In all the Mazdean pantheon, it has been remarked, Mithra was the only divine figure that profoundly affected the religious imagination of Europe. Who can dare at this distance to pierce the mystery? But we may conjecture that the ascendency is partly due to his place as mediator in the Persian hierarchy, partly to the legends, emblazoned on so many slabs, of his miraculous and Herculean triumphs; but still more to the moral and sacramental support, and the sure hope of immortal life which he offered to his faithful worshippers. Mithra came as a deliverer from powers of evil and as a mediator between man and the remote Ormuzd. He bears the latter office in a double sense. In the cosmic system, as lord of light, he is also lord of the space between the heavenly ether and the mists of earth. As a solar deity, he is the central point among the planetary orbs.[3112] In the ubiquitous group of the slaughtered bull, Mithra stands between the two Dadophori, Cautes and Cautopates, who form with him a sort of Trinity, and are said to be incarnations of him.[3113] One of these figures in Mithraic sculpture always bears a torch erect, the other a torch turned downwards to the earth. They may have a double significance. They may figure the ascending light of dawn, and the last radiance of day as it sinks below the horizon. They may be taken to image the growth of solar strength to its midsummer triumphs, and its slow decline towards fading [pg 605]autumn and the cold of winter. Or again, they may shadow forth the wider and more momentous processes of universal death and resurgent life. But Mithra also became a mediator in the moral sense, standing between Ormuzd and Ahriman, the powers of good and evil, as Plutarch conceives him.[3114] He is the ever victorious champion, who defies and overthrows the malignant demons that beset the life of man; who, above all, gives the victory over the last foe of humanity.
The legend of Mithra in hymn or litany is almost entirely lost. But antiquarian ingenuity and cultivated sympathy have plausibly recovered some of its meanings from the many sculptural remains of his chapels. On the great monuments of Virunum, Mauls, Neuenheim, and Osterburken, can be seen the successive scenes of the hero’s career. They begin with his miraculous birth from the “mother rock,” which was familiar to Justin Martyr, S. Jerome, and many of the Fathers.[3115] The dedications petrae genetrici abound along the Danube, and the sacred stone was an object of adoration in many chapels.[3116] A youthful form, his head crowned with a Phrygian cap, a dagger in one hand, and a torch in the other, is pictured emerging from an opening rock, around which sometimes a serpent is coiled. Shepherds from the neighbouring mountain gaze in wonder at the divine birth, and presently come nearer to adore the youthful hero, and offer him the firstlings of their flocks and fields.[3117] And again, a naked boy is seen screening himself from the violence of the wind in the shelter of a fig tree; he eats of its fruit and makes himself a garment from the leaves.[3118] In another scene, the sacred figure appears in full eastern costume, armed with a bow from which he launches an arrow against a rock rising in front of him.[3119] From the spot where the arrow strikes the stone, a fountain gushes forth, and the water is eagerly caught in his upturned palms by a form kneeling below. Then follow the famous scenes of the chase and slaughter of the mystic bull. At first the beast is seen borne in a skiff over an expanse of waters. Soon afterwards [pg 606]he is grazing quietly in a meadow, when Mithra comes upon the scene. In one monument the hero is carrying the bull upon his shoulders; in others he is borne upon the animal’s back, grasping it by the horns. Or again, the bull is seen in full career with the hero’s arms thrown around his neck. At last the bull succumbs to his rider’s courage, and is dragged by the hind-legs, which are drawn over his captor’s shoulders, into a cavern where the famous slaughter was enacted.[3120] The young god, his mantle floating on the wind, kneels on the shoulder of the fallen beast, draws back its head with his left hand, while with the other he buries his dagger in its neck.[3121] Below this scene are invariably sculptured the scorpion, the faithful dog, and the serpent lapping the flowing blood. The two Dadophori, silent representatives of the worlds of light and gloom, one on each side, are always calm watchers of the mystic scene. But the destruction of the bull was not a mere spectacle of death. It was followed by a miracle of fresh springing life and fertility, and, here and there, on the slabs are seen ears of corn shooting from the tail of the dying beast, or young plants and flowers springing up around.[3122] His blood gives birth to the vine which yields the sacred juice consecrated in the mysteries. Thus, in spite of the scorpion and the serpent, symbols of the evil powers, who seek to wither and sterilise the sources of vitality, life is ever rising again from the body of death.[3123]
Mithra’s mysterious reconciliation with the Sun is figured in other groups.[3124] Mithra, as usual, in eastern costume, has, kneeling before him, a youthful figure either naked or lightly clad. The god touches the head of the suppliant with some mysterious symbol, and the subject of the rite raises his hands in prayer. The mystic symbol is removed, and Mithra sets a radiant crown on the suppliant’s head. This reconciliation of the two deities is a favourite subject. In the sculpture of Osterburken, they ratify their pact with solemn gestures before an altar. Their restored harmony is commemorated in even [pg 607]more solemn fashion. In one monument the two are reclining on a couch at a solemn agape, with a table before them bearing the sacred bread, which is marked with the cross, and both are in the act of raising the cup in their right hands.[3125]
The legend of Mithra, thus faintly and doubtfully reconstructed from the sacred sculptures, in the absence of express tradition, must probably for ever remain somewhat of an enigma. It has been, since the third century, the battle-ground of ingenious interpreters. To enumerate and discuss these theories, many of them now discredited by archaeological research, is far beyond the scope of this work. It is clear that from the early Chaldaean magi, who, to some extent, imposed their system on Iranian legend, down to the Neo-Platonists, the god and his attendants were treated as the symbols of cosmic theory. The birth from the rock was the light of dawn breaking over serrated crests of eastern hills.[3126] The cave, which was always piously perpetuated in the latest Mithraist architecture, was the solid vault of heaven, and the openings pierced in its roof were the stars shining through the celestial dome.[3127] The fountain which rose in every chapel, the fire on the altar, the animals surrounding the bull, represent the powers of nature in their changes and conflict. The young archer, causing water to spring from the rock by a shot from his bow, marks the miraculous cessation of prehistoric dearth, as the bull leaping from a skiff perhaps commemorates a primaeval deluge. The slaying of the bull, the central scene of all, may go back to the exploits of the heroic pioneers of settled life, a Hercules or a Theseus, who tamed the savage wilderness to the uses of man. It had many meanings to different ages. To one occupied with the processes of nature, it may have symbolised the withering of the vegetative freshness of the world in midsummer heats, yet with a promise of a coming spring. To another it may have meant a victory over evil spirits and powers of darkness.[3128] Or it may, in the last days, have been the prototype of that sacramental cleansing which gave assurance of immortal life, and which seemed to the Fathers the mockery of a Diviner Sacrifice.
There can be no doubt that Mithra and his exploits, in response to a great need, came to have a moral and spiritual meaning. From the earliest times, he is the mediator between good and evil powers; ever young, vigorous, and victorious in his struggles, the champion of truth and purity, the protector of the weak, the ever vigilant foe of the hosts of daemons who swarm round the life of man, the conqueror of death. His religion, in spite of its astrology, was not one of fatalist reverie; it was a religion of struggle and combat. In this aspect it was congenial to the virile Roman temperament, and, above all, to the temperament of the Roman soldier, at once the most superstitious and the most strenuous of men.[3129] Who can tell what inspiration the young heroic figure, wearing an air of triumphant vigour even on the rudest slabs,[3130] may have breathed into a worn old veteran, who kept ceaseless watch against the Germans in some lonely post on the Danube, when he spent a brief hour in the splendour of the brilliantly lighted crypt, and joined in the old Mazdean litany? Before him was the sacred group of the Tauroctonus, full of so many meanings to many lands and ages, but which, to his eyes, probably shed the light of victory over the perilous combats of time, and gave assurance of a larger hope. Suddenly, by the touch of an unseen hand, the plaque revolved,[3131] and he had before him the solemn agape of the two deities in which they celebrated the peaceful close of their mystic conflict. And he went away, assured that his hero god was now enthroned on high, and watching over his faithful soldiers upon earth.[3132] At the same time, he had seen around him the sacred symbols or images of all the great forces of nature, and of the fires of heaven which, in their motions and their effluences, could bring bane or happiness to men below. In the chapels of Mithra, all nature became divine and sacred, the bubbling spring, the fire on the cottage hearth, the wind that levelled the pine tree or bore the sailor on his voyage, the great eternal lights that brought seed-time and harvest and parted day from night, the ever-welling vital force in opening leaf and springing corn-ear, and birth of young creatures, triumphing in regular round over the [pg 609]malignant forces which seem for a time to threaten decay and corruption. The “Unconquered Mithra” is thus the god of light and hope in this world and the next.[3133]
The ancient world was craving for a promise of immortality. Mithraism strove to nurse the hope, but, like the contemporaneous Platonism and the more ancient Orphic lore, it linked it with moral responsibility and grave consequences. Votaries were taught that the soul descended by graduated fall from the Most High to dwell for a season in the prison of the flesh.[3134] After death there is a great judgment, to decide the future destiny of each soul, according to the life which had been led on earth.[3135] Spirits which have defiled themselves during life are dragged down by Ahriman and his evil angels, and may be consigned to torture, or may sink into endless debasement. The pure, who have been fortified by the holy mysteries, will mount upwards through the seven spheres, at each stage parting with some of their lower elements, till, at last, the subtilised essential spirit reaches the empyrean, and is received by Mithra into the eternal light.
But the conflict between good and evil, even on this earth, will not last for ever. There will be a second coming of Mithra, which is to be presaged by great plagues. The dead will arise from their tombs to meet him. The mystic bull will again be slain, and his blood, mingled with the juice of the sacred Haoma, will be drunk by the just, and impart to them the gift of eternal life.[3136] Fire from heaven will finally devour all that is evil. Thus the slaughter of the bull, which is the image of the succession of decay and fructifying power in physical nature, is also the symbol and guarantee of a final victory over evil and death. And, typifying such lofty and consolatory truths, it naturally met the eye of the worshipper in every chapel. It was also natural that the taurobolium, which was originally a rite of the Great Mother, should be absorbed, like so many alien rites and ideas, by the religion which was the great triumph of syncretism. The baptism of blood was, indeed, a formal cleansing from impurity of the flesh; but it was also cleansing in a higher sense. The inscrip[pg 610]tions of the fourth century, which commemorate the blessing of the holy rite, often close with the words in aeternum renatus.[3137] How far the phrase expressed a moral resurrection, how far it records the sure hope of another life, we cannot presume to say. Whether borrowed from Christian sources or not, it breathes an aspiration strangely different from the tone of old Roman religion, even at its best. There may have been a good deal of ritualism in the cleansing of Mithra. Yet Mithra was, from the beginning, a distinctly moral power, and his worship was apparently untainted by the licence which made other heathen worships schools of cruelty and lust. His connection, indeed, with some of them, must at times have led his votaries into more than doubtful company; Sabazius and Magna Mater were dangerous allies.[3138] Yet, on the whole, it has been concluded that Mithraism was a gospel of truth and purity, although the purity was often a matter of merely ceremonial purification and abstinence.
The day is far distant when the mass of men will be capable of the austere mystic vision, which relies little on external ceremonies of worship. Certainly the last ages of paganism in the West were not ripe for any such reserved spirituality. And the religions which captivated the ages that preceded the triumph of the Catholic Church, while they strove to satisfy the deeper needs of the spirit, were more intensely sacerdotal, and more highly organised than the old religions of Greece and Rome. Probably no small part of their strength lay in sacramental mystery, and an occult sacred lore which was the monopoly of a class set apart from the world.[3139] Our knowledge of the Mithraic priesthood is unfortunately scanty, and the ancient liturgy has perished.[3140] But inscriptions mention an ordo sacerdotum; and Tertullian speaks of a “high pontiff of Mithra” and of holy virgins and persons vowed to continence in his service.[3141] The priestly functions were certainly more constant and exacting than those of the old priestly colleges of Greece and Rome. There were [pg 611]solemn sacraments and complicated rites of initiation to be performed. Three times a day, at dawn, noon, and evening, the litany to the Sun was recited.[3142] Daily sacrifice was offered at the altars of various gods, with chanting and music. The climax of the solemn office was probably marked by the sounding of a bell.[3143] And turning on a pivot, the sacred slab in the apse displayed, for the adoration of the faithful, the scene of the holy feast of Mithra and the Sun after their reconciliation. The seventh day of the week was sacred to the Sun, the sixteenth of each month to Mithra, and the 25th of December, as marking the sun’s entrance on a new course of triumph, was the great festival of Mithra’s sacred year.[3144]
Initiation in the mysteries, after many rites of cleansing and trial, was the crowning privilege of the Mithraist believer. The gradation of spiritual rank, and the secrecy which bound the votaries to one another in a sacred freemasonry, were a certain source of power. S. Jerome alone has preserved for us the seven grades through which the neophyte rose to full communion. They were Corax, Cryphius, Miles, Leo, Perses, Heliodromus, and Pater.[3145] What their origin was who shall say? They may correspond to the seven planets, and mark the various stages of the descent of the soul into flesh, and its rise again to the presence of God. According to Porphyry, the first three stages were merely preliminary to complete initiation. Only the Lions were full and real communicants,[3146] and the title Leo certainly appears oftenest on inscriptions. The dignity Pater Patrum, or Pater Patratus, was much coveted, and conferred a real authority over the brethren, with an official title to their reverence.[3147] The admission to each successive grade was accompanied by symbolic ceremonies, as when the Miles put aside the crown twice tendered to him, saying that Mithra was his only crown.[3148] The veil of the Cryphius, and the Phrygian bonnet of the Perses, have a significance or a history which needs no comment. Admission [pg 612]to full communion was preceded by austerities and ordeals which were made the subject of exaggeration and slander. The neophyte, blindfold and bound, was obliged to pass through flame. It was said that he had to take part in a simulated murder with a blood-dripping sword. On the sculpture of Heddernheim a figure is seen standing deep in snow. These ceremonies probably went back to the scenes and ages in which mutilations in honour of Bellona and Magna Mater took their rise. They may also have been a lesson, or a test of apathy and moral courage.[3149] But the tales of murder and torture connected with these rites have probably no better foundation than similar slanders about the early Christian mysteries.[3150]
The votaries of Mithra, like those of Isis and other eastern deities, formed themselves into guilds which were organised on the model of ordinary sodalities and colleges. As funerary societies, or under the shelter of Magna Mater, they escaped persecution. They had their roll of members, their council of decurions, their masters and curators.[3151] And, like the secular colleges, they depended to a great extent, for the erection of chapels and the endowment of their services, on the generosity of their wealthier members and patrons.[3152] One man might give the site of a chapel, another a marble altar; a poor slave might contribute out of his peculium a lamp or little image to adorn the walls of the crypt.[3153]