, Pontus, and Phrygia, those regions where the religion of Mithra had taken deep root before it passed into Europe. And, like the Christian, the religion of Mithra was, at the outset of its career, a religion of the poor and humble. It was only in the second century that it achieved the conquest of the court and the educated classes. It was probably through slaves that [pg 593]it found its way into remote corners of Apulia, Lucania, or Etruria.[3048]

The stages in the spread of the Mithraist rites throughout Italy cannot be clearly traced. But in the second century the cult was established not only in Campania, Capreae, and Ischia, but in lonely country places in Southern Italy.[3049] It had spread to a circle of towns around Rome—Lanuvium, Alba, Velitrae, Labici, and Praeneste.[3050] Borne by traders, imperial officers or slaves, it followed the line of the great roads to the north. Thus we can trace its march along the Via Cassia through Etruria, at Volsinii, Arretium, and Florence.[3051] It arrived at Pisa probably by sea. Along the Flaminian Way, it may be followed through Interamna, Spoletium, and Sentinum to Bononia. At Nersae, in the Aequian territory, the cult must have been of some antiquity in 172 A.D.[3052] For, in that year the treasurer of the town, a man probably of the slave class, restored a chapel which had fallen into ruins. The roll of the patrons of a Mithraist society at Sentinum has come down to us, with the names of slaves or freedmen among its members.[3053] In Gallia Cisalpina the traces of Mithra are less frequent. Milan, already growing to its great destiny in the fourth century, and Aquileia, are the chief seats of the Persian cult. Aquileia has yielded a large number of inscriptions. From its situation at the mouth of the Po, as the great entrepôt for the trade between the Adriatic and the Danubian provinces, it must have powerfully stimulated the diffusion of the worship.[3054] It is curious, however, that the passes of the Alps have yielded richer booty to the investigator in this field than the plains of Lombardy. In the mountain valleys leading to Rhaetia and Noricum, as well as in those above the Italian lakes, many relics of this far-spreading religion have been given to the light.[3055] A temple of Mithra has been discovered near Trent, in the valley of the Adige. In the Tyrol and Carinthia sacred grottoes, buried among woods and rocks, have disclosed bas-reliefs, sculptured with the traditionary figures of [pg 594]Persian legend. They were probably frequented by the faithful down to the reign of Valentinian.[3056] Throughout Noricum and Pannonia imperial functionaries or agents of private enterprise, procurators, clerks of the treasury, custom-house officers, or eastern freedmen and slaves, have left many traces of their devotion to the Persian god.[3057] Thus, everywhere along the great roads which radiated from Aquileia to the markets or strong places upon the Danube, the votary of Mithra would find in the days of the Antonines many a shrine, stately or humble, where he could refresh his piety by the way.

The Greek provinces have yielded but few memorials of the worship of Mithra. But, from the mouth of the Danube to the north of England his triumphant march can be traced, with only a break here and there. He follows the line of the rivers or the great roads, through the frontier camps or the centres of Roman commerce. Firmly seated at Tomi and the ports of the Black Sea, Mithra has not left many traces, so far as exploration has gone, in Thrace and Macedonia.[3058] Nor have the Moesias as yet contributed many monuments, although at Troesmis and Oescus, along the great military road, bas-reliefs and inscriptions have been brought to light.[3059] Next to Pannonia and the territory of the Upper Rhine, Dacia was the province where Mithraism seems to have reached its greatest popularity in Europe.[3060] In the year 107, after six desolating and often doubtful campaigns, Dacia was resettled and organised by Trajan.[3061] Its depopulated fields were colonised with immense masses of men from all parts of the Roman world. Probably there has seldom been such a colluvies gentium assembled. And, among these alien settlers, there were many from Edessa, Palmyra, and those regions of the East where Mithra or his kindred deities had their earliest and most fervent worshippers.[3062] In the capital of the province, Sarmizegetusa, an excavated Mithraeum has afforded fifty bas-reliefs and inscriptions.[3063] The colony of Apulum can show the remains of at least four temples. And Potaissa and other places, with names strange to English ears, have enriched the museums.

Pannonia abounds with interesting remains of Mithra, not only in the great seats of Roman power on the Danube, but in places far in the interior. And in this province can be distinctly traced not only the progress of the military propaganda, but the dates, with approximate accuracy, when the mysteries of Mithra were first introduced.[3064] Aquincum and Carnuntum were the chief seats of the Persian worship on the Danube. In the former town, the god had at least five chapels in the third century. There were at least four in the territory of Carnuntum, one of them being closely connected with that of the allied deity, Jupiter Dolichenus of Commagene.[3065] The original votaries of the reign of Vespasian had been contented with a rude grotto, partially formed by the configuration of the rocks, the intervals being filled in with masonry.[3066] This structure in the third century was replaced by a more stately edifice at the expense of a Roman knight.[3067] There can be little doubt that the spread of Mithraism in Pannonia was chiefly the work of two Legions, the II. Adjutrix and XV. Apollinaris, both largely recruited from Commagene or Cappadocia.[3068] The bricks of a Mithraeum at Carnuntum bear the stamp of the 15th Legion, and the inscriptions contain several dedications by soldiers of the two corps.[3069] The 15th Legion, which was quartered on the Danube in 71 or 72, had fought under Corbulo against the Parthians, and had borne a part in suppressing the Jewish revolt of 70 A.D. We may be sure that the gaps in its ranks were filled by eastern recruits.[3070] The soldiers of other corps, such as the Legions XIII and XIV, Geminae Martiae, caught the religious enthusiasm, and took part in the erection of buildings and in monumental offerings.[3071] It was probably through officers, transferred from the Danube, that the worship was introduced into the camp of Lambaesis in Numidia. There is a tablet of the third century to Mithra in that camp, dedicated by a prefect of the 3rd Legion, who was born at Carnuntum.[3072] In Noricum and Rhaetia, the military propaganda seems to have been less vigorous than in [pg 596]Pannonia. But a corner of the former province was once guarded by a corps from Commagene, which has left traces of its presence in the name of a town on the Danube and in some monuments to Mithra.[3073] In Rhaetia his remains are singularly scanty.[3074] But when we come to the Agri Decumates and the region of the Upper Rhine, we find ourselves in a district once more teeming with relics of Mithra. Not only has this region given to the light the largest number of his chapels,[3075] but the bas-reliefs found in their ruins surpass all others in their dimensions and the completeness of their symbolism. The tauroctonus group of Osterburken is regarded as the masterpiece of Mithraist art in its complex variety and the vivid and masterly skill of the execution.[3076] Many of the German inscriptions to Mithra are offered by simple citizens. But, from the number dedicated by soldiers also, Cumont may be right in tracing the diffusion of the worship once more to military zeal. It is true, the legions quartered in Germany did not contain any considerable number of recruits from the East. But they were in constant communication with the camps upon the Danube, where oriental influences were strong. It is significant that the earliest inscription to Mithra yet found in Germany, of the year A.D. 148, is that of a centurion of the 8th Legion, which was quartered in Moesia from 47 till 69, and which during that time had frequent communications with the East. The legion was in 70 removed from Moesia to Upper Germany.[3077] It is probable that, however it was introduced, the worship of Mithra may have found its way into the valley of the Neckar, and even to the Lower Rhine, before the end of the first century. Coins of Trajan have been found in the temple at Friedberg;[3078] a series of coins from Vespasian to M. Aurelius has been recovered from a temple in the neighbourhood of Cologne.[3079] From Cologne the line of conquest may be followed to Boulogne, the station of the British fleet. Thence the cult passed easily to London, which, in the time of Tacitus, was a centre of great commercial [pg 597]activity.[3080] The legions probably carried the worship to the great camps of Caerleon, Chester and York. At all the guardposts of the great rampart of Hadrian, there were chapels of the eastern god, and the inscriptions show that the officers at this remote outpost of the Empire maintained a warm devotion to the religion of their native East.[3081]

The regions of the western world on which Mithra, from whatever causes, seems to have made least impression were Western Gaul, Spain, and North Africa.[3082] Syrian merchants, slaves, or soldiers, had established the worship at Lyons, Arles, and Narbonne. But Elusa is the only place in Aquitaine where traces of it have been found. In Spain, the legionaries carried it only to a few remote frontier posts in Asturia or Gallicia.[3083] The African garrisons, recruited largely from the surrounding country, remained true to their native deities, and the few inscriptions to Mithra at great military strongholds, like Lambesi, are probably due to the devotion of some of the higher officers, who had been transferred to these distant quarters from Syria or the Danube.[3084]

If we try to explain the fascination of this religion of central Asia for western minds, we must seek it partly in its theological system, partly in its ritual and clerical organisation, still more in its clear promise of a life beyond the grave. In these characteristics, Mithraism differed profoundly from Graeco-Roman paganism, and seemed, in the eyes of the Christian apologists, to be a deceptive imitation of the rites and doctrines of the Christian Church. Inspired with the tendency or ambition to gather many races into its fold, Mithraism was a compound of the influences of very different ages, and offered many footholds for the faith or superstition of the lands which it traversed in its march. It drew, from points widely severed in time and place, doctrine or symbolism or rite, from the ancient lands of the Aryan race, from the mountain homes of the Persians, from Babylon and Phrygia and Commagene, from the philosophy of Greece, and the mythologies of all the peoples among whom it came. Yet it [pg 598]never to the end ceased to be a Persian cult. In the Divine Comedy of Lucian, as it may be called, Mithra, even when he is admitted to Olympus, cannot speak in Greek.[3085] His name is never disguised or translated. On many of his inscriptions the names of the old Mazdean pantheon, such as Ahriman, the power of evil, still figure.[3086] The mystic beasts which are always present in the sacred scene of the tauroctonus, the lion, the dog, the snake, the scorpion, had all a hieratic meaning in Persian theology.[3087] The cave, which was the immemorial sanctuary of the worship, amid all the mystic meanings attached to it by later Neo-Platonist speculation, carried the mind back to Zoroastrian symbolism.[3088] The petra genetrix, which is figured on so many sacred slabs on the Danube and in Upper Germany, goes back to the very cradle of the worship.[3089] The young god, emerging from the spires of rock, round which a serpent coils itself, is the first radiance of the upspringing sun, as on high, lonely peaks it flashes and broadens to the dawn. The great elemental powers, sun and moon, ocean, the winds and seasons, are generally grouped around the central piece, in forms borrowed from classic art.[3090] Fire and water are always present; no chapel was without its fountain.[3091] And the tradition of the astral lore of the Euphrates can be seen in the signs of the zodiac which encompass the sacred scene of mystic sacrifice in the chapels on the Upper Rhine.[3092] The very letters of the name of Mithra, expanded into Meithras, according to S. Jerome, like the mystic word Abraxas, yielded to ingenious calculation the exact number of days in the year.[3093] It is difficult for us to conceive how these frigid astronomical fancies should form a part in a religious system which undoubtedly from the beginning had a profound moral effect on its adherents. Yet it is well to remember that there was a time when the mystery of the stellar spaces, and the grandeur and beneficence of the sun, were the most awful and impressive things in human [pg 599]experience. The cold scrutiny of the telescope has long since robbed the heavenly orbs of their mystic power over human destiny. Yet even now, a man who has not been imbued with the influence of modern science, may, on some calm, starlit summer night, travel back in imagination to the dreams of the early star-gazers on the Ganges or the Euphrates, and fancy that, in the far solitary splendour and ordered movement of those eternal fires, which shine so serene and pitiless on this small point in the universe, there may be forces to guide or signs to predict the course of mortal destiny. Nor was it an altogether unworthy dream, which floated before the minds of so many generations, that in those liquid depths of space, where, in the infinite distance, the radiance of widely-severed constellations blends into a luminous haze, might be the eternal abode of spirits who, after their sojourn in the flesh, have purged themselves of earthly taint.[3094]

The relative influence of Babylon and ancient Iran in moulding the theology of Mithraism, has long been a subject of controversy. The opposing schools, represented by Lajard and Windischmann,[3095] have been discredited or reconciled by saner methods of criticism, and wider archaeological knowledge. It is now seen that while Babylonia has left a deep impress on the creed of Mithra, yet the original Aryan or Persian elements still maintained their ascendency. Mithra, in his long journey, came under many influences; and he absorbed many alien ideas from the cults and art of the many lands through which he travelled. His tolerance, indeed, was one great secret of his power. But, while he absorbed, he assimilated and transmuted. He remained the god of Persia, while he gathered into his creed mystic elements that might appease the spiritual cravings of the western world.[3096] His system came to represent the best theological expression of the long movement of pagan mysticism, which, beginning with the mythic names of Orpheus and Pythagoras, organised in the classic mysteries, elevated and glorified by the genius of Plato, ended, if it has ended, in the Neo-Platonic movement which offered a last resistance to the Christian church. The central ideas of that [pg 600]theory of life and death were presented to the neophyte in the mysteries of Mithra, and one of the last expounders of the Platonic creed, in the reign of Theodosius, had probably been initiated in one of the last chapels of the worship.[3097] In that vision of human destiny, of the descent and ascent of the human soul, the old Orphic doctrine is united with the star-lore of the Euphrates. Travelling towards its future prison-house in the flesh, the spirit which leaves the presence of Ormuzd descends by the gate of Cancer, through the spheres of the seven planets, and in each acquires a new faculty appropriate to its earthly state. The Mithraist discipline and sacraments prepare it for the ascent after death. When the soul at last leaves its mortal prison, it has to submit to a great judgment in the presence of Mithra, and if it pass the ordeal, it may then return through the seven spheres, at each stage divesting itself of those passions or earthly powers, which it had taken on for a time in its downward journey.[3098] Finally, through the remote gate of Capricorn, its sublimated essence will pass back again to ecstatic union with the Supreme. It is thus that the East and West, Orphic mysteries and Chaldaean astrology, combined to satisfy the craving for a moral faith and the vision of another world.

The religion of Mithra probably achieved its highest victory through an ethical theology, typified and made concrete to the average worshipper by an elaborate symbolism in rite and sculptured scene. But it had also a cosmic theology. Mithra, in virtue of his moral power, became in the end the central figure. But in nearly all his chapels can be discovered a divine hierarchy, in which, for ages, he did not hold the foremost rank. The highest place is given to Infinite Time, without sex or passions, or properly without even a name, although in order to bring him within the vulgar ken, he may be called Cronus or Saturn and imaged in stone as a lion, wrapped in the coils of a snake.[3099] He is the author of life and death; he carries the keys of heaven, and in his limitless sway, he is identified with the unbending power of Fate. Like other cosmic systems of the East [pg 601]the Mazdean explained the universe by a succession of emanations from the Infinite First Cause.[3100] From his own essence, Cronus engendered Earth and Heaven, whom mythologers may call Jupiter and Juno, and they in turn give life to Ocean. Jupiter, as in classical mythology, succeeded to the power of Cronus, and gave to the world the Olympian deities, along with Fortune, Themis, and the Fates. In the hemisphere of gloom and evil, another order was engendered by Infinite Time, which is represented by Ahriman, or, in the fancy of more western lands, by Pluto and Hecate. The evil spirits, who are their progeny, like the Titans of Greek legend, have tried to storm Olympus, and been hurled back to the under world.[3101] There they still retain their power to plague and corrupt the race of men; but, by means of incantation, and sacrifice, their malice may be turned aside. In this daemonology Mithraism joined hands with the new Platonism, of which Plutarch, as we have seen, was one of the earliest apostles, and the affinity between them continued to the last age of paganism.[3102] But it was in its divinisation of the elemental powers and heavenly bodies that this religion probably obtained its most powerful hold on an age profoundly fatalist and superstitious. The strife of the four elements figures under animal symbolism on innumerable sculptures of the chapels of Mithra, around the image of the bull-slaying God.[3103] The divine fire which sparkles in the stars, and diffuses the warmth of life in animal or plant, blazed perpetually on the altar of the crypt.[3104] The sun and moon are seldom missing from these slabs. In the great masterpiece of Mithraic art at Osterburken, the two deities occupy opposite corners of the tablet.[3105] The sun-god, with a cloak floating from his right shoulder, is urging his four-horse team up the steep of heaven, and over the car floats Phosphorus, as a naked boy, bearing a torch in each hand. On the opposite side, Selene, crowned with the crescent and erect in her car, is urging her team of oxen downwards towards the gloom. On another piece, also found in the heart of Germany, there is an impressive scene, in which Mithra and the Sun, arrayed in eastern costume, stand side by side over a [pg 602]huge slaughtered bull. The sun god is handing to Mithra a bunch of grapes, which he receives with a gesture of admiration.[3106]

The most popular, and the least wholesome, element, which Mithraism borrowed from Babylon, was the belief in planetary influence. The seven planets became the arbiters of human destiny, and their number acquired a hieratic significance.[3107] The days of the week and the seven principal metals were consecrated to them. The various grades of initiation into the mysteries of Mithra found a correspondence in the intervals of the seven spheres.[3108] The soul, in descending to its earthly tenement for a season, passes through their successive realms, and assumes appropriate faculties in each, just as, on its release and ascension, it divests itself of them, one by one, as it returns to the region of ethereal purity. But the astral doctrine, introduced into the system of Iran from Chaldaea, was a dangerous addition to the creed. It was a fatal heritage from ages of benumbing superstition, and, while it gave an immense impetus to the progress of the solar cult, it counterbalanced, and, to some extent, neutralised its more spiritual and salutary doctrines.[3109] A co-ordinate evil power, side by side with the beneficent Creator and Preserver, and his revealer and mediator, a host of daemons, tempting to sin, as well as visiting men with calamity, an iron Fate at the centre of the Universe, whose inevitable decrees are at once indicated and executed by the position and motions of the planets—all this gloomy doctrine lay like a nightmare on the human mind for many ages, and gave birth to all sorts of evil arts to discover or avert or direct the pitiless forces which controlled the fate of man. This is the dark side of Mithra worship, and, in this evil tradition from Babylon, which partially overlaid the purer creed of Persia, we may find some explanation of the strange blending of dark superstition with moral earnestness which characterised the reaction of Julian, the votary of the Sun, and the patron of Maximus.

But, although the deification of the great elemental powers and the mingled charm and terror of astrology gave the religion of Mithra a powerful hold on the West, there were [pg 603]other and nobler elements in his system which cannot escape the candid enquirer. The old unmoral, external paganism no longer satisfied the spiritual wants of all men in the second century. It is true the day will probably never come when the religion of many will not begin and end in solemn, stately rite, consecrated to the imagination by ancient use, and captivating the sense by scrupulously ordered ceremonial. The ritualist and the puritan conception of worship will probably always exist side by side, for they represent two opposite conceptions of religion which can never entirely blend. And certainly in the days of M. Aurelius the placid satisfaction in a sumptuous sacrifice, at which every word of the ancient litany was rendered to the letter, was still profoundly felt by many, even by the philosophic emperor himself. But there were other ideas in the air. Men heard from wandering preachers that God required other offerings than the “blood of bulls and the ashes of a heifer,” that the true worship was in the sacrifice of a purified spirit.[3110] Platonist and Pythagorean, even when they might reverently handle the ancient symbolism of ritual, were teaching that communion with the Infinite Father was only possible to a soul emancipated from the tyranny of sense. Moreover, as we have seen, the new Platonism was striving to create some mediatorial power between the world of sense and the Infinite Spirit, transcending all old materialistic fancies of the Divine.[3111] This Platonic daemonology, indeed, from the Christian point of view, was a very crude and imperfect attempt to bridge the gulf. And it had the graver fault that it was really a revival of the old mythology. Yet it was also an attempted reformation. It was an effort to introduce a moral influence into paganism. It was an effort to substitute for physical and naturalistic conceptions a moral theory of the government of the world. That was surely an immense advance in religious history, and foreshadowed the great revolution which was to launch the western world on a new spiritual career. The hosts of sister spirits, whom Maximus of Tyre imagines as surrounding and sustaining the life of men, involved in the darkness and sorrow of time, are [pg 604]a conception strange to the old paganism. And the need of mediatorial sympathy, of a sympathetic link, however slight, with the dim, awful Power, ever receding into more remote and mysterious distances, was also connected with the need of some assurance, or fainter hope, of a life beyond the tomb. To that hope the old classical paganism afforded only slight and shadowy nutriment. Yet, from hundreds of sepulchral inscriptions the yearning, often darkened by a doubt, appeals with pathetic force. Apart, in fact, from the crowd of mere antiquarian formalists and lovers of spectacle, there were, we believe, a great mass who longed for some channel through which they might have the faintest touch of sympathy with the Infinite Spirit; for some promise, however veiled in enigmatic symbolism, that this poor, puzzling, ineffectual life should not close impotently at death.