Beck on Mithraism: Collected Works with New Essays 1351574337, 9781351574334

Citation preview

BECK ON MITHRAISM Beck's essays on Mithraism are lucid, elegant, original and persuasive. Gathering them into one volume will reinforce his reputation as an outstanding scholar in this field. The addition of new essays and reflective introductions to the various sections of the book will make more accessible the extent, depth and coherence ofhis work. They will also demonstrate a hallmark of Beck's work - his constant searchfor new and more sophisticated ways of understanding the ancient evidence. His is 'a mind on the move.' I predict it will become a standard reference work in the field of Mithraic studies. Stephen Wilson, Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada J would see this as a very worthy project from one of the world's leading experts in Mithraism, with a very distinct and consistent approach, and with a large following of scholars who read his articles and books. Frederick Brenk, S.J., Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome, Italy Roger Beck's suggestive and influential contributions to the study ofMithraism are well known; in gathering them together he has added a number of important new studies that not only bring the earlier studies up to date but tie the whole together. The resulting volume attractively indicates how texts and realia can offer new insights into the analysis of one of the most important "new" religions of antiquity. It affords fresh insights into the examination of early Christianity and Greco-Roman religion, especially their astronomical and astrological features. All in all, it is an important and perceptive discussion of myth making in antiquity. Peter Richardson, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada Roger Beck is a leading scholar in the field of Mithraic Studies. His publications have brought decisive progress in a complicated and often controversial realm of scholarship. I very much welcome the project to collect and to publish Roger Beck's Mithraic studies in one volume. Walter Burkert, Emeritus Professor, University of Zurich, Switzerland Professor Beck brings to this task a wealth of knowledge and experience. His work over the past 25 years or so on the Roman cult of Mithras has placed him internationally in the top rank of scholars of this ancient astral religion, and certainly the leading English-language guide. Not only will the book usefully bring together in one place a number of seminal articles which are scattered in various publications, but it also promises both to update the critical survey of Mithraism which Professor Beckfirst made in 1984, and to be innovative in its interpretation of the cult. As always with Professor Beck's work, I anticipate that the new interpretations will be soundly grounded in a deep appreciation of the cultural mind-set of the time. Robert Hannah, Professor, University of Otago, New Zealand Among historians of religions and classical or Iranian scholars Beck is recognized as the world authority on Mithraism. The core of his achievement lies in the decipherment of symbols, either astronomical, cognitive, or imagistic. For thirty years his spirit has been that of a pioneer and a

marshal in the same time: opening new paths and redressing the balance. A wave of groundbreaking ideas enlivens this collection of studies from the first page to the last. Giovanni Casadio, Professor of the History of Religions, University of Salerno, Italy Roger Beck has been one of the most significant and creative writers over the past 30 years not only specifically in Mithraism, but more broadly in the study of ancient 'paganisms'. He has been responsible, mostly single-handed, for establishing that Mithraism had a significant astronomical component. It is an excellent idea to add the new sections to this collection, which will locate his discoveries in the context of his more recent thinking, centred on the subject of cult formation. This is sophisticated and original work, which is of interest to a wide range of scholars. This volume will bring it to the attention of a wider audience. Dr Simon Price, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

ASHGATE CONTEMPORARY THINKERS ON RELIGION: COLLECTED WORKS

General Editor: John Hinnells

Beck on Mithraism

ASHGATE CONTEMPORARY THINKERS ON RELIGION: COLLECTED WORKS

General Editor: John Hinnells Other titles in this series: Zoroastrian and Parsi Studies: Selected Works of John R. Hinnells JOHN R. HINNELLS, University of Derby, UK ISBN 0 7546 1501 4 Neusner on Judaism: Volume 1: History JACOB NEUSNER, Bard College, USA ISBN 0 7546 3598 8 Neusner on Judaism: Volume 2: Literature JACOB NEUSNER, Bard College, USA ISBN 0 7546 3599 6 Neusner on Judaism: Volume 3: Religion and Theology JACOB NEUSNER, Bard College, USA ISBN 0 7546 3600 3 Williams on South Asian Religions and Immigration: Collected Works RAYMOND BRADY WILLIAMS, Wabash College, USA ISBN 0 7546 3856 1 Thiselton on Hermeneutics: Collected Writings of Anthony Thiselton ANTHONY C. THISELTON, University of Nottingham, UK ISBN 0 7546 3925 8 Briimmer on Meaning and the Christian Faith: Collected Writings VINCENT BRÜMMER, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands ISBN 0 7546 4028 0 Ninian Smart on World Religions: Selected Works Edited by JOHN J. SHEPHERD, St Martin's College, UK ISBN 0 7546 4080 9

ASHGATE CONTEMPORARY THINKERS ON RELIGION: COLLECTED WORKS

General Editor: John Hinnells

Beck on Mithraism Collected Works with New Essays

ROGER BECK Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Canada

First published 2004 in the Ashgate Contemporary Thinkers on Religion: Collected Work by Ashgate Publishing Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright© Roger Beck 2004. For copyright of individual articles please refer to the Acknowledgements. Roger Beck has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Beck, Roger Beck on Mithraism : collected works with new essays. (Contemporary thinkers on religion: collected works) l.Mithraism 2.Rome - Religion - Middle Eastern influences I.Title 299.1'5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beck, Roger, 1937Beck on Mithraism: collected works with new essays/ Roger Beck. p. cm. - (Contemporary thinkers on religion) Includes index. ISBN 0-7546-4081-7 (alk. paper) l. Mithraism. I. Title. II. Series. BL1585.B4252004 299'.15-dc22

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-4081-3 (hbk)

2004006134

Dis Manibus Cultorum Mithrae

Contents Foreword: Luther H. Martin

xiii

Preface

xv

Acknowledgements

xvii

List of Abbreviations

xix

Introduction: Four Stages on a Road to Redescribing the Mithraic Mysteries

xxi

I: THE SCHOLARLY SCENE

1

Mithraism after 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont', 1984-2003

3

II: FOUNDATION

Introduction 2

The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis. Originally Published in Journal of Roman Studies, 88 (1998), pp. 115-28

31

3

A Summary Description of the Mithraic Mysteries in Six Propositions

45

III: MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS

Introduction 4

Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel. Originally Published in Journal of Roman Studies, 90 (2000) pp. 145-80

55

5

History into Fiction: The Metamorphoses of the Mithras Myths. Originally Published in Ancient Narrative, 1 (2001-02) pp. 283-300

93

6

Apuleius the Novelist, Apuleius the Ostian Householder, and the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres: Further Explorations of an Hypothesis of Filippo Coarelli. Originally published in S.G. Wilson and M. Desjardins (eds), Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson, Studies in Christianity and Judaism, 9, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000, pp. 551-67

111

CONTENTS

X

IV: MITHRAS AND THE HEAVENS: FIRST EXPLORATIONS

Introduction 7

The Seat of Mithras at the Equinoxes: Porphyry De Antro Nympharum 24'. Originally published in Journal ofMithraic Studies, 1 (1976), pp. 95-8

129

8

Cautes and Cautopates: Some Astronomical Considerations. Originally Published in Journal ofMithraic Studies, 2 (1977), pp. 1-17

133

9

Interpreting the Ponza Zodiac, I. Originally Published in Journal ofMithraic Studies, 1 (1976), pp. 1-19

151

10

Interpreting the Ponza Zodiac, II. Originally Published in Journal ofMithraic Studies, 2 (1977-78), pp. 87-147

171

V: MITHRAS AND THE HEAVENS: QUIS ILLE?

11

The Rise and Fall of the Astral Identifications of the Tauroctonous Mithras

235

12

Astral Symbolism in the Tauroctony: A Statistical Demonstration of the Extreme Improbability of Unintended Coincidence in the Selection of Elements in the Composition

251

In the Place of the Lion: Mithras in the Tauroctony. Originally Published in J.R. Hinnells (eds), Studies in Mithraism, Rome: Bretschneider, 1994, pp. 29-50

267

13

VI: THE ASTRONOMICAL AND ASTROLOGICAL MATRIX

Introduction 14

15

The Astronomical Design of Karakush, a Royal Burial Site in Ancient Commagene: An Hypothesis. Originally Published in Culture and Cosmos, 3 (1) (1999), pp. 10-34

297

Whose Astrology? The Imprint of Ti. Claudius Balbillus on the Mithraic Mysteries

323

CONTENTS

xi

VII: EiKONA KOSMOU: THE MITHRAEUM

Introduction 16

17

Cosmic Models: Some Uses of Hellenistic Science in Roman Religion. Originally Published in T.D. Barnes (éd.), The Sciences in Greco-Roman Society, APEIRON, 27 (4) (1994), pp. 99-117

335

Qui Mortalitatis Causa Convenerunt: The Meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on June 26, A.D. 184. Originally Published in Phoenix, 52 (1998), pp. 335-44

355

Index

365

Foreword Luther H. Martin The University of Vermont

The Roman cult of Mithras has fascinated those interested in religion since the end of the first century AD. It appealed to Roman citizens because it offered wisdom from the East in the context of a sentient ritual system alternative to that of traditional Roman religion. Ironically, it appealed as well to many of the new, non-Roman residents of the Empire because of its association with 'Romanness' as instantiated by a membership drawn largely from among the military and from the civil service. However, the cult was vigorously opposed by Christian polemicists, especially by Justin and Tertullian, because of perceived similarities between it and early Christianity. And with the anti-pagan decrees of the Christian emperor Theodosius during the final decade of the fourth century, Mithraism disappeared from the history of religions as a viable religious practice. During the nineteenth century, a scientific impulse for the study of religions emerged which refocused the interests of Western scholars upon the broad range of the religions ofjnankind, including those of the past and especially those of Graeco-Roman antiquity. With this interest, the study of Mithraism reemerged as an object of fascination, still because of its perceived agonism with emergent Christianity, and was judged consequently to have 'a very close and serious bearing upon the history of religious evolution'. At the end of that century, Franz Cumont collected all available evidence of Mithraism in his monumental Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra (1896-99), and offered a coherent reconstruction of the cult based on his arguments for its transformation into a Roman cult as a consequence of its spread from the Persian East to the West. Cumont's work established the basis and the framework for the study of Mithraism throughout most of the twentieth century. Roger Beck is perhaps best known to those outside the arguably arcane realm of Mithraic studies for his magisterial overview of 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont' (Aufstieg una Niedergang der romischen Welt II.17.4 [1984]) in which he exhaustively surveyed new Mithraic discoveries and new interpretations of Mithraism since the beginning of the twentieth century. The post-Cumontian interpretations of Mithraism included the discovery of the role of astrology in the structuring of Mithraic iconography, especially its characteristic and central tauroctonous scene, and an acknowledgement of the 'Romanness' of Mithraism and, consequently, a reopening of questions about its historical beginnings. During the final part of the twentieth century, Beck was also developing his own coherent reconstruction of the cult, of its origins and of its probable significance. Much of this work is exemplified in the current collection of essays, as is a brief update of new developments in Mithraic studies during the latter part of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1970s, a number of scholars - including Beck - began to argue that the number of discontinuities between Roman Mithraism and the Indian and Persian myths of Mithra greatly outweighed Cumont's proposed story of continuities and

xiv

FOREWORD

transformations. Apart from the name of the god himself, in other words, Mithraism seems to have developed largely in and is, therefore, best understood from the context of Roman culture. Cumonfs bias towards the then popular explanation of religions on the basis of their historical diffusion apparently overwhelmed his perceptions of the astrological structure of Roman Mithraism, even though astrological influence on Mithraism had previously been suggested and Cumont himself had produced what is still consulted as an authoritative monograph on astrology in the Greek and Roman world. Drawing upon an enviable knowledge of the history of ancient science (for example, his Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras [1988]), Beck has been pre-eminent among a handful of modern scholars of Mithraism who have striven to situate Mithraic iconography - and the very architecture of the Mithraeum itself - astrologically; to chart these astrological allusions and their possible inferences; and to begin to develop a syntax of Mithraic discourse based on the common Roman idiom of what he terms 'startalk7, a discourse of signification alternative to the Cumontian project of decoding from Mithraic iconography a standard Mithraic myth and a coherent set of Mithraic doctrine based on this myth. In seeking to understand a Mithraic syntax of star-talk, Beck is employing recent research from the field of cognitive science, a rather daring direction for classicists and historians but an orientation which is increasingly being explored by colleagues in the archaeology, anthropology and history of religions. By seeking to exploit for historical research conclusions about how human minds process information to produce the kinds of mental representations that we do, Beck has situated himself at the forefront of Mithraic studies not only in terms of the historical, linguistic, and astronomical knowledge he commands but by his relentless employment of cutting-edge theoretical advances. Ashgate Publishing is to be commended for making Beck's articles conveniently available in their Collected Studies Series - as they are for publishing a companion volume of essays by Beck's colleague and collaborator Richard Gordon (1996) - and especially for encouraging the inclusion of a significant amount of new, previously unpublished materials which indicate the new directions of Beck's research and their continuity with his earlier studies. The publication of both of these volumes certainly whets interest in Gordon's and Beck's forthcoming study, Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun: The Cult of Mithras in the Roman Empire, a study which promises to be the definitive modern study of Mithraism. Beck's articles on Mithraism are essential for all, not only for those interested just in the Roman cult of Mithraism or even in the Hellenistic mystery cults generally; his careful and innovative approach to this example of Roman religion should prove to be revelatory to classicists and to historians, especially historians of religion. They exemplify what a scholarly study of religion might - and, indeed, should - be, but rarely is.

Preface Some thirty years ago, as a new instructor at the recently founded Erindale College of the University of Toronto, I had to devise, together with my colleagues, new courses in Classics for non-specialist students entering the University on its western campus. Those were boom times in post-secondary education in Ontario, as elsewhere in North America. But they were also perilous times for Classics, at least in Canada, for it was clear to many of us that the discipline here was unlikely to survive solely on the strength of the traditional language-based specialist programmes, for all their excellence. Courses which would attract transient visitors to antiquity in reasonable numbers were called for, not as substitute but as supplement - the bread, if you will, to sustain the butter. They had to be offered 'in translation', and they had to look beyond the literary 'classics' to engage broadly with the culture of classical antiquity in its many forms both popular and elite. How our discipline at large successfully met this challenge is a story well enough known. Each of us responded according to our individual interests, frequently by broadening out from our particular focuses of research. For me the process worked in reverse. Originally a Homerist, I came to publish on Petronius by way of teaching a course on the ancient novel, and on Mithraism by way of my course on the religions of the Roman Empire. Within Mithraism my focus on the cult's astronomy and astrology had a different source, amateur astronomy or, less grandly, star-gazing. But that too has not been without pedagogical issue, specifically an undergraduate course on ancient astronomy and astrology. The Seventies was a fortunate decade in which to start a research programme on Mithraism. Interest in the god, his Indo-Iranian manifestations, and his cult in the Roman Empire was already considerable when a series of International Congresses (Manchester 1971, Teheran 1975, Rome 1978) and the subsequent publication of their proceedings (MS, EM, MM - see Abbreviations, p. xix) first made it possible to recognize 'Mithraic Studies' as a coherent interdisciplinary field of research. There were, of course, distinguished scholars working outside the ambit of those congresses and the contemporaneous Journal of Mithraic Studies. Moreover, the whole enterprise depended on the prior publication of M.J. Vermaseren's great two-volume Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (CIMRM, 1956-60). Nonetheless, Mithraic studies was clearly a good vineyard in which to choose to labour, for it quickly gave me access to experienced and congenial fellow toilers and a forum in which to test my early ideas on Mithraism. Two in particular have become my life-long personal friends and close colleagues in Mithraic ventures, John Hinnells and Richard Gordon. My scholarly debt to Richard will be apparent in virtually every essay, old and new, in this collection. I am indebted to John not only as Mithraic scholar but also as the great enabler of Mithraic studies, the organizer of the Manchester, Teheran and second (1990) Rome conferences and the editor of Mithraic Studies (MS, 1975) and Studies in Mithraism (SM, 1994).

xvi

PREFACE

During the years, and in travels which have taken me to Mithraic sites and museums with Mithraic monuments the length and breadth of the European half of the Roman Empire, I have received assistance from many scholars and have made many friends that proper acknowledgement here would be impossible. But I must make special mention of four. The late Ugo Bianchi, with his customary grace and wisdom, initiated me into the study of the Mithraic mysteries at the first Rome congress (1978), the proceedings of which he edited in the following year as Mysteria Mithrae, one of the great landmarks in our field. Mary Boyce has explicated for me the arcana of Iranian Mithra and honoured me with the invitation to write on the Graeco-Roman Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha for the third volume of A History of Zoroastrianism (1991). Reinhold Merkelbach has always exemplified for me the paragon of a scholar of the GraecoRoman mystery cults. Luther Martin, most recently, has been my guide into the methods of what I am convinced will be 'the next big thing' in the study of ancient, as of living, religions - the Cognitive Science of Religion. My indebtedness to the many other colleagues and friends who have helped me in one way or another along my Mithraic road must be, I fear, by name alone. My heartfelt thanks to Timothy Barnes, Joanna Bird, David Bivar, Glen Bowersock, Leonard Boyle, Fred Brenk, Joe Bryant, Walter Burkert, Giovanni Casadio, Manfred Clauss, Malcolm Davidson, Margreet B. de Boer, Albert de Jong, Terry Donaldson, Jacques DuchesneGuillemin, Michael Gervers, Frantz Grenet, Alison Griffith, Robert Hannah, Steven Hijmans, Ingeborg Huld-Zetsche, Howard Jackson, Peter Kingsley, Henri Lavagne, Wolf Liebeschuetz, Varbinka Naydenova, Simon Price, Harold Remus, Peter Richardson, James Rives, James R. Russell, Ennio Sanzi, W. Schlosser, Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Robert Turcan, David Ulansey, Leif Vaage, M.E.C. Vermaseren-van Haaren, Maria Weiss, Harvey Whitehouse and Engelbert Winter. Among those no longer with us, I wish to record my deep gratitude to Alessandro Bausani, William Brashear, Pierre Brind'Amour, Wolfgang Lentz, Will Oxtoby, Alexandru Popa and Maarten Vermaseren; also to my ancient history tutors at Oxford, Geoffrey de Ste Croix and C.E. Stevens. I cannot conceive of better teachers under whom to engage with the history of the GraecoRoman world. Without the love and support of my wife, Janet, I could not have sustained these thirty-year-long explorations of the Mithras cult. For her encouragement - not to mention her stylistic acumen - 1 can never thank her sufficiently. My special thanks go to Ashgate Publishing, to Sarah Lloyd and to John Hinnells for enabling this collection of my past articles and for accommodating a number of new essays which look ahead to work still to come. I have dedicated this book to the memory of the initiates of Mithras. History is a sort of dialogue with the dead, and over the years I sense that I have come to know something of the Mithraists. Certainly I have come to respect both them and their mysteries. RB

Acknowledgements The chapters in this volume are reproduced from the sources listed below. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the copyright holders of these papers for their permission to reproduce them in this volume. 1

Mithraism after 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont, 1984-2003', first publication.

2 'The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis', Journal of Roman Studies, 88 (London, 1998), pp. 115-28. Reprinted with permission of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. 3 'A Summary Description of the Mithraic Mysteries in Six Propositions', first publication. 4 'Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel', Journal of Roman Studies, 90 (London, 2000) pp. 145-80. Reprinted with permission of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. 5 'History into Fiction: The Metamorphoses of the Mithras Myths', Ancient Narrative, 1 (Eelde, 2001) pp. 282-300. Copyright © 2001 Roger Beck. 6 'Apuleius the Novelist, Apuleius the Ostian Householder and the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres: Further Explorations of an Hypothesis of Filippo Coarelli', Stephen G. Wilson and Michael Desjardins, eds., Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson, Studies in Christianity and Judaism, 9 (Waterloo, 2000) pp. 551-67. Reprinted with permission of Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 7 'The Seat of Mithras at the Equinoxes: Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum 24', Journal of Mithraic Studies, 1 (Henley, 1976), pp. 95-8. Reprinted with permission of Taylor and Francis Group Ltd, http://www.tandf.co.uk. 8 'Cautes and Cautopates: Some Astronomical Considerations', Journal of Mithraic Studies, 2 (Henley, 1977), pp. 1-17. Reprinted with permission of Taylor and Francis Group Ltd, http://www.tandf.co.uk. 9 'Interpreting the Ponza Zodiac', Journal ofMithraic Studies, 1 (Henley, 1976), pp. 1-19. Reprinted with permission of Taylor and Francis Group Ltd, http://www.tandf.co.uk.

xviii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

10 'Interpreting the Ponza Zodiac, II', Journal ofMithraic Studies, 2 (Henley, 1978), pp. 87-147. Reprinted with permission of Taylor and Francis Group Ltd, h t t p / / www.tandf.co.uk. 11 The Rise and Fall of the Astral Identifications of the Tauroctonous Mithras', first publication. 12 'Astral Symbolism in the Tauroctony: A Statistical Demonstration of the Extreme Improbability of Unintended Coincidence in the Selection of Elements in the Composition', first publication. 13 Tn the Place of the Lion: Mithras in the Tauroctony', John R. Hinnells, eds., Studies in Mithraism (Rome, 1994), pp. 29-50. 14 The Astronomical Design of Karakush, a Royal Burial Site in Ancient Commagene: An Hypothesis', Culture and Cosmos, 3 (Bristol, 1999), pp. 10-34. Reprinted with permission of Culture and Cosmos, www.cultureandcosmos.com. 15 'Whose Astrology? The Imprint of Ti. Claudius Balbillus on the Mithraic Mysteries', first publication. 16 'Cosmic Models: Some Uses of Hellenistic Science in Roman Religion', Timothy D. Barnes, éd., The Sciences in Greco-Roman Society, APPEIRON, 27, (Edmonton, 1994), pp. 99-117. Reprinted with kind permission of Academic Printing and Publishing. 17 'Qui Mortalitatis Causa Convenerunt: The Meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on 26 June, A.D. 184', Phoenix, 52 (Toronto, 1998), pp. 335-44. Reprinted with permission of Phoenix the Journal of the Classical Association of Canada. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

List of Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used in the new chapters and introductions. They are not repeated in the lists of references at the end of those chapters. CCAG = Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, (1898-1953), 12 vols (various editors), Brussels: Lamertin. CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. CIMRM = Vermaseren, M.J. (1956-60), Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae, 2 vols, The Hague: Martinus Nijhof. EM = Duchesne-Guillemin, J. (éd., 1978), Études Mithriaques, Actes du Deuxième Congrès International, Téhéran ... 1975, Acta Iranica, 17, First Series, vol. 4, Leiden and New York: Brill. EPRO = Études Préliminaires aux Religions Orientales dans l'Empire Romain, Leiden and New York: Brill. JMS - Journal ofMithraic Studies. MM = Bianchi, U. (1979), Mysteria Mithrae, Atti del Seminario Internazionale su 'La spécificité storico-religiosa dei Misteri di Mithra ...', Roma e Ostia ... 1978, EPRO, 80, Leiden and New York: Brill. MS = Hinnells, J.R. (éd., 1975), Mithraic Studies, Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, 2 vols, Manchester: Manchester University Press. MSFC = Beck, R.L. (1984), 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont', Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rõmischen Welt, 11.17A, pp. 2002-115. PG = Beck, R.L. (1988), Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras, EPRO, 109, Leiden and New York: Brill. SM = Hinnells, J.R. (éd., 1994), Studies in Mithraism, Papers associated with the Mithraic Panel ... [at] the XVIth Congress of the International Association of the History of Religions, Rome 1990, Storia delle Religioni, 9, Rome: Bretschneider. TMMM = Cumont, F. (1896-99), Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, 2 vols (vol. 1,1899; vol. 2,1896), Brussels: Lamertin. V+number: refers to a Mithraic 'monument' in CIMRM (above).

Introduction

Four Stages on a Road to Redescribing the Mithraic Mysteries The intent of this collection is not simply to offer my past articles on Mithras and Mithraism within a single cover, or even to bring to a single focus whatever light my researches have shed on the subject. Certainly, the collection will serve those ends. But it also has another and more ambitious intent, which is to underpin a larger project, long under way, of comprehending and describing the Mithraic mysteries more effectively than the traditional methods for studying the culture of classical antiquity seemed to afford. For many years, indeed for most of the time span of the writing of these articles, the goal of this larger project eluded me, not in the sense that I could not yet reach it - to me that was obvious enough - but in the sense that I did not yet know how to reach it. I knew that I could say certain things, and say them quite well: these are the fruits of my researches gathered here. But other things, I was uneasily aware, I could not say, nor did I know why: unsatisfactory and abandoned drafts attested to, but did not indicate, a path not yet travelled. Adequately to comprehend and to describe the Mithraic mysteries, I now understand, did not require blazing an entirely new trail. It was necessary only to explore and accommodate to my purposes paths opened up by other disciplines, notably study of religion, anthropology and cognitive science. In fairness to myself, I may say that until quite recently some of these paths were inaccessible - for the very good reason that they had not yet been mapped by scholars in their home disciplines. This was particularly so in the cognitive science of religion, a subdiscipline which only came into existence in the 1990s. Of the works which have inspired and enabled my quest, most bear a publication date of 1999 or later. My stance in this collection is therefore prospective, not retrospective, and I invite the reader to look at the articles from the same point of view. In a quite literal sense they are pro-visional, opening questions rather than solving them. And where they do reach solid conclusions, it is to firm up a section of the path ahead or to close off an unprofitable cul-de-sac. It is with the same intent that I have added several new essays: to orient the articles in various sections towards the now clearer goal of redescribing the Mithraic mysteries; and to introduce the cross-disciplinary methods by which I aspire to attain that goal - or to get as close to it as mortality allows. How do I intend to realize my project of redescribing the Mithraic mysteries? First, the vehicle is more readily indicated than the road. For the past several years Richard

xxii

INTRODUCTION

Gordon and I have been collaborating on a comprehensive study of Mithraism with the working title of Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun: The Cult ofMithras in the Roman Empire. No precise line of demarcation should, or indeed can, be drawn between his sector of the work and mine, though our study will in fact be presented in two separate parts. Broadly, Gordon focuses on what may be subsumed under the heading of 'the cult', while I focus on what may be subsumed under 'the mysteries'. Of course we have no intent of forcing an artificial dichotomy between two manifestly overlapping domains, and we frequently discuss the same phenomena, though from somewhat different perspectives. It is, however, within the compass of my Part (II) of our study that I am attempting my redescription of the Mithraic mysteries. My route has four stages, three constructive ones following some necessary deconstruction. Stage 1: The Deconstruction of 'Doctrine' The first stage is the deconstruction of 'doctrine'. That Mithraism had anything like a systematic and coherent body of teaching, transmitted to the initiates as a necessary element of the mysteries or guarded by the Fathers as arcana, I no longer consider tenable. Why, then, do I now reoffer past articles, several of which postulated or implied just such a corpus of doctrine, in particular astrological doctrine? In answer, I must first reply that one cannot leave nothing in doctrine's place; that would imply that the Mithraists neither constructed nor communicated meaning, which is patently absurd. The problem, then, is to identify the 'something' which replaces doctrine. This 'something', I suggest, is both less specific than doctrine and more complex ontologically: instead of a lost body of explicit teaching and beliefs, which is the scholar's task to reconstruct, I propose a loose network of cosmological, theological and soteriological ideas which were expressed, transmitted and apprehended symbolically in the iconography of the monuments, the design of Mithraea, the performance of ritual, and to some extent also in explicit teaching and in the exegesis of icons, and of course in the rehearsal of sacred story. So I ask the reader to effect a sort of deconstruction or translation of my past articles along these lines. Where doctrine is postulated, especially cult-wide doctrine, a more tentative claim should be substituted: norms of meaning and interpretation, rather than fixed beliefs; sometimes riffs and elaborations. Both the second and third stages of my project's route are intimated in the italicized phrase above: apprehended symbolically. Stage 2: The Apprehension of Symbols The ideas of the mysteries, at least those we can still recover, are instantiated above all in the symbol complexes of the icons (especially the icon of the bull-killing) and of the

INTRODUCTION

xxiii

mithraeum. Interpreting symbols is not of course a straightforward business; a complex of symbols cannot be read off like an encoded message once one finds the key. Classicists, of course, are familiar enough with problems of symbolism. However, given their traditional focus on the masterpieces of ancient literature, their approaches to symbolism tend to be either formal/rhetorical or else aesthetic. For a student of a mystery cult, it seems to me, a more fruitful approach would be to interpret the symbolism with reference to the initiates who actually engaged with and apprehended the symbols. Attempting this compels one to turn to cultural anthropology, where much work of high quality and sophistication has been done on the premise that cultures in general and religions in particular are, or function as, networks of symbols. Classicists have made surprisingly little use of symbolist anthropology. Lévi-Straussian structuralism, if one may include it in the symbolist camp, has had some impact, especially as mediated by French classicists such as Marcel Détienne.1 But the main Anglo-American symbolist tradition of, for example, Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz and Edmund Leach,2 has scarcely been tapped, even by English-language classical scholarship. Perhaps this is because symbolist anthropology requires ethnographic field work among living cultures, or at least very rich archival material, unattainable desiderata for a classicist or a student of ancient religion. How can we replicate for dead cultures the sort of 'thick description' which is the essence of Geertzian anthropology (1973, pp. 3-30, esp. p. 6)? We cannot. But there are compensating strategies for overcoming the obstacle. One of them is to look to ethnographic descriptions of cultures and their religions in cases where the cosmologies and the complexes of symbols appear comparable to those of Mithraism. One such culture, it seems to me, is that of the Chamula, a Maya people of the Central Chiapas Highlands in southern Mexico, as described by the anthropologist Gary H. Gossen (1979). I quote from the editors' introduction to Gossen's paper (1979, p. 116): ... the author describes some of the cosmological referents for the religious symbolism of a modern Maya community. In Chamula, the ancient Maya sun and moon deities and other supernaturais appear to have merged ... with the Christian pantheon which the Dominican missionaries introduced after the Spanish Conquest ... Chamulas believe that the sun-Christ not only delimits the spatial boundaries of their universe, but also maintains the critical temporal cycles which regulate their agricultural activity and ritual life. Hence, most of the fundamental discriminations in Chamula ritual symbolism - right/left, up/down, counterclockwise/clockwise - emphasize the primacy of the sun and all he represents. The analogies with Mithraism and its cosmology are patent: the syncretistic origins, the primacy of the sun, and the symbol systems expressing natural and ethical oppositions. But what can we do with such comparisons? Obviously we cannot reconstruct the missing elements of Mithraic ideology and ritual. But we can, as it were, borrow some 'thickness' from the comparison culture for our description of the Mithraic mysteries by 1 2

Particularly helpful, I have found, are Détienne (1977,1979). For example, Turner (1967), Douglas (1973), Geertz (1973) and Leach (1976).

xxiv

INTRODUCTION

superimposition of the structural grid of the former on the latter. For example, we can comprehend more fully what it meant for a Mithraic Lion to cleanse his hands with honey (Porphyry, De antro nympharum, 15) by reference to the 'hot' and metaphorically 'solar' products of Chamula culture (rum, fireworks, cigarettes) and how they are regarded and handled in that culture. For heuristic and hermeneutic purposes, even the process of superimposition, as I have termed it, is helpful in itself regardless of any specific analogies drawn. It reminds us that a religion's system is not a disembodied abstraction comprehended intellectually by its adherents - the chimaera of doctrine again! - but something lived and enacted, definitively but not exclusively in ritual. 3 This, we must assume, was as true of the Mithraists as it is of the Chamula. 4 Stage 3: Cognition Maintaining that the mysteries subsisted in their apprehension by the initiates brings me to cognition as the third stage in my project. Initially, aspiring to comprehend the cognitive processes of long dead initiates might seem even more hubristic than aspiring to offer a 'thick' description of the symbol system of their religious subculture. Actually it is less so, for it is fundamental in modern cognitive studies that cognition is a matter of our species Homo sapiens and its brain circuitry, not of this or that human culture; moreover, that any relevant evolutionary change to our species' neural system occurred long, long ago over the tens of millennia of our hunter-gatherer phase. Cognitively, then, there is no difference between 'doing religion' now and doing it nineteen centuries ago, or between doing Christianity and doing Mithraism. Gods may vary, but forming representations of supernatural agents as a human mind-brain activity does not. The potential of the new 'cognitive science of religion' for the exploration of ancient religions is immense. It is a much more recent approach than symbolist anthropology and even less familiar to scholars of classical antiquity.5 My own explorations will rely largely on the works of Boyer (2001) and Sperber (1996). It is particularly from those two authors (a psychologist and an anthropologist, respectively) that I draw my working model of 'a religion'. My project is to describe a particular religion, the Mithras Mysteries, and for the description to be serviceable it has to be grounded, implicitly or explicitly, on an adequate model of what constitutes a religion - any religion. The model must be 'naturalistic' (Sperber, 1996). Unlike a 3 Ritual, very properly in my view, is currently in the ascendant over faith, belief and doctrine in the study of religion. Two recent works on ritual which I have found immensely useful and stimulating are Bell (1997) and Rappaport (1999). 4 The difference, an important one, is that Chamula culture and Chamula religion are co-extensive. The Mithraists, of course, were members of a much wider culture, the culture of the Roman Empire, in which their mysteries were but one of many religious options. 5 Conversely, the only classicist widely known to cognitive scholars is Walter Burkert, for his remarkable explorations of the prehistoric phylogenetic grounding of Greek religious practice (1983,1996).

INTRODUCTION

XXV

description, which can, and must, make liberal use of the non-natural categories used by the particular religion's adherents, the model must be 'firmly rooted' in the natural world. Accordingly, in line with current thinking in cognitivist psychology and anthropology, a religion to me is the sum of the mental representations of its adherents, its material representations (texts, artifacts, meeting places, and so on) and its enacted representations (rituals, words spoken and received, and so on). A living religion, one might say more abstractly, is the interplay between the mental representations of its adherents and the public representations which give expression to, and in turn condition, the mental representations. Thoughts about Mithras generate icons of Mithras generate thoughts about Mithras. Every thought, every mental representation is an event in the actual world: it either is, or correlates with, a brain event, a firing of neurons which is in principle observable and describable in entirely natural terms. That the mental representations of dead Mithraists are irrecoverable is irrelevant; what matters is that as natural events they are empirically reconstructable, at least in principle. We give no hostages to a metaphysical realm.

Stage 4: 'Star-talk' The fourth and final stage returns us to symbolism. So far in this Introduction I have not said much about the role of astronomy and astrology in Mithraism. And yet that has been the subject of most of my research on the cult, as a glance at the contents of this collection will show. Astronomy and astrology, I am increasingly persuaded, are medium, not message. In other words, they convey esoteric truths about Mithras and a Mithras-dominated universe, but those esoteric truths are not themselves, at least for the most part, astronomical or astrological. So the astral symbolism in which the monuments abound seems to me to be a sort of idiom, a special language in which the representations of the mysteries are communicated to the initiates. I have taken to calling this language 'startalk'. There is, however, a grave and immediate problem. In one of Sperber's earlier works (1975) he demonstrated, very effectively in my view, that symbols do not function together like language signs to convey precisely determinable meanings. Interpreting symbols, then, is not like reading a text. Symbols, to use Sperber's term, 'evoke'. Or to translate a favourite word of the ancients, ainittesthai (from which our 'enigma'), they 'intimate riddlingly'. And what they intimate is multivalent, imprecise, and not infrequently contradictory. My task is to demonstrate that astral symbolism as deployed in the Mithraic mysteries constitutes a partial exception. Outrageous though it may seem, I intend to 'have my cake and eat it': I shall claim for the astral symbols dual status, both as symbols and as quasi-language signs. The first part of the claim is unproblematic, although something does need to be said about symbols in a general way, since the study of Mithraism, along with much other classical scholarship, has usually taken for granted as selfevident what symbols are and how they work. The real challenge, however, is the

xxvi

INTRODUCTION

second part of my claim: that at least in the Mithraic context astral symbols function as language signs. Now, obviously, I would not be advancing it here if I did not already have my argument formulated and drafted. Necessary and sufficient proof, it seems to me, consists of demonstrating that all the language criteria which Sperber says symbol systems do not meet are in fact met by the ancient astral symbol system as deployed in the Mithraic mysteries. I shall demonstrate that this is so in Chapter 12 of Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun. There too I shall show that the ancients themselves both postulated and discussed a celestial language, the language of the stars themselves. This explicit representation of a primary star-talk, I suggest, generates a secondary star-talk of astral symbolism in the Mithraic mysteries. In conclusion I stress that these four stages are stages in a hermeneutic journey. I seek to describe and to interpret, not to explain - or at least not to 'explain' in the customary sense of translating something out into other categories, still less of explaining away. Here I part company with my cognitivist colleagues, most of whom are severely reductionist. Ironically, I value the cognitivist approach partly because it frees me from the tyranny of functionalism and social determinism. A 'naturalistic approach' (Sperber, 1996) which sees religion as the product and expression of the representation-forming human mind preserves an openness both to the contingent and to the creative. Someone, somewhere, somewhen began to imagine Mithras in a certain way, sharing and shaping those representations with people 'of like mind'. The rest, as Sperber rightly says (1996),6 is epidemiology.

References Bell, CM. (1997), Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boyer, P. (2001), Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, New York: Basic Books. Burkert, W. (1983), Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. P. Bing, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. — (1996), Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Détienne, M. (1977), The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology, trans. J. Lloyd, Antlantic Highlands, NJ: The Humanities Press. — (1979), Dionysos Slain, trans. M. and L. Muellner, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Douglas, M. (1973), Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, New York: Vintage Books. Geertz, C. (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books. Gossen, G.H. (1979), 'Temporal and Spatial Equivalents in Chamula Ritual Symbolism', in Lessa, W.A. and Vogt, E.Z. (eds), A Reader in Comparative Religion, New York: Harper. 6

Note the titles of Chapter 3, 'Anthropology and psychology: Towards an epidemiology of representations', and Chapter 4, The epidemiology of beliefs'.

INTRODUCTION

xxvii

Leach, E. (1976), Culture and Communication, the Logic by which Symbols are Connected: An Introduction to the use of Structuralist Analysis in Social Anthrolopology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rappaport, R.A. (1999), Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 110, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D. (1975), Rethinking Symbolism, trans. A.L. Morton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — (1996), Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach, Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, V. (1967), The Forest of Symbols: Aspects ofNdembu Ritual, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

I THE SCHOLARLY SCENE

CHAPTER ONE

Mithraism after 'Mithraism since Franz Cumonf, 1984-2003

In 1984 my survey of Mithraic scholarship was published in Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, II. 17.4 (ANRW). Almost twenty years later, this seems a good opportunity to take a look at the directions Mithraic scholarship has taken in the interval. In many respects, this chapter cannot and does not pretend to replicate the earlier survey. In other words, I am not attempting to cover Mithraic scholarship since 1984 in the depth and breadth to which I aspired for the earlier postCumontian period. First, it would be impossible do so in the span of a brief essay. Second, it is not in my mandate, as it was in the encyclopedic context of ANRW, to be inclusive and comprehensive. Consequently, I can offer now a more personal and selective take on the tenor of Mithraic scholarship during the last two decades. Third, the scholarship on two important questions is better addressed in other parts of this collection. This I shall do by means of: (1) the articles and new essays in Parts IV-VI on the role of astronomy and astrology in Mithraism; and (2), more succinctly, the next essay (Introduction to Part II) on the origins and antecedents of the cult (the perennial question of oriental versus occidental). Fourth, for obvious reasons I shall not try to assess in this essay my own contribution to Mithraic research and scholarship, although I shall mention some of my articles and reviews which bear on particular questions. In my 1984 survey newly discovered archaelogical data, that is, mithraea, inscriptions, 'monuments figures' (as Cumont called them) and other artifacts, were presented (region by region) separately from the more general socialhistorical and religious-historical studies of the cult. I shall not differentiate in that way here. There have been some extremely important discoveries in recent years, and these have added qualitatively as well as quantitatively to our database.1 These discoveries I shall certainly mention, but not in isolation from the broader issues of interpretation. 1

One of the joys of Mithraic studies, I believe, is that we are not endlessly reinterpreting the same material.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

4 2

MITHRAISM AFTER 'MITHRAISM SINCE FRANZ CUMONT'

An excellent, well balanced overview of the main lines of Mithraic research and interpretation to date has recently been published by Ennio Sanzi (2002). On the status quaestionis in the early 1990s see also John Hinnells' Introduction in SM (1994). Sanzi has also recently produced a most useful new anthology of the literary sources on the oriental cults (2003), with Italian translations. As well as all the previously known literary texts on the Mithraic Mysteries (40941 - texts on Mithras outside the context of the Roman Mystery are excluded), Sanzi has included the dipinti from the Santa Prisca Mithraeum (no. 26) and the papyrus from Hermupolis containing a possible 'Mithraic catechism' (no. 27: see Brashear, 1992) which I shall discuss later in this essay. The Social Construction of Mithraism: Manfred Clauss and the New Empiricism We all like to see our desiderata not only acknowledged but also met. In my ANRW survey I identified four desiderata for future research, one of which was 'Mithraism and society' (1984, p. 2098, cf. 2093-4). By this I meant not only Mithraism's place in society but also Mithraism as a social construction. I was not alone in indicating this desideratum. In 1990 Jonathan Z. Smith, in his penetrating study of principles and methods of comparison between early Christianities (sic) and the mystery cults, could justly deplore the fact that 'we simply lack all but a very few responsible social analyses of "mystery" traditions' (p. 134). Justly too, he singled out Richard Gordon's 1972 article as 'the most sophisticated exception' (ibid.).2 I do not think that Smith could or would reiterate that complaint today, at least not about Mithraism, since the major shift in the study of that mystery cult has been precisely in the direction he desiderated and away from the interpretation of 'religion' narrowly construed as an ideological system - or, as Smith characterizes it - away from 'our present preoccupation with mythologoumena' (ibid.). The scholar who best exemplifies this change of approach is Manfred Clauss, who has contributed not only a comprehensive study of the cult (1990a, English translation 2000) but also an inventory and analysis of all epigraphically attested cult members, the cultores Mithrae (1992). Clauss explicitly takes as his point of departure the need to break out of the limits set by his predecessors' hermeneutics and particularly from what he characterizes pejoratively as 'rather unconvincing speculation about astrological issues' (2000, p. xx). The justice of Clauss' condemnation of the astrological interpreters is discussed in Part V. (It should be clear from the Introduction to this collection that I 2

Nowadays one would certainly want to add Liebeschuetz (1994).

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ CUMONT'

5 3

consider an understanding of the astral symbolism a necessary - though obviously not a sufficient - condition for comprehending the Mithraic mysteries.) But the success of his approach in enlarging and vivifying our understanding of the cult as a social enterprise of its time and place is beyond dispute. Clauss' method is not at all innovatory. Rather, it marks a return to oldfashioned empiricism and the traditional methods of historians and archaeologists of classical antiquity. A particular strength of Clauss' approach is his attention to cult furniture and equipment, especially ceramics. By a fortunate coincidence, the recently discovered mithraeum at Tienen (Belgium) was extremely rich in pottery material, which afforded a timely opportunity for an international conference there devoted to Mithraic 'small finds' (see Maartens and De Boe, eds, now published, 2004). This conference was more than just an occasion to re-emphasize an undervalued class of find. It also celebrated and showcased new methods and techniques in archaeology which have greatly extended the inferences and conclusions which can now be drawn from material data. For example, analysis of the piglet bones from the refuse pit at Tienen shows that they: ... were all killed at roughly the same time, at the end of June or the beginning of July, and that the festival must have involved at least one hundred people, who cannot possibly all have fitted into a building measuring 12.5 x 7.5m, so that the feast must have been held in the open air.3 To be able to extrapolate from the archaeozoological data alone an alfresco midsummer (solstitial?) feast with an attendance well in excess of the mithraeum's capacity is no trivial accomplishment. Nevertheless, the Claussian approach does not quite fully answer Smith's call for 'responsible social analyses', because it is not grounded in any theory of 'social formation' (1990, p. 134). But why should this matter? Surely the dividends paid by scrupulous adherence to tried and true empirical methods, the classicist's traditional tool kit, are sufficient reward and justification. In a sense, of course they are, and especially so in times like these when archaeology itself is expanding its reach with innovative methods. So if we are content with a factual description of Mithraic cult life in its physical setting and with its material accoutrements, as far as they can be reconstructed, then Clauss is the one!

3 I quote from Richard Gordon's text for the Introduction to Maartens and De Boe (eds, 2004); to my regret, I was unable to attend the conference.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

6 4

MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MiTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

'Speculation' or Hermeneutics? But what of 'the mysteries', that which the Mithraists came together to celebrate? One can of course dismiss them as no longer accessible, in practice or in principle. Or one can dismiss them as trivial and uninteresting, with a judgement of value either on those mysteries in particular or on the subjective element (the mental representations) of religion in general.4 In fact Clauss takes none of those routes. Nor does he simply eschew interpretation without further ado. And herein lies the problem. Despite his insistence on the hard - or seemingly hard - evidence of archaeology and epigraphy, Clauss continues to draw from that data much the same sort of inferences about cult myth and theology, and about the attitudes and motives of the initiates, as did his predecessors, Cumontian or otherwise. No doubt, with him as with them, many of those inferences are contingently valid. But they are valid (when they are valid) not as a result of following strictly empirical and objective methods. Some of the inferences are mere common sense, and some the product of scholarly insight, expertise, and familiarity with the culture. With the loss of so much of antiquity, conjecture is necessarily the métier of our discipline. Demonizing it as 'speculation' cannot and will not exorcize it. I have elaborated this critique of Clauss in my review of the recent English translation (Clauss, 2000; Beck, 2002), and in the Introduction to this present collection I have suggested that the classicist's traditional methods and techniques for addressing the phenomena of ancient religions need to be supplemented with the methods and theoretical approaches of other disciplines, in particular anthropology and cognitive studies. Regional Mithraism? Normative Mithraism? One of the salutary effects of the methodological retrenchment exemplified by Clauss is that we no longer take for granted the existence of a unitary Mithraic system. Regional variations were of course long recognized, for example in the design of the tauroctony, its side scenes and other optional elements, but the tendency was to construe such things as variations on or from a fixed body of doctrine, beliefs, sacred narrative, conventions of representation, cult institutions and practice, and so on. While recognizing the continuity and coherence of 'the main tenets, the most important features', Clauss invites us to view Mithraism as the sum of whatever was believed, internally communicated, and materially 4 This is the route taken by N.M. Swerdlow, who dismisses Mithraism as 'nothing much, and perhaps not a serious religion after all' (1991, p. 62).

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

7 5

constructed in self-identified Mithraic communities for three hundred years or so across the Empire (2000, pp. 16-17). The problem is identifying the 'main tenets, the most important features'.^ (These tenets and features, one must immediately qualify, should be considered a set of norms rather than a fixed and irreducible credal core.) There is no simple calculus by which frequency of occurrence, for example of an iconographie feature, can serve as a proxy for normative Mithraism. The argument from rarity or uniqueness is particularly dangerous. It may well be that, for example, a rare iconographie configuration is the product of purely local thought or imagination. Perhaps, though, it reflects something more profound and central to Mithraic thinking which, for whatever reason, the Mithraists chose not, on the whole, to represent visually. A better criterion than frequency, I suggest, is coherence. Does the rare or unique fit with Mithraic thought as exemplified in more common representations? Fortunately, we need no longer address that question in terms of finding and putting in their proper places the lost pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, for there is no 'complete picture' of the Mithraic mysteries which we could reconstruct even in principle. Rather, the criterion of coherence furnishes a first assay: is the unusual here an aberration, or is it either a riff, a variation on some known Mithraic theme, or else an index of something more profound, more central to the Mithraic system of representations? Definite answers to these questions are not to be expected; it is more a matter of orienting case-by-case explorations. New Monuments, New Evidence It is time to turn to the most challenging of the new monuments unearthed in the past twenty years. ('Unearthed' is intended metaphorically as well as literally, since not all this new evidence has come to light from excavations during the period.) Hawarti, Syria (15 km north ofApamea) This Mithraeum with numerous frescos was discovered beneath a fifth-century Christian basilica (Gawlikowski, 1999, 2000; Gordon, 2001; Griffith, 2000). The interest and importance of the frescos lie in their extreme divergence from the norms of Mithraic iconography. Some of the scenes represented are modifications

5 'Die Hauptlehren und die wichtigsten Elemente' (Clauss, 1990, p. 26).

8

BECK ON MITHRAISM 6

MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

of traditional Mithraic compositions, while others are unique, at least in our extant portfolio of attested scenes. To this add both the very late date of the top - and only discernible - two layers of the frescos (not earlier than c. 36o),6 and of course the comparative scarcity of recovered Mithraic sites and monuments in the east of the Empire. Following Gordon (2001), I mention only three of the entirely new (to us) scenes: 1

A city wall and gate topped with a grisly row of severed heads (some black, some white), each pierced on the cranium with a lance. Another head, likewise pierced, falls to the ground below; A pair of lions savaging black men, two of whom are already mauled to death (or close to it); On opposite sides of the entry from the vestibule into the mithraeum proper, identical scenes in which a dismounted rider, gorgeously clothed in contemporary regional dress and standing in front of his gorgeously caparisoned white horse, holds by chains to the necks a two-headed squatting black figure.

2 3

Now it is clear to all (see the authorities cited above) that what is represented here is the overcoming and punishment of evil, both human and demonic.7 What is fascinating is that the originator of these representations - I suspect, but of course cannot prove, that he was some local grandee rather than the local Mithraic community collectively - has broken entirely with conventional cult iconography to convey his sense of what it means to overcome and punish 'evil-doers'. 8 That however does not make his representations somehow 'un-Mithraic'. For as Gordon shows (2001), these representations are consonant with Mithraic ethics and the stern dualism of Mithraic ideology.9 Consequently they are proper, if obsessive, expressions of those ethics and that ideology. It is tempting to relate the extreme iconographie divergence to the late date of the frescos, as a manifestation of the breaking apart of a religion in its dying

6

Guaranteed by the contents of the fill in structures (steps to a podium and a pedestal) which predate these layers. 7 Why it is clear is another (and very interesting) question. At the conscious intellectual level it has to do with knowledge of similar representations, both verbal and visual, in the culture of the times. But recognition of fiend and foe, I suspect, occurs at a deeper level of cognitive programming altogether. 8 A glimpse into the mind-set of our present anti-terror warriors in that part of the world? 9 Note Gordon's perceptive characterization of the second scene, above, as 'les lions justiciers'. It may not be pleasant, but what those lions are doing is a metaphor for the moral function of lions (and Lions) in the Mithraic system.

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

9 J

days. 10 Perhaps - but I would stake no money on the impossibility of equally divergent monuments turning up from Mithraism's second or third century heydays. More relevant is locale: it seems to me a priori unlikely that such radically innovative representation would occur in an area of the cult's concentration such as Rome or Ostia. Gordon (2001) rightly draws out the specifically Syrian ethos of the representation of evil and the 'forces of evil' in the Hawarti frescos. Rightly too, he adduces the Avestan Hymn to Mithra (Gershevitch, 1959), with its characterization of the god as the destroyer of evildoers and their communities, the one who literally decapitates the treaty-breakers (Yasht 10.37). But he rejects the implication which scholars of an earlier generation might have drawn, that the Yasht and its teaching had all along been lurking undetected in the doctrines of occidental Mithraism. Instead, and more reasonably, he argues that if the Mithra Yasht is indeed somehow recalled at Hawarti, the intermediary would be the contemporary Zoroastrianism of Sasanian Persia not far to the east. Mainz A pottery vessel with representations of seven men engaged in two previously unknown ritual performances was discovered in 1976 (published Horn, 1994; see also Merkelbach, 1995; Huld-Zetsche, 2004). Since my article (Beck, 2000) on the Mainz vessel forms part of the present collection (Chapter 4), there is no need for me to discuss it in any detail here. Its importance lies in its representation of actual Mithraic ritual. Temporally, it takes us back to the other end of the cult's life span from the Hawarti frescos. The current best estimate for the vessel's date is c. 120-140 (Huld-Zetsche, 2004), s o m e rituals must have been in place within, at the most, about fifty years of the cult's foundation. Likewise the complex system of mental representations to which the rituals give performative expression. Again, as of the Hawarti frescos, we ask, are the rituals of the Mainz vessel 'one-off, something done locally in Mainz in the early days of the cult? And again there is no single way or uniform set of criteria for deciding. The argument from silence is particularly dangerous in this case. The fact that these two rituals are attested on this one artifact and nowhere else means no more, surely, than that the realistic visual representation of ritual was something the Mithraists chose on the whole to avoid. A likelihood - and no 10 The end of Mithraism has been a topic of concern in recent scholarship (Nicholson, 1995; Sauer, 1996; Gordon, 1999), prompted in part by an unusual number of 'new' Mithraea discovered in the NW provinces of the Empire and excavated during the last two decades (Gordon, 1999).

BECK ON MITHRAISM

10 8

MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

more - that the rituals were widespread can be established by demonstrating that they are consonant with much Mithraic thought, that as performative representations they cohere with a rich structure of mental representations which can be inferred from the material representations of the monuments supplemented by the very few extant verbal representations of the texts. That is what I attempted in my article on the vessel. Burginatium, Germânia Inferior An altar with unusually dense arrays of symbols on its lateral faces (published Horn, 1995): (left) an untensed bow crossed with an arrow, above a crater entwined by a snake; (right) a wreath with fillets and the seven solar rays at its apex, a lighted lamp at its centre, a slanting staff, and at the bottom the cosmic globe with crossed bands (= celestial equator and ecliptic/zodiac). None of these represented items is new to our inventory of Mithraic symbols. It is their arrangement on the Burginatium altar, their collocation, that is novel. But this is unproblematic. As Gordon elegantly demonstrates (199s),11 the altar exemplifies a Mithraic - but not exclusively Mithraic - habit of 'listing', of grouping symbols so as to permit the evocation of multiple combinations of significance. A generation ago one might have looked for 'the meaning' of the Burginatium altar. No longer. Israel Museum, Jerusalem A Syrian tauroctony (precise provenance unknown) (published De Jong, 1997; see also Gordon, no date; Gordon, 2001). The relief is notable inter alia for unusual side scenes and for spears as supplementary attributes for Cautes (left) and Cautopates (right). The designer has resisted the temptation (if he ever felt it!) to invert the spear of Cautopates. The new side scenes are detailed below. Scene 1 This scene depicts the infant Mithras reaching for bunches of grapes overhead. Here the tauroctony's Syrian provenance points us to the myth of the origins of wine related as the foundation legend for the festival of Dionysus Protrygaeus ('of the grape harvest') at Tyre.12 Has the Mithraic dedicator, the

11

Cf. my interpretation of the altar in Beck, 2000 (see Ch. 4, below), pp. 170-71. Achilles Tatius, Cleitophon and Leucippe, 2.2. Since the work is a novel, it is possible, though improbable, that the author has invented both myth and festival out of whole cloth. The myth, or rather the telling of it, is of great interest because Achilles Tatius appears to be parodying the Christian eucharist (Bowersock, 1994, pp. 125-38). 12

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

11 9

Semitic Absalmos, here appropriated a local aetiological myth to form a new infancy episode for his god? On a different tack, one must now reopen the question of the authenticity of the bunch of grapes held by the infant Mithras in the rock-birth CIMRM 590. The bunch of grapes is known only from an old plaster cast of the original, and it was assumed that this was a false restoration later removed. Perhaps it was, but it can no longer be deemed so on criteria of uniqueness. Scene 2 This scene depicts two men in Persian dress (clearly Cautes and Cautopates without their torches) carrying a cauldron suspended from a pole on their shoulders. The parallel to the cauldron bearers, as has been pointed out (De Jong, 1997, pp. 56-7; Gordon, 2001) is the scene from Dura of the two figures carrying a large animal carcass (presumably the slain bull) slung on a pole between them (CIMRM 42.12). It is easy enough to fit the new scene into a narrative of the preparation for the banquet of Mithras and Sol, itself a scene included in the surrounds of the Jerusalem tauroctony Gordon rightly points out that it refers to the boiling of sacrificial meat for the public, differentiated from the roasting of the gods' portion, the splankhna. Scene 3 This scene depicts a seated figure holding a long object and facing a rock from which a stream of water flows, with seven spherical boulders or balls loosely piled in front of the rock. There is some doubt as to whether this constitutes a separate scene or whether it is a part or continuation of the scene of the cauldron bearers immediately above it. Likewise the seven spherical boulders: are they simply an independent allusion to the spherical bodies of the seven planets? Gordon (2001) interprets the scene as the next stage in the narrative of the sacrifice and feast. The seated figure is Cautes and the object he holds is his raised torch which he is applying to the cauldron above so as to heat the water for the boiling of the meat. The stream of water, nicely juxtaposed to the fiery torch, is the source from which the water in the cauldron has been drawn. I would add only that compositionally the scene is modelled on the 'water miracle' in which Mithras shoots at a rock so as to elicit water. The torch of Cautes in our new scene is thus a modification of the bow wielded in the standard water miracle scene. Both the primary intent and the principal consequence of Clauss' redirection of Mithraic scholarship has been to shift the focus of research in recent years away fronvMithraism as an ideological system and on to Mithraism as a social construction within its wider socio-political context of the Roman Empire. The questions now posed are of two sorts, for they involve both the external and internal relations of the cult and its members: externally, what was Mithraism's

BECK ON MITHRAISM

12 10

MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

'place in society', and what was the social profile of its membership; internally, what was its organizational structure, its interior economy?^ Clauss, as we saw above, addressed these questions not only in his comprehensive study of the cult (1990a, English translation, 2000) but also in his Cultores Mithrae (1992), an inventory and analysis of all epigraphically attested cult members. 1 ! In one of those ironies of timing which occasionally bedevil the best laid research plans, no sooner was Cultores Mithrae published than an album (membership list) was discovered at Virunum (province of Noricum) which instantly added close to one hundred new names to the 997 individuals catalogued by Clauss. Fortunately, however, while the Virunum list added quantitatively to our database, it did not substantially alter the overall picture qualitatively. I shall start with this and other recent discoveries which impact membership and social questions, before going on to consider more general issues raised by this line of research. An important review article of Clauss (1992) by Gordon addresses all these membership questions (Gordon, 1994)Virunum (near KlagenfUrt, Austria) A bronze tablet containing the names of 98 members of a local Mithraic community was discovered in 1992 (published Piccottini, 1994: reviewed Gordon, 1996). The tablet lists first the 34 men who restored the Mithraeum 'at their own expense' (in 183) and then those who 'assembled because of the mortality' (mortalitatis causa convenerunt) on 26 June i84.15 The names of the latter are engraved group after group in different hands, and from this Piccottini draws the reasonable inference that the groups represent annual cohorts of new members, 16 cohorts in all, from 184 to 201. The case for annual co-option is supported by the appearance of some of the same names in the same order on two previously discovered stone fragments of another album datable to between 198 and 209. Since no names appear on this stone album which do not also appear on the bronze album, and since the stone album records the construction of something 'from the ground up', Piccottini (1994, pp. 44-52) infers that the stone album represents the foundation of a new Mithraic community formed by a colony from the Mithraeum of the bronze album. Socially, the Virunum bronze *31 have addressed these issues briefly in Beck, 1992 and 1996. We shall look at Jaime Alvar's (2001) altogether more sophisticated socio-political analysis of the cult towards the end of this chapter. *4 I reviewed Clauss (1992) in Beck (1994). *5 I address some of the implications of this latter occasion and its date in an article republished in the present collection (Beck, 1998).

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

13 11

album holds no surprises. It is an important document mainly because it affords us our first glimpse of recruitment and of continuities and discontinuities in the life of a Mithraic community over several years. 16 Aquincum (Budapest), Mithraeum 5, in the Tribune's House This is a series of Mithraic dedications by tribuni laticlavii (military tribunes) of legio II Adiutrix (Kocsis, 1989; Fitz, 1989; Clauss, 1992, pp. 183-4).*7 It is fortunate that these discoveries, unlike the Virunum album, preceded Clauss' Cultores Mithrae, because they more than doubled the previous total of cultores in the senatorial class (from five to twelve)! They illustrate, I think, an important internal distinction among cultores Mithrae. Self-evidently, these high persons honoured Mithras and so may validly be classed as cultores, but were they initiates in the normal sense of cult membership? To suppose so is to defy probability: one must suppose that only at Aquincum did a succession of high military officers either come to the base as Mithraists already or else join the cult during their tours of duty there. A simpler and more credible hypothesis is to suppose that at this particular base a local habit of élite patronage in the Mithraists' favour became entrenched. It 'came with the turf. Perge (Pamphylia) This is a Mithraeum cut back into the rock to form a cave, with a separate tauroctony (that is, not sculpted on the rock surface), of which more than half of the scene and almost all of the dedicatory inscription are extant. The Mithraeum has not been systematically excavated, but the inscription has been published (Sahin, 1999, no. 248, with Plate 56). Our dossier of Anatolian Mithriaca is still tantalizingly small, so any discovery there is doubly welcome. To judge from its tauroctony, the Perge Mithraeum represents the main stream of the Roman Mysteries (not some collateral or transitional form),18 an assessment which is supported by the tria nomina of the dedicator: Markos Loukkios Krispos ('with his children'). But this Roman Mithraist was well integrated with the local Greek élite - one would hardly expect otherwise 16 The issue of recruitment, at Virunum and elsewhere, I address in Beck, forthcoming (a). '7 On the frescos which depict a number of the usual side scenes, see Madarassy (1991). 18 There are, however, some unusual features in the essentially normal composition. Mithras' right arm, though broken off at the shoulder, seems to have been raised, to judge from the god's pose. More significantly, the torchbearer on the left - his colleague on the right is lost holds a bow in his left hand and appears to be drawing it with his right. No torch; thus no possibility of determining whether he is Cautes or Cautopates, unless the slight elevation of his aim indicates the former.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

14 12

MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

- for he dedicates in Greek and with a prayer 'for the holy council and people of Perga' (hyper tês hieras boulês kai dêmou Perglaiôn] euxameno[s]). Doliche (Commagene) Here are two Mithraea in a single natural cave system, each with a tauroctony cut into the rock^ (preliminary report, Schütte-Maischatz and Winter (2000)). As at Perge, these Mithraea are especially significant because they are located in a region, Anatolia, where relatively few Mithraic monuments have been found - even fewer monuments of the developed Roman cult - and where anything discovered may impinge on the vexed question of origins and transmission. The implications of the Doliche Mithraea will be addressed in the Introduction to Part II. Suffice it to say here that the two tauroctonies, both with elements typical of reliefs in the provinces of the Rhine frontier (that is, the addition of a crater and a lion to the snake beneath the bull so as to form a compositional triad), prove that in the late second or early third centuries CE Doliche was home to Mithraism of the normal occidental type but with a particular affiliation to the cult on the Rhine frontier, the medium of transfer presumably being the military. Beyond that not inconsiderable addition to the dossier on Mithraism's extent, the phenomenon of two Mithraea in a single cave - a sort of Mithraic duplex - is a striking and so far unique discovery. It appears to bear out dramatically the lesson of the Virunum alba (above): if full, found a new parallel community (Gordon, 2001). Hermupolis, Egypt This is a fourth-century papyrus fragment of a catechism, possibly Mithraic (P. Berol. 21196, published Brashear (1992)). The fragment contains Mithraic terms - 'Lion-place' (leonteiori), Lion, Father - in a context which is obviously initiatory Of the two parties to the dialogue, one is instructed how to answer (imperative lege = 'say') the questions of the other (erei = 'he will say'). This is sufficient to warrant the hypothesis that the document was an actual Mithraic catechism, preparatory to initiation into the Lion grade, or else that it was appropriated, for whatever purposes (magical?), from such an original. It is much closer, in my view, to actual Mithraic praxis than the obvious comparison document, the well-known 'Mithras Liturgy'. Hence it is a much better index of the legomena (things spoken) which accompanied Mithraic drômena (things performed), and thus also of the thought underlying Mithraic initiation. ^ A l s o a small rock-cut relief of the lion-headed god to the left of the tauroctony in Mithraeum 1.

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

15 13

The Seven Grades: Normal cursus or Special Priesthoods? The new focus on cult membership has generated some debate on the sevenstage grade hierarchy. Clauss himself set the terms for this debate with two assertions (1990b; 1990a, pp. 138-47 = 2000, pp. 131-40; 1992, pp. 275-7; contra, Gordon, 1994, pp. 465-7): (1) that the grades represent a priesthood; and (2) that the 15 per cent or so of members with attested grade status is an index of the actual percentage of grade holders in the cult. Clauss' position can best be captured by saying what the grades in his view are not: they are not stages of initiation through which, in principle, every Mithraist can pass, but rather the degrees of an esoteric élite, a cursus which differentiates the leadership from the led. This question raises in an acute form two general problems to which I have already alluded: (1) what constituted normative Mithraism (if there ever was such a thing); and (2) what does silence, or the absence of evidence, imply? In this instance does the non-attribution of grade status to 85 per cent of known Mithraists really mean that only some 15 per cent were in fact grade-holders? Or does it mean only that grade status, with the partial exception of Father and of Lion (the senior grade and the first grade of 'participants')/ was not something which the Mithraists generally chose to record epigraphically? Or that, as at Dura, the medium of inscription was the graphito or dipinto, and hence the attribution of grades has not on the whole survived (Gordon, 1994, p. 466)? The problem is intractable, for one cannot imagine what type of evidence would solve it one way or the other. My own inclination is towards a commonsensical compromise: that the full seven-course menu was probably not available at many, perhaps even most, Mithraea; but that it was nevertheless a widely recognized option and normative in the sense that it instantiated the ideal route for reaching the rank of Father.20 The Claussian method is to limit the relevance of extant Mithraic data to the times and places where they are manifested; in other words, not to generalize, except from the few Empire-wide phenomena such as the icon of the tauroctony in its basic composition. The consequence of this method is the creation, at least hypothetically, of numerous local and regional forms of Mithraism of limited duration. 21 The clearest example of this trend, at least to me, is furnished not by 20 See above on the Mainz ritual vessel. Although I disagree with Horn and Merkelbach in discerning in the seven figures representatives of each of the seven grades, I argue nevertheless that the scenes imply a rich ideology of the two senior grades, the Father and the Sun-Runner, already in place in the early second century. 21 The trend parallels that in the scholarship of Christian origins where (with much greater justification, in my view) one no longer speaks of a single Christianty but rather of plural Christianities.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

16 14

MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

Clauss himself, but by a distinguished scholar who has been toiling in the Mithraic vineyards for many more years than Clauss. I have in mind Robert Turcan's article (1999) in which he argues that the systematic correlation of the seven grades with the seven planetary gods was limited to Roman (urban) and Ostian Mithraism of about the final decade of the second century, that being the approximate date of the two finds which explicitly attest the correlation, the mosaic of the Felicissimus Mithraeum in Ostia and the dipinti of the Santa Prisca Mithraeum. My sense is that Turcan's restriction is too narrow, but this is not the place or occasion to contest it. Rather, let me conclude with a positive reflection that, whatever the merits of that particular hypothesis, it is a fundamentally healthy development in Mithraic scholarship which brings us centrifugal narratives of alternative Mithraisms to entertain in tension with the old centripetal narrative of a monolithic mystery cult.

Four New Interpretive Approaches I turn finally to general interpretations and explanations of Mithraism, assuming, as I do, that such exercises are valid and that not all questions worth asking can be answered by Claussian methods. What is available now that was unavailable two decades ago? If I omit important contributions to the study of Mithraism in the past twenty years, it is solely because they do not appear to me to offer new and different lines of approach (or because they fall under one or other of the two categories which I address in subsequent essays, viz. astrological approaches and explanations in terms of oriental origins).22 Specifically, I shall touch on two general studies of the mystery cults (Burkert, 1987; Alvar, 2001), one comprehensive study of Mithraism alone (Merkelbach, 1984), and several articles by Luther Martin (1994 and 2004 (a) and (b)). 22 For example, the scholars whose contributions I recognized as pre-eminent in my ANRW survey (Beck, 1984, pp. 2006-7), Richard Gordon, Robert Turcan, Ugo Bianchi and his Italian colleagues, have all been productive since then, though with the untimely loss of Ugo Bianchi in 1995. I have already recognized earlier in this essay the importance of Smith's Drudgery Divine (1990) for the making of comparisons between the mystery cults and early Christianities, although it has almost nothing to say about Mithraism specifically. Potentially of significance to all scholars of the mystery cults was sociologist Rodney Stark's application of rational choice theory to early Christianity (Stark, 1996). Though both exciting and convincing on the growth of Christianity over its first three centuries - and widely and justly praised for this Stark fails badly when it comes to Christianity's pagan competitors in the religious 'market' of the Roman Empire. This I demonstrate in Beck (forthcoming (b)). Stark not only misunderstands and so misdescribes the mystery cults in particular, but also imposes on ancient religion in general, pagan and Christian alike, a free-market model of religious competition, as in North America today, which simply does not fit the ancient context of loosely integrated and non-competitive public and private cults.

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

17 15

Approach i The great merit of Walter Burkert's Ancient Mystery Cults, in my view,23 is that it offers an accessible and lucid 'comparative phenomenology of ancient mysteries' (1987, p. 4) free of Franz Cumont's 'oriental' narrative.2* This allows Burkert to treat the mysteries of Mithras, together with the Eleusinian mysteries and those of Dionysus, Isis, and the Great Mother, as phenomena of their own times and culture, disencumbered of alien baggage and a priori ideas about their essential nature. The times and culture, moreover, constitute a 'long' antiquity which includes classical and even archaic Greece, as it must if justice is to be done to the Eleusinian and Bacchic mysteries. The mystery cults are compared in four respects: what the cults offered - and did not offer - to meet 'personal needs in this life and after death' (Ch. 1); their organization and leadership (Ch. 2); their 'theologia', which Burkert assesses at the three levels of myth, nature allegory, and (mostly Platonic) metaphysics (Ch. 3); and the 'extraordinary experience' (Ch. 4). For Burkert, the fourth element is at the core of the mysteries, which, as he states in the final sentence of his Introduction (1987, p. 11), were 'initiation rituals of a voluntary, personal, and secret character that aimed at a change of mind through experience of the sacred'. Burkert explores the 'extraordinary experience' as rigorously as the scarce and elusive data allow. But a method of 'comparative phenomenology' soon reaches its limits when applied to subjective things like 'experience' and 'change of mind'. The way forward, as I suggested in my Introduction to this collection, now has to be illuminated by some theory of mental representation and cognition. Moreover, the experienced 'sacred' needs a definition which will draw it out of the temple and into the academy. I am not sure that what Burkert so brilliantly offered in his later Creation of the Sacred (1996) can be easily retrojected into Ancient Mystery Cults. The mysteries, as Burkert describes them, were on the whole tentative and unsystematic, and in this he is surely right. He is right too in sensing in Mithraism a certain distance from the other mysteries in this regard, manifested both in its tighter organizational structure (The picture presented by the mysteries of Mithras is totally different', 1987, p. 41 f.) and in its 'more prominent and more sophisticated initiations' ('Mithras stands apart once more', 1987, pp. 98-9).

2

3 See also my review (Beck, 1988). *4 In this regard Turcan (1992) adheres to the Cumontian tradition.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

18 16

MITHRAISM AFTER 'MITHRAISM SINCE FRANZ CUMONT'

Approach 2 A glance at the title, Los Misterios: religiones 'orientales' en el imperio romano (2001), might suggest that Jaime Alvar has returned to the old Cumontian narrative. He has not - note the quotation marks round 'orientales'! This is not the story of the adoption and transformation of alien religions, but rather of the construction of new religions 'in the context of the social and political changes brought about by the Roman Empire in its subject provinces' and in response 'to the structural requirements of a new socio-political order, characterized by a strongly stratified social structure and complex social conflicts'.2^ While Burkert's approach is phenomenological, Alvar 's is sociological, though not reductionist: he rather considers the 'oriental religions' as one of the means ... by which the ordinary inhabitants of the Empire were able to re-present to themselves the larger significance of the changes that came upon them, in an ideological idiom which linked personal fate through the medium of individual choice to an ultimately benign and rationally ordered universe.26 Alvar 's sociological grounding of the 'oriental' religions is especially welcome. As his study becomes more widely known, it will both answer and help the rest of us to answer Smith's call for 'responsible social analyses' (1990, p. 134) in the study of the mystery cults, to which I alluded earlier in this chapter. While Burkert extended the field to include indigenous Greek mysteries which were neither oriental nor 'oriental', thus also extending the time period back into classical and archaic Greece, Alvar returns to Roman imperial times and society. Accordingly, the cults under consideration are reduced effectively to just three: Isis (with Sarapis), the Magna Mater (with Attis); and Mithras. Of the two scholars, it would be a mistake to try to say who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'. Alvar 's approach is neither more nor less legitimate than Burkert's. Because their approaches differ, so do the pictures of their subject matter, and to some extent even the subject matter itself. Burkert focuses first on the mysteries and then on the cults which sustained them, Alvar first on the cults and then on the mysteries which they created. Here it is vital to remember that the cults were not solely vehicles for mysteries, nor mysteries the sole expression of the cults. Only for Mithraism can the case be plausibly made that cult and mysteries were coextensive. Apart from some few scattered exceptions in Anatolia, there was no communal Mithras-worship in the Roman Empire outside of the mysteries celebrated by the initiates in their 'caves'.

2

5 I quote from the English original of the Introduction by Richard Gordon. Gordon, ibid.

26

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MITHRAISM AFTER 'MITHRAISM SINCE FRANZ CUMONT'

19 17

Approach 3 In retrospect, Reinhold Merkelbach's Mithras (1984) now seems the last great synthesis of Mithraism as an explicit and integrated belief system. Merkelbach is far from silent about the socio-political aspects of the cult: see the excellent chapter entitled 'Die Religion der Loyalitàt und das Kaisertum' (pp. 153-88). But the prime focus is doctrinal; or stated more inclusively, for Merkelback everything in the Mysteries of Mithras - iconography, ritual, the grade hierarchy, cult life, sacred space - coheres in an ideology which was consciously entertained by the membership and can be reconstructed as such by modern scholarship. Merkelbach presents Mithraic teaching in two blocks: (1) pp. 77-133, on the seven grades and particularly their one-to-one correlation with features of the tauroctony; and (2) pp. 193-244, on Mithraic cosmology, again particularly as it is expressed in the tauroctony and the sacrifice represented there. Of the two, I find the latter, with its emphasis on Platonic parallels and antecedents, the more persuasive. In the former, as I argued in my review article (Beck, 1987, pp. 306-13), I find the correlation of grades with features of the tauroctony strained and contrived. Approach 4 Luther Martin's home turf is Study of Religion rather than Classics. In recent years this has proved fortunate for Mithraic scholarship, since he is both well placed and inclined as a scholar to exploit new trends in the anthropology, sociology, and psychology of religion, as well as the new cognitive science of religion (see the Introduction to this collection). Consequently he is able both to bring these new approaches to bear on Mithraism and to represent Mithraism to scholars in those fields for whom unmediated access to the culture(s) of classical antiquity is difficult. Martin's 1994 article urged us to move away from the traditional interpretations of the bull-killing in terms of its place and meaning in a fixed Mithras myth and to consider instead its more immediate symbolic evocations.27 These he reads (non-exclusively) as affirmations of the ideal of the Roman soldiersettler, victorious both in civilizing warfare and in the domestication of land 2 7 Although I agree with the general tenor of Martin's article, I find the dismissal of narrative overplayed. In this context I should mention Zwirn's excellent article (1989) distinguishing between the 'biographical narration' of the framing scenes of the complex tauroctonies and the essentially non-narrative 'theophanic' presentation of the god in the centre. Zwirn makes an elegant and persuasive comparison with the narrative scenes in imperial triumph art (columns, arches) and the similarly theophanic display of the victorious emperor on top.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

20 18

MITHRAISM AFTER 'MITHRAISM SINCE FRANZ CUMONT'

and livestock. In subsequent articles he has related his ideas about the iconographie display and the ritual enactment of Mithraic representations to two important new theoretical approaches to religion (1) in 2004 (a), to the anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse's theory of two 'divergent modes of religiosity', the 'imagistic' and the 'doctrinal', based respectively on 'episodic' and 'semantic' memory (see, for example, Whitehouse, 2000); and (2) in 2004 (b), to the explorations of the cognitive philosophers Lawson and McCauley (1990) into ritual as a form of language with its proper grammar and syntax. From both of these new approaches I too have profited. Mithraic scholarship is much indebted to Martin for bringing them to bear on our subdiscipline. References Alvar, J. (2001), Los Misterios: Religiones 'orientales' en el imperio romano, Barcelona: Crítica. Beck, R.L. (1984), 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont', Aufstieg und Niedergang der rõmischen Welt, II.17.4, 2002-115. — (1987), 'Merkelbach's Mithras' (review article of Merkelbach, 1984), Phoenix, 41, pp. 296-316. — (1988), Review of Burkert (1987), Phoenix, 42, pp. 266-70. — (1992), 'The Mithras Cult as Association', Studies in Religion, 21, pp. 3-13. — (1994), Review of Clauss (1992), Phoenix, 48, pp. 173-6. — (1996), 'The Mysteries of Mithras', in Kloppenborg, J.S., and S.G. Wilson (eds), Voluntary Associations in the Ancient World, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 176-85. — (1998), 'Qui mortalitatis causa convenerunt: The meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on June 26, A.D. 184', Phoenix, 52, pp. 335-44. Chapter 17 in this collection. — (2000), 'Ritual, myth, doctrine, and initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New evidence from a cult vessel', Journal of Roman Studies, 90, pp. 144-79. Chapter 4 in this collection. — (2002), Review of Clauss (2000), Mouseion, 56 (Ser. 3, vol. 2, no. 3), pp. 410-13. — (forthcoming (a)), 'On becoming a Mithraist: New evidence for the propagation of the Mysteries', in Vaage, L. (éd.), Religious Rivalries and Relations among Pagans, Jews, and Christians, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. — (Forthcoming (b)), 'The Religious Market of the Roman Empire: How well does Rodney Stark's Model Accommodate Christianity's Pagan Competition', in Vaage, L. (éd.), Religious Rivalries ... (see preceding entry for details).

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MITHRAISM AFTER 'MITHRAISM SINCE FRANZ CUMONT'

21 19

Bowersock, G.W. (1994), Fiction as History: Nero to Julian. Sather Classical Lectures 58, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Brashear, W.M. (1992), A Mithraic Catechism from Egypt: P. Berol, 21196, Tyche Supplementband, Vienna: Verlag Adolph Holzhausens. Burkert, W. (1987), Ancient Mystery Cults, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. — (1996), Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clauss, M. (1990a), Mithras: Kult una Mysterien, Munich: C.H. Beck. — (1990b), 'Die sieben Grade des Mithras-Kultes', Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 82, pp. 183-94. — (1992), Cultores Mithrae: Die Anhangerschaft des Mithras-Kultes, Heidelberger Althistorische Beitrâge und Epigraphische Studien, 10, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. — (2000), The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries, trans. R.L. Gordon, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, New York: Routledge. De Jong, A. (1997), 'A New Syrian Mithraic Tauroctony', Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New Series, 11, pp. 53-63. Fitz, J. (1989), 'Prosopographische Bemerkungen zu den Inschriften aus dem Mithras-Heiligtum im Legionslager von Aquincum', Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 41, pp. 93-8. Gawiikowski, M. (1999), 'Hawarti, Preliminary Report, 1998', Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean, 10, pp. 198-204. — (2000), 'Hawarti, Preliminary Report, 1999', Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean, 11, pp. 261-71. Gershevitch, I. (1959), The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, University of Cambridge Oriental Publications, 4, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordon, R.L. (1972), 'Mithraism and Roman Society: Social Factors in the Explanation of Religious Change in the Roman Empire', Religion, 2, pp. 92121. Reprinted as Chapter III in R.L. Gordon, Image and Value in the GraecoRoman World, Variorum Collected Studies Series CS551, Aldershot: Variorum, 1996. — (1994), 'Who Worshipped Mithras?' (review article of Clauss, 1992), Journal of Roman Archaeology, 7, pp. 459-74. — (1996), 'Two Mithraic Albums from Virunum, Noricum' (review of Piccottini, 1994), Journal of Roman Archaeology, 9, pp. 424-6. — (1998), 'Viewing Mithraic Art: The Altar from Burginatium', Antigüedad: Religiones y Sociedades, 1, pp. 227-58. — (1999), 'The end of Mithraism in the North-western Provinces' (review of Sauer, 1996), Journal of Roman Archaeology, 12, pp. 682-8. — (2001), 'Trajets de Mithra en Syrie romaine', Topoi, 11, no. 1, pp. 77-136.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

22 20

MITHRAISM AFTER 'MITHRAISM SINCE FRANZ CUMONT'

— (no date), 'A new Mithraic Relief in the Jerusalem Museum', Electronic Journal ofMithraic Studies, 2, . Griffith, A. (2000), 'A new Mithraeum in Hawarti, Syria', Electronic Journal of Mithraic Studies, 1, . Hinnells, J.R. (1994), 'Introduction: The Questions asked and to be asked', in SM, pp. 11-17. Horn, H.G. (1994), 'Das Mainzer Mithrasgefàfi', Mainzer Archàologische Zeitschrift, 1, pp. 21-66.

— (1995), 'Eine Mithras-Weihung vom Niederrhein', in Ausgrabungen im Rheinland 1983/84, Kunst und Altertum am Rhein, 122, pp. 151-5. Huld-Zetsche, I. (2004), 'Der Mainzer Krater mit den 7 Figuren', in Maartens and De Boe (eds), pp. 213-27. Kocsis, L. (1989), 'Inschriften aus dem Mithras-Heiligtum des Hauses des Tribunus Laticlavius im Legionslager von Aquincum aus dem 2.-3. Jahrhundert', Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 41, pp. 81-92. Lawson, E.T. and McCauley R.N. (1990). Rethinking Religion: Connecting Culture and Cognition, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G. (1994), 'The Expansion of Mithraism among the Religious Cults of the Second Century', in Hinnells (éd., 1994), pp. 195-216. Maartens, M. and De Boe, G. (eds, 2004), Roman Mithraism: The Evidence of the Small Finds, Archaeologie in Vlanderen, Monografie, 5, Zellik and Tienen. Madarassy, O. (1991), 'Die bemalte Kultwand im Mithraum des Legionslagers von Aquincum', Kõlner Jahrbuchfür Vor- und Frühgeschichte, 24, pp. 207-11. Martin, L.H. (1994), 'Reflections on the Mithraic Tauroctony as Cult Scene', in SM, pp. 217-24. — (2004 (a)), 'Performativity, Discourse, and Cognition: "Demythologizing" the Roman Cult of Mithras', in Braun, W. (éd.), Persuasion and Performance: Rhetoric and Reality in Early Christian Discourses, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. — (2004 (b))/ 'Ritual Competence and Mithraic Ritual', in Light, T. and Wilson, B. (eds), Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson, Leiden and New York: Brill. Merkelbach, R. (1984), Mithras, Konigstein/Ts.: Verlag Anton Hain. — (1995), 'Das Mainzer Mithrasgefàss', Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 108, pp. 1-6.

Nicholson, O. (1995), 'The end of Mithraism', Antiquity, 69, issue 263, pp. 35862 (electronic journal). Piccottini, G. (1994), Mithrastempel in Virunum, Aus Forschung und Kunst, 28, Klagenfurt: Verlag des Geschichtsvereines fur Kârnten. Sahin, S. (1999), Die Inschriften von Perge, Inschriften griechischer Stádte aus Kleinasien, 54, Bonn: R. Habbelt.

THE SCHOLARLY SCENE MlTHRAISM AFTER 'MlTHRAISM SINCE FRANZ C U M O N T '

23 21

Sanzi, E. (2002), 'A Deus Invictus among Persia, Stars, Oriental Cults and Magic Gems', in Charmes et sortilèges, magie et magiciens, Res Orientales, 14, pp. 20929. — (2003), I Culti Orientali nell'Impero Romano: Un antologia di fonti, Collana di studi storico-religiosi, 4, Cosenza: Edizioni Lionello Giordano. Sauer, E. (1996), The End of Paganism in the NW Provinces of the Roman Empire, BAR International Series, 634, Oxford: Tempus Reparatum. Schütte-Maischatz, A. and Winter, E. (2000), 'Kultstatten der Mithrasmysterien in Douche', in J. Wagner (éd.), Gottkonige am Euphrat: Neue Ausgrabungen und Forschungen in Kommagene, Antike Welt, Sonderband, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, pp. 93-9. Smith, J.Z. (1990), Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and Religions of Late Antiquity, Jordan Lectures 1988, London: School of Oriental and African Studies. Stark, R. (1996), The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, Princeton: Princeton University Press; San Francisco: HarperCollins (1997). Swerdlow, N.M. (1991) 'On the Cosmical Mysteries of Mithras' (review article of Ulansey, 1989), Classical Philology, 86, pp. 48-63. Turcan, R. (1992), Les Cultes orientaux dans le monde romain, 2nd edn, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. — (1999), 'Hiérarchie sacerdotale et astrologie dans les mystères de Mithra/ in La Science des deux: Sages, mages, astrologues, Res Orientales, 12, pp. 249-61. Whitehouse, H. (2000), Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes ofReligiosity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zwirn, S.R. (1989), 'The Intention of Biographical Narration on Mithraic Cuit Images', Word & Image, 5, pp. 2-18.

n FOUNDATION

Introduction Under the heading of 'foundation' I present two very different studies. The first is an article (Beck, 1998, Chapter 2 of this collection) offering, as its title states, 'a new account' of the 'genesis' of the Mithraic mysteries. The novelty of the account resides as much in its method as in its findings. To 'give an account' of the origins and foundation of a religious movement for whose actual founding we have no direct evidence, let alone an extant narrative, I argue that we should ask how a reconstruction of the founding group is constrained by the data and patterns of evidence once the cult has crossed the threshold of visibility into the historical record. Only within these parameters can one offer a plausible account or a 'likely story' of the cult's genesis (1998, Chapter 2 of this collection, p. 117). My narrative of the genesis of the Roman mysteries, as Gordon has pointed out (2001, p. 292), is thus an 'ideal' story. It does not pretend to describe what actually happened, but rather to deploy in a narrative the sort of socio-historical causes which would lead to the known socio-historical outcomes. The second essay in this Part is new and also aims at an 'ideal' in much the same sense, but at an ideal description of the mysteries, not an ideal narrative about them. It presents in summary form the re-description of the mysteries which, as I stated in the Introduction to this collection, is the objective of my larger quest, the quest I hope to realize in the study co-authored by Gordon and me. The Iranian Question Since the first of the two essays which follow concerns that perennial topic of Mithraic studies, the extent of Iranian input into the Roman mystery cult, I shall mention here some contributions to the debate which postdate, or which were insufficiently covered in, my 1998 article (Chapter 2). There is no need for the sort of general coverage I gave to new developments in other areas of Mithraic scholarship in the preceding essay (Chapter 1). Not only do the notes (4-6, 32, 37, 47-9) to my 1998 article outline the principal scholarly positions taken up to the time, but I have also discussed them fully in a forthcoming entry in the Encyclopaedia Iranica (Beck, forthcoming). Revisionism The most interesting and potentially the most fruitful new approach to the question of Mithraic origins is a form of revisionism - revisionism in a precise sense, in that it re-visits and re-envisages the Iranian religion from which, in the classic Cumontian scenario, western Mithraism was supposed to have evolved. The proponents of this revisionist approach are Philip Kreyenbroek (1994) and Richard Gordon (2001). One of the difficulties which old-style Iranizing interpretations of the Roman mysteries had to surmount was how to get from Mazda-centred Zoroastrianism in which

28

BECK ON MITHRAISM

bull-killing is the act either of the evil Ahriman (an act of pure malice and destructiveness) or else of a saviour figure, the Saosyant, at the end of time, to mysteries focused on Mithras as bull-killer, creator and effective world ruler. Since the 1970s, scholars of western Mithraism have generally agreed that Cumont's master narrative of east-west transfer is unsustainable; but as Gordon has pointed out (2001, p. 293), recent trends in the scholarship on Iranian religion, by modifying the picture of that religion prior to the birth of the western mysteries, now render a revised Cumontian scenario of east-west transfer and continuities once again viable. Earlier scholarship construed pre-Sasanian religion, if not as entirely monolithic, then as hewing quite closely to an explicitly Zoroastrian and Mazda-centred main line. The revisionist approach views Iranian religion at that stage, especially in divine myth and cosmogony, as a much looser clustering of stories and ideas, as yet uncoordinated and unsystematized. Consequently, it opens up space for hypothetical forms of west Iranian Mithra-worship and Mithra-legend analogous in divine myth and cosmology to the Roman mysteries. Among these lost forms might lurk Mithraism's ancestor(s). Kreyenbroek (1994) traces the ancestry back beyond Iran to Vedic sources. Both Kreyenbroek (1994) and Gordon (2001) make persuasive cases for an Iranian myth of the bull-sacrificing Mithra as the vivifier who endows a dark and inert world with light and movement. Other studies Not mentioned in my 1998 article (for the most part because they postdate it) are studies by A.D.H. Bivar, Bruno Jacobs and Maria Weiss. The works of Jacobs and Weiss are addressed in Chapter 11 on the astronomical interpretations of the tauroctony. Bivar (1999) is the culmination of this distinguished Iranist's engagement with Mithra(s). Bivar views Roman Mithraism as but one manifestation - albeit a very prominent one in the extant evidence - of Mithra-worship pervading the ancient world both oriental and occidental.1 For Bivar, then, to treat the origins of western Mithraism as an isolated issue of transfer versus reinvention is to problematize unnecessarily a part of a single larger pattern of continuities across time and space. Boliche In Chapter 1,1 included the twin Mithraea at Doliche among the most important Mithraic monuments discovered in the past two decades. Here I shall look more closely at their implications for the question of the origins and transmission of the Mithraic mysteries. In so doing, I am updating the Postscript on the Doliche Mithraeum - only the first had then been discovered - in my 1998 article (Chapter 2), p. 128. As a working assumption, I take it that the Rhenish composition of the two tauroctonies, that is, the addition of a crater and a lion to the customary snake so as to form a group underneath the bull, is to be explained by back-formation from the Rhine frontier to Doliche, presumably by the transfer of military personnel. This is not incompatible with a hypothesis that one or both caves were in use as Mithraea or as locations of Mithra1 1 have reviewed Bivar (1999) in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62 (1999), pp. 548-9.

FOUNDATION

29

worship prior to the mystery cult. Indeed, I think it likely, at least for Mithraeum l. 2 What I would resist, until and unless archaeological evidence confirms it, is the hypothesis of transfer in the other direction: that a Commagenian style of composition determined the Rhenish style, or that the Mithraic mysteries in their familiar Roman form originated in Commagene. Commagene, as the article which follows seeks to establish, figures largely in Roman Mithraism's antecedents, but I see no need as yet to entertain the hypothesis suggested by Schütte-Maischatz and Winter (2000, p. 99) that it might have been 'the starting point for the triumphal progress of the Mithras-Mysteries westwards' or that there was a specifically Commagenian 'type' (Auspragung) of the mysteries. Such a hypothesis has huge implications for the development of Mithraism elsewhere. In particular it would imply that the 'original' mysteries spread from Commagene first to the Rhine frontier and thence and only later, with the loss of a key element in the composition of the cult icon, to Rome and the rest of the Empire. I do, however, concede that if - and it is still a big 'if - some form of Mithras-worship was practised in the Doliche caves prior to (say) the middle of the first century CE, then it follows, at least in my scenario of Commagenian antecedents, that from Commagene the western mysteries also took over a tradition that Mithras is properly worshipped in caves; moreover, that this tradition was demotic and in stark contrast to Commagene's royal cult, which honoured Mithras, together with his divine peers, in high places.

References Beck, R.L. (forthcoming), 'Mithraism', Encyclopaedia Iranica. Bivar, A.D.H. (1999), The Personalities of Mithra in Archaeology and Literature, Biennial Yarshater Lecture Series 1, New York: Bibliotheca Pérsica Press. Gordon, R.L. (2001), 'Persei sub rupibus antri: Uberlegungen zur Entstehung der Mithrasmysterien', in M. Vomer Gojkovic et al. (eds), Ptuj in rõmischen Reich: Mithraskult und seine Zeit. Akten des internat. Symposium Ptuj, 11-15 Okt. 1999 = Archaeologia Poetoviensis, 2, pp. 289-301. Kreyenbroek, P.G. (1994), 'Mithra and Ahreman in Iranian Cosmogonies', in SM, pp. 173-82. Schütte-Maischatz, A. and Winter, E. (2000), 'Kultstàtten der Mithrasmysterien in Doliche', in J. Wagner (éd.), Gottkonige am Euphrat: Neue Ausgrabungen und Forschungen in Kommagene, Antike Welt, Sonderband, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, pp. 93-9.

2

The discovery of a coin of Antiochus IX of Syria (c. 115-95 BCE) in the fill beneath the floor level in Mithraeum 1 suggests that the cave was in use much earlier than the time of the Roman mysteries. However, it is impossible to tell whether it was used as a centre of Mithra-worship or indeed for religious activity of any sort.

CHAPTER TWO

The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis i

In 1896 Franz Cumont published, as the second volume of his Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, the dossier of documents on the basis of which he was to render, three years later, the first truly historical account of the transformation of Mithra-worship from a branch of Iranian Mazdaism to a Roman mystery cult. This transformative process, as he envisaged it, was long and evolutionary. He used a geological metaphor to describe its stages, as theology and practice were passed down the ages and across the lands from Iran to Rome:1 Le fond de cette religion, sa couche inférieure et primordiale, est la foi de l'ancien Iran, d'où elle tire son origine. Au-dessus de ce substratum mazdéen, s'est déposé en Babylonie un sédiment épais de doctrines sémitiques, puis en Asie Mineure les croyances locales y ont ajouté quelques alluvions. Enfin, une végétation touffue d'idées helléniques a grandi sur ce sol fertile, et dérobe en partie à nos recherches sa véritable nature. Central to Cumont's scenario was Anatolia and the Mazdean diaspora that survived (and flourished) there after the fall of the Achaemenian empire. It was there during the Hellenistic Age that €Mithraism received approximately its definitive form',2 although Cumont hesitated to pinpoint the precise time and area. Reactions to Cumont—and there have been many, although his remains the 'default' account to which we tend to return—have mostly pulled the transformative moment down in time and westwards in space.3 Anatolia has continued to have its adherents (e.g., Will, Colpe, Schwertheim, Gordon, Boyce), 4 though these usually look to the extreme end of the period and the turbulence of the Mithridatic Wars in the midfirst century B.c. The Cilician pirates, whose teletai of Mithras were said by Plutarch to have survived to his own time (Pomp. 24), remain a favourite staging-post (e.g., Will, Turcan).5 A more radical departure is represented by those accounts which see the cult as essentially created in, and diffused from, the city of Rome not much prior to the * This paper was first delivered to a joint seminar of the Department of Classics and the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto (November, 1996). I am grateful for the helpful comments made there and afterwards, especially those of Timothy Barnes, Alexander Jones, Peter Richardson, and John Rist. I am also grateful to the scholars and friends who have patiently read and thoughtfully commented on the drafts, in particular G. W. Bowersock, Mary Boyce, Fred Brenk, Giovanni Casadio, Richard Gordon, John Hinnells, Peter Kingsley, Henri Lavagne, Reinhold Merkelbach, Robert Turcan, and finally to the Editorial Committee of the Journal. The following abbreviations are used: EM = J. Duchesne-Guillemin (éd.), Études Mithriaques (1978) Gordon 1996 = R. L. Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World' Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art JMS = Journal o/Mithraic Studies. Kommagene = F. K. Dõrner (éd.), Kommagene, Antike Welt Sondernummer (i975) MS « J. R. Hinnells (éd.), Mithraic Studies (2 vols, 1975) SM = J. R. Hinnells (éd.), Studies in Mithraism (1994)

V +number = Vermaseren, op. cit. (n. 22) 1 Les mystères de Mithra (3rd edn, 1913), 27. 2 ibid., 17. 3 For a survey, see R. Beck, 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont', ANRW 11.17.4 (1984), 2002-114, at 2071-5. 4 E. Will, Le relief cultuel gréco-romain (1955), 144-69; idem, 'Origine et nature du Mithriacisme', EM, 527-36, at 527-8; C. Colpe, 'Mithra-Verehrung, Mithras-Kult und die Existenz iranischer Mysterien', MS Vol. 2, 378-405, at 390-9; E. Schwertheim, 'Monumente des Mithraskultes in Kommagene', Kommagene, 63-8; idem, Mithras: seine DenkmOler und sein Kult, Antike Welt Sondernummer (1979), 13-24; R. L. Gordon, 'The date and significance of CIMRM 593', JMS 2 (1978, reprinted in Gordon 1996), 148-74; idem, 'Who worshipped Mithras?' JRA 7 (1994), 459-74, at 469-71 (more cautiously); M. Boyce and F. Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism Vol. 3 (1991), 468-90. On the limitations of the Anatolian evidence, see Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2018-19; Gordon, op. cit. (above, 1994), 461-2. 5 Will, op. cit. (n. 4, 1955), 164 f.; R. Turcan, Mithra et le mithriacisme (2nd edn, 1993), 25-6.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

32 Il6

ROGER BECK

earliest extant monuments and dedications (Vermaseren in his later work, Merkelbach, Clauss).6 Most interesting is Merkelbach's theory, drawing on Nilsson, 7 which postulates the creation of the Mysteries by a forgotten individual of genius, working in the environs of the palace at Rome but himself of east Anatolian origin and deeply versed not only in Iranian religious traditions but also in Hellenistic philosophical culture. Cumont's geological strata become in effect one man*s multifarious expertise. II

In the context of the centenary of Textes et monuments, and as a tribute to Cumont as the founder of the study of Mithraism, I am proposing a new scenario for the genesis of the Mysteries which will synthesize and reconcile the insights of previous accounts. It may properly be called a 'Cumontian scenario* for two reasons: first, because it looks again to Anatolia and Anatolians; secondly, and more importantly, because it hews to the methodological line first set by Cumont. Cumont, as I read him, sought to give an account of an historical process, untrammelled by doctrinaire historiography, on the basis of the broadest possible array of relevant historical evidence. 8 It was the interconnection of multifarious data, painstakingly assembled in the volume of testimony and monuments (1896), that led, in the volume of interpretations (1899), to the first full and credible portrait of Mithraism. To do justice not merely to the sociological externals of a religion but to its inner dynamics qua religion, one must be inclusive. At the present juncture, the study of Mithraism shows signs of taking a rather positivistic turn, in which the hard data of epigraphy and archaeological Realien are privileged and the supposedly softer data of iconography discounted. Valid inferences, it is thought, may be drawn from the former, while the fruits of the latter are largely speculative.9 As a result, the inner life of the Mysteries, including their doctrine, is downplayed by some as largely irrecoverable— hence as inconsequential.10 It is not an approach with which, I think, Cumont or his principal successors in the European continental traditions (Vermaseren, Bianchi, 6 M. J. Vermaseren, 'Mithras in der Rõmerzeit', in M. J. Vermaseren (éd.), Die orientalischen Religionen im Romerreich (1981), 96-120, at 96-103; R. Merkelbach, Mithras (1984), 77, 160-1, 146-9; M. Clauss, Mithras: Kult und Mysterien (1990), 31-2; idem, Cultores Mithrae: Die Anhàngerschaft des MithrasKultes (1992), 253-5; more tentatively, W. Liebeschuetz, 'The expansion of Mithraism among the religious cults of the second century', SMt 195—216, at 199-200. There is a telling critique in Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 467-8. From the publication dates, it will be apparent that this is the later of the two trends; indeed, when I made my survey of post-Cumontian scholarship (op. cit. (n. 3), 2074) it was still something to be desired. There is a third trend, that typified by G. Widengren ('The Mithraic mysteries in the GrecoRoman world, with special regard to their Iranian background', in La Persia e il mondo greco-romano, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Anno 363, Quaderno 76 (1966), 433-55; idem, 'Reflections on the origins of the Mithraic Mysteries', in Perennitas: Studi in onore di Angelo Brelich (1980), 645-68; cf. Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2065-6, and 2013-4 with n. 14), which sees in the Mysteries essentially a continuity from Iran. I pass it by, not because it is negligible, but because by definition it postulates no new genesis of the Mysteries as part of the process of east-west transmission of Mithra-worship. 7 Geschichte dergriechischen Religion (3rd edn, 1974), Vol. 2, 675 f. 8 An approach to history much the same as that later described by P. Veyne in Comment on écrit Vhistoire (1971): 'Rien qu'un récit véridique' (ch. I, title).

9 I have in mind particularly the work of Manfred Clauss. This is not to belittle the great contribution made by Clauss in Cultores Mithrae (above, n. 6) on the basis of the cult's epigraphy (see my review, Phoenix 48 (1994), 173-6, and Gordon's review article, op. cit. (n. 4,. 1994)), but to sound a note of caution against carrying a reasonable scepticism concerning iconographie interpretations too far. See the retrospective and programmatic statements in the introduction to Mithras: Kult und Mysterien (above, n. 6), 7-9: of Cumont, 'in der Annahme, die Religion bestehe essentiell in ihrer Théologie, vernachlfissigte er den Kult' (7). In a sense, Clauss renews the counter trend to Cumont's approach which, in Cumont's own day, was typified by J. Toutain, Les cultes païens dans Vempire romain, 1: Les provinces latines (3 vols, 1907-20); R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981), 116, with n. 11, has an interesting perspective on this earlier debate, favouring Toutain. 10 This final, illogical step is taken by N. M. Swerdlow, 'On the cosmical mysteries of Mithras', CP 86 (1991), 48-63, a review article of D. Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (1989). Swerdlow's dismissal of the rich body of astrological evidence, in both the texts and the monuments, because of the excesses of its recent interpreters, leads him to the further dismissal, as contemptuous as it is ill-considered, of the Mysteries and their initiates alike: '.. . those who ask "What was Mithraism, anyway?" just may conclude that it was nothing much, and perhaps not a serious religion after all' (62).

33

FOUNDATION THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

II7

Turcan, Merkelbach)11 would be entirely happy. To understand how a religion was transmitted one must seek to reconstruct what it was, the evolving nature of the thing transmitted. The where and when of its physical traces and the who of its adherents are key components of the story—they are those indeed on which I shall mainly dwell in the present study—but they should never be mistaken for the story itself. m After those remarks, it might seem not a little contrary to look first not to the 'what* but to the 'who'—and not to the divine 'who', the evolving but always essentially Iranian Mithra at the core of the Cumontian story, but to the human 'who* of his adherents. In putting forward my account of the genesis of the Mysteries, I shall start by asking questions about a founding group. What would such an initial group, with the essential characteristics of a Mithraic cell and capable of transmitting the mysteries to its known successors, look like? What would be its setting in time, space, and society? My account, then, will be based neither on a long transformative process (à la Cumont) nor on a single creative individual (Nilsson-Merkelbach) but on the profile of that founding group. A founding group is a necessary hypothesis; for what new religion does not have an initial band of adherents? Nevertheless, because the identity of Mithraism's founding group is not patently a matter of record but must be reconstructed indirectly from an array of historical evidence, it must remain in this sense (i.e., qua founders) hypothetical, although the postulated group (qua group), as we shall see, is real enough historically. Consequently, what I offer here does not pretend to be a definitive historical account of the genesis of the Mysteries, only an historically plausible account. To paraphrase Veyne on the writing of history: Rien qu}un récit vraisemblable}2 IV

The following parameters constrain the account. They are set by the known data of the cult after it has crossed the threshold of visibility into the historical record; essentially, they are patterns in the subsequent evidence which must be accommodated if the account of the foundation of the Mysteries is to be more plausible than its predecessors. 1. The postulated foundation group should be reasonably close in time to the cult*s earliest attested dedications and monuments. The problem with theories of formation in the first century B.C. (or earlier) is the absence of near-contemporary monumental evidence. Why does widespread evidence for the cult appear at the end of the first century A.D. or the beginning of the second, but not earlier? If formation took place in the first century B.c., either the Mysteries went to ground for a century and more, or else what was formed was not the Mysteries as they came to be, with their formidable monumental apparatus, but rather some earlier, minimally iconic phase. The latter, 11 To cite a work of each, M. J. Vermaseren, Mithra, ce dieu mystérieux (trans. M. Léman and L. Gilbert, i960); U. Bianchi, 'The religio-historical question of the mysteries of Mithra', in U. Bianchi (éd.), Mysteria Mithrae (1979), 3-60; Turcan, op. cit. (n. 5); Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6). 12 loc. cit. (n. 7). It is worth pointing out that, although unusual in classical scholarship, this sort of hypothetical reconstruction is both commonplace and fundamental to the study of primitive Christianity (or Christianities). New Testament Form Criticism," for instance, works by reconstructing from the texts (viz.

the Gospels) the early Christian or proto-Christian communities whose needs those texts were intended to serve. This method even involves second-order hypotheses: e.g., a certain type of community is hypothesized for the common source text of Matthew and Luke, called 'Q'; but 'Q* itself is hypothetical in that, although generally accepted as an actual text by New Testament scholarship, it is neither extant nor directly attested. The title of a recent work by one of my Toronto colleagues is illustrative of this method: L. E. Vaage, Galilean Upstarts: Jesus' First Followers According to Q (1994).

BECK O N MITHRAISM

34 Il8

ROGER BECK

however, merely returns us to the question of the true formative stage immediately prior to the earliest monumental evidence. Let us locate the hypothetical founding group a generation or so earlier than the earliest evidence, approximately in the third quarter of the first century A.D. 2. The foundation scenario must be compatible with the transmission of the Mysteries within a comparatively short time span to widely separated parts of the Empire. The major problem that bedevils theories of the cult's diffusion is this simultaneity in the archaeological record. Progression in space cannot be neatly deduced from progression in time. That is why so many different scenarios of diffusion are prima facie possible (e.g., from the lower Danube—Wikander, Beskow).13 The enigma is greatly heightened by the addition of the Caesarea Marítima mithraeum to the roster of locations where the cult is attested for the late first to early second centuries A.D. 14 Until recently, Mithraism in the East (e.g., as at Dura) was generally thought to be a later back-formation from the cult in the West. ls The attested locations of the cult in the earliest phase (c. 80-120) are as follows:16 Mithraea datable from pottery11 Nida/Heddernheim III (Germânia Sup.) 18 Mogontiacum (Germânia Sup.) 19 Pons Aeni (Noricum) 20 Caesarea (Judaea)21 Datable dedications22 Nida/Heddernheim I (Germânia Sup.) (V1091/2, 1098)23 Carnuntum III (Pannonia Sup.) (V1718) 24

13 S. Wikander, 'Études sur les mystères de Mithras', Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund, Arsbok (1951), 5-46; P. Beskow, 'The routes of early Mithraism', EM, 7-18. 14 J. A. Blakely et al., Caesarea Marítima: The Pottery and Dating of Vault 1, Joint Excavation Report 4 (1987), 62, 103; cf. R. J. Painter, Mithraism and the Religious Context at Caesarea Marítima, dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1994), 99-163. 15 I. Roll, 'The mysteries of Mithras in the Roman orient: the problem of origin', JMS 2 (1977), 18-52; S. B. Downey, 'Syrian images of Mithras Tauroctonos', EM, 135-49; Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2013-17. 16 From the perspective of dating, the dossier should be regarded as a composite of the certain and the highly probable. Most of its elements are conveniently set out in Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 147—9; see also Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1990), 31-2; idem, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 251-2; Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 460-2, 467-8, 470. I have also consulted material prepared by Richard Gordon for a book on Mithraism which we are writing together. I am greatly dependent on, and grateful for, his expertise in this early phase of the Mysteries, especially in Germany where the picture is extremely complicated. 17 Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 461, with references in n. 8. 18 I. Huld-Zetsche, Mithras in Nida-Heddernheim (1986), 33-6. See also Vermaseren (below, n. 22), no. 1117; E. Schwertheim, Die Denkmüler orientalischer Gottheiten im rõmischen Deutschland (1974), no. 61; Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 115-17. 19 H. G. Horn, 'Das Mainzer Mithrasgefftfi*. Mainzer Archüologische Zeitschrift 1 (1994), 21-66, at 31-2 (see also R. Merkelbach, 'Das Mainzer Mithrasgefafi*, ZPE 108 (1995), 1-6). Strictly, we have to do with the dating of a ritual cup of a certain pottery type (Wetterau ware); unfortunately, the mithraeum where it was discovered could not be systematically excav-

ated. This remarkable object is decorated with seven figures, representing cult members engaged in two scenes of ritual performance. Though some of the figures are grade holders (the Pater and the Heliodromus are readily identifiable), finding a corresponding grade for every figure (let alone one-for-one correspondences with each of the seven grades in the hierarchy) is problematic. I am currently working on an explication of the cup's two scenes. What is undeniable is that the cup documents a developed, indeed sophisticated, ritual and ideology at a very early date in the cult's life. 20 J. Garbsch, 'Pons Aeni', Bayerische Vorgeschichtsblâtter 50 (1985), 355-462, at 428-35. See also Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 13521 Above, n. 14. 22 Where applicable, monuments are cited by their number in M. J. Vermaseren, Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (2 vols, 1956-60), prefixed with 'V. On the dossier of the earliest epigraphy, see Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 467. Gordon rightly draws attention to a certain fluidity of language in Mithras' cult-titles both in these early inscriptions and in the relatively few inscriptions from Anatolia: op. cit. (n. 4, 1978), 159 f. 23 Respectively, by the cavalryman Tacitus and the centurion C. Lollius Crispus: Schwertheim, op. cit. (n. 18, 1974), nos 59Í and o; Huld-Zetsche, op. cit. (n. 18), 55-6, nos 8 and 9; Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 149, nos 6 and 7; Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 116; Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 460. 24 By the centurion C. Sacidius Barbarus: Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 148-9, no. 5; D. Schõn, Orientalische Kulte im rõmischen õsterreich (1988), no. 50; Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 157. See also C. M. Daniels, 'The role of the Roman army in the spread and practice of Mithraism', MS Vol. 2, 249-74, at 250-1.

35

FOUNDATION THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

IIO,

Novae (Moesia Inf.) (V2268/9) 25 Oescus (Moesia Inf.) (V2250)*6 Rome (V362, 593/4) Aezanitis (NW Phrygia) (V23)28 Datable literary reference Rome (Statius, Theb. 1.719-20) 29 The postulated group need not be geographically fixed. Indeed, freeing it from a particular formative location (which by definition excludes all other locations) eases the problem of the simultaneity of the earliest evidence. Rome or Anatolia may be a false dichotomy. Were the Mysteries launched, as it were, from a mobile platform? The concept of a group in transit might seem strange; but as we shall see, in the fluid world of the Roman Empire of the first century A.D. it is not a null category. 3. The founding group has to have been one of social insiders', although not of the élite. It cannot have comprised the marginal or alienated. Otherwise Mithraism's speedy adoption by moderately successful and trusted persons with no apparent suspicion on the part of their patrons or superiors is inexplicable.30 Moreover, the group must have been such as to commend itself simultaneously to persons of this sort both in the military and in the households of the great, since Mithraism of the earliest phase is firmly located in both circles.31 4. The founding group has to be a plausible matrix for (a) a rich Iranian religious tradition centred on Mithra-worship and (b) a learned Western tradition in which astrology furnished the master metaphors of cosmology and soteriology. Both streams are fundamental to the Mysteries as we know them from the monuments and literary testimonies. Between them, they furnish the 'what' of Mithraism. The first stream is recognized by all scholars; indeed, its acknowledgement is Cumont's essential and

25 By Melichrisus, slave of P. Caragonius Philopalaestrus, conductor of the publicum portorium Ripae Thraciae: Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 148, no. 4; Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 224; Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1978), 153-4; idem, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 267-8. Melichrisus' name may be esoteric, alluding to the purification of Mithraic Lions with honey (Porphyry, De antro 15). A peculiar detail of this monument is that the deity Cautopates carries an upside-down cockerel, balancing the cockerel carried upright by Cautopates' twin, Cautes, on the opposite side. 26 By the veteran and pater sacrorum T. Tettius Plotus: Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 225. 27 Respectively, by the imperial freedman T. Flavius Hyginus Ephebianus and the slave Alcimus, the vilicus of T. Claudius Livianus (in all likelihood, the praefectus praetorio under Trajan): Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4,1978), 151-3,155-6; Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 147-8, nos 3 and 2; Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6,1992), 19-20 (see nn. 32, 35, 54). Hyginus makes his dedication 'through his father (dia ... pairos idiou), Lollius Rufus', and most scholars take 'father' not in the natural but in the esoteric hierarchic sense. The tauroctony dedicated by Alcimus has some significant idiosyncratic features: the torchbearers are grouped together on the same side of the composition, i.e., behind the bull's tail to the viewer's left, rather than one on each side; the ears of wheat appear not as growths on the bull's tail but as patterns of blood flowing from the .wound struck by the god. 28 I have included the one Anatolian monument which (a) belongs to this early period and (b) cannot be dismissed, because of iconographie or other dissimilarities, as definitely not a monument of the Mysteries. To exclude it, on the grounds that it must none

the less belong to some collateral branch of Mithraworship (since nothing about it absolutely compels us to attribute it to the Mysteries), would have begged the question. It is a dedication of one Midon, son of Solon, to Helios Mithras, and shows the bust of the god in a Phrygian cap. See, most recently Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 470. We shall return below to the dossier of Anatolian monuments. 29 The well-known allusion by Statius to Mithras subduing the bull in the 'Persian cave': 'seu Persei sub rupibus antri/ indignata sequi torquentem cornua Mithram'. See Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1978), 161-4; Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 147, no. 1. If Statius is drawing, directly or indirectly, on the cult icon, he has either taken liberties with the standard iconography or else is replicating a non-standard (prestandard?) exemplar: Mithras, on the monuments, typically holds the bull by the muzzle, not the horns. 30 The social appeal of Mithraism to conformists is agreed by all; see esp. R. L. Gordon, 'Mithraism and Roman society', Religion 2 (1972), 92-121 (reprinted in Gordon 1996); Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 153-88; Clauss, op. cit. (n. 6, 1990), 42-50; idem, op. cit. (n. 6, 1992), 262-75; Turcan, op. cit. (n. 5), 37-41; Liebeschuetz, op. cit. (n. 6). All stress the importance oîfamiliae and of bureaucratic and military structures in the propagation of the Mysteries. The permission, indeed the encouragement, of superiors is likewise assumed. Liebeschuetz (203-6) rightly observes that the civilian groups frequently belong to a second tier of dependency, as the freedmen/slaves of freedmen/ slaves. 31 As can readily be appreciated from the status of the dedicators: above, nn. 23-7.

36

BECK ON MITHRAISM I20

ROGER BECK

indisputable legacy.32 The second stream, though amply demonstrable, still remains controversial; I shall say rather more about it later.33 The story should also tell how these two streams entered the founding group (as a Cumontian account, it will emphasize continuities over discontinuities), and how they were shaped within the founding group to become the definitive Mysteries. An individual 'of genius' may have been responsible for much of this shaping, or even for some degree of 'reinvention' as the Mysteries were transmitted outwards from the founding group.34 Such a figure, however, although he can be readily accommodated in the story and might indeed enhance it, is not one of its essential elements. v Is there an actual group with a profile conforming to the these four parameters? If what emerges is a mere chimaera, it should be set aside and we should return to one or other of the current bi-polar alternatives, lengthy evolution (in the East) or reinvention (in the West). Obviously, though, I would not be advancing my scenario if there were not a plausible candidate in the Roman world of the later first century A.D. Before I unveil my candidate, I want to emphasize again that what I am advancing remains a scenario of the founding of the Mysteries, not a claim to have discovered with certainty the founding group. My argument is not: ( i ) here is the profile of a founding group; (z) group x fits the profile; therefore (3) group x founded the Mysteries. Rather, to reverse the order, it aims at the conclusion: (3) my scenario of the founding of the Mysteries is historically plausible, because (2) there is an historical group (x) which fits (1) a profile of the founding group desiderated by patterns in the historical evidence. That group x , realistically, could have founded the Mysteries does not imply that group X did found the Mysteries. I propose a suspect, perhaps even a prime suspect, and a scenario; but I have no smoking gun to offer, either in evidence or in logic. The identified group will serve as a control on the verisimilitude of the account, ensuring that the profile is not that of some chimaera, a composite of features that could never have cohered in an historical actuality. It will keep the account in the real world. It is worth observing that the identification of a founding group which is neither known 32 Although, of course, considerable disagreement persists about the precise nature and extent of the Iranian component and the manner of its metamorphosis into the stuff of the Mysteries. The most thoroughgoing and effective critique of Cumont's interpretation of Mithraism as transmuted Mazdaism is Gordon's ('Franz Cumont and the doctrines of Mithraism', MS Vol. 1, 215-48), the most successful redefinition of the Mysteries' continuing Iranian ethos—at least in my opinion—Turcan's: 'Le sacrifice mithriaque: Innovations de sens et de modalités', in Le sacrifice dans l'antiquité classique, Entretiens sur l'Antiquité classique, Fondation Hardt (1981), 341-80; 'Salut mithriaque et sotériologie néoplatonicienne', in U. Bianchi and M. J. Vermaseren (eds), La soteriologia dei culti orientait nelV impero romano (1982), 173-91; 'Le dieu et le divin dans les mystères de Mithra', in R. van de Broek (éd.), Knowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman World (1988), 243-61. On the maximalist view of Widengren and others, see above, n. 6. 33 Scepticism is undoubtedly warranted by the implausibility of much of the astronomical/astrological interpretation of the cult-icon: Swerdlow, op.

cit. (n. 10); Turcan, op. cit. (n. 5), 105-8; R. Beck, 'In the place of the Lion: Mithras in the tauroctony', SMt 29-50, at 32-40; cf. idem, op. cit. (n. 3), 2081-3. But the body of astrological data, occurring in both the monuments and the texts and concerning not only the icon but also the mithraeum and the grade hierarchy (see below), is not to be denied merely because of the perceived inadequacies of its interpreters or because of its difficult, somewhat rébarbative nature: R. Beck, Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras (1988), ix-xii. Patient, more sophisticated, and methodologically sounder evaluation of the evidence is certainly to be desiderated, but so is a recognition of its pervasiveness and complexity. Practitioners of this line of inquiry and their critics alike have a long but, one hopes, rewarding road to travel. There is an interesting story to be told—though not here—as to why Cumont, himself no mean scholar of ancient astrology, so persistently undervalued and marginalized the astrology of the Mysteries. 34 One might, for example, envisage a figure such as Paul of Tarsus, who defined a certain type of Christianity even as he transmitted it.

37

FOUNDATION THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

121

to have existed nor whose existence is even plausible is the basic error of the most sensational recent account of Mithraism's origins, that of Ulansey.35 VI

I propose to locate Mithraism's founding group among the dependants, military and civilian, of the dynasty of Commagene as it made the transition from client rulers to Roman aristocrats.3 The kingdom of Commagene on the Empire's eastern marches with Parthia and Armenia figures, more or less prominently, in all accounts of the transmission of Mithras worship, because the monuments and texts of Antiochus I, its mid-first-century B.C. ruler and the founder of a remarkable syncretistic Greco-Iranian royal cult, accord to Mithras a prominent place in the newly defined pantheon.37 It is, however, on the ending of the kingdom more than a century later that I wish to focus. 3 The actual demise occurred in A.D. 72 with the deposition of the long-reigning Antiochus IV,39 following a period of unusual turmoil and mobility of personnel across the Empire. Commagenian military elements (under royal command) were engaged in

35 op. cit. (n. 10). Ulansey proposes a group of Tarsian Stoics who, at some time after the middle of the second century B.c., transmuted the astronomer Hipparchus' highly technical hypothesis about the precession of the equinoxes into the foundation doctrine of the new cult. As I have demonstrated (Beck, op. cit. (n. 33), 37-9), other than a few professional astronomers, almost no one took cognizance of Hipparchus' discovery (Origen and Proclus are the two exceptions, with a single reference apiece), and no one at all was interested in the historical reconstruction of the equinoxes of past epochs that Ulansey's account postulates. To imagine that people in Antiquity might have turned such matters into a religion is an egregious anachronism. 36 The story of the dynasty and its fortunes is well and fully told by R. D. Sullivan, 'The dynasty of Commagene', ANRW 11.8 (1977), 732-98. We are concerned with its later phases (Sullivan, 785-98), particularly with the times of the last reigning king. C. Iulius Antiochus IV Epiphanes (A.D. 38-72; PIR 4.138-40, no. J 149), and his son of the same name (PIR2 4.140-1, no. J 150; RE 10.1.159-63, Iulius no. 66). The acme of Romanization was reached in the next generation by C. Iulius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus (he of the monument in Athens), suffect consul in 109 and Arval Brother (PIR2 4.141, no. J 151). The kingly title was retained in the latter two generations, as was a proud dynastic memory (see below on Julia Balbilla). The dynasty had, of course, long been Hellenized, tracing its pedigree to Alexander and the Seleucids and interweaving Greek with Iranian in the pantheon of its cult (see next note). Highly germane, from our perspective, is the family's connection with the astrologer and high Roman functionary, Ti. Claudius Balbillus. The specifics of the link and the prosopography of Balbillus are complicated and controversial (less so now than formerly); they will be discussed briefly below. However interpreted, the relationship adds an unusual cultural dimension to the dynasty's Romanization. Was there a 'trickle down' of astrological doctrine to those in the dynasty's household to whom our scenario traces the origins of the Mysteries? 37 See esp. Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 50-72. The

scholarly literature on the Commagenian royal cult is considerable; I cite the two most recent comprehensive studies, both excellent: M. Boyce, op. cit. (n. 4), 309-51; H. Waldmann, Der kommagenische Mazdaismus (1991). This is also the point at which to recognize the contribution to the study of Commagenian religion of another distinguished Belgian scholar, Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin: 'Iran and Greece in Commagene', EM, 187-204. On Mithras in particular in the context of the royal cult, see F. K. Dõrner, 'Mithras in Kommagene', EM, 123-33; Schwertheim, op. cit. (n. 4,1979), 13-18; Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2017-18. Important here because he has more to say than most about the dynasty and the cult subsequent to Antiochus I is J. Wagner, 'Dynastie und Herrscherkult in Kommagene', Istanbuler Mitteilungen 33 (1983), 177-224 (see esp. 208-24). The articles and illustrations in the Antike Welt Sondernummer 1975 devoted to the kingdom ( = F. K. Dõrner (éd.), Kommagene) furnish an excellent overview. 38 In its final phase, under Antiochus IV, the kingdom included portions of maritime Cilicia (Dio 59.8.2, Jos., Ay 19.276). In A.D. 52, Antiochus campaigned against some wild tribes there (agrestium Cilicum nationes) which had been harrowing the coastal cities (Tac, Ann. 12.55). Pacification was achieved by isolating and killing the chieftains and 'settling the rest leniently' (ceteros dementia composuit). It is worth considering whether the germination of the Mysteries might not have taken place when Commagenian and Cilician Mithra-worship coalesced at the exposure of Commagenian administrators and military to the rites of the Cilician tribes. On this scenario, the Mysteries would indeed have been transmitted from the teletai of Cilician outlaws, as Plutarch's testimony declares (above, n. 5), but at a different time and by a different route than scholars have supposed. These rites, one may rather postulate, were not carried abroad and perpetuated by Pompey's resettled pirates—Plutarch does not in fact say that they were—but instead lingered in their homeland of Cilicia until taken up by the Commagenians more than a century later. 39 Josephus, BJf 7.219-43, gives a full account of this episode and its aftermath.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

38 122

ROGER BECK

both the Judaean and Civil Wars,40 and there would have been extensive contact with Roman legionary and other troops (including the units already identified as among the earlier carriers of the new mystery cult: XV Apollinaris, V Macedónica, II Adiutrix).41 On the civilian side, the dynasty, after its deposition, was resident for a period in Rome:42 contact between its familia and the familiae of the Roman aristocracy, including the imperial familia, is more than likely. What I propose, then, is that the Mysteries of Mithras were developed within a subset of these Commagenian soldiers and familyretainers and were transmitted by them at various points of contact to their counterparts in the Roman world. Development and transmission should be seen as overlapping, not rigidly sequential, phases: certain of the essentials of the Mysteries will have been in place prior to their transmission, but they were developed into their familiar form in and through the process of transmission itself.

VII

Earlier, I set out certain parameters for our account, based on the constraints of the historical evidence. The scenario of the founding of the Mysteries by a circle of Commagenians in the mid- to late first century A.D. fits those parameters in the following ways: i. By moving the foundation period forward from the first century B.c. to the first century A.D., the account obviates the problem of the missing evidence. Nothing from the Mysteries is extant from that earlier period because, quite simply, the Mysteries did not then exist. What we have are, principally, monuments documenting Mithrasworship as an element in the religion out of which the Mysteries were eventually to be generated, the Commagenian royal cult. The scenario allows for a futher interval, between an initial dissemination of the Mysteries (60s to 70s A.D.?) and their earliest dedicatory and monumental records (c. 80-120), during which the archaeological record remains silent while the cult grows towards the threshold of visibility. 2. Equally, the account obviates the problem of the simultaneity of the earliest evidence and the difficulty of determining a locale for the foundation of the Mysteries. The Mysteries were 'founded' wherever subsets of this highly mobile Commagenian founding group interacted with their military or civilian peers in the Roman world. The very early date of the Caesarea mithraeum is accommodated (the Mithraic community being founded there during, or in the aftermath of, the Judean War).43 The Rome versus Anatolia problem disappears. The scarce, enigmatic, but not negligible Anatolian material outside Commagene can be accommodated piece by piece, instead of either (a)

40 In the Civil Wars, on the side of Otho against the Vitellians in the battle twelve miles from Cremona ( T a c , Hist. 2.25.2); in the Judean War, at the siege of Jerusalem ( T a c , Hist. 5.1.2, Jos., BJ 5.460-5). On both occasions the Commagenians were led by Antiochus, the king's son (above, n. 36); on the latter occasion, he volunteered his crack detachment of 'Macedonians' in a gallant—or foolhardy—assault on the walls. There had been earlier co-operation, and hence presumably contacts, between Commagenian and Roman forces in Corbulo's Armenian campaigns (Tac, Ann. 13.7.1,37.2). 41 Daniels, op. cit. (n. 24), 250-2; Turcan, op. cit. (n. 5), 32. On Caesarea as a likely military contact point, see Painter, op. cit. (n. 14), 45-9, 115-19. D. Braund, 'New "Latin" inscriptions in central Asia: Legio XV Apollinaris and Mithras?' ZPE 89 (1991),

188-90, is properly sceptical of the interpretation of a Latin-alphabet inscription found in Northern Bactria which has a detachment of XV Apollinaris worshipping Mithras in a cave there some time during this period(l). 42 Jos., BJ 7.243 ('. . . and there they remained (katemenon), treated with every respect'). Antiochus IV was no stranger to the city; it was presumably there that, together with Herod Agrippa of Judaea, he 'associated with' (syneinai) Caligula, a relationship which the Romans observed with dismay, considering the pair of client princes 'mentors in tyranny* (tyrannodidaskalous): Dio 59.24.1. The acquaintance of his eventual kinsman by marriage, Balbillus (above, n. 36), was most likely made in Rome. 43 Painter, loc. cit. (n. 14).

39

FOUNDATION THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

123

having to bear the weight of being the key transformative link in an evolutionary chain or (b) being relegated entirely to the status of back-formation from the Western mysteries.44 Some of the material may be collateral to the Mysteries, i.e., manifestations of local Mithra-worship not stemming from the Commagenian founding group.45 3. The social status of the postulated founding group is consonant with the status of the earliest cult cells, as attested by the earliest dedicators. Essentially, this is a model of peer-to-peer commendation both in the military and in thefamiliae of the great.46 Hence Mithraism's uniform respectability, most untypical of translocated mystery cults. 4. A Commagenian group, dependent on the dynasty, would be carriers of the two essential defining traits of the Mysteries identified above, (a) an Iranian tradition centred on Mithra-worship and (b) a learned Western tradition, principally astrological. Both would have been derived from the royal cult itself, amply documented in its monuments. It is important to note that the account does not make the Mysteries the evolutionary successor of the royal cult or the royal cult a prototype of the Mysteries.47 The Mysteries were a genuinely new creation, a creation which however drew on antecedent traditions. The account locates the antecedent traditions in the cult of the royal patrons of the founding group. The great innovation, the primary 'invention* of the Mysteries, was the bull-killing of Mithras construed as a mighty act of 'salvation'. The great continuities, inherited from the royal cult, were (a) the identification of Mithras with

44 On the dossier of Anatolian material, F. Cumont, 'Mithra en Asie Mineure', Anatolian Studies in Honour of W. H. Buckler (1939), 67-76; Will, op. cit. (n. 4, 1955), 154-6; Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2018-19; Gordon, op. cit. (n. 4, 1978), 159-60; idem, op. cit. (n. 4, 1994), 461-2, 469-70. See above, n. 28, on V23; also n. 22, on the variety in forms of dedication, to which Gordon rightly draws attention as evidence of a certain fluidity in the types of Mithra-worship and the early Mysteries there. 45 It is in this category that I would place the Kerch terracottas, on which see Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2019. 46 See above, n. 30 and the studies cited there; see also R. Beck, 'The Mysteries of Mithras', in J. S. Kloppenborg and S. G. Wilson (eds), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (1996), 176-85, at 179. For a recent sociological perspective on the growth of new religious movements through social networks (with applications to the ancient world), see R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (1996), 13-21. 47 Attempts have indeed been made to project Mithraism back into the royal cult, notably on the basis of the artificial cavern at Arsameia on the Nymphaeus as a precursor of the mithraeum: Schwertheim, op. cit. (n. 4, 1975); idem, op. cit. (n. 4, 1979), 13-18; Dõrner, op. cit. (n. 37, 1978), 132-3; contra, H. Dõrrie, Der Kònigskult des Antiochus von Kotnmagene im Lichte neuer Inschriften-Funde (1964), 192-4. Waldmann, op. cit. (n. 37), 182-4, gives an appropriately sceptical overview of the question 'Mithrasmysterien in Kommagene?' Actually, Waldmann's question can now be answered in the affirmative, though in a different sense than he intended. Very recently (late summer 1997)1 a mithraeum was discovered in a natural cave at Doliche, with a representation of the bull-killing Mithras cut into the rock. So far, however, there is nothing to suggest a particularly

early date or that this is other than a standard Roman mithraeum. Nevertheless, the discovery is of great importance, and I return to it in a postscript. 48 By 'invention' I mean, rather in the rhetorical sense, the discovery of the bull-killing as a divine fact of supreme relevance and its subsequent elaboration in myth and doctrine. By 'salvation' I mean only the effect of the act for good, however defined, on the world and, as mediated through the cult, on the initiates. The specifics of that good I here leave undefined. If Mithras as bull-killer was indeed the 'invention' of the founding cultists in the middle of the first century A.D., then it is not surprising that the search for his Iranian original has proven so unsatisfactory (see Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2068-9). (The exploration of the underlying Iranian concepts of sacrificai killing, whether by god or mortal, is of course another matter.) The reason that we hear no hint of a bull-killing Mithras prior to the late first century A.D. is, quite simply, that he did not exist until shortly before that time. If I were to suggest an antecedent for the motif of the bull-killing, I would locate it close to Commagene—in Tarsus and the image of the bull-vanquishing lion, prominent in the earlier coinage of that city. In fact, this antecedent has already been proposed, inter alia, by A. D. Bivar, 'Towards an integrated picture of ancient Mithraism', SM, 61-73, at 64-5. I would construe it, however, not as a forerunner of the bull-killing Mithras but rather as a trigger to his invention, a pre-existent motif, quite unrelated to him, which might have given both impetus and local legitimacy (the latter through the appearance of traditional depth) to a new religious creation. Again, I would pull the moment forward in time to the age of Antiochus IV and the expansion of Commagene into Cilicia (above, n. 38—though Tarsus, of course, remained outside his realm).

40

BECK O N MITHRAISM 124

ROGER BECK

the Sun (demonstrably, a Commagenian equation of the century before),49 and (b) the employment of astrology in the composition of 'cosmic images*,50 artificial constructs, that is, which mirror or replicate certain celestial realities. The foremost of these constructs was (i) the icon of the tauroctony, in which the celestial dimensions of the newly 'invented' bull-killing, as the action of a solar deity, were expressed in the patterns of a narrative allegory whose underlying terms are Sun, Moon, and constellations;51 in a similar way, though more explicitly and more straightforwardly, the celestial charter of the Commagenian royal cult had been embodied among the sculptured monuments of Nemrud Dag in the star-studded figure of the lion who is Leo. 52 Two other innovative creations of the Mysteries likewise mirror the heavens. They are (ii) the physical structure of the mithraeum which, we are explicitly told, was designed as an 'image of the cosmos (eikona kosmou), whose furnishings, by their proportionate arrangement, symbolize the cosmic elements and

49 The monuments of the royal cult make this equation both in text and in iconography. Mithras is called Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes in the foundation text of the primary hierothesion on Nemrud Dag (V32 = OGIS 383 = H. Waldmann, Die kommagenischen Kultreformen (1973), 62-9, line 55), and elsewhere likewise, though with variation in the order of names. On the reliefs which show him in dexiosts with the king, one extant on the west terrace of Nemrud Dag (V30) and two at Arsameia on the Nymphaeus, his Persian tiara is surrounded with the rayed solar halo: Waldmann (above), pis 22.3, 30.2-3; Dõrner, Kommagene, 41 Abb. 42, 56 Abb. 82; idem, op. cit. (n- 37)> pis 3-6; Schwertheim, op. cit. (n. 4, 1979), 17 Abb. 16, 20 Abb. 19; Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 6), 266-7, Abb. 4-5. That the equation of Mithras with the Sun was formulated in the context of the royal cult and not inherited ready-made is proved by a different dexiosts relief, discovered in 1974 a t Sofraz Koy, which belongs to an earlier phase of the cult and predates the identification of the two divinities. Here the god with solar rays and halo is named simply Apollo Epekoos, his iconography is entirely Hellenic, and he is neither called nor does he carry any of the attributes of Persian Mithra: J. Wagner, 'Neue Funde zum Gõtter- und Kõnigskult unter Antiochos I. von Kommagene', Kommagene, 51-9, at 54-9 with Abb. 77; J. Wagner and G. Petzl, 'Eine neue TemenosStele des Kõnigs Antiochos I. von Kommagene', ZPE 20 (1976), 201-23; Schwertheim, op. cit. (n. 4, 1979), 20, Abb. 20; Wagner, op. cit. (n. 37), 192-4, 198-208, pi. 49.4; Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2018. (Very similar is the Samosata relief of Helios: Waldmann, op. cit. (above), pi. 5.) Solar Mithras thus represents a continuity from the royal cult of Commagene to the Mysteries of Mithras, but it is not a long-standing one, being an 'invention' of the royal cult itself in the same sense that Mithras as bull-killer was the 'invention' of the Commagenian founders of the Mysteries a century or so later (see preceding note). In our account, then, the 'invention' of Helios-Mithras in the Commagenian royal cult is sufficient causal explanation of the solarity of Mithras in the Mysteries: Mithras is the Sun in the Mysteries because the Commagenian founders of the Mysteries received him in that identity. Further theories about the remoter Iranian origins of Mithras' solarity (a much vexed question: see Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2068; Boyce, op. cit. (n. 4), 479-82) thus concern not so much the Mysteries themselves as the antecedent royal cult: on what precedent, if any, did Antiochus I build his identification of Mithras with

the Sun? The chronology of the monuments of the royal cult and the development of the various divine equations recorded there are complicated—and still very open—questions. Necessarily, I have simplified, but only to what commands general agreement. For discussions of these issues see, in addition to the works of Wagner cited above, Dõrner, op. cit. (n. 37); Duchesne-Guillemin, op. cit. (n. 37); Boyce, op. cit. (n. 4), 317-49; Waldmann, op. cit. (n. 37), esp. 55-9 (note that, for relative chronology, this work replaces Waldmann's 1973 work cited above). 50 On the phrase, see below, n. 53. 51 Beck, op. cit. (n. 33, 1994); see also above, n. 33. 52 V31. The stars are arranged in the pattern of Leo the constellation, three larger stars above the lion's back are identified by inscription as the planets Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter, and there is a crescent moon on the lion's chest. There is general agreement, following O. Neugebauer and H. B. Van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes (1959), 14-16, no. 61, that the monument functions as a horoscope whose designated date is 7 July 62 B.C.; also, following Dõrrie, op. cit. (n. 47), 201-7, that the accompanying dexiosts reliefs are to be interpreted in the light of this horoscope as alluding to the successive conjunctions (within a few days of each other) of the three planets and the moon with the principal star of Leo, Regulus, symbolized on the lion monument by the large star cradled in the lunar crescent on the lion's chest. The dexiosis reliefs thus also carry an astrological message, that the planetary gods on a particular occasion came to greet and be greeted by the king's celestial surrogate, 'the royal star at the heart of the lion' (Pliny's phrase, NH 18.235, ^71)- I n their ensemble, they both establish and validate the theological equations of the royal cult by reference to what had actually occurred in the heavens. (While essentially correct, the current astrological interpretation of the monuments requires modification, in part because Dome's conjunction data were erroneous and present a misleading and oversimplified picture of the underlying celestial events and configurations, and in part because Neugebauer and Van Hoesen, while, of course, accurate in their data, were severely limited in their treatment of the horoscope within its unusual religious context. I am presently at work on a revised interpretation, as also on the astrology of the cult's later monuments, notably the Karakus site, a hitherto neglected line of inquiry, though obviously worth exploring if one is arguing for a continuity in astrological thinking from the royal cult to the Mysteries of Mithras.)

41

FOUNDATION THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

125

climes';53 and (iii) the organizational structure of the seven-fold grade hierarchy whose principle of arrangement is a sequence of the planets through which the initiate passes as up a 'seven-runged ladder'.54 The new messages of the Mysteries were thus largely conveyed in the inherited, though brilliantly adapted, medium of astrology. What was transmitted was not the celestial constructs themselves (the tauroctony, the mithraeum, the grade hierarchy— these were the definitive inventions of the Mysteries) but the mind set and habit of constructing things to celestial templates.55 VIII

I have characterized this account of the origins of the Mysteries as 'Cumontian' because it looks again to Anatolia and to an Anatolian group steeped in an Iranian religious tradition. These, however, are not the Hellenized Mazdean magi, the Magousaioiy to whom Cumont remained so attached as MithraisnVs putative ancestors.56 They are a less diffuse group and one whose devotion to Mithras may be inferred directly from the much heralded devotion of their dynastic patrons to that god. In an economy that is surely a desirable feature of any such account, this group also becomes the origin of another component of the Mysteries, the astrologically based cosmology, which Cumont located more distantly in space and time, in Babylon as the Semitic 'stratum* and contribution to Mithraism. 57 Temporally, Cumont saw the transformative process of Mazdaism to Mithraism occurring in the centuries immediately prior to the Christian era. Nevertheless, in a passage of Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain58 he puts the decisive moment of lift-off into the Roman world in the second half of the first century A.D. and in

53 Porphyry, De antro nympharum 6. On the way in which this ideal is exemplified in actual mithraea, principally the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres in Ostia, see R. Beck, 'Cosmic models: Some uses of Hellenistic science in Roman religion', in T. D . Barnes (éd.), The Sciences in Greco-Roman Society (1995) = Apeiron 27 (1994), no. 4, 99-117. In principle and in nomenclature, though not in practice, every mithraeum is a 'cave' because the cave is a symbol of the universe (Porph., ibid.). The Mysteries, in a sense, went underground, in sharp contrast with their royal antecedent, which was a cult of high, open places. It is conceivable that the artificial cavern tunnelled out at the Arsameia site might have prompted the Mysteries to take that direction, but it is certainly not the prototype of a mithraeum (see above, n. 47). On the mithraeum recently discovered in a natural cave at Doliche, see above (n. 47), and below (Postscript). 54 Beck, op. cit. (n. 33, 1988), esp. 1-11. The phrase (klimax heptapylos) is taken from the Mithraic symbolon given in Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22 (Beck, ibid., 73-85); the images of the grades and their tutelary planets are arranged in this ladder form in mosaic up the aisle of the Felicissimus Mithraeum at Ostia (V299). 55 For example, arrangements of the planets were used in both systems to define tutelary gods. But the products were very different. Whereas in the Commagenian royal cult the conjunctions of certain planets with the star Regulus in a certain year had been used to define the identities of the king's divine peers (above, n. 52), in the Mysteries a unique spatiotemporal sequence of the full seven was constructed to organize and validate the hierarchy of grades and to characterize progress through it: Beck, op. cit. (n. 33,

1988), 1-11. The example is instructive in another respect, for it points up a key difference between the two religions: the royal cult focused the universal on the particular—on a particular moment in time, on particular local circumstances, and on one particular individual and his dynasty; in the Mysteries the 'images of the universe' were made universally applicable, functioning, at least potentially (and with the notorious restriction to the male sex), for the salvation of all. Because of its particularity, the royal cult was, finally, a non-exportable dead end; Mithraism injected a measure of egalitarianism into the cosmos, and so succeeded. 56 See the important, though ultimately misdirected, 1931 article in which Cumont linked the newly discovered and idiosyncratic Dieburg relief (V1247) to the magian hymns of Dio, Or. 36 (39-61) to postulate a common eschatology transmitted from the 'mages occidentaux' to the Mysteries: 'Lafindu monde selon les mages occidentaux', RHR 103 (1931), 29-96; contra, Gordon, op. cit. (n. 32), 237-41; Beck, op. cit. (n. 3), 2036-7; idem, 'Thus spake not ZarathuStra: Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha of the GrecoRoman world', in Boyce and Grenet, op. cit. (n. 4), 491-565, at 539-48. 57 Textes et monumentsfigurésrelatifs aux mystères de Mithra, Vol. 1 (1899), 109, 120, 301 ('c'est là la doctrine capitale [viz. astrological fatalism] que Babylone a introduite dans le mazdéisme'); likewise much of Mithras' solarity: ibid., 200, 300 ('il y a en réalité dans les mystères deux divinités solaires, l'une iranienne qui est l'héritière du Hvarè perse, l'autre sémitique qui est le substitut du Shamash babylonien, identifié à Mithra'), 303. 58 (1929), 129-30.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

42 126

ROGER BECK

circumstances identical to those postulated here. In this sense, I have done no more than update Cumont. The passage is worth quoting at some length: Des contacts passagers avec des populations mazdéennes se produisirent à partir des guerres contre Mithridate, mais ils ne devinrent fréquents et durables qu'au Ier siècle de notre ère. C'est alors que l'Empire étendit graduellement ses annexions jusqu'à l'Euphrate supérieur, s'adjoignant ainsi tout le plateau d'Anatolie, et au sud du Taurus, la Commagène. Les dynasties indigènes . . . disparurent l'une après l'autre. Les Flaviens construisirent un immense réseau routier à travers ces régions. En même temps . . . les légions vinrent camper sur les bords du haut Euphrate et dans les montagnes de l'Arménie . . . . Ainsi . . . tous les îlots mazdéens disséminés en Cappadoce et dans le Pont entrèrent forcément en rapports constants avec le monde latin . . . . De ces conquêtes et de ces annexions en Asie Mineure et Syrie date la propagation soudaine en Occident des mystères persiques de Mithra. Car, si une communauté de leurs adeptes paraît avoir existé à Rome dès le temps de Pompée . . ., leur diffusion réelle ne commença qu'à partir des Flaviens vers lafindu Ier siècle de notre ère. In broad-brush terms this is right. But the scenario can be put in sharper focus and certain peculiarities of Mithraism better understood if we look to a very specific set of Commagenians and to the special circumstances of war and migration which brought them into close contact with precisely those groups in Roman society among whom Mithraism appears in the succeeding generation. IX

If my account follows the trajectory of Cumont, it builds no less on the insights of Merkelbach following Nilsson. The foundation of the Mysteries, it is here argued, did indeed occur in a synthesis of Iranian religion and Greek learning, and that synthesis was no less the product of invention than of evolution. Foundation in Rome, moreover, in the environs of the palace is accommodated by the supposition that it was there that the entourage of the deposed yet honoured Antiochus IV, invited to live in the capital by the emperor, first transmitted the Mysteries into the households of the great. My principal departure from Merkelbach is to stress creation within a relatively limited group rather than by a single individual of genius. Yet, intriguingly, if one were to seek an individual in this setting, there is an obvious candidate, not so much as the synthesizer of Iranian religion and Greek learning but as the re-designer of that astrology which was the dominant mode of Greek learning in the Mysteries as previously in the Commagenian royal cult. That person, already mentioned,59 is Ti. Claudius Balbillus, who was both the leading astrologer of the period in Rome and related by marriage, possibly too by blood, to the Commagenian dynasty. (That Balbillus was the father-in-law of C. lulius Antiochus Epiphanes, the son of the last ruling king of Commagene, is generally agreed; most scholars also accept that Balbillus was the son of the pre-eminent astrologer of the previous generation, Ti. Claudius Thrasyllus, who may—here is where real uncertainty obtrudes—himself have married a Commagenian

59

Above, n. 36.

FOUNDATION THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

43 127

60

princess.) This coincidence of a well-known astrologer in close proximity to the Commagenian dynasty at the crucial time is too promising to pass over in silence. Balbillus, as the kinsman of the dynasty and a person of rank and influence within the Roman élite, was, of course, the social superior of the original Mithraists here postulated. If one were to fit him into the scenario, it need not be as an early Mithraist himself or as the putative founder. Rather, one might imagine a sort of intellectual patronus of the early Mysteries, a mentor and close source of inspiration. Still, I emphasize that it is less important to nominate a specific individual as our missing genius than to demonstrate through an actual example the historical plausibility of the account even when we add in this feature.61

60 It is unnecessary to adopt here more than the minimalist position that Balbillus the astrologer was the grandfather of the Julia Balbilla who caused a poem to be inscribed on the colossus of Memnon in which she claims as her other grandfather Antiochus IV of Commagene (the grandfathers are styled respectively 'Balbillus the wise' and 'Antiochus the king'): A. and E. Bernand, Les inscriptions grecques et latines du Colosse de Memnon (i960), 86-92, no. 29, lines 13-16, with commentary. The Bernands' correct reading of line 15 of this poem excludes, in my view, an earlier and widely current interpretation which gave Balbillus himself 'a royal mother, (?)Aka' (see also J. Gagé, Basileia (1968), 75-85). Balbillus' Commagenian mother was promoted by C. Cichorius, Ròmische Studien (1922), 390-8, in the same prosopographical package which also made him the (unnamed) son of Thrasyllus mentioned by Tacitus {Ann. 6.22) as predicting Nero's principate. One may, of course, retain the filiation while rejecting the earlier Commagenian marriage connection. That Balbillus himself married royalty (whether Commagenian or other) was argued by J. Schwartz, 'Ti. Claudius Balbillus (préfet d' Egypte et conseiller de Néron)', Bull. Inst. Franc. d'Archéol. Orient. 49 (1950), 45-55» at 48, and Gagé, op. cit. (above), 84. On Balbillus' daughter (Julia Balbilla's mother), see PIR2 1.262, no. C 1086 (Claudia Capitolina). As a practising astrologer, Balbillus has the invidious distinction of advising Nero to divert the evil omen of a comet on to members of the nobility as surrogate victims (Suetonius, Nero 36). Balbillus was also among the 'best' astrologers whom Vespasian consulted, favouring him to the extent of allowing the Ephesians to institute games in his honour (Dio 66.9.2; on the records of these 'Balbilleia', see L Moretti, Iscrizioni agonistiche greche (1953), 184 and index s.v.). On the theoretical side, a fragment from Balbillus' astrological works is preserved (CCAG 8.3.103-4; 8.4.233-8, 240-4); it is concerned principally with the rather dangerous topic of length of life. Cumont, as historian of astrology, devoted a short study to him: 'Astrologues romains et byzantins: I. Balbillus', Mil. d'Archéol. et d'histoire . . . de l École Franc, de Rome 37 (1918-19), 33-8; see also W. and H. G. Gundel, Astrologumena (1966), 151-3. Balbillus, it is generally agreed, also had a varied and distinguished career as an equestrian functionary, a point of some significance if one is to cast him as a .sort of godfather to the Mithraic Mysteries. Here again, I follow a minimalist consensus which identifies him with, inter alios, (a) the Balbillus who was the subject of a procuratorial career recorded in an Ephesian inscription (J. Keil, Forschungen in Ephesus 3 (1928), 127-8, nos 41-2 = AE

1924, 78) and (b) the Balbillus who was prefect of Egypt from 55 to 59 (Tac, Ann. 13.22). For brief biographies which reflect at least this consensus (in addition to those by Cumont, Moretti, the Bernands and the Gundels cited above) see D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, Vol. 2 (1950), 1398-400; R. Syme, Tacitus (1958), 508-9; H.-G. Pflaum, Les carrières procuratoriennes équestres sous le haut-empire romain, Vol. i. (i960), 34-41, no. 15. A 'separatist' position, breaking apart the various identities, was taken by A. Stein, 'Balbillus', Aegyptus 13 (1933), 123-36; and less insistently in PIR 1.184-5, n ° . C 813; cf. ibid., 349, no. B 38; cf. Schwartz, op. cit. (above) (less radical). A maximalist (or 'unitarian') biography, following Cichorius (above) and exploiting all possible identities and both Commagenian marriage connections, is woven into his history of Roman astrology by F. H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics (1954), index s. 'Balbillus'. Finally, one should mention, though with reservations, Gage's picture of Balbillus and the Commagenian dynasty as deeply involved in the formulation of a 'royalist' ideology focused on the person of the emperor: op. cit. (above), 75-85, 108-17, i43~9, i55~ 6 3; mre tentatively, Wagner, op. cit. (n. 37), 216-17. 61 In Balbillus' favour, one might point to certain Egyptian (or Egyptianizing) elements which appear to have entered Mithraic ideology, most notably in the person of their lion-headed god: R. Pettazzoni, 'The monstrous figure of Time in Mithraism', in Essays in the History of Religions (trans. H . J . Rose, 1954), 180—92. It is difficult to account for these motifs in most current scenarios of transmission. Balbillus, the curious polymath who prior to his governorship of Egypt had served as head of the 'Museum and Library at Alexandria' (see preceding note on his procuratorial career), would be a fine example of the type of conduit which must be postulated. Indeed, his whole persona resonates remarkably with that 'bricolage' of encyclopaedic learning which, as Gordon has so perceptively demonstrated (op. cit. (n. 4, 1978); 'Reality, evocation and boundary in the Mysteries of Mithras', JMS 3 (1980, reprinted in Gordon 1996), 19-99), characterizes the Mysteries. For example, Seneca (Nat. Quaest. 4a.2.i3-is) reports an eye-witness account by Balbillus, whom he decribes as 'the best of men and uniquely accomplished in every genre of literature', of a battle between dolphins and crocodiles at the Heracleot mouth of the Nile; paradoxically, the more pacific creatures were the victors. Such animal lore is the stuff of the Mysteries: see Gordon, op. cit. (above, 1980).

BECK O N MITHRAISM

44 128

ROGER BECK X. POSTSCRIPT

Late in the summer of 1997, a mithraeum was discovered by an archaeological team from the University of Münster at the Commagenian city of Doliche. 62 The mithraeum was located in a natural cave, with its bull-killing relief cut into the rock.63 The relief is badly damaged, but it appears to be essentially of the standard design familiar in scores of exemplars across the Roman Empire from the early to mid-second century A.D. onward. So far the mithraeum has yielded nothing which can date it more narrowly, except for a short inscription in a niche which may 'possibly' refer to the legion IV Scythica,64 stationed at Zeugma from the mid-first to the end of the third century. The new mithraeum does not, of course, in any way confirm my account. If, as seems likely, it belongs with the mass of standard Roman mithraea of the second and third centuries, then it shows only that Mithraism returned to the land of its founders. Only if it can be shown to antedate all its peers would it assume a special significance as evidence for the Commagenian origin of the Mysteries. A date in the early first century A.D. or earlier would, of course, disconfirm my account: in that case the Mysteries might indeed be Commagenian, but the founding group would not be as I have postulated it. Finally, it must be emphasized that the mithraeum is no evidence for autochthonous Commagenian religion. The Münster expedition does not report it as such, although, ironically, that was precisely the objective of the survey in the area when it was led to the cave.

62 E. Winter and A. Schütte-Maischatz, 'Neue Forschungen in Kommagene', Historisch-Archâologischer Freundeskreis: Rundbrief (i997). 3 I - 7 - I a m most grateful to Simon Price for alerting me to this discovery and sending me the initial report (above). 63 On caves and rock-cut reliefs in Mithraism, see H. Lavagne, 'Importance de la grotte dans le mithriac-

isme en occident', EM, 271-8; R. Beck, 'The rockcut mithraea of Arupium (Dalmatia)', Phoenix 38 (1984), 356-71. On artificial caves in the Commagenian royal cult, see above n. 47. 64 Mithraists from IV Scythica are attested at Dura (V53. 62).

CHAPTER THREE

A Summary Description of the Mithraic Mysteries in Six Propositions

In the Introduction to this collection I gave as the goal of my scholarly project a re-description of the Mithraic mysteries in terms of the initiate's apprehension of its system of symbols. By 'system' I mean, not some fixed and static encoding, the decoding of which will yield the 'meaning' of the mysteries, but a complex and fluid interrelation of the elements of the mysteries, both visual and performative, effected by the initiate himself, as he attunes his interior mental representations to the shared cultic representations of icon, word, and ritual. By 'symbols', it should be clear, I mean much more than just the visual symbolism to be traced in the iconography of the monuments. The intent of my redescription of the Mithraic mysteries is interpretive, not explanatory; verstehen, not erklaren. A hermeneutic project of this sort can only be realized at length and at leisure, and I hope to achieve it in the compass of the comprehensive study of the Mithras cult which Gordon and I are in the process of completing (see Introduction to this Part). Here I offer a summary, reduced to six propositions. Obviously, I cannot explicate or justify here the summary either in whole or in its parts; so I limit myself to a minimum of introductory comments (and a single gloss on Proposition A). i

First, by 'description' I mean description and only description. What follows is a scholar's construct for hermeneutic ends. It is not an attempt at reconstructing the lost Mysteries of Mithras. It is, if you like, an ideal foundation document, not an approximation to a creed, a catechism, a doctrinal rehearsal of a sort which ever did or ever could exist in the real world: not the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Mithraic Religion.

2

That said, the description does make claims to accuracy. Its propositions are either empirically true (for example, Propositions D and E) or true to the esoteric 'truths' of the mysteries (for example, Proposition A). The . Mithraic grade system was a real-life fact, the Invincibility of Mithras a sacred fact for his initiates.

3

It is of course the schematization, the constructed aspects of the description, which are non-factual and beyond the sanction of verifiability/falsifiabilty.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

46 2

DESCRIPTION OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES IN SIX PROPOSITIONS

Here, I can only plead the hermeneut's justification: utility to comprehension. Does the description, so structured, improve our understanding of the Mithraic mysteries today? 4

The impetus to attempt a description of the Mithraic Mysteries starting from its 'ultimate sacred postulates' or 'axioms' - a structuralist project so old-fashioned that I must hope its very outrageousness gains it a hearing - came from a reading of two important studies of religion, both published in 1999, neither of them by a scholar of ancient paganism and neither of them concerned, except marginally, with the mystery cults of classical antiquity. One was written by an anthropologist, the late Roy Rappaport, 1 as the culmination of his life's work; the other was written by a distinguished historian of Christian origins and theologian, Gerd Theissen.2 It is in the first two propositions (A and B) that I am most indebted to Rappaport and Theissen. There, even the terminology is theirs: the term 'Ultimate Sacred Postulates' is Rappaport's; the terms 'Axioms' and 'Motifs' are Theissen's.

5

Note the subtitle of Theissen's work: Creating a Symbolic World. As already explained in the Introduction to this collection, I too locate my description of the Mithraic mysteries in the 'symbolist' tradition in anthopology on which Theissen draws. In fact I believe that a symbolist interpretation works much better for Mithraism than for early Christianity. While Theissen can only speak metaphorically of 'primitive Christian religion' as 'a marvellous cathedral of signs' (1999, p. 306 and elsewhere), the Mithraists literally and explicitly constructed their Mithraea as symbolequipped 'images' of the universe. To repeat, my goal is to redescribe the Mithraic mysteries in terms of the initiate's apprehension of its system of symbols.

6

A religion's symbol system does not exist in some ideal state in isolation from the adherents of the religion, any more than it exists in isolation from its material (or performed or uttered) representations in the actual world. Again, in the Introduction to this collection I have already emphasized processes and modes of cognition. Our quarry is not the Mithraists' symbol system per se, but their apprehension of their symbol system.

7

From the ancient (and not so ancient) perspective, initiates apprehend in their mysteries the gifts of the god, sometimes mediated by a 'prophet' or 1 2

Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. The Religion of the Earliest Churches: Creating a Symbolic World.

FOUNDATION DESCRIPTION OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES IN SIX PROPOSITIONS

47 3

'law-giver' ('Zoroaster' for the Mithraists). Here is how Plutarch (De ¡side et Osiride, 27) describes the institution of her mysteries by Isis: Nor did she allow the contests and struggles which she had undertaken, and her many deeds of wisdom and bravery, to be engulfed in oblivion and silence, but into the most sacred rites she infused images, suggestions and representations of her experiences at that time (alla tais hagiôtatais anamixasa teletais eikonas kai hyponoias kai mimêmata ton tote pathêmatôn), and so she consecrated at once a pattern (didagma) of piety and an encouragement (paramythion) to men and women overtaken by similar misfortunes, (trans. Gwyn Griffith) As a sort of theological mind experiment, I have 'translated' each of the six propositions of my description into foundational utterances of Mithras on the model of the Isis aretalogies. Playfulness apart, is there any merit in the experiment? Yes, for it offers a kind of falsifiability for the propositions expressed in cognitive terms from the initiate's perspective. If the god's foundational utterance is unimaginable as an 'authentic' divine utterance (that is, if it is the sort of thing one would never imagine a Mithaist supposing his god once 'said'), then the reciprocal proposition in terms of the initiate's cognition is false. The Description A. In the mysteries, the initiate apprehends symbolically two Axioms or Ultimate Sacred Postulates: 1. DEUS SOL INVICTUS MITHRAS 2. 'Harmony of tension in opposition'. I am the GOD MITHRAS I am the SUN I am UNVANQUISHED I SHOOT MY BOW THROUGH OPPOSITES, for HARMONY exists in TENSION [toxeuô dia tôn enantiôn, palintonos gar hê harmonia, adapted from Porphyry, De antro nympharum, 29, itself an adaptation of Heraclitus, fr. 51 DK]. B. The initiate experiences these axioms in an indeterminate number of motifs, for example, the motif of descent and ascent. I command DESCENT I command ASCENT, for I am the MEDIATOR [Plut. De hide 46] and my THRONE is at the EQUINOXES [Porph. De antro, 24]

BECK ON MITHRAISM

48 4

DESCRIPTION OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES IN SIX PROPOSITIONS

C. The initiate apprehends the axioms and themes in one or more of four domains: i. 2. 3. 4.

The sacred story, the deeds of Mithras The cosmos The sublunary world The destiny of human (especially initiates') souls. I am born of the ROCK I sacrifice the BULL I FEAST I have ordained the FEAST I rule the IMMUTABLE I rule the MUTABLE I rule the FATES of MEN and of you, my MYSTAI.

D. The initiate apprehends the symbol complexes conveying the axioms and motifs of the mysteries in their various domains on structured sites; in the mysteries there are three principal and distinctive structures: 1. The physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony (with its reverse = the banquet scene, plus peripheral scenes) 2. The physical structure of the Mithraeum 3. The organizational structure of the seven grades (note, only the first two structures are attested ubiquitously). I have ordained IMAGES of my DEEDS I have ordained a CAVE, to be a LIKENESS of my UNIVERSE I have ordained DEGREES for my MYSTAI. E. The initiate apprehends the symbols in one or more of four modes: 1. Ritual action 2. The perception of meaningful iconography 3. The giving and receiving of words (logia, explications, teaching, esoteric epigraphic formulae) 4. Ethical behaviour consonant with the mysteries (for example, Mithraic Lions behave in an esoterically appropriate leonine way). I have ordained things to be DONE: In TELETAI you shall know me I have ordained things to be SEEN: In IMAGES you shall know me I have ordained words to be SAID and HEARD: In WORDS you shall know me I have ordained RULES of LIFE. My LIONS shall be FIERY [Porph. De antro 15, Tertullian Adv. Marc, 1.13].

49

FOUNDATION DESCRIPTION OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES IN SIX PROPOSITIONS

5

F. The mysteries' symbolic idiom across axioms, motifs, domains, structures, and modes is the language of astronomy/astrology or star-talk. I have ordered the STARS as SIGNS. References Rappaport, R. (1999), Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Theissen, G. (1999), The Religion of the Earliest Churches: Creating a Symbolic World, trans. John Bowden, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Ill MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS

Introduction In Chapter 3 I quoted Plutarch (De ¡side et Osiride 27) on the foundation of the mysteries of Isis. The mysteries are established by the goddess: 'into the most sacred rites (teletais) she infused images (eikonas), suggestions (hyponoias) and representations (mimêmata) of her experiences at that time'. As secular academics, we must of course translate these divine gifts into human creations, the constructions of the devout realized both in mental representation and in artifact, word, and performance. Although I do not think Plutarch intended precise distinctions, we might think of the three 'infused' elements of the 'initiations' as, respectively, (1) visually perceived material images (statues, painted scenes, and so on); (2) ideas and their expression in language; and (3) rituals as enacted imitations. Each of these types of representation relates in a different way events of the divine past ('her many deeds of wisdom and bravery', 'her experiences at that time') to 'initiations' in the human present. Each is a form oí fiction, in the sense of something fashioned. Likewise that which is infused, namely the goddess' 'experiences' (pathêmata) and her 'deeds of wisdom and bravery', everything in fact that we call myth. Another way to regard all these fictions, both those of myth and those of 'initiations', is as inventions in the literal ancient sense of 'findings'. They are the sacred facts and protocols which the initiates discover. From our perspective the initiates discover them in and by constructing them, not only in a foundational event or process but also as individual initiates generation after generation rediscover and reconstruct them in their own mental representations. From their perspective, of course, the initiates discover and rediscover the sacred truths and protocols as divinely authorized givens. In the three following chapters I explore certain Mithraic 'fictions' and 'inventions' in the sense defined above. But I originally presented them not in those terms but using the traditional categories of 'myth', 'doctrine', 'ritual', and so on. I ask the reader to effect the necessary translations.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel i. INTRODUCTION: MITHRAIC RITUAL

Despite the wealth of the cult's material remains, we still know relatively little about the ritual of the Mithraic mysteries. What was it, in the sense of liturgy performed, that Mithraists actually did in mithraea? How did it relate to myth, to the story of the god, which, by contrast, is singularly well documented on the monuments? Was it, in some way, a mimesis or re-enactment of that story? How, if at all, was it an expression of the initiate's progress, an actualization of his 'salvation', 1 and thus of cult doctrine on these matters. There are three major pieces of this puzzle already in place. 2 First, and most important, we know that the cult meal, shared by the initiates on the banquet benches of their mithraeum, replicated the feast of Mithras and the Sun god at a table draped with the hide of the newly slain bull. 3 We know this primarily from representations on the Konjic relief and the Sa. Prisca frescoes, where we see the initiates participating in roles defined by their positions within the hierarchy of grades: the Father (Pater) and the * Earlier versions of this article were presented orally at the 1997 meeting of the Classical Association of Canada and at the University of Calgary later that year. I am grateful, as always, to Richard Gordon for his advice at various stages of the article's development; to Joanna Bird for some timely information on 'snake vessels'; finally, to the Journal's Editorial Committee for wise suggestions for improvement. Referendes to Mithraic monuments in M. J. Vermaseren, Corpus inscriptionum et monumentorum religionis Mithriacae (2 vols, 1956-60) will be by number prefixed with ' V (e.g., V485). Other abbreviations: BNP History, Sourcebook = Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome: Volume 1 — A History, Volume 2 — A Sourcebook, (1998) JMS = Journal of Mithraic Studies 1 That the Mithraists were in some sense 'saved' is agreed by all, the agency of that salvation being, as the dipinto in the Sa. Prisca mithraeum attests, the 'blood shed' by Mithras, presumably in the bull-killing {et nos servasti . . . sanguine fuso: the text quoted here is that deemed secure by S. Panciera in U. Bianchi (éd.), Mysteria Mithrae (1979), 103-5). The specifics of that salvation are widely debated, but need not concern us at this point. 2 What remains quite unknown is the liturgical year — and indeed whether the Mithraists had one, although it is difficult to imagine a solar cult without. Mithras' birth is generally supposed to have occurred, and been celebrated, on 25 December, but that rests solely on the assumption that it coincided with the Natalis Invicti, the birthday of the officiai Sun god. The assumption is reasonable but not self-evidently correct. A valiant attempt was made by I. Toth ('Das lokale System der mithraischen Personifikationen im Gebiet von Poetovio,' Arheoloski vestnik 28 (1977), 385-92) to correlate other events in the story of Mithras with the seasonal cycle and hence with a liturgical year, but it was not, in my opinion, persuasive (R. Beck, 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont',

ANRW II. 17.4 (1984), 2002-115, at 2040-1). More cautiously and convincingly, R. Merkelbach {Mithras (1984), 141-5) suggested several dates throughout the solar year as potentially significant, arguing principally from the zodiacs with which Mithraic icons are so liberally endowed. I have argued that the icon of the bull-killing Mithras (the so-called 'tauroctony') speaks in a very complex fashion of a particular season, opôra or high summer, but not that the bullkilling is liturgically datable ('In the place of the Lion: Mithras in the tauroctony', in J. R. Hinnells (éd.), Studies in Mithraism (1994), 29-50, at 44-6). In sum, I do not believe that the Mithraists' ritual year is recoverable — yet at least. Even R. Turcan's tentative summary overstates, although it is surely in principle along the right lines {Mithra et le mithriacisme (2nd edn, 1993), 80-1): 'Suivant les moments de l'année, on devait mettre l'accent sur tel ou tel épisode de la geste divine: naissance de Mithra pétrogène (peutêtre au solstice d'hiver . . .); sacrifice du taureau à l'équinoxe de printemps; miracle de l'eau . . . [final ellipsis marks sic]'. On the possible observance of the summer solstice, see my 'Qui mortalitatis causa convenerunt: The meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on June 26, A.D. 184', Phoenix 52 (1998), 335-44. 3 On this there is no disagreement. For treatments of the cult meal and its divine archetype in the more recent general studies of Mithraism: Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 2), 132-3; M. Clauss, Mithras (1990), 117-22; Turcan. op. cit. (n. 2), 78-80. Of particular studies of the cult meal, the most perceptive, in my view, are J. Stewardson and E. Saunders, 'Reflections on the Mithraic liturgy', in S. Laeuchli (éd.), Mithraism in Ostia (1967), 67-84, and J. P. Kane, 'The Mithraic cult meal in its Greek and Roman environment', in J. R. Hinnells (éd.), Mithraic Studies (1975), v °l- 2> 313-51. Kane concludes, rightly in my opinion, that the giving of bread and a cup of water mentioned by Justin {Apology 66) as a Mithraic ritual is not an element of the cult meal but a rite of initiation (as Justin in fact calls it).

56

BECK O N MITHRAISM 146

ROGER BECK

Sun-Runner (Heliodromus) represented Mithras and Sol reclining at their feast, the remaining grades their ministers. 4 It is worth noting that there is no known counterpart in ritual to the central mythic act which precedes the feast, the bull-killing itself.5 Nevertheless, since the bull-killing in some sense effected 'salvation', we may suppose that the feast of the initiates, replicating the feast of the gods, celebrated this salutary effect for mortals. That the divine feast follows, and follows from, the bull-killing is assured by (1) the fact that it was served on the hide of the slaughtered bull, 6 and (2) its depiction on the reverse of tauroctony reliefs, at least some of which could be rotated at the appropriate ritual moment. 7 Finally, the ubiquity of the mithraeum's distinctive banqueting benches implies the ubiquity of the cult meal as the 'liturgie ordinaire'. 8 Secondly, the frescoes on the side-benches of the Capua mithraeum reveal actual scenes of cult initiation in some detail. 9 However, there is nothing in these scenes which resonates in any way with cult myth. Unlike the banqueters, these Mithraic initiators and initiands are not replicating any known episode in the cult story. Nor, moreover, can the scenes be correlated with initiations into particular grades, about which there is a certain amount of scattered information. 10 4 Konjic = V1896; recognizable as ministers are the Raven, the Lion, and (?) the Persian. Sa. Prisca = V483 (best illustration in Bianchi, op. cit. (n. 1), Appx I, Tav. X): the Raven is recognizable; the banquet scene is balanced on the other side of the aisle by a fresco of grade initiates bearing offerings toward a throned Father. A Raven ministrant is also recognizable in V42.13 (Dura) and 397 (Castra Praetoria, Rome). 5 Though, paradoxically, there seems to be an allusion to initiation into Mithras' theft of the bull in the symbolon reported by Firmicus Maternus, De err. 5.2: mysta boõklopiês, syndexiepatros agauou. 6 Particularly well represented on the Ladenburg, Rückingen, and Hedernheim (I) reliefs (all illustrated in Clauss, op. cit. (n. 3), 121-2). 7 e.g., V1083 Heddernheim I. 8 Turcan, op. cit. (n. 2), 78. 9 M. J. Vermaseren, Mithraica I: The Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere (1971), with excellent colour plates. We shall return to the composition of these initiation scenes below. Until the publication of the cult vessel which will be the principal subject of this article the Capua frescoes were virtually unique as depictions of Mithraic initiation. Descriptions of the lost Velletri reliefs (V609) are too elusive to furnish helpful parallels (see Vermaseren, Mithriaca I (above), index, s. 'Velletri'). 10 Initiation into specific grades are recorded in the fourth-century Roman inscriptions V400-5, typically in the form N N tradiderunt leontica (pérsica, patrica, heliaca (for the Heliodromus!), hierocoracica (for the Raven). Ritual is best attested for the Lions: being 'fiery' their ablutions are performed with a suitably fiery liquid, honey, not water (Porphyry, De antro nympharum 15); they are the cult's incense offerers (per quos thuradamus, Sa. Prisca dipinto: M. J. Vermaseren and C. C. van Essen, The Excavations in the Mithraeum of the Church of Santa Prisca in Rome (1965), 224) and in some sense 'consume' their fellow initiates (per quos consumimur ipsi, ibid.), presumably something ritually enacted; processions of lions can be seen on both side walls of the Sa. Prisca mithraeum (V481-2); finally, what may be the text of an initiation ceremony into the grade has recently been published by W. M. Brashear, A Mithraic Catechism from Egypt (P.Berol. 21196) (1992). For the Mithraic Soldier (Miles), a formal renunciation of a crown, with the formula 'Mithras is my crown', is reported by Tertullian (De corona 15). For the Nymphus (the term cannot be translated, for it is a non-word for a non-thing, a 'male bride' — see Gordon, op. cit. (below), 48), ritual transvestism was practised, to judge from the frescoes

of the Pareti Dipinte mithraeum in Ostia (V268); they were hailed at some point as the community's 'new light' (formula in Firmicus Maternus, De err. 19.1). On the grades and the extent of our knowledge concerning them, see M. J. Vermaseren, Mithra, ce dieu mystérieux (trans. M. Léman and L. Gilbert, i960), 115-26; Beck, op. cit. (n. 2, 1984), 2090-3; Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 2), 77-133 (a very full but somewhat idiosyncratic treatment); Clauss, op. cit. (n. 3), 138-45; Turcan, op. cit. (n. 2), 81-91. By far the best treatment of the ideology of the grades remains, in my view, R. L. Gordon, 'Reality, evocation and boundary in the Mysteries of Mithras', J MS 3 (1980), 19-99 (reprinted in idem, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World (1996), ch. 5). In general, Mithraic ritual seems to be characterized by strangeness, violence, and the extreme. Apart from the ethos of the Capua frescoes, our best evidence is Ambrosiaster (Ps.-Augustine), Quaest. vet. nov. test. 114.11 (CSEL 50, p. 308): 'Their eyes are blindfolded so they don't recoil from being foully degraded; some flap their wings like birds, imitating the call of the raven; others roar like lions; others again, their hands bound with chicken guts, are propelled over trenches filled with water; then comes someone with a sword and severs the guts — he's called the "liberator"'. Other Christian writers attest the severity of Mithraic rituals of initiation, although in the later sources one must allow for exaggeration based on the increasing remoteness of authentic information: see Clauss, op. cit. (n. 3), i n . The emperor Commodus is reported to have actually killed a man during a Mithraic rite in which 'something is customarily said or counterfeited to elicit a display of fear' ('cum illic aliquid ad speciem timoris vel dici vel fingi soleat', SHA Comm. 9). A possible stage prop for such a ritual has been discovered at the Riegel mithraeum: a blade whose two halves are joined by a hoop which would fit around the body (references, with other interpretations of the object, Beck, op. cit. (n. 2, 1984), 2039); the effect of someone apparently run through by a sword is illustrated, with an appropriately tunicked model, in E. Schwertheim, Mithras: Seine Denkmàler und sein Kult, Antike Welt Sondernummer (1979), 29 Abb. 38. A pit in the Carrawburgh mithraeum has been interpreted as the place for a mimesis of interment or subjection to other ordeals (V844; I. A. Richmond and J. P. Gillam, The Temple of Mithras at Carrawburgh (1951), 19). Finally, we should not overlook the alarming ritual implications of the 'fiery breath which is an ablution (niptron) for holy magi' (graffito in the Dura mithraeum, V68).

57

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS MYSTERIES OF M I T H R A S

147

Thirdly, Porphyry (De antro nympharum 6) tells us that the mithraeum functioned as the place of initiation into a mystery of the 'descent and exit of souls' and that it was designed and equipped for this purpose as a 'likeness (eikona) of the universe': Similarly, the Persians call the place a cave where they introduce an initiate to the mysteries, revealing to him the path by which souls descend and go back again. For Eubulus tells us that Zoroaster was the first to dedicate a natural cave in honour of Mithras, the creator and father of all . . . This cave bore for him the image of the cosmos which Mithras had created, and the things which the cave contained, by their proportionate arrangement, provided him with symbols of the elements and climates of the cosmos, [trans. Arethusa edition] There is plenty of evidence from actual excavated exemplars showing that Porphyry and his sources were quite correct about the design of the mithraeum as a 'cosmic model'. 11 That being so, we ought to have some confidence in their information about the intent of the design. As yet, however, no direct evidence has come to light to reveal the drômena of this rite of initiation, the ritual mode or ceremony, that is, by which 'descent and exit' were expressed within the mithraeum qua cosmic model. II. THE MAINZ CUP: ITS PRIMARY IMPORT

This small but by no means negligible dossier on Mithraic ritual is dramatically augmented by a single, recently published cult vessel, a large two-handled crater discovered in a mithraeum in Mainz, the ancient Mogontiacum and capital of the Roman province of Germânia Superior. 12 Moulded on the shoulders of the vessel between the handles are seven figures, three on one side and four on the other (Pis

11 Most explicit is the Seven Spheres mithraeum at Ostia: R. L. Gordon, 'The sacred geography of a mithraeum; the example of Sette Sfere', JMS 1 (1976), 119-65 (reprinted in idem, op. cit. (n. 10, 1996), ch. 6); idem, 'Authority, salvation and mystery in the Mysteries of Mithras', in J. Huskinson, M. Beard and J. Reynolds (eds), Image and Mystery in the Roman World (1988, repr. in Gordon, op. cit. (n. 10, 1996), ch. 4), 45-80, at 50-60; R. Beck, 'Cosmic models: some uses of Hellenistic science in Roman religion', in T. D. Barnes (éd.), The Sciences in Greco-Roman Society, Apeiron 27.4 (1994), 99-117. 12 Published by H. G. Horn, 'Das Mainzer MithrasgefãB', Mainzer Archãologische Zeitschrift 1 (1994), 21-66. T h e vessel stands some 40 cm high. A dipinto on the rim records the dedication to Mithras (i]nv[icto); for the dedicator's name, Horn (ibid., 30) reads Quintus Cas[sius (though Abb. 13 seems to show no more than Quintus Ca[ ). The pottery type, Wetterau ware, is of great significance because of its relatively early date; it will be discussed below. The vessel belongs to the class of Schlangengefãfien, so called from the snakes which are moulded on to them, in this instance a single one with its head resting on the top of one handle and its tail writhing horizontally around a quarter of the cup's body. There are a number of other Mithraic Schlangengefàfie, with notable examples from Koln (E. Schwertheim, Die Denkmãler orientalischer Gottheiten im ro'mischen Deutschland (1974), no. 15a) and Friedberg (V1061); see also E. Swoboda, 'Die Schlange im Mithraskult', JÕA1 30 (1937), 1-27; J. Bird, 'Frogs from the Walbrook', in eadem, M. Hassall, and H. Sheldon (eds), Interpreting Roman London: Papers in Memory of Hugh Chapman (1996), 119-27, at 119-21 (a valuable discussion of the cult contexts and motifs of

these vessels: they are associated with other gods besides Mithras). Joanna Bird makes the intriguing suggestion that on the analogy with the Kõln vessel cited above, the snake's head on the extant handle may well have been balanced by a lion on the lost handle (personal communication). T h e story of the discovery of the vessel and its mithraeum in the context of the commercial redevelopment of the site in Mainz in 1976 makes dismal reading. 'Leider konnten sie [i.e., the site] von der Archàologischen Denkmalpflege Mainz nicht eingehender untersucht werden. Mõglich war lediglich, im Rahmen einer notmaBnahme und mit Hilfe ehrenamtlicher Mitarbeiter die von Baggern zufãllig freigelegten Befunde einzumessen und fotografisch mehr schlecht also recht zu dokumentieren sowie vereinzelte Funde zu bergen. Der Grabungsbericht ist demzufolge aufîerst lückenhaft' (Horn, op. cit. (above), 21). Indeed, the mithraeum has to be inferred primarily from the finds; even its precise location and plan are irrecoverable. One can only conclude, with Horn, " . . . dafi beim Ausschachten der Baugrube für den Nordstern-Neubau . . . in Mainz wohl ein komplettes Mithrasheiligtum so gut wie unbeobachtet und undokumentiert zerstõrt bzw. abgebaggert wurde' (ibid., 22). Most tragically, to judge from their few remaining fragments, it seems that about eight other vessels similar to ours were smashed during excavation and hauled off with the spoil (ibid., 22, n. 7). If these vessels were anything like as informative as ours, the loss to our knowledge of Mithraism is incalculable. This sorry story is much redeemed by the careful restoration and publication of the surviving vessel, for which we are greatly in the debt of the museum and archaeological services (see next note) and H. G. Horn.

58

BECK O N MITHRAISM 148

ROGER BECK

XIII-XIV). 1 3 There can be no doubt that these figures represent cult members engaged in cult activities. The vessel thus belongs among the very few Mithraic monuments on which we can be certain that what is depicted, at least at the literal level, is the human world of cult initiates rather than the divine world of cult myth. On the Mainz vessel, as I shall argue, the humans are mimicking the divine, so in fact both levels are present. But the divine, the mythic, is intimated in the rituals of the human participants; it is these latter whom the artist has actualized on the artifact. The fact that the figures number seven, that they are differentiated in appearance and attributes, and that some of them are manifestly grade holders of identifiable rank, led the publisher, H. G. Horn, to postulate a one-for-one set of correspondences between the seven figures on the vessel and the seven grades of the Mithraic hierarchy. 14 This is understandable, but I shall argue later that it is misconceived and leads to implausible results. Similarly, I shall argue against R. Merkelbach's alternative analysis, which also postulates a grade identity for each of the figures but finds certain of the grades represented twice and others not at all. 15 My point here is that the emphasis on grade identity distracts from, and conflicts with, the more important task — which of course Horn and Merkelbach also pursued — of determining what the figures are doing in the context of the two scenes in which they participate. Function, not rank, is the issue here. The Mainz vessel does indeed furnish significant new data on the incidence of the Mithraic grade hierarchy, but it tells us much more of substance about Mithraic ritual and the ritual's underlying doctrinal intent. Each of the scenes, I shall argue, represents the performance of a ritual which takes place within the mithraeum. On one side (A) is represented what I shall term 'the archery of the Father', on the other (B) 'the procession of the Sun-Runner'. That the former is a ritual of initiation was recognized by Horn from its striking similarity of composition with the Capua scenes. 16 Merkelbach argued that it represents Mithras shooting at a rock, a common scene in the myth cycle, usually called the 'water miracle' from the supposed effect of the archery. 17 Here, I shall simply combine the insights of the two scholars — recognizing that they are not mutually exclusive — and propose that the ritual archery of the Father initiates by miming the mythic archery of Mithras. If this is so, then we have a second myth-and-ritual pair to complement the banquet of the gods and the cult meal of the initiates discussed above: ritual (enacted)

myth

(imitated)

feast of the Father and the Sun-Runner archery of the Father

feast of Mithras and Sol archery of Mithras

The second scene (B), I shall argue, likewise has its counterpart in the divine world, though the allusion is less straightforward. What is mimed in the procession of the SunRunner are certain esoteric cosmological truths, about which we are quite well informed from Porphyry's De antro, having to do with the Sun's journey (the dromos of Helios performed, logically enough, by the Heliodromus) and its role in the 'descent and exit of souls'. If I am right, we now have an actual example of a ritual of initiation into those mysteries for which the mithraeum, we are told, was designed as 'cosmic model'. These are the drômena which, I mentioned above, have so far eluded us. The importance of the recovery of these two ritual scenes is greatly enhanced by the early date of the artifact relative to the history of Mithraism. The vessel is of 'Wetterau ware', a regional pottery type whose manufacture was limited to the first quarter of the second century A.D. 18 The vessel therefore belongs among our earliest 13 Photographs: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz, Abt. Archaologische Denkmalpflege, Amt Mainz. I am most grateful to this Office for the photographs and permission to reproduce them. To capture the detail, I have used individual photographs of the figures arranged as on the vessel.

14

op. cit. (n. 12), 28-30. 15 'Das Mainzer MithrasgefáB', ZPE 108 (1995), 1-6, at 6. 16 op. cit. (n. 12), 25-8. 17 op. cit. (n. 15), 2-5. 18 V. Rupp, Wetterauer Ware: Eine romische Keramik im Rhein-Main-Gebiet (1987), 54-9.

59

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

149

data for the Mithras cult on the Rhine frontier, or for that matter anywhere in the Empire. The implications are considerable: it suggests that the cult's peculiar grade structure — or at least major components of it — was in place more or less ab origine; likewise the well-developed interplay of ritual, myth, and doctrine of a sort which characterizes a mature religion; and all this not in the capital city but at the margins of Empire. It adds a large measure of support to those accounts of the Mysteries which construe them as something more constructed than evolved, 19 and it certainly casts doubt on those others which see them, for the most part, as a product of incoherent, unthinking good fellowship. 20 We shall return to these implications in the Conclusion. Before describing and analysing the scenes on the two sides, the problem of the vessel's uniqueness should be addressed. T o what extent may we generalize from this single artifact? Can we be reasonably sure that the rituals depicted there, even if correctly interpreted, were not merely local or peculiar to the Mithraists of Mogontiacum? These would indeed be insoluble questions if the scenes were unrelated to anything else in the cult's visual or textual remains. That, however, is demonstrably not the case. T h e archery of Mithras is well documented iconographically over a wide area. It is reasonable to suppose that its mimesis by a mithraeum's Father was widespread too — which is not to say that it was universal, as we assume the banquet to have been. The reason why the archery ritual is attested so far only at Mogontiacum is not that it was merely a local initiative; it arises from something already noted, the fact that with very few exceptions (such as the Capua frescos) Mithraists depicted myth rather than ritual, things done by their gods, not things done by themselves as initiates. The Mainz Cup is one of the handful of exceptions. Similarly, the scene of the procession of the Sun-Runner is no aberration; it coheres with Mithraic cosmology preserved in Porphyry's De antro and expressed in the design of actual mithraea. I would hazard the conjecture that the ritual was in widespread — again, not universal — use to animate, through performance, the mithraeum's design. These, then, are pieces of the puzzle which by shape and colour fit with what we have already. in. SCENE A: THE ARCHERY OF THE FATHER

Of the three figures on Side A (PI. X I I I ) , that on the left is seated (he is the only one of the seven on the cup so posed). He wears a Persian cap with ear-flaps. He is in the act of drawing a bow. He aims his arrow straight at the figure in front of him, the middle of the three in the scene. This second figure is smaller than the other two and naked. He is shown advancing towards the seated bowman, whom he faces. His arms are crossed in front of him in a gesture of subordination, 21 though they are raised to the level of his head as if to ward off the threat of the drawn bow. Behind him (thus on the right of the scene), the third figure likewise advances leftwards. He gazes upwards, with open mouth as if speaking; his right arm is extended and raised, the hand gesturing with thumb and two fingers (index and middle) extended and the other two fingers folded over the palm; his left arm is bent across his chest, the hand holding a small indecipherable object. 22 Undoubtedly, as Horn argued, 23 this is a scene of initiation: The seated bowman is a Father of the Mithraic community, identifiable as such in that he wears the garb of Mithras and performs one of the god's actions. He is the initiator. The naked figure is 19 The view articulated most fully by Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 2), 75-7 (note the section title: 'Die Mithrasmysterien — eine neue Religion'); see also my 'The Mysteries of Mithras: a new account of their genesis', JRS 88 (1998), 115-28. 20 N. M. Swerdlow, 'On the cosmical mysteries of Mithras', CP 86 (1991), 48-63, is the extreme case of this view. There is something of it in R. MacMullen's description of Mithraic cult activities: Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981), 124. Full-scale treatments of Mithraism tend to move away from it because the

mass of evidence, principally iconographie, renders it unsustainable: Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 2); Turcan, op. cit. (n. 2); even Clauss, op. cit. (n. 3), despite his emphasis on cult community over doctrine. 21 Thus, e.g., Tiridates of Armenia on his first encounter with Nero at Naples (Dio 63.2.4, tas cheiras epallaxas). 22 Horn (op. cit. (n. 12), 23) suggests a cup. We shall return to the figure's gesture later. 23 ibid., 25-8.

60

BECK O N MITHRAISM 150

ROGER BECK

the initiand, small and vulnerable, menaced with a death he goes to meet, yet instinctively tries to ward off. That the bow and arrow were real enough and the archery potentially deadly, we need scarcely doubt. The terror of the scene fits well with what we know of ancient initiation in general and of Mithraic initiation in particular. 24 The third figure, balancing the scene on the right, is the mystagogue. As in the Capua scenes, he is probably the initiand's sponsor and guide into the ritual and its experience; he is also, as we shall see when we come to examine his gesture, its explicator. The Capua scenes, as Horn well appreciated, 25 are crucial to the interpretation of this scene on the Mainz vessel. If there were any doubt about the primary meaning of the latter, parallels of composition with the former would obviate them. In both we find the same triads of initiator, initiand, and mystagogue, similarly placed. Especially striking is the similarity between initiands: small, naked, and vulnerable, even their gestures (in one instance of the Capua scenes) 26 are the same. Why, though, does a ritual of Mithraic initiation take this form of mimed archery? Here we may follow Merkelbach's insight that the scene represents — we should qualify, also represents — an episode from the cult myth, found as a side-scene on many of the monuments of the bull-killing, especially the complex northern reliefs. 27 This is the socalled 'water miracle', a scene in which Mithras shoots an arrow at a rock to draw water from it.28 As on the Mainz vessel, the scene is often witnessed by two subordinate figures, who are its suppliants and beneficiaries. It appears, then, that the participants in the initiation drama are playing out an episode in the story of the god: the Father aims an arrow because Mithras aimed an arrow. Far from being mutually exclusive, the interpretations of Horn and Merkelbach turn out to be complementary. The scene on the cup is both cult initiation and water miracle. The Father initiates by imitating the deed of Mithras, whose counterpart in the economy of the cult he is. Ritual is here a mimesis of myth. The scene is enacted simultaneously at two levels or in two worlds, the earthly world of cult life and the 'other' world of heroic myth. What is done in the here and now by the Pater imitates and thus derives its authority from what was done (or is done timelessly) by Mithras in that other world. I have tried to display these relationships between different levels of reality, or 'worlds', schematically in the diagram (Fig. 1): the scene on the artifact (first box) represents a ritual performance (an initiation by the Father) taking place in the actual world of the mithraeum (second box), which in turn imitates, and is therefore validated by, a mythic event (the archery of Mithras) in the divine world (third box). As I have already suggested, representations of the familiar banquet scene refer in much the same way to the world of men (viz., cult initiates) and the world of gods, although allusion to the former, except in the Konjic relief,29 is not so direct. Scene A of the Mainz vessel is a key addition to our dossier of Mithraic art precisely because it furnishes a parallel to the banquet scene in the linking of myth to ritual: the mythic event of the water miracle is replicated in ritual, as a rite of initiation, by the feigned archery of the Father, just as the banquet of Mithras and Sol is replicated by the banquet of the initiates presided over by the Father and the Sun-Runner. This raises the further question, why should the water miracle be chosen as the archetype for an initiation ritual? With the banquet the question scarcely arises; that the celebration of men should replicate the celebration of gods is self-evidently appropriate. The relevance of Mithras' archery to initiation, however, is not so obvious. Part of the answer, as we shall see later, lies with the symbolism of the bow. For the present, though, we need to look at the water miracle itself and its supposed significance in the myth cycle. With the possible exception of one of the Sa. Prisca texts, 30 we have no 24

See above, n. 10. Above, n. 23; on the Capua scenes, Vermaseren, op. cit. (n. 9), esp. pis 21-3, 25-8. 26 Vermaseren, ibid., pi. 28. 27 op. cit. (n. 15), 2-5. For the scene's location on various monuments (excluding the Danubian), see R. L. Gordon, 'Panelled complications', JMS 3 (1980), 200-27 (repr. as ch. 9 in Gordon, op. cit. (n. 10, 1996)); the scene is (letter) 'O' in his scheme. 25

28 There is an example from Mogontiacum, V1225; similar in composition to the scene on our cup is V1301 (Besigheim). 29 Above, n. 4. 30 'Fons concluse pétris, geminos qui aluisti nectare fratres' (Vermaseren and van Essen, op. cit. (n. 10), 193) is generally thought to refer to the water miracle.

FIG. I . ACCESSING THE MYSTERIES THROUGH THE MAINZ VESSEL.

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

61

151

62

BECK O N MITHRAISM 152

ROGER BECK

written evidence at all on this episode. What is happening in the scene and what it means have to be reconstructed from iconography and other archaeological data, always a risky undertaking. Scholars, however, are unanimous in the following reading: Mithras shoots at a rock and elicits water from it; the other figures in the scene (sometimes one, sometimes two) serve either to petition Mithras or to receive gratefully (sometimes in cupped hands) the gushing water. 31 The archery is thus interpreted as a victory over drought, an action once performed by the god in mythic time to relieve world-wide aridity and thus performable again in actual time at the behest of his devotees. Water both gives and sustains life, so the water miracle is seen as an achievement of Mithras as the creator and/or enabler of physical life and growth. Is he also the author of the 'waters of life' in a more profound sense? Even as cautious a scholar as Manfred Clauss affirms that he is, explicitly drawing the parallel with contemporary Christianity: 32 Das Wasserwunder weist neben dem Kultmahl [N.B.!] die deutlischsten Parallelen zum Christentum auf, das in derselben Zeit wie der Mithras-Kult expandierte. Natürlich rühren die Vorstellungen beide Kulte, die dem zugrunde liegen, aus den gleichen Traditionen her. Das Wasserwunder gehõrt zu jenen Wundermythen, die aus Gegenden stammen, in denen Dürre herrscht und das Gedeihen von Mensch und Natur vom Regen abhãngt. Mithras und Christus verkorpern beide auf ihre Art dieses zunãchst ganz konkret lebensnotwendige, dann bald symbolhafte Wasser [my italics]. Christus wird im Neue Testament ais das Wasser des Lebens apostrophiert. Als Symbol der Unsterblichkeit ist auf zahlreichen christlichen Sarkophagen jenes Wunder dargestellt, bei dem Mose Wasser mittels eines Stabes aus dem Felsen schlãgt (Exodus 17). Appropriately, Clauss then goes on to discuss the rich archaeological and monumental data for the importance of water in the Mithras cult. 33 Following this line of argument, one might conclude that a ritual of initiation that replicates the water miracle is admission into that more abundant life symbolized by the waters elicited by Mithras the bowman: ARCHERY = > WATER = > L I F E By one of those strange extensions of meaning so typical of Mithraism, archery thus becomes a mode of baptism. All that prevents me from wholeheartedly pressing this solution is, first, its entire dependence on a particular interpretation of the archery of Mithras in the side-scenes and, secondly, the fact that in the scene on the Mainz vessel the Father is shooting not for the initiand but at the initiand. That the seated bowman is the — or a — Father of the local Mithraic community is not in doubt. His dress, and more particularly his actions, mark him as Mithras' surrogate, and such a person can only be a Father. 34 He is enthroned, while all others stand and face him. This last is true not only of those in Scene A, but also of the four in Scene B, whose procession may be linked across the intervening handje. They too are moving leftwards around the body of the vessel towards the Father. The composition is here reminiscent of the Sa. Prisca procession scene (V480), in which representatives of the grades, clearly identified as such, proceed towards an enthroned Father. Finally, we may note the privileging of the Father's position by the treatment of the moulded snake. His throne is embowered by the snake, which laps around him, from its head on the vessel's lip above, through its body on the handle behind, to the coil immediately below. 31 F. Cumont, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, Vol. 1 (1899), 164-6; Vermaseren, op. cit. (n. 10), 71-4; Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 2), 112-15; Clauss, op. cit. (n. 3), 80-2. The two subsidiary figures are apparently the same pair as sometimes attend the birth of Mithras from the rock and are probably identifiable with the torchbearers (Cautes and Cautopates) who attend the bull-killing. The rock at which Mithras shoots is also the vault of heaven (Merkelbach, loc. cit.).

32 loc. cit. (n. 31). The parallel with Christian uses of Moses' water miracle at Horeb (Exodus 17:1-7) was already drawn by Cumont, loc. cit. (n. 31). 33 ibid. Noteesp. the fonsperennis oï V1533. 34 The Persian cap is the symbol of the Father in the relevant panel of the Felicissimus grade mosaic (V299). The bow and arrow is, of course, Mithras' weapon.

63

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

153

Are the second and third figures in Scene A, the initiand and the mystagogue, also identifiable as grade holders? Horn 3 5 assigned them, respectively, the grades of Raven (Corax) and Lion (Leo), but the only iconographie warrant is the small, indistinct object held by the mystagogue, which he interpreted as a cup. It will be presented to the new initiate qua Raven; for a cup, as the Raven panel in the aisle mosaic of the Felicissimus mithraeum attests, 36 is the proper symbol of that grade. This is all rather tenuous, and in fact these two identities were determined more by a process of elimination. Horn, assuming one-for-one correspondence between figures on the vessel and grades in the hierarchy, first assigned grade identities to the four figures in Scene B, and of course to the bowman in A; the two grades remaining for the other two figures in A were the Raven and the Lion. For Merkelbach, 37 these two figures are the Persian (Perses — centre) and the Sun-Runner (right). This follows a priori from their identities as the pastoral figures who attend the water miracle. 38 This pair, on Merkelbach's theory, is identical with the Mithraic subdeities Cautopates and Cautes, to whom in turn correspond the Persian and the Sun-Runner. The identifications are thus only as good as the general theory. 39 Thus, neither Horn's nor Merkelbach's identifications stem from the actual iconography; nor do they contribute to an understanding of the scene's primary intent in ritual and myth. There is, however, something more to be said about the mystagogue. As already mentioned, the artist has modelled the gesture of his right hand in careful detail: thumb, index, and middle fingers extended, ring and little fingers folded into the palm. The gesture is anything but casual. That it is an orator's gesture seems likely, more so in that the figure appears to be speaking. But what does it signify? The answer lies not so much where one might expect it, in the orators' handbooks, 40 but in the iconography of comparable artifacts. This is precisely the gesture which H. P. L'Orange documented in numerous examples in various media and which he argued signified 'speech' — not a particular type of speech, or a particular content, or a particular style or level or emotional coloration, but speech itself, the presentation of reason through language, in

35

op. cit. (n. 9), 30. V299. If one were to pursue Horn's identification further, it should be through the associations of raven and cup in the catasterism myth for Corvus, Crater, and Hydra. The story (Apollo instructs the raven to fetch water; the raven dallies in its task, offering the specious excuse that it was prevented by a watersnake; Apollo condemns the raven to thirst over the season of its delay, catasterizing it along with the water-jar and water-snake) has been fully explored by Richard Gordon for its resonances in the ideology of the Mithraic grade system (op. cit. (n. 10), 25-9). Gordon has demonstrated how the story's underlying tension between thirst/drought/aridity and water/ fertility/generation is exemplified in the Mithraic grade structure in general and the Raven grade in particular. The same tension, as we have seen, underlies the Mithraic 'water miracle', which is the story replicated in the ritual of our Scene A. If the initiand is indeed the Raven, as Horn suggests, then perhaps the scene also functions as an esoteric counterpart of the catasterism myth. A different Raven is commissioned by a different Apollo, himself shooting to end drought; in a nice paradox, the cup in which water is to be brought is held (again, if Horn's identification is correct) by a fiery, water-shunning Lion (above, n. 10 — dryness in Mithraism is not a simple 36

negative); and behind 'Apollo' writhes a much more formidable manifestation of the raven's feeble excuse, the snake. The vessel itself, on which the scene is depicted, bespeaks, as Merkelbach points out (op. cit. (n. 15), 6), 'water'. Thus, Horn's identifications may be shown to generate a secondary intent for the scene, but without iconographie warrant it remains inconclusive. 37 op. cit. (n. 15), 2-6. 38 See above, n. 31. 39 That there is an extensive correlation between the grades and the figures in the various scenes of the Mithraic myth cycle was central to Merkelbach's interpretation of the latter in his monograph on the cult: op. cit. (n. 2), 86-133; see also his Weihegrade und Seelenlehre der Mithrasmysterien, RheinischWestfãlische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vortrãge G 257 (1982). The goal of relating cult life to myth and doctrine is wholly admirable, but Merkelbach's correlations, at least as an extended system, have not proved credible; see my review article of his Mithras: 'Merkelbach's Mithras', Phoenix 41 (1987), 296-316, at 306-15. 40 There are no precise parallels in the section of Quintillian's Institutio oratoria (11.3.92-104) which discusses hand gestures.

64

BECK O N MITHRAISM 154

ROGER BECK

a word, logos.41 Apart from the wealth of artifacts, 42 there is one especially cogent literary description. In the Golden Ass, when the mutilated Thelyphron is coaxed by Byrrhaena, with compliments to his oratory, into re-telling his bizarre story, he commands the attention of his fellow dinner guests (whose discourtesy he has just protested) with exactly the gesture of our mystagogue: '. . . porrigit dexteram, et ad instar oratorum conformât articulum, duobusque infimis conclusis digitis ceteros eminus porrigens et infesto pollice clementer surrigens infit Thelyphron: "pupillus ego Mileto profectus . . .".' 4 3 The gesture, then, whether Thelyphron's or our mystagogue's, is not meant to tell its audience (or us the viewers of the vessel) anything about the content of what is being said, except that it is serious and extraordinary. It says, in effect, 'intende — listen'. 44 In the context of the Mainz cup, it indicates that the figure is indeed the mystagogue, the one who reveals, presumably in the narrative of Mithras' archery, the intent and efficacy of the ritual. It makes clear something that we might perhaps assume but could not otherwise know for certain, that the ritual has legomena as well as dromena, things said which match the things done. 45 iv. SCENE B: THE PROCESSION OF THE SUN-RUNNËR

The other side of the vessel shows a processional scene with four figures moving in file to the left (PL XIV). T h e first figure wears a breastplate and is the only one on the vessel so clad. T h e second and the fourth carry rods, held in front of them in the right hand, but in strikingly different and contrasted positions: No. 2 downwards as one might hold a walking stick, No. 4 upwards almost vertically. They are further differentiated in that No. 2 wears a Persian cap (like the Father in Scene A), while No. 4. is bareheaded. The figure between them, No. 3 in the procession, brandishes a whip. The whip, in Mithraism, is the proper symbol of the second most senior grade, the 'Sun-Runner' {Heliodromus), who carries it in his capacity as solar charioteer. For just as the Father is Mithras' surrogate in the economy of the cult, so the Sun-Runner is the Sun's; and as the text in the Sa. Prisca mithraeum attests, the Sun is the grade's tutelary planet. 47 From the single projecting spike on the top of the figure's peculiar head-dress, Horn and Merkelbach infer that it is the rayed solar bonnet, which is another of the

41 Studies on the Iconography of Kingship in the Ancient World (1953), i 7 i - 9 7 - His examples are drawn from sarcophagus reliefs, diptychs, coins, catacomb frescos, mosaics, etc. Admittedly, much of the material comes from early Christian art and is thus quite late relative to the Mainz vessel. Particularly germane, however, are (i) the illustrations of ancient comic actors, especially the Prologus, in the Terence Codex Vaticanus, and (ii) the Sabazius hands. On the latter, the gesture is interpreted as giving voice to the symbols with which the hands are embellished; they become 'speaking hands'. T h e gesture eventually becomes one of blessing (the so-called benedictio latina), but L'Orange argues, convincingly in my view, that that was not its original intent. While such a construction could be placed on the Sabazius hands, it could scarcely be so in the Apuleius passage below, or in the Terence miniatures (cf. the scene of the council of the gods at the start of Aeneid 10 from the Codex Romanus (vat. lat. 3867, fol. 234V): that Venus is about to speak is to be inferred from the gesture in question which she alone makes; also ibid., foi. ir, Meliboeus makes the same gesture as he leads off the amoebaean song of the Eclogues). 42 One might add as a particularly vivid example the scene of the traditio legis on a silver casket from Thessalonica (illustrated in T. F. Mathews, The Clash of Gods: a Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art

( Ï 9 9 3 ) . 80, fig. 57): Christ makes the speaker's gesture with his right hand as he hands the scroll to Peter on his left (viewer's right), while Paul on his right answers with the identical gesture in imitation. The composition is an elegant statement of the authority of the Word, spoken and written. In gesture and uplifted gaze, both Christ and Paul are strongly reminiscent of our Mainz mystagogue. 43 Apuleius, Met. 2.21 (ed. Hanson). 44 I echo the word of another talking artifact, the scroll which carries the 'author's' address to the reader in the introduction of the Golden Ass ( 1.1 ). 45 L'Orange contrasts the 'gesture of thought' with the 'gesture of power'. In the latter (op. cit. (n. 41), 139-70), the right hand is extended but the palm is open (outwards) and the fingers all extended. In the archery scene on the Mainz cup the mystagogue's gesture of speech is balanced by a different 'gesture of power': the Father's hands draw the bow and hold it in tension with arrow poised. This is the essence of the drômenon. In contrast to the hands of the two active figures, the hands of the initiand between express passivity and subordination (above, n. 21). 46 The symbol is found in the Sun-Runner's panel in the mosaic of the Felicissimus mithraeum (V299). 47 Nama Heliodromis tutela Solis (V480.2; Vermaseren and van Essen, op. cit. (n. 10), 156).

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

65 155

Sun-Runner's identifiers. 48 We should accept, then, as certain their identification of the figure as a cult functionary of that grade. We need scarcely go further in pursuit of grade identities. T h e first figure may be, indeed probably is, a 'Soldier* (Miles); for it would be difficult to interpret his breastplate in other terms. But the identification will add nothing to our understanding of the scene. T h e second figure, likewise, may be a 'Persian' (Perses), although the Persian cap which he wears is the Father's symbol, not the symbol of the Persian. 49 But, again, the identification adds nothing. Rather, it distracts from the cap's significance in context, which, I shall suggest, is to differentiate further its wearer from his colleague, the rodbearer with the raised wand at the end of the procession. Nevertheless, before explicating this processional scene, we should complete the grade identifications proposed by Horn and Merkelbach. For ease of reference, the identifications for all seven figures on the cup are set out below; the position of each grade in the hierarchy is given by number in parenthesis, from lowest — Raven (1) — to highest — Father (7): Figure (as here interpreted)

Horn

Merkelbach

Ai

initiating Father = Mithras as archer

initiating Father (7)

Mithras as archer = Father (7)

A2

initiand

initiand = Raven ( 1 )

'entreating shepherd' = Cautopates = Persian (5)

A3

mystagogue

mystagogue = Lion (4)

'shepherd with cup' = Cautes = Sun-Runner (6)

Bi

attendant (Soldier)

Soldier (3)

Soldier (3)

B2

rodbearer (rod down) = Cautopates

Persian (5)

Persian (5) = Cautopates

B3

Sun-Runner = Sol

Sun-Runner (6)

Sun-Runner (6) = Cautes

B4

rodbearer (rod up) = Cautes

Nymphus (2)

Raven (1)

The final figure in the procession scene (B4) is especially problematic. Horn assigns him to the Nymphus grade and justifies the identification by reading the figure's elevated stick as a torch — which, at the literal level, it most certainly is not — and construing it as a substitute for the Nymphus' proper symbol of a lamp. ° But the fact of the matter is that neither this figure nor the initiand and mystagogue on the other side carry unambiguous grade identifiers, so identification is a matter of shuffling them into the most appropriate — or least inappropriate — grades not already assigned to the other four figures.

48 Horn, op. cit. (n. 12), 24, 29; Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 15), 6. This symbol, complete with ribbons to tie the bonnet beneath the chin, is found, together with the symbol of the whip, in the Sun-Runner's panel in the Felicissimus mosaics (V299).

49 See, once again, the relevant panels of the Felicissimus mosaics (V299). 50 op. cit. (n. 12), 24, 29. On the Nymphus, the only grade name which I have left untranslated, see above,

n. 10.

66

BECK O N MITHRAISM 156

ROGER BECK

Merkelbach identifies B4 as a Raven. 51 He has three alternatives for this final figure, since, in his analysis, the Sun-Runner and Persian appear twice, once as the shepherds participating in the water miracle performed by the Father playing Mithras the archer, and again as the figures with the whip and the Persian cap (B3 and B2) in the procession scene. The question, then, is which two of the trio Lion-Nymphus-Raven to eliminate and why. Merkelbach opts for the Lion and the Nymphus on the grounds that the latter is represented by the figure of the snake, an equation stemming from his general theory of grade identification, while the Lion is truly and appropriately absent because this is a water vessel with a scene of the water miracle and water is inimical to the fiery Lion grade (Porphyry, De antro 15).53 Hence figure B4 can only be the Raven. The most serious weakness in Merkelbach's analysis lies not so much in the eliminations, tortuous though they are, or in the selection of the lowliest grade of Raven for B4, for which there is some slight warrant in the figure's youthfulness; rather, it stems from the prior identification of the figures with the lowered stick (B2) and the whip (B3) as Persian and Sun-Runner respectively. Now, the second of these identifications, as we have seen, is certain, while the first is not implausible. But the consequence, in Merkelbach's system, is that these two figures, qua Persian and SunRunner, must also represent the subdeities Cautopates and Cautes. Those were the equations used to establish the grade identities of the shepherds at the water miracle in the other scene (shepherds = Cautopates and Cautes = Persian and Sun-Runner). However, to identify B2 and B3 in the procession as the twins Cautopates and Cautes is to deny the obvious. If any two figures are to represent those deities, it must surely be, as I shall argue below, the pair with the identical yet opposed symbols of the lowered and raised sticks, i.e., B2 and B4. Yet B4, for Merkelbach, cannot be Cautes (even though Merkelbach follows Horn in seeing his elevated stick as a torch), since Cautes correlates with the Sun-Runner and the Sun-Runner is manifestly B3 with the solar whip. Merkelbach's grade identifications on the Mainz vessel are thus in unresolvable conflict with his more general system of grade equations in Mithraic iconography. Putting aside these other grade identifications allows us to focus on the essence of the scene and to begin to correlate it with the scene on the other side of the vessel. Let us start with the rodbearers. Their function, I suggest, is to escort the person whom they bracket, much as lictors escort a magistrate — an analogy to which we shall return in due course. From this it follows that the commanding figure in Scene B is this person in between. Scene B represents the procession of the Sun-Runner just as Scene A represents the archery of the Father. In the composition of the Mainz vessel, the two senior grades, the Father and the Sun-Runner, predominate. What, then, is the meaning of the procession of the Sun-Runner? What purpose did it serve as a ritual performed? To what does it allude at some higher level, in a world beyond literal action in the mithraeum? For the archery of the Father we have the close compositional analogy, on the one hand, with the Capua frescoes to tell us that this is a scene of initiation, and, on the other, with the water miracle to tell us that Mithras' own archery validates the ritual. What is it that authorizes, or energizes, the procession of the Sun-Runner? Ritual can never be entirely self-referential, something performed solely for its own sake. It must, if it is not to be inane or trivial, refer to some larger reality beyond. To answer these questions, one must return to the rodbearers. Now, it seems to me inescapable that in a Mithraic context such a pair, carrying the same symbol but in contrasted positions, one elevated, the other lowered, denotes primarily, not two of the seven grades, but the cult's peculiar pair of subdeities, Cautes and Cautopates. On numerous cult monuments, in particular in scenes of the bull-killing, the cult's principal

51 52 53

op. cit. (n. 15), 6. op. cit. (n. 2), 91. See above, n. 10; see also n. 12 — Joanna Bird's

suggestion that the vessel may have carried a lion on the top of the missing handle to balance the snake's head on the extant handle.

67

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

157

icon, the pair is regularly featured, distinguished by the attributes of a raised torch (Cautes) and a lowered torch (Cautopates). 5 On the Mainz vessel, then, it appears that two of the cult members are playing the roles of Cautes and Cautopates, just as the Heliodromus with his whip is miming Sol the charioteer and the Pater with his bow is miming Mithras the archer. It matters not at all that the contrasted objects are rods rather than torches. On another early monument from the lower Danube they are birds, one held upright, the other upside down. 55 Nor does it matter that B2 wears a Persian cap, while B4 is bare-headed. This too merely serves to heighten the contrast within an essential unity of function. The two are identical, yet opposed. Our scene, then, represents two cult members playing Cautes and Cautopates escorting a third who is a Sun-Runner playing the Sun (the trio preceded by a fourth who, to judge from his breastplate, is probably of the grade of Soldier). Like the scene on Side A, we must suppose that this processional scene also refers to a world beyond the world of which it is a literal representation, beyond the world, that is, of ritual performance within the mithraeum. In Scene A that other world is the world of myth, of the heroic deeds of Mithras. In Scene B what is imitated and so actualized in the ritual is drawn, I suggest, from the world of cult cosmology. It is a doctrinal truth rather than an episode of myth. What, then, does the Sun-Runner with his two rodbearers mime in this procession? The grade title furnishes an obvious clue. The Sun-Runner {Heliodromus) imitates the course, the dromos, of the Sun. Now, the Sun's particular course is its annual journey around the ecliptic, the journey which both defines and generates the earth's seasons. 6 That course has four great markers or turning points, the tropics of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, defined in opposed pairs as the equinoxes (spring/autumn) and solstices (summer/winter). It is these opposed celestial pairs, I suggest, that are intimated by the rodbearers attending the Sun-Runner in the guise of Cautes and Cautopates attending the Sun. 57 There is good warrant for effecting this identification, for we know from Porphyry's essay On the Cave of the Nymphs that the four solar tropics were significant doctrinally to the Mithraists. It was there that they located their deities, Mithras at the equinoxes, Cautes and Cautopates at the solstices. 5

54 On the iconography of the torchbearers (with frequencies and geographic distribution), see J. R. Hinnells, 'The iconography of Cautes and Cautopates, I: the data', JMS 1 (1976), 36-67; on their astronomical significance, R. Beck, 'Cautes and Cautopates: some astronomical considerations', JMS 2 (1977), r-17; on their opposition (and the rare exceptions to it), idem, 'The Mithraic torchbearers and "absence of opposition'", Classical Views 26, N.S. 1 (1982), 126-40; most recently, R. Hannah, 'The image of Cautes and Cautopates in the Mithraic tauroctony', in M. Dillon (éd.), Religion in the Ancient World (1996), 177-92. 55 V2268/9. 56 Astronomically, dromos means the distance (in longitude) covered by a celestial body in a given period of time. A particularly relevant example, in view of what follows, is Geminus 1.34-5: as a result of the eccentricity of its orbit, 'the sun's [sc. annual] dromos is divided into four unequal sectors'; hence the inequality of the seasons. The Mithraists' verbal coinage is thus precisely and literally appropriate. On analogous -dromôs coinages see R. L. Gordon, 'Mystery, metaphor and doctrine in the Mysteries of Mithras', in Hinnells, op. cit. (n. 2), 103-24, at

110-13.

57 Raised and lowered objects, whether they be torches as normally or rods as here, are appropriate

signifiers for the solstices and equinoxes as contrasted pairs. At the spring equinox the Sun is ascending in daily altitude as it crosses into the northern half of the ecliptic; at the autumn equinox it is declining in daily altitude as it crosses back into the southern half. The solstices are more ambiguous: at the summer solstice the Sun reaches its zenith at the ecliptic's northern extreme, but at the selfsame moment it starts its descent southward; conversely, at the winter solstice the Sun reaches its nadir but at the same time starts its climb back northward and upward — the paradox of midwinter renewal. 58 De antro 24: 'To Mithras as his proper seat, they assigned the equinoxes . . . As creator and master of genesis, Mithras is set at the equator with the northern signs to his right and the southern signs to his left. They set Cautes to the south because of its heat and Cautopates to the north because of the coldness of its wind'. From context it is clear that the northern and southern tropics, i.e., the summer and winter solstices, are intended. Cautes and Cautopates were restored to the text by the brilliant — and universally accepted — emendation of the Arethusa edition (1969). On the passage, see R. Beck, 'The seat of Mithras at the equinoxes: Porphyry, De antro nympharum 2$\JMS 1 (1976), 95-8; idem, op. cit. (n. 11, 1994), 106-7, 114-15.

68

BECK O N MITHRAISM 158

R O G E R BECK

The scene on the Mainz vessel, interpreted in this way, is not without precedent. Indeed, there is a close analogy on a similar artifact from a site not that far distant. A Mithraic Schlangengefãft from Kõln shows the Sun between Cautopates and Cautes (left and right respectively, as on the Mainz vessel, but facing inwards towards him rather than processing with him). S9 On the Kõln vessel, by contrast, the scene is obviously set in the cosmological world, not the actual world. The gods are presented as themselves, rather than through personae intimated by human actors in a ritual — which, most unusually, is the primary subject of the artist's representation on the Mainz vessel. The cosmic setting is further emphasized by the large stars, originally seven in all, around the circumference of the Kõln vessel. Thus, the Kõln vessel represents directly what it is that the figures in Scene B of the Mainz vessel are enacting, and Porphyry's De antro explicates the underlying doctrine of both. 60 We may conclude that the procession of the Sun-Runner is as certainly a mimed actualization of Mithraic doctrine as the Father's archery is of Mithraic myth. It is worth reflecting, too, that without Porphyry's De antro and its embedded Mithraic lore, the significance of the Sun-Runner's procession would be as opaque to us as would the Father's archery without the corresponding side-scene from the monuments. Conversely, the scenes on the Mainz and Kõln cups help to confirm as genuinely Mithraic the cosmological doctrines attributed to the Mysteries in the De antro.61 The De antro warrants reading yet further meaning into the Sun-Runner's procession, answering the question: to what end, other than imitating the cosmological placement of their gods, would Mithraists play a game of solar travel between the tropics? Now, the setting of Mithras at the equinoxes and the torchbearers at the solstices had an anthropological as well as a theological purpose. It was at the solstices, according to Porphyry, that the gates through which the human soul enters and leaves the world were located, entry being at the northern tropic (Cancer) and exit at the

59 Schwertheim, op. cit. (n. 12), no. 15a; good colour illustration in idem, op. cit. (n. 10), Abb. 42 (see also Abb. 83, 86). 60 Sol between Cautes and Cautopates is apparently the subject of one of the fresco panels in the mithraeum in the Tribune's house at Aquincum: O. Madarassy, 'Die bemalte Kultwand im Mithrãum des Legionsiagers von Aquincum', Kõlner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 24 (1991), 207-11, at 209-10; the scene is numbered 11 in the sequence. It is badly damaged and difficult to decipher, but whatever its interpretation, this is a new side-scene in the cycle, in the sense that it has not been encountered before. Sol is kneeling, and Madarassy reads it as an initiation scene: 'Vermutlich handelt es sich um eine mit dem Kult zusammenhãngende Einweihungszeremonie, um die darstellung einer Wiedergeburt'. There are similarities, noted by Madarassy, with the Dura-Europus scene of Cautes and Cautopates bearing between them the carcase of the slain bull (V42.12). 61 The Mithraic core of the cosmology of De antro 24 is not really in doubt, but the point is worth making explicitly because certain of its important features, to be introduced below, are dismissed as spurious (i.e., non-Mithraic) in R. Turcan's influential Mithras

Platonicus: Recherches sur Vhellénisation philosophique de Mithra (1975). Turcan, as we shall see, tends to construe such things as philosophers' constructs calqued on the Mysteries by outsiders. The issue of genuineness needs to be addressed definitively. Since the issues are technical and complicated, I shall deal with them for the most part in the Appendix. For a brief critique of Turcan's overall approach, see my 'Mithraism since Franz Cumont' (above, n. 2), 2055-6. It is encouraging that the compilers of the most recent sourcebook on Roman religion include, as a probable Mithraic source and with a serviceable commentary from that perspective, generous excerpts from the De antro: BNP Sourcebook, 90-1 extract 4.6a, 313-16 extract 12.5g. In BNP History (277-8) the authors discuss this question of the reliability of Porphyry's Mithraic data, but conclude that 'this is only a pressing problem if you imagine that there was a single "real" Mithraic message which could, in principle and if you had enough evidence, be disentangled'. I return to this answer in my Conclusion. Since I maintain that Mithraism did indeed have doctrinal norms (as I would prefer to call them) and that the Mainz vessel affords us significant new access to them, the problem, in my view, is indeed 'pressing' and its solution achievable.

69

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS MYSTERIES OF M I T H R A S

159

southern (Capricorn). 62 Although Porphyry does not explicitly complete the equations, one may conclude that Cautopates, set at the northern tropic, presides over entry and descent into mortality; that Cautes, set at the southern tropic, presides over exit and ascent into immortality; and that Mithras, from his 'proper seat' at the equinoxes midway between, ultimately controls and balances both processes. Finally, as Porphyry tells us and as we have already observed, 63 it was into a 'mystery' of this double process of the soul's entry and exit that the Mithraists inducted their initiates, designing and furnishing their mithraeum or 'cave' as a 'model of the cosmos' for this very purpose. We may therefore infer that miming the solar journey within the context of a mithraeum necessarily intimates the genesis and apogenesis of souls and as such would be an integral part of the mithraeum's rites of initiation. The procession of the Sun-Runner in Scene B thus proves to be as initiatory as the archery of the Father in Scene A. But of greater importance, in Scene B of the Mainz vessel we appear to have hit upon a form of the missing dromena of the mystery of the soul's 'descent and exit' which the Mithraist practised in the mithraeum qua cosmic model. As I commented at the end of the Introduction, this crucial element of Mithraic ritual has so far eluded us. It is here that one must confront Robert Turcan's contention that the doctrine of solstitial soul gates is not Mithraic. Clearly, if Turcan is right, it cannot be a mystery of the soul's entry and exit through the gates of the solstices that the Mithraists of the Mainz vessel are enacting. Turcan's contention about the soul gates is part of a larger thesis, which is the principal subject of his important Mithras Platonicusy as the subtitle, Recherches sur Vhellénisation philosophique de Mithra, makes explicit. This thesis discounts the data on Mithras and Mithraism found in the philosophical sources on the grounds that they are for the most part (and with allowance made for an irreducible genuine core) distortions or elaborations designed to bolster and authenticate the philosophers' own theories. In the case of the De antro, Porphyry uses this data, probably already contaminated by his own philosophical sources, to substantiate various elements in the allegory which he weaves round Homer's description of the cave in Odyssey 13.102-12. Scepticism is certainly in order. It is not Porphyry's intent to give an objective account of Mithraism; Mithraic data are simply grist to his allegorical mill. Could he not be distorting or elaborating them with the justification that they carry profounder meanings which are 'really' there though unsuspected by the cultists? Indeed he could. However, the fact that an ancient allegorist might well pursue this method as fair game does not imply that in any given instance or set of instances he actually did so. To establish this as more than a possibility, we must show that what Porphyry, or any other philosopher, attributes to Mithraism is inconsistent with what we know about the cult from its monuments. In other studies I have demonstrated that 62 De antro 21-9. In chs 21 and 22 Porphyry acknowledges the second-century Neopythagorean Numenius of Apamea 'and his associate Cronius' as his immediate sources for these solstitial soul gates. Later in the passage, as we have seen, Porphyry explicitly cites the doctrines of the Mithraic mysteries. Whether Mithraic doctrine was mediated through Numenius (and/or Cronius), or whether through another source (Porphyry elsewhere cites Pallas and Eubulus, on whom see Turcan, op. cit. (n. 61), 23-43, as sources on Mithraism), or whether Porphyry here drew directly on the Mithraists, it is difficult to tell. As is apparent from the parallel account in Proclus, the Numenian material will have been drawn from that author's commentary on the 'Myth of Er' with which Plato concludes his Republic (Numenius fr. 35 Des Places = Proclus, In Rempubl. 2, p. 128 Kroll). Although his is the earliest attested account of it, there is no reason to suppose that the theory of solstitial gates is original to Numenius. T h e Mithraists could well have had priority; indeed, it appears likely from the Mainz vessel that they did. Below and in the Appendix, I address Turcan's contention that the Mithraists cannot have held a theory of solstitial gates

because it is incompatible with other elements of their doctrine. A third literary version of the theory, which is also thought to derive ultimately from Numenius, is found in Macrobius, In Somn. 1.12.1-4. See R. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian (1986), 66-75, 120-33, 318-24; H. de Ley, Macrobius and Numenius (1972). L. Simonini gives a full commentary on this section in her edition of the De antro (1986). Although she furnishes much detailed and germane background information, she does not succeed, in my opinion, in disentangling the literary and Mithraic sources or in displaying their relationship; the architecture of the section remains opaque. Modern scholarship on the larger topic of the soul's celestial journey is considerable. I cite the major treatments in my Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras (1988), nn. 12, 180 (add A. F. Segal, 'Heavenly ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, early Christianity and their environment', ANRW II.23.2, 1333-94). Planetary Gods is itself largely concerned with manifestations of the theory of the soul's celestial journey in the literary testimonia and on the monuments of Mithraism (esp. 41-2, 73-85, 92-100). 63 De antro 6, quoted above in my Introduction.

70

BECK O N MITHRAISM l6o

R O G E R BECK

Porphyry's Mithraic information in the De antro, far from being inconsistent with the monuments of Mithraism, is amply borne out by them. 64 Indeed, evidence continues to mount from new discoveries to support the credibilty of the De antro's Mithraic data. 65 Here it remains only to disprove Turcan's particular claim that the theory of soul gates at the solstices is incompatible with Mithraic doctrine. Unfortunately, that road is long and tortuous, but it has to be followed if we are to restore full credibility to the Mithraic data reported by Porphyry and his philosophical sources. In the following two paragraphs I summarize Turcan's argument and its refutation, leaving my full counterargument to the Appendix. As we have seen, in De antro 21 and 22 Porphyry (following Numenius and Cronius) locates the soul gates at the solstices; in ch. 24, by introducing the cosmic location of Mithras in this context, he appears to attribute the doctrine of the entry and exit of souls through solstitial gates to Mithraism. This, argues Turcan, 6 6 cannot be, for the doctrine of solstitial gates presupposes a particular thema mundi, i.e., an alignment of the heavens at the time of the world's creation, while Mithraic doctrine presupposes a different thema mundi altogether. Mithraic cosmological doctrine and the doctrine of the entry and exit of souls through solstitial gates are thus mutually exclusive. Mithraism, then, could not have taught the doctrine of entry and exit through solstitial gates because it was incompatible with the cult's cosmology. The counter-argument is not that the doctrine of solstitial soul gates and the cosmological doctrines of Mithraism imply the same thema mundi, but rather that neither set of doctrines implies any particular thema mundi. There is in fact only one attested thema mundi and it has nothing to do either with the theory of solstitial soul gates as reported in the philosophical sources or with Mithraic cosmology as reported in De antro 24 and exemplified on the cult monuments relating to that passage. It is simply an irrelevance. Demonstrating that fact and explaining why Turcan should have pursued such a will-o'-the-wisp will be the matter of the Appendix. The conclusion is that there is no incompatibility between Mithraic cosmological doctrines and the theory of solstitial soul gates. Quite the contrary; solstitial soul gates are part and parcel of Mithraic cosmology and anthropology — which is the obvious way to construe De antro 6 and 21-9. Nothing, then, precludes reading Scene B of the Mainz vessel as a representation of initiates miming within their mithraeum the cosmology and the destiny of souls ascribed to them in the De antro. Accordingly, we should now briefly rehearse the mithraeum's relevant features both as 'cosmic model' and as stage set for the initiates' performance, using the data of the De antro, especially ch. 24, as elements of its blueprint. The classic case is the Sette Sfere mithraeum in Ostia, because the cosmography there is much more explicit than in any other mithraeum. The mithraeum in my diagram (Fig. 2) is thus a composite of the ideal mithraeum as intimated in the De antro and actual mithraea as represented principally by Sette Sfere. 67 The 'proper seat of Mithras' which is 'at the equinoxes' or 'on the equator' is represented in the mithraeum by the image of the bull-killing Mithras, with equinoctial symbols, 68 commanding the central axis of the structure, the aisle between the two distinctive side benches. So placed, Mithras has 'on his right the northern signs', which 64 op. cit. (n. 62), 92-100; op. cit. (n. 11), 106-9, 112-14; see also the studies by R. L. Gordon cited above, n. 11. 65 (1) Celebration of the solstices as feasts of mortality and immortality is suggested by a formula in the recently discovered Virunum album: see my 'Qui mortalitatis causa convenerunt: the meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on June 26, A.D. 184', Phoenix 52 (1998), 335-44; G. Piccottini, Mithrastempel in Virunum (1994), 24. (2) In the papyrus 'Mithraic catechism* (W. Brashear, A Mithraic Catechism from Egypt (1992), 23, on line 5 recto), the supplement 'tropic' is proposed by Merkelbach and Burkert (no mean authorities!) to the initiand's response, 'through the summer

66

op. cit. (n. 61), 88-9. For fuller descriptions of the mithraeum's design, see the works cited above, n. 11. For simplicity's sake I have included only what is relevant to our present concerns. 68 Aries, the spring equinox, is intimated by the knife which Mithras wields, Libra, the autumn equinox, by the fact that he straddles the bull. The logic is tortuous and can only be recovered by emendation of the De antra's text (Beck, op. cit. (n. 58)): the knife belongs to Mars, and Mars has Aries as his astrological 'house'; the bull, qua Taurus, belongs to Venus, again as her astrological house, and Venus has Libra as her other house. 67

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

71 161

FIG. 2 . THE MITHRAEUM AS 'IMAGE OF THE UNIVERSE*. COMPOSITE RECONSTRUCTION FROM PORPHYRY, DE ANTRO NYMPHARUM 6 . 2 I ~ 4 , AND EXCAVATED SITES, PRINCIPALLY THE MITHRAEUM OF THE SEVEN SPHERES (OSTIA).

BECK O N MITHRAISM

72 162

R O G E R BECK

are represented in the mithraeum by the bench to his right (embellished at Sette Sfere with symbols of the six northern signs of the zodiac); and 'on his left the southern signs', represented by the bench to his left (embellished at Sette Sfere with symbols of the six southern signs). The setting of Cautes 'to the south' and of Cautopates 'to the north' is represented by the placement of the torchbearers; when their images are set on or against the bench ends, Cautes is invariably found on the 'southern' side to Mithras' left (i.e., to the right for someone entering the mithraeum) and Cautopates on the 'northern' side to Mithras' right. It follows that the solstices, at the midpoints of the northern and southern signs, are represented by the niches which are regularly found at the midpoint of each bench. T h e summer solstice (the tropic of Cancer) is midway along the 'northern' bench, the winter solstice (the tropic of Capricorn) midway along the 'southern' bench. These, then, represent the gates of genesis and apogenesis, of entry and exit into and out of the world. 69 The mithraeum's orientation is symbolic, not actual: i.e., its 'north' side does not necessarily lie towards the geographic north, nor does its aisle run east-west in that literal sense. 70 But even at the symbolic level, one must guard against automatically applying the logic of geographic orientation and inferring that because the mithraeum has 'north' and 'south' benches it therefore has an 'east' end at the cult-niche and the image of the tauroctonous Mithras and a 'west' end at the customary entrance. 71 The ideal mithraeum is not a place on the earth's surface; rather, it is the cosmos itself and thus in the strict sense amenable only to a cosmographie orientation. In a geocentric cosmography, the universe, like the globe of earth, although it has north and south hemispheres and north and south poles, has neither east nor west ends. Rather, east and west are directions of motion around the north-south axis. Consequently, while 'north' and 'south' are replicated in the mithraeum by its north and south sides, i.e., the benches to Mithras' right and left respectively, 'east' and 'west' are replicated not by its two ends but by motion along the aisle. But motion in which direction? In a seeming paradox which in fact merely reflects the cosmographie principles involved, motion in either direction up or down the aisle can replicate either eastward or westward motion. More precisely, as I have tried to show in the diagram, if one follows the order of the signs of the zodiac (explicit in the Sette Sfere mithraeum as mosaics on the side benches) and proceeds down the north bench from cult-niche to entrance and back up the south bench from entrance to cult-niche, one is replicating eastward motion, i.e, the motion of sun, moon, and planets (the seven whose spheres are represented at Sette Sfere as arcs in mosaic on the floor of the aisle);72 conversely, proceeding in the opposite direction replicates westward motion, i.e. the daily motion of the universe itself and all celestial bodies. 73 The mithraeum's aisle, the space where ritual movement must take place if it is to be enacted at all, thus represents a sideways projection or edge-on view of the two great 69 At the Dura mithraeum one of the columns along the front of the 'north' (geographic south) bench is obligingly labelled 'eisodos / éxodos' (V66, graffito 'in minute letters'; for location see V34). One would be ill-advised to attempt literal entry or egress since there is no physical doorway there — and never was. Clearly this is a soul gate, and its function is ritual or psychagogic. On the wall on the same side in the Capua mithraeum there is a graffito I N Y O D U M , which it is tempting to construe as 'a barbarous LatinGreek contamination for eisodos* (Vermaseren, op. cit. (n. 9), 23-4, though he concludes that this 'involves too liberal an interpretation of the laws of epigraphy'). The Capua mithraeum also contains conspicuous mid-bench niches with a transverse line in the form of a narrow stone slab across the aisle between — not to mention the relief of Cupid and Psyche in the central panel of the wall on the same side as the graffito, approximately above the mid-bench niche representing the gate of entry of souls. The appropriate conclusions were drawn by Gordon, op. cit. (n. n , 1988), 57-8.

70 Actual mithraea are aligned in many different directions: see Beck, op. cit. (n. 11), i i 2 n . 2 4 . 71 A mistake made by Gordon, op. cit. (n. 11, 1976), 127 fig. 2, 133-4, a n a " Turcan, op. cit. (n. 61), 84. Unfortunately, BNP Sourcebook (315) compounds the error by introducing it into the text of De antro 24 as an explanatory gloss: 'Mithras is placed . . . on the line of the equinoxes < facing west > , with the north on his right and the south on his left'. 72 The planets, though not the sun and moon, can also move westward in so-called 'retrograde motion'. 73 It is important to note here a major limitation in the mithraeum's design. Moving 'westward' up or down the aisle would indeed intimate universal daily motion. However, in the actual universe that motion does not take place against a fixed background, as does eastward (or westward) planetary motion. The entire background, including the signs and the four tropics, revolve together with the sun, moon, and planets in the course of twenty-four hours. Clearly this motion cannot be imparted to the model, though it can be imagined.

73

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS MYSTERIES OF M I T H R A S

163

circles that carry celestial motion: the equator, parallel to which all celestial bodies revolve daily, and the ecliptic, oblique to the former and along which the sun, moon, and planets revolve in their particular periods. 74 More precisely, while the equator is seen edge-on, the ecliptic and its circle of signs (the zodiac), because it is oblique, is viewed somewhat on the bias, its northern half with the northern signs obtruding on one side and its southern half with the southern signs obtruding on the other. 75 The ecliptic and the equator intersect at the equinoxes, and it is these that are replicated by the ends of the mithraeum, the spring equinox (Aries) by the cult-niche and the autumn equinox (Libra) by the entrance. The tauroctonous Mithras is thus at the spring equinox. Since Mithras is the Sun, and the Sun reaches the spring equinox in late March, a time of year is specified, although one should not forget that De antro 24 sets Mithras impartially at both equinoxes. 76 The point about orientation has been worth making at some length, because determining the proper meaning of 'east' and 'west' in the context of the mithraeum has enabled us to get at the true significance of proceeding up and down the mithraeum's aisle. This is of obvious relevance to the processional scene on the Mainz vessel, in which initiates replicate within the mithraeum cosmic motions which are necessarily east-west and/or west-east. The procession of the Heliodromus, by miming the specifics of the solar journey and, esoterically, the cosmic setting of Mithras and the torchbearers at the equinoxes and solstices respectively, brings the 'image of the universe' to life, energizing that which as a material structure is inert until acted upon ritually. 77 Just as Mithras animates the cosmos whose 'demiurge and despot of genesis' he is, 78 so, in their mimesis, the initiates activate the 'image of the cosmos' and thereby enable their 'mystery of the descent and return of souls' through the gates of the solstices. The enactment of this mystery — we now have ample reason to trust what Porphyry tells us — is precisely the business of Mithraists meeting in their mithraeum. Parading in imitation of the Sun and of one's esoteric deities at the tropic points will probably seem a bizarre and unlikely activity (perhaps all the more so in a provincial garrison town). But the enactment of solar dramas of one sort or another was by no means peculiar to the Mithraists. They are reported on a much grander and more public scale in the Serapeum at Alexandria, where a sunbeam illuminating the mouth of the statue of Serapis on the day on which the Sun's statue was brought to visit that of Serapis was interpreted as the Sun greeting Serapis with a kiss. Another striking 74 In the imagination of antiquity these are frequented routes. In the great myth of the Phaedrus gods and human souls travel them (although the description is imprecise: D. R. Dicks, Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle (1970), 114-15). It is the ultimate périphérique (in Plato's account, at 248B, quite as crowded and risky as its latter-day urban exemplars), and the Mithraists are doing nothing unusual, conceptually, in joining the trame. It is their mode of joining that is truly original. 75 If a mind experiment would help, imagine a fly walking around the edge of a transparent disk which is viewed side-on. The fly is proceeding in the same direction, but for the viewer it appears to be going to and fro along a single linear path. Now imagine a second disk concentric with the first, but somewhat oblique to it, with the intersecting diameters at right angles to the viewer's line of sight. The circumambulating fly still appears to be going to and fro, but its path deviates from one side to the other in a shallow ellipse. In the mithraeum (and in my floor-plan of its design), the paradox of motion in the same direction appearing as motion in opposite directions is the inevitable consequence of trying to express in two dimensions a three-dimensional reality. There is a certain appropriateness here. As everyone in antiquity knew, the cosmic original is spherical and endowed with a circular motion which is divine; but the mortal denizens of the physical mithraeum, constructed to a

rectangular plan in the sublunary world, must intimate that celestial motion by the rectilinear motion proper to the elements of mutability. Such are the constraints of one half of our human nature. 76 On the explicit privileging of the spring equinox at the Sette Sfere mithraeum, see R. Beck, 'Sette Sfere, Sette Porte, and the spring equinoxes of A.D. 172 and 173', in Bianchi, op. cit. (n. 1), 519-29. If we wish to go further and specify sunrise as the time of day — though nothing in the mithraeum's design or the De antro data necessitates it — then Mithras as the rising Sun would indeed, terrestrially speaking, be in the east. Only so can the mithraeum's cult-niche be equated with an 'east' and its entrance with a 'west'. 77 There is an interesting analogy in the vestments of the Jewish high priest. Like the tabernacle and its furnishings, they too were interpreted by contemporaries as an image of the universe (Josephus, AJ 3.180, 184-7), although that is not their meaning in the charter text (Exodus 28, 39). They were worn, i.e., the image was activated, each year only on the three most solemn festivals and the one fast i/LJ 18.94). Their custody at other times was a contentious issue, being held at various times not only by the Temple establishment but also by client kings and Roman prefects. 78 De antro 24. 79 R u f i n u s , # £ 11.23.

BECK O N MITHRAISM

74 164

ROGER BECK

'happening' in the same temple was the suspension of the Sun's image, in the form of a statuette or small chariot made of iron, apparently by magnetism, likewise in salutation of Serapis; the explicatory liturgical formula is preserved: surrexit Sol, ut valedicens Serapi discedat ad propria. Our most detailed description of an ancient initiation, albeit fictional, ends with the public display of the newly made initiate, Lucius in the Golden Ass, in the guise of the Sun. 81 In these events, as in the Mithraists' procession of the Sun-Runner, mixed-media performance art (as we might call it these days) is conscripted into the service of solar cult. Below, we shall discuss the emperor Nero's contributions to this art form, for they are particularly germane. The physical sun lends itself to such displays through the use of sunbeams or shadows, as the first of the two examples from Alexandria shows. There may well be two such instances in the design of mithraea. It is likely that the off-set scuttle in the roof of the Caesarea mithraeum served to focus a sunbeam on the central altar around the time of the summer solstice and thus to demonstrate and define that solar tropic; 82 possible, too, that the Carrawburgh mithraeum on Hadrian's Wall (V844) was structured to mark the winter solstice by focusing a sunbeam at that time of year through the exterior and interior doorways across the front of — appropriately — Cautes' statue and on to the image of Sol on his altar. 83 Finally, we should not forget the religious and cosmological aspects of the ordinary sundial. It, too, is a 'model of the universe' on which by shadow projection the Sun measures out both daily and annual (viz., seasonal) time. 84 It is thus a microcosmic arena for the god's journeyings. It was therefore entirely appropriate that Augustus dedicated its largest exemplar, the great Horologium in the Campus Martius, 85 to the Sun. In this particular form (i.e., projection on to a level horizontal surface), the dial's principal east-west axis is the equinoctial line while the solstices lie at the northern and southern extremes of its meridian. 86 T h e esoteric cosmic model of the mithraeum is actually not that dissimilar from the exoteric — and quotidian — model of the sundial. What is remarkable about the Mithraists' action is not the strangeness of the ritual or its intent but the integration of the ritual and its sacred space, of performance and stage set. The key is the structure of the mithraeum as 'cosmic model' with its 'symbols of the elements and climes in proportionate arrangement'. T o actualize in the present world a mystery of cosmic soul travel the Mithraists daringly shrank the universe to a scale model. In viewing the activities of the initiates in Scene B of the Mainz vessel, we should bear in mind that we see just the actors in a performance that makes sense only on its proper stage — that stage being the very location where the artifact was kept. The initiate viewer would supply the missing background, for it was all around him. Fortunately, from the De antro and the lay-out of extant mithraea we too can reintegrate the actors with their set. Precedence resides neither with the ritual nor with the structure. Each 'consecrates' — in the most literal sense, makes mutually sacred — the other. To echo the title of J. Z. Smith's important book on the subject, 87 what 'takes place' makes place: the ritual realizes the mithraeum as sacred space. But the opposite causality is just as true: the model universe as context makes sacred and endows with meaning an otherwise quite senseless file of four men with two sticks and a whip. 80 Rufinus, ibid.; Quodvultdeus, Liberpromissionum et praedictorum dei 3.42; formula in Rufinus. On both events, see R. Merkelbach, his regina — Zeus Sarapis (1995)» I49-5081 Apuleius, Met. 11.24: 'After I had thus been decorated in the likeness of the Sun (ad instar Solis) and set up in the guise of a statue, the curtains were suddenly opened and the people wandered round to view me' (trans. Hanson). Specifically, the solar accoutrements are (1) the twelve stoles, (2) the lighted torch, (3) the 'crown made of leaves of shining palm, jutting out like rays of light'. The last is, of course, virtually the same as the headgear of the Sun-Runner. A celebration follows to mark Lucius' 'birth into the mysteries' (notaient sacrorum): 'a delicious banquet and a cheerful party'. Solar pageantry and good cheer:

is it surprising that Apuleius chose to call Lucius' mystagogue — Mithras? 82 R. J. Bull, 'The mithraeum at Caesarea Marítima', in J. Duchesne-Guillemin (éd.), Études Mithriaques (1978), 75-89, at 79. 83 Beck, op. cit. (n. 2, 1984), 2034. 84 On ancient sundials see S. L. Gibbs, Greek and Roman Sundials (1976). 85 E. Buchner, Die Sonnenuhr des Augustus (1982); see also Beck, op. cit. (n. 11, 1994), 100, 102, 104-5. 86 For other examples of this form of dial, see Gibbs, op. cit. (n. 84), nos 4001-15; note esp. no. 4007 with lettering for the signs of the zodiac and for the equinoctial and two solstitial lines. 87 To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (1987).

75

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

165

To return finally to the dramatis personae, we may conclude (a) that the second figure in the procession, with the lowered stick, represents Cautopates at the gate of the descent of souls at the summer solstice (i.e., the northern tropic); (b) that the fourth figure, with the raised stick, represents Cautes at the gate of ascent at the winter solstice (i.e., the southern tropic); and (c) that the third figure, the Sun-Runner, represents the Sun at the mid-point between, i.e., 'at the equinoxes' or 'on the equator', and thus Mithras himself at his 'proper seat' where he controls the processes of both genesis and apogenesis. 88 That the Sun-Runner represents both the Sun and Mithras is but a manifestation of the larger paradox under which Mithras both is and is not the Sun — is, because countless inscriptions hail him as such; is not, because in iconic representations the two are separate characters. A more startling paradox is the representation of the summer solstice by the rodbearer with the lowered stick and of the winter solstice by the rodbearer with the raised stick. This seems to invert the physical and perceptible facts that at the summer solstice the midday sun is high in the heavens, while at the winter solstice it is low down at the nadir of its annual journey. This is indeed the case. But what inverts that exoteric, i.e., public and scientific, truth is the esoteric truth that from the summer solstice souls descend and to the winter solstice they rise again. 89 So far, our analysis of Scene B has paralleled that of Scene A, as can be appreciated in the diagram (Fig. 1): The scene on the artifact (first box) represents a ritual performance (second box — A: initiation by the Father B: the procession of the Sun-Runner) which imitates and is authorized by, respectively, a mythic event and a cosmological doctrine (third box — A: the archery of the Mithras B: the journey of the Sun). Scene B, however, also makes reference beyond the esoteric world of Mithraic myth and doctrine to authority in the secular world, as I indicate in the two boxes ('external precedents') in the bottom row of the diagram. First, the procession of the Sun-Runner imitates something very public and very Roman, the procession of a magistrate attended by his lictors. For composition, one may compare the well-known reverse scene on the denarius of M. Junius Brutus showing his ancestor Lucius, the consul of 509 B.c., thus attended. 90 The order (left to right) is identical to that on our vessel: on the coin — accensus, lictor, consul, lictor; on the

88 The phrases in quotation marks are of course the familiar ones from De antro 24. They steer one clear of the inappropriate question 'which equinox?' Just as the microcosm of a planar horizontal sundial has separate solstitial lines but only a single equinoctial line (see above, n. 86), and the analogous microcosm of the mithraeum has separate 'northern' and 'southern benches' but only a single 'east-west' aisle), so the performance of this drama of the tropics requires separate actors for the solstices and their deities but only one for the equinoxes and the god Sol Mithras located there. 89 Even at the physical level the symbolism is appropriate, for from the summer solstice the sun starts to descend and from the winter solstice it starts to rise again. Porphyry's De antro (21-5) preserves a different logic, which is probably the Mithraists' own since it is used to locate their torchbearing deities. The solstices are first identified as 'northern' and 'southern' (indeed, the terms 'summer' and 'winter' are never used of the solstices in this section); the northern (i.e., summer) solstice is assigned to Cauto-

pates and descent into genesis because the north wind is bracing and vivifying, the southern (i.e., winter) solstice to Cautes and ascent into apogenesis because the south wind is warm and relaxing and so dissolves mortality back into immortality. That said, however, it would be unwise to exclude altogether the obvious exoteric connotations of the raised and lowered sticks with summer (high sun) and winter (low sun) respectively. By conflating the terrestrial with the celestial, the paradox can be made to seem implicit in nature: (terrestrial) north is cold, but the (celestial) northern tropic is the site of the summer sun; (terrestrial) south is warm, but the (celestial) southern tropic is the site of the winter sun. The Mithraists probably appreciated the ambiguity. I would not altogether exclude the possibility, adumbrated there, that the rodbearers also intimate the equinoxes where Sol-Mithras has his 'proper seat', the raised stick the waxing sun at the spring equinox, the lowered stick the waning sun at the autumn equinox. See above, n. 57. 90 M. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (1974), no. 433/1.

76

BECK O N MITHRAISM l66

ROGER BECK

vessel — Soldier, rodbearer, Sun-Runner, rodbearer. In the tranformation of public into cultic functionaries, the only structural change is the opposition of the symbols of authority: the fasces are carried identically, the rods one upright and the other reversed. The opposition is of course fundamental to the esoteric significance of the Mithraists' procession, as has been amply demonstrated. It also serves to differentiate crisply esoteric authority from exoteric. Authority is the key concept here. The procession of the Sun-Runner draws on the recognizable symbolism of political authority in order to enhance its claims to spiritual authority. This symbolism, adopted and adapted into the world of the mithraeum, poses no challenge to its political original precisely because its claims are confined to the world of the mithraeum. Like the archery of the Pater, we must suppose the procession of the Heliodromus to be staged inside the mithraeum. As we have seen, it is only there, within the 'model of the universe', that the procession can convey its cosmological meaning, animating the model thereby. Outside, it would be both pointless and presumptuous, a mere travesty of secular imperium. In any case, with the possible exception of the sacrificai procession depicted at the Sa. Prisca mithraeum, 9 public display was not a feature of the Mithras cult. At least, if it was, it was not one which the Mithraists chose to commemorate in and on their monuments. More tellingly, it is one on which external sources are entirely silent. Secondly, it may be that a more specific historical archetype lies behind the processing Sun-Runner. In a recent article, 92 I have proposed a new account of the Mithras cult that places its creation, simultaneously with its irruption into the Roman world, around the time of the Judaean and Civil Wars. On this scenario, one might now suggest that among the elements that went into the invention of this solar cult was the heliolatry — perhaps heliomania would be the better term — provoked by Nero's exhibitionist promotion of, and self-identification with, the Sun god. In the aftermath of the great fire during the punishment of the Christian arsonists, Nero paraded among the people dressed as a charioteer. 93 There can be no doubt that this was in mimesis of the Sun, representing the triumph of divine over criminal fire. Again, during the visit of Tiridates in 66, on the so-called 'golden day' the purple theatre awning protecting spectators from the sun 'was embroidered with a figure of Nero driving a chariot, with golden stars gleaming all around' 94 — surely, an imaginative and daring substitution of the emperor's image for the Sun's in the Sun's own space, the vault of heaven. I am not suggesting that the procession of the Mithraic Sun-Runner consciously imitated these

91 V481. Rightly, in my view, Merkelbach (op. cit. (n. 2), 180-2) maintains that what is represented is an actual, not an ideal, procession (the participants being named individual Mithraic Lions). If so, it could only take place outside, there being insufficient space to parade an ox through a mithraeum. Following Vermaseren (op. cit. (n. 10), 43 f.; cf. Vermaseren and Van Essen, op. cit. (n. 10), 160-4), Merkelbach decribes the procession as the preliminary to the suovetaurilia (the sacrifice of a pig, a sheep, and a bull, customary on certain great public occasions). Turcan denies this, on the grounds that the cock, which is also carried by one of the Mithraists, is not one of the prescribed animals (op. cit. (n. 2), 79). This is too simple: we might rather say that the Mithraists' procession alludes to the suovetaurilia, and hence signals the

importance of their ritual, but deprecates identification precisely by the inclusion of an improper victim. T h e cock is the 'Persian bird' (Persikos omis); no prize, then, for guessing whose ritual this quasi-suovetaurilia has become. In the same way, our procession of the Sun-Runner deprecates identification with the magistrate's procession by inverting one of the quasi-fasces. On processions in pagan, imperial, and Christian art see, Mathews, op. cit. (n. 42), 150-71. 92 'The Mysteries of Mithras: a new account of their genesis\J7*S88(iQQ8), 115-28. 93 Tacitus, Ann. 15.44.6-7. 94 Dio 63.6.2 (Loeb translation). The same conceit underlies Lucan, Phars. 1. 48-50: 'seu te flammigeros Phoebi conscendere currus / telluremque nihil mutato sole timentem / igne vago lustrare iuvet. . .'

77

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

167

95

or any other specific piece of Neronian solar fantasy. Rather, we may detect in the procession of the Heliodromus, as enacted on the Mainz cup, an echo of Neronian showmanship some fifty years on. Nero set the fashion for imitating the Sun god; the Mithraists then exploited that fashion within the confines of their own peculiar world. In the spirit of the times, it marks an egalitarian extension of access to heaven, not that dissimilar in principle from Christianity's, though the medium is utterly different.96 V. INTEGRATING THE SCENES: 'HARMONY THROUGH OPPOSITES'

So far, we have explored the scenes on the Mainz vessel at three levels of reality or 'worlds', represented by the first three columns in the diagram (Fig. i): at the most literal level, as images presented on the artifact; next, as representations of things done in the world of the mithraeum; and thirdly, as representations of what those performances intimate at the mythic or cosmological level. The two scenes conduct one through this hierarchy of worlds along separate but parallel routes. There is, however, a fourth level at which the routes converge and the two scenes are integrated as aspects of a single reality (just as their physical starting points are, literally, the two sides of the same vessel). I have termed this level, represented in the fourth column of the diagram,

95 Nor do I mean to imply that Nero systematically used solar imagery to promote a certain form of divine monarchy. Thus, the strictures of (e.g.) M. T. Griffin {Nero: the End of a Dynasty (1984), 215-20) against such interpretations do not apply. We have to do not with propaganda in the service of calculated policy, but with exuberant and opportunistic fictions shaped as much by audience response as by artistic initiative. I have deliberately left out of account here the colossal statue of Nero in his own Domus Aurea (Suet., Nero 31), since it is a moot point whether or not it incorporated solar iconography. Also, I have avoided making much of Tiridates prostrating himself before Nero 'as Mithras' (Dio 63.5.2). No doubt, Tiridates' words (supposing them correctly reported) carried a wealth of meaning for both parties, but I follow Boyce and Grenet {History of Zoroastrianism, Vol. 3 (1991), 39) in hearing Iranian royal ritual as their primary referent: '. . . to prostrate myself before you as I do before Mithras too' {has kai ton Mithran). If this episode and Tiridates' initiation of Nero into 'Magian/magic feasts' ('magicis etiam cenis initiaverat', Pliny, NH 30.6) have anything to do with Roman Mithraism, it is only as an incident that brought the Persian god to Rome's attention prior to the founding of the Mysteries. We need to get the cart back behind the horse: Nero and Tiridates were in no sense playing to a local audience of Mithraists, because Mithraism as we know it did not then exist. It is one of the merits of a late foundation scenario that we do not have to postulate Roman Mithraic input into some hybrid 'Zoroastrian-Mithraic' (Griffin's term, ibid., 216) investiture or, worse, into the monarchs* 'Magian feasts'. (Although this is not the place to do so, Cumont's reconstruction ('L'iniziazione di Nerone da parte di Tiridate d'Armenia', Rivista di Filologia N . S . II (!933)> I 45~54) c a n D e vindicated by explaining the Mithraic investiture scene and the banquet scene in terms of outcome rather than input: Mithraic myth and ritual, together with their artistic representations, developed as they did in imaginative response to the flamboyant actions of the rulers of the two world

powers, Rome and Parthia/Armenia; they were not, as Cumont imagined, pre-existent forms brought to Rome by Tiridates' magi and played out there in a context that already knew them in the Roman mysteries. This path merits further exploration — eventually. One wonders, for example, about the role of the following fantasies in Mithraism's genesis: (1) a world said to be ruled, in its master's absence, by a freedman called 'Sun' (Dio 63.12.2); (2) an exceptionally Romanophile Parthian prince and the exchange of high courtesies with great pageantry of arms in the East ( T a c , Ann. 15.28-30); (3) the same prince, Tiridates of Armenia, transfixing a pair of bulls with a single arrow fired from his seat in games given in Puteoli by another of Nero's freedmen, Patrobius (Dio 63.3.1-2) — all grist, I suspect, to that mill of the imagination, which on rare occasions and at certain cultural junctures grinds out a new religion.) 96 One last Neronian fantasy is worth citing here: the rotating dining-room in the Domus Aurea. Whatever its ideological intent, it not only 'could have represented the heavens' (Griffin, op. cit. (n. 95), 138; cf. H.-P. L'Orange, 'Domus Aurea — der Sonnenpalast,' Symbolae Osloenses Suppl. 11 (1942), 68-100, at 72) — it did represent them, or at least was thought to do so and was so described by Suetonius, whose text (31.2) is unambiguous: 'praecipua cenationum rotunda, quae perpetuo diebus ac noctibus vice mundi circumageretur'. It is difficult to imagine what this rotunda could be other than a dome representing at least the northern celestial hemisphere (with the pole at the zenith) revolving, with or without the chamber below, every twenty-four hours so as to bring the stars and constellation figures on to the actual meridian at the correct time. In any event, it was interpreted by contemporaries as a cosmic model which replicated the universe by daily revolution. With fewer resources but more imagination, the Mithraists too managed to hold their meals in cosmic models. Was it the palace that here furnished a precedent for lesser folk to achieve the heavens?

BECK O N MITHRAISM

78 168

ROGER BECK

the 'ideal' world, for it is a world essentially of abstract principles, although these principles are exemplified in Mithraic art by a wealth of material symbols. 97 At this fourth level both scenes on the cup exemplify a principle of 'harmony through opposition'. That this was an important principle of Mithraic doctrine is amply borne out in the cult's prolific monumental art and even in its meagre literary documentation. It is also, of course, a principle in much ancient philosophy; 98 indeed, thanks to the Mainz vessel, it can now be shown that the Mithraists drew directly or indirectly on a particular philosopher for one of its instances. It is not, then, a mere echo of philosophical thought in Mithraic doctrine; nor is it something tendentiously elicited from Mithraism by contemporary or modern intellectuals; nor is it some epiphenomenon generated by structuralist analysis. The arch-symbols of opposition and polarity on the cult's monuments are of course the torchbearers Cautes and Cautopates, who regularly flank the icon of the bull-killing Mithras and who are sometimes also found, as we have seen, as independent images on opposite sides of the mithraeum. There is no need to rehearse here the various ways in which the twins, with their raised and lowered torches, represent 'identity in opposition', i.e., that which is both the same and yet polarized into opposites. 9 The relevant examples were given in the preceding section in which we saw how the rodbearers in Scene B, in the roles of Cautes and Cautopates, acted out the opposition of the solstices and the mystery of the descent and ascent of souls through the solstitial gates. Opposition, then, is both explicit in, and fundamental to the intent of, the ritual played out in the Sun-Runner's procession. What of the archery of the Father in the other scene? For this we must turn again to the De antro. In ch. 29 Porphyry summarizes various opposed cosmological pairs, in addition to those which were used in the preceding explication of the solstitial soul gates (i.e., the equinoxes and solstices). He concludes with the image of the drawn bow, stemming ultimately from Heraclitus: 100 Since nature arose out of diversity, the ancients everywhere made that which has a twofold entrance her symbol. For the progression is either through the intelligible or through the sensible; and when it is through the sensible, it is either through the sphere of the fixed stars or through the sphere of the planets; and again it is made either by an immortal or a mortal road. There is a cardinal point above the earth, and another below it, one to the east, and one to the west. There are regions to the left and right, there is night and day. And so there is a harmony of tension in opposition and it shootsfrom the bowstring through opposites (kai dia touto palintonos hê harmonia kai toxeuei dia tôn enantiôn)101 Here, then, is our answer. The symbol of opposition in Scene A is the bow itself, the bow of the Father and thus of Mithras. T h e archery of the Father, which is a mimesis of the archery of Mithras, represents at the highest and most abstract level the polarity of opposites held in harmonious tension. 97 The hierarchy of 'worlds' and the routes through them are offered as heuristic and hermeneutic devices for comprehending the complex of realities — myth, ritual, initiates, and initiation, 'place' in the Smithian sense (above, n. 87), art and artifacts, theology, cosmology and soteriology — which made up the Mysteries of Mithras. No precedence is intended in the hierarchy, except of course that the art and artifacts (first level) are generally posterior, temporally and conceptually, to the rituals, myths, and ideas (second through fourth levels) to which they give visual expression. Even that is an overstatement: few would deny, for example, that much Mithraic myth and theology was defined, not prior to, but in the creation of the icon of the bull-killing. In particular, I do not intend to imply priority in creation or formulation, or a hierarchy of religious or metaphysical value, or even a highly conscious differentiation, as between the worlds of ritual performance (second level), myth and cosmology (third level), and abstract ideology (fourth). Especially, I would wish to avoid any

impression that Mithraic myth (or cosmology), because it 'authorizes' ritual as its 'imitation', therefore generates ritual, in the sense that the Mithraists deliberately designed ritual to express existing myth (or cosmology). The 'invention' of Mithraic myth and ritual, which I regard as essentially equipollent realities, is a topic to which we shall return. 98 See, most obviously, G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (1966), 15-171. In cosmology, the best example, because it is also fundamental to that aspect of Mithraism, is the opposition of the two celestial motions, the motion of the universe (westward) and the motion of the planets (eastward), which exemplified for Plato in the Timaeus (36) the even more fundamental polarity of Same and Different. 99 See the works cited in n. 54, above. 100 Fr. 51 DK. 101 Trans. Arethusa ed. (1969), modified to restore 'mortal or immortal road' to their correct order.

79

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

l6o

It is surely no coincidence that the selfsame essay of Porphyry, an essay containing a number of explicit references to Mithraism, should enable us first to unlock the cosmological and soteriological intent of the opposition in Scene B, then to discover the implicit symbol of opposition in Scene A, and so, finally and in consequence, to reintegrate the two scenes as expressions of a doctrinal principle of 'opposition' itself at the most abstract level. One may surmise that it was ultimately the Mithraists, rather than Porphyry's philosophical sources, who contributed the polarities of De antro 29, 102 in particular the closing image of the drawn bow, which they adapted from Heraclitus and used to explicate the archery of their god. Several years ago, without benefit of the Mainz vessel, I argued precisely this case for the Mithraic provenance of De antro 29 and the image of the bow: 103 'The metaphor signals . . . a symbolon, and it is not difficult to detect its visual counterpart within the Mysteries of Mithras: the scene of Mithras as archer'. That case is now, I submit, much more secure. From the Mainz vessel we may even assign the verbal symbol a precise context, the ritual in which the archery of Mithras was mimed by the Father. 'He shoots through opposites', said of the Father who is Mithras, 104 may be heard among the legomena of the speaking mystagogue. The polarities of De antro 29 begin with the distinction between a 'route' (poreia) 'through the intelligible' and a route 'through the perceptible'. Within the perceptible there is a further opposition between a route via the sphere of the fixed stars ('through the non-wandering') and a route via the spheres of the planets ('through that of the wanderers'); likewise, between a route of immortality ('through the immortal') and a route of mortality ('through the mortal route'). What makes the attribution of the De antro's polarities to Mithraism virtually certain is the independent testimony of the antiChristian polemicist Celsus, as quoted by Origen, that the Mithraists encoded the opposition of the spheres of the planets and of the fixed stars and the soul's 'route through and out' (diexodos) in yet another visual symbol, a 'seven-gated ladder': 105 These things [i.e., celestial ascent] are intimated in the doctrines of the Persians and their mysteries of Mithras. They have a symbol of the two celestial revolutions, that of the fixed stars and that assigned to the planets, and of the road of the soul through and out of them. The symbol is this: a seven-gated ladder {klimax heptapylos) with an eighth on top. Elsewhere, I have argued that the intent of the Mithraists' symbol is as Celsus reports it: its primary meaning, conveyed in the formula 'seven plus one', is the two celestial revolutions, its secondary meaning the soul's diexodos thereby. 106 That the celestial revolutions are opposed to each other in direction, the sphere of the fixed stars revolving westwards and the spheres of the planets eastwards, is a cosmological commonplace. 107 Hence, their appearance at the head of Porphyry's list of polarities in 102 Some other considerations leading to that conclusion: (1) The 'cardinal points' are not our familiar points of the compass, but the astrological kentra, repectively the 'midheaven', the 'lower midheaven', the 'ascendant', and the 'descendant*. The use of technical astrological concepts is typical of Mithraism as presented to us both in the De antro and on the monuments. (2) A fairly recent discovery in a mithraeum in Mundelsheim probably exemplifies another of these polarities, 'left and right': the left half of an ox skull sunk into the bench on the left (as one enters) and the right half of the same or another ox skull in the opposite bench (D. Planck, 'Ein romisches Mithraum bei Mundelsheim', Archâologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Wiirttemberg (1989), 184-90). More than the tautology 'this is on your left/right' is surely intended! Interestingly, 'right' and 'left' are here relative to the mortal entering the mithraeum rather than the god in the cult-niche (see diagram, Fig. 2). 103 op. cit. (n. 56), 84-5. 104 This would explain a puzzling feature of Porphyry's language: it is 'harmony' itself that 'shoots'. We may suppose two stages in the transmission of the Heraclitan saying, which originally took the form of a

baldly stated simile appended to a vivid metaphor: palintonos harmonie hokôsper toxou kai lyrês ('there is a back-stretched connection, as of a bow and of a lyre', trans. Barnes). First, the Mithraists split the saying, converting part of the bland simile into a dramatic statement about their god's bowmanship. Since action accompanied words, there was no need to specify the subject. Secondly, Porphyry (or his philosophical predecessor) reintegrated the saying. Robbed of its performance context, the second element, somewhat awkwardly, acquired 'harmony' as its grammatical subject. 105 Contra Celsum 6.22. Plato uses diexodos as one of his terms for the celestial paths of gods and souls in the Phaédrus (247A, there are 'many' such diexodoi). 106 Beck, op. cit. (n. 62), 73-85. Turcan (op. cit. (n. 61), 44-61), following Cumont ('La fin du monde selon les mages occidentaux', RHR 103 (1931), 29-96), argued that the symbol signified something altogether different, a sequence of world ages. There is nothing in the evidence to compel such a reading; equally, no reason why Celsus' testimony cannot be read literally and at face value. 107 See above, n. 98.

BECK O N MITHRAISM

80 170

ROGER BECK

the sensible world is not surprising. However, from the independent testimony of Celsus we may infer that Porphyry adopted them as part of a Mithraic list of oppositions closing with the symbol of the archer god who 'shoots through opposites'. The secondary meaning of the symbol of the ladder, the diexodos of souls, alludes to a scenario of the soul's celestial journey different from, but complementary to, that intimated in De antro 21-8 and enacted, as I have suggested, in the ritual depicted in Scene B of the Mainz vessel. 108 T h e full Mithraic account, it appears, related not only how the soul enters and leaves the cosmos through the gates of the solstices, but also how it travels through the spheres of the planets and the sphere of the fixed stars. 109 Since the solstices are located in the sphere of the fixed stars, entry and exit through them can be regarded as a subset of the journey through that sphere. Correlating the two soul journeys is not, however, the issue here. 110 T h e point is rather that both journeys are accomplished through cosmic opposites and so exemplify, finally, the same abstract principle of 'harmony through opposition'. By induction, we can work our way up through various opposed pairs expressed in symbols — some obvious (Cautes and Cautopates), others more veiled (the bow, the ladder) — to a doctrinal principle of 'opposition' itself. That principle is not merely one of cosmology; it is also one of soteriology and anthropology, in that it is actualized in the descent and ascent of the human soul as taught in the Mysteries and enacted in their rituals. This doctrine of opposition is spelled out, at least in part, in De antro 29. We need not doubt that it was pursued, both inductively and deductively, through its various symbolic and ritual expressions in the instruction and admission of initiates. By a curious coincidence, another Mithraic monument from Germany, likewise discovered fairly recently and not yet part of the familiar dossier of Mithraic scholarship, furnishes a close parallel to the Mainz vessel in the relationship between the scenes on the two sides. An altar base from Burginatium, 111 down-Rhine in Germânia Inferior, shows on its lateral faces assemblages of symbols: on the left side, an untensed bow crossed with an arrow above a crater entwined by a snake; on the right, a wreath with fillets and the seven solar rays at its apex, a lighted lamp at its centre, a slanting staff, and at the bottom the globe of the cosmos with crossed bands representing the celestial equator and the zodiac/ecliptic. T h e 'lists' of symbols and the function of such lists in Mithraic art are the subject of an article by Richard Gordon, 112 so there is no need to pursue them exhaustively here. Suffice it to say that inter alia the list on the left face seems to me to intimate the domain of the Father and of Mithras, while that on the right intimates the domain of the Sun-Runner and of Sol, thus paralleling precisely the scenes on either side of the Mainz vessel. That the bow alludes not only to Mithras but also to

108 It is worth noting that the prime example of the ladder symbol in Mithraic art is found on another German snake-vessel, V1061: see H. Ogawa, 'Mithraic ladder symbols and the Friedberg crater', in M. B. de Boer and T . A. Edridge (eds), Hommages àMaartenJ. Vermaseren (1978), 854-73. 109 A further important element in the account was the involvement of the Sun and Moon in these journeyings — hardly a surprise in Mithraism: in De antro 29, following the list of opposites, we learn that the Moon was a gate of descent and the Sun a gate of ascent (Beck, op cit. (n. 2, 1994)» 48). We should appreciate that all this 'soul travel' was not necessarily, or even primarily, viewed as posthumous (Beck, op. cit. (n. 62), 77-8). In ritual, in imagination, and in progress through the grades and their tutelary planets, the journeys were undertaken in the here and now; they were not mere planning for the disembodied future — or recollections of a pre-embodied past. 1,0 My study of the bull-killing relief (op. cit. (n. 2, 1994)) was largely an exploration of how the cult icon functions, inter alia, as a sort of map and calendar for

soul travel in the sphere of the fixed stars. My Planetary Gods (above, n. 62) was more, though not exclusively, concerned with the Mithraists' journeys in the spheres of the planets. 1,1 H. G. Horn, 'Eine Mithras-Weihung vom Niederrhein', Ausgrabungen im Rheinland IQ83/84, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn: Kunst und Altertum am Rhein 122 (1985), 151-5. In his subsequent publication of the Mainz vessel (idem, op. cit. (n. 12)) Horn of course makes appropriate reference to the Burginatium altar. 112 'Viewing Mithraic art: the altar from Burginatium (Kalkar), Germânia Inferior', ARYS 1 (1998), 227-58. Among monuments which 'list' in this way by the mere juxtaposing of symbols, the closest analogies are V1496 (Poetovio) and V1706 (Carnuntum). T h e donor of the altar describes himself as p(ater) s(acrorum) (following Horn, Gordon, and Clauss {Cultores Mithrae (1992), 98) for the expansion, rather thanp(ecunia) s(ua))\ he had, presumably, the expertise to marshal his symbols in a meaningful way.

81

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

171

his mortal surrogate, the Father, is now securely established; 113 equally, the rayed crown alludes to the Sun-Runner as his proper symbol. 114 Finally, on each side we find the great symbols of opposition: the bow of Mithras by which he 'shoots through opposites'; the two zones on the globe along which the Sun and his celestial colleagues measure out the universe's definitive contrary motions. Enacted in cult ritual, the counterparts of these symbols of opposition are, as we find them on the two sides of Mainz vessel, the archery of the Father and the procession of the Sun-Runner. VI. CONCLUSION

The Mainz vessel is a document of fundamental importance not only for the internal history of Mithraism (as its publisher fully appreciated) 115 but also — and let me here hazard an extreme claim — for the religious history of the Roman Empire. The significance for Mithraism lies principally in the new data which the vessel brings to bear on Mithraic ritual and its place within the ideology of the Mysteries. The import of this evidence is greatly enhanced by the vessel's early date in the cult's history. Taken together with the other early monuments of the cult, 116 it would suggest that, ideologically, the Mysteries were formed in a burst of creative 'invention' no later than the end of the first century A.D. or the very beginning of the second. Negatively, it weighs against the view that the Mysteries were evolved unsystematically over a long period of time. With respect to the cults of the Roman world (Christianity and Judaism included), the authors of the recent Religions of Rome urge us to 'avoid thinking in terms of "uniformity", or in terms of a central core "orthodox" tradition with its peripheral "variants'". We should 'think rather in terms of different religions as clusters of ideas, people and rituals, sharing some common identity across time and place, but at the same time inevitably invested with different meanings in their different contexts'. 117 On the whole the prescription is sensible, and I agree that orthodoxy and heterodoxy are unhelpful categories especially in dealing with the pagan cults — which is why I prefer to speak rather of 'norms'. Norms are in fact demonstrable for Mithraism, the most obvious being the composition of the tauroctony, the icon of the bull-killing Mithras. Here the norm is not simply the presence of the icon in the mithraeum but its peculiarly stereotyped composition, maintained empire-wide for over two centuries. Another norm, observed semper et ubique, was the mithraeum's distinctive side-benches, designed for the celebration of the cult meal. Other features of the cult, while not universally observed, are nevertheless legitimately viewed as 'norms'. The full sevenfold grade hierarchy, which was probably not realized in each and every Mithraic community, is

113 Gordon (ibid., 248-58) links the other symbol on the same face of the altar, the crater with snake, to the 'water miracle'; hence to the bow, to Mithras as archer, and to rituals of initiation — i.e., to everything that we find in Scene A of the Mainz vessel. Note that the Mainz vessel is what the Burginatium altar depicts, a 'snake-vessel'. On the former, the seated Father/Mithras is privileged by location with respect to the snake: writhing beneath him and up the handle it defines his place of enthronement. 114 The Sun-Runner's other symbol may also be present: Gordon (ibid., 232) describes the staff on the same side as having 'a slightly thickened top perhaps suggesting a whip'. The lamp would refer to the light of the Sun: the cult's solar (and lunar) altars are sometimes illuminated by lamplight shining through apertures (e.g., V847, where the apertures are the

solar rays). That the lamp also indicates the grade of Nymphus, whose proper symbol it is, should be considered too (Gordon, ibid., 243-4; Horn, op. cit. (n. 12), 30, n. 52). 115 Horn, op. cit. (n. 12), 30. 116 See Beck, op. cit. (n. 92), 118-19. 117 BNP History, 249; cf. 278, where the postulate of 'a single "real" Mithraic message' is questioned (see above, n. 61), and 302-6 where the authors pose the problem of the 'homogeneity' of the cults, allowing that it is only 'because there is a degree of uniformity in their material remains' (302, emphasis sic) that we can plot their distribution across the Empire. For Mithraism, they rightly see that homogeneity (or otherwise) is largely a question of the centripetal in iconography versus the centrifugal (302 with n. 174, 303-4 with n. 177).

BECK O N MITHRAISM

82 172

ROGER BECK 118

an example. That there were also regional variants and local singularities in Mithraism is not in doubt. 119 For all these reasons I was at pains to explore the extent to which one may legitimately generalize from the scenes on the Mainz vessel. 120 I concluded that these are not one-off ideological 'sports' but rather expressions of wide-spread, even normative, Mithraic ritual and doctrine. 121 What is untypical about the Mainz vessel is not the ritual actions which it depicts but the artifact's 'garrulity' in showing such scenes at all. 122 The fact of the matter is that while none of the mysteries had core orthodoxies, at least one — Mithraism — did have extensive norms reinforcing its religious identity over time and space. 123 At the other extreme, the mysteries of Dionysus were so discontinuous and their manifestations so discrete that not only does it make no sense to speak of 'a central core "orthodox" tradition', but it is also questionable whether those mysteries can even be described as 'sharing common identity across time and place'. 124 In this regard as in others, the dissimilarities of the mystery cults are as striking and as important as their similarities. Now to my more far-reaching claims concerning the vessel's significance for the religious history of the Roman Empire. First, as a necessary proviso, I am not proposing that there is a 'religious history' of the Roman Empire in the sense of some single grand process in the development of which, and in the historian's reconstruction of which, the Mainz vessel is a significant new landmark. But there was a 'Roman Empire'; publicly and privately, its people, who interacted with one another, were possessed of a remarkable array of religions; so there is a story to be told whose chapters cannot remain self-contained. That the story can indeed be told and its chapters integrated has been well demonstrated in the recent work quoted above, Religions of Rome.12 A more substantial point follows on from this proviso about religious pluralism. The Mainz vessel is important for the Empire's religious history because it raises anew and in a dramatic way a comparison with another of the Empire's religions, one which

1.8 There is room for disagreement here. Clauss ('Die sieben Grade des Mithras-Kultes', ZPE 82 (1990), 183-94) argues that the grade hierarchy was an optional priesthood entered by some 15 per cent of cult members, i.e, the proportion for whom grade status is recorded. Most scholars, however, continue to believe otherwise: that the attested grade membership is the tip of an iceberg, albeit one of indeterminable size, and that silence about grades in a particular mithraeum does not imply absence. Again, it is a matter of what the Mithraists chose to be talkative about, and of what it was considered appropriate to say in what medium. Gordon ('Who worshipped Mithras?' jfRA 7 (1994), 45?~74> at 465-7) rightly points to the extensive grade information conveyed at Dura in the fragile medium of scratched and painted texts; the same is of course true of the Sa. Prisca mithraeum. The Mainz vessel is itself an important vehicle of new information about the grades (especially the seldom attested Sun-Runner) and their early appearance in the cult's history, although, as I have argued, its seven figures do not ipso facto confirm the sevenfold hierarchy. 1.9 These range from truly idiosyncratic exemplars of the tauroctony (e.g., V334, 1275) to such obviously localized ideological initiatives as the personification of mythic events at Poetovio (Tóth, op. cit. (n. 2)). There are also broad regional variations in the composition of the side scenes relative to the main bullkilling in complex reliefs and frescos, a perennial topic in Mithraic scholarship: see Beck, op. cit. (n. 2, 1984), 2074-8. 120 Sect. 11, ad fin. 121 Similarly, the 'mithraeum' described in Sect, iv is

not a single Ostian example, Sette Sfere, but a composite of Porphyry's data and of actual features, some of which are exemplified in all mithraea, others in many mithraea, but none contradicted by contrary features elsewhere. Sette Sfere is simply the most 'garrulous' case (see next note). 122 On 'garrulity' see R. L. Gordon, 'A new Mithraic relief from Rome', JfMS 1 (1976), 166-86 (reprinted in op. cit. (n. 10), ch. 8), at 175-7. 123 The really interesting question is how those norms in Mithraism were developed and maintained. Obviously, it was not as in Christianity where orthodoxy was progressively defined by appeal to scripture backed by the authority of the episcopacy, especially the apostolic tradition of the greater sees. Just as obviously, the transmission of doctrinal norms in Mithraism was dependent on the transmission of iconographie norms (see above, nn. 117, 119), an irrelevance to Christianity. The contrast is implicit in the treatment of 'homogeneity' in BNP History, 302-6. 124 In terms of group identity, what links, for example, the Bacchic manifestations of the 186 B.C. scandal, the Villa of the Mysteries, and Agrippinilla's thiasos (BNP History, 91-6, 161-4, 271, respectively)? Yet all three arguably exemplify mysteries of Dionysus. The absence of these mysteries from the discussion of 'homogeneity' in BNP (see preceding note) in effect makes the case for the zero grade: there could be mysteries of the same god with no common group identity at all. 125 Note the plurality of the title and the fact that nevertheless the 'religions' are not presented in selfcontained sections.

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

83 173

came into being at approximately the same time as Mithraism 126 — Christianity. The Mainz vessel, if my explications are approximately right, adds weighty support to the view (now quite out of vogue, as we shall see) that the Mithraists were operating — symbolically, ritually, and ideologically — much as were some of their Christian contemporaries. In the relationship between cult act and mythic act, between sacrament and sacred story, it seems to me, there is a striking similarity between, on the one hand, the archeries of the Father and of Mithras and, on the other, the eucharist and the Last Supper. More precisely, the Mainz vessel, by introducing a further pair of terms on the Mithraic side, enhances the familiar analogy: Mithraic cult meal : banquet of Mithras and Sol :: eucharist : Last Supper. 127 To the Mithraic side we may also add the pair, Sun-Runner's procession and Sun's journey, although the charter for the ritual is in this instance cosmological (i.e., the actual solar journey and its esoteric implications for the fate of souls) rather than mythical. For Christianity, I have added what few would quarrel with — initiation by baptism. 128 Ritual

Validating myth/ cosmological 'fact*

Mithraic Feast of initiates Archery of the Father Sun-Runner's Procession

Feast of Mithras and Sol Archery of Mithras ('water miracle') Solar journey

Christian Eucharist Baptism

Last Supper Baptism of Jesus by John in Jordan

No comparison of ancient religions, and especially not one between a mystery cult and Christianity, can now be undertaken without reference to Jonathan Z. Smith's dense and brilliant work on the topic of comparison itself in this historical context, Drudgery Divine}29 First, then, in Smith's terms, my comparison is analogical, not genealogical. 130 I make no claim that things in early Christianity were as they were because of the influence of Mithraism — or vice versa. Nor do I postulate deterministic convergence: that each religion was led ineluctably, if independently, towards similar sacraments. In fact, the scenes on the Mainz vessel show that the Mithraists developed a portfolio of sacraments that was in ways quite different from the Christian. I claim 126 Most would agree that the explosive growth of Mithraism began towards the end of the first century A.D. Some hold (on the testimony of Plutarch, Pomp. 24) that the cult came to Rome much earlier; but if so, it remained latent for more than a century, and we have no idea of its early form, for it has left no trace in literature or archaeology. The very substantial monumental and epigraphic record, which defines for us the Mysteries of Mithras as one of the religions of the Roman Empire, begins at the very end of the first century A.D. One need suppose an incubation period of no more than a generation or so before the commencement of that record. For a scenario of Mithraism's genesis, see Beck, op. cit. (n. 92) (survey of scholarly opinion, 115-16; on Plut., Pomp. 24, 121 n. 38). Cf. Franz Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (1929), 130: 'Car, si une communauté de leurs adeptes [i.e., Mithraists] paraît avoir existé à Rome dès le temps de Pompée . . ., leur diffusion réelle ne commença qu'à partir des Flaviens vers la fin du I er siècle de notre ère'. 127 On the MitHraic cult meal, see above, Section 1, esp. n. 3. For the acceptance of such analogies, see the extended quotation from Clauss concerning the 'water miracle', above (Sect. in). That the Christian eucharist (whatever one chooses to call it) was validated by a charter myth, at least for Paul of Tarsus and

his Corinthian correspondents, is readily apparent in 1 Cor 11:23-5 (cf. Mk 14:22-5, Mt 26:26-9, Lk 22:17-19). 128 For the story (admittedly, not presented explicitly as a charter for cult practice), see Mk 1:4-11, Mt 3, Lk 2:1-22. A further comparison may be drawn between the Mithraic and the Christian rites of initiation: archery of Father : archery of Mithras = water miracle :: rite of baptism : baptisms by John. What gives the analogy particular interest is the appearance of water on both sides of the comparison. From there one might pursue (though not here) baptisms, on both sides, in another element — fire (on the Mithraic side, see above, n. 10, on the initiation of Lions and 'the fiery breath which is an ablution for holy magi'; on the Christian, the 'baptism with the holy spirit and with fire' (Lk 3:16, Mt 3:11, cf. Mk 1:8), in opposition to the baptism of water). I emphasize, however, that we are here concerned more with the comparison of relationships {a:b::x:y) than with the comparison of things (ritual a with ritual x, myth b with myth y). 129 Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (1990). 130 On the distinction, Smith, ibid., 47-51.

84

BECK O N MITHRAISM 174

R O G E R BECK

only that, in the light of the Mainz vessel and other data which it informs, Mithraism may now be described in more sacramental terms than previously; consequently, that there is a striking comparison to be made between it and early Christianity, if it is granted that in one or more of its forms early Christianity evolved sacramentally. 131 That last proviso is more controversial than it might seem. Sacramentalism, especially in conjunction with a robust other-worldly soteriology, is a characteristic which contemporary scholarship tends to downplay — both in Christianity and in the mysteries. 132 On the pagan side, this will be familiar enough, certainly to classicists. For more than a decade now, we have been accustomed to discounting both systematic ideology and other-worldliness in the mystery cults. 133 Above all, we like our cults tentative, even banal, in their soteriologies. T o use another of Smith's illuminating distinctions, we favour the 'locative* over the 'utopian'; 134 that is, we emphasize that which in the cults is focused on confirmation in the here and now rather than on salvation in and to another world. Less familiar to classicists will be the extent to which early Christianity too, in some of its forms — one speaks now of 'Christianities', plural — is being uncoupled from the other-worldly soteriology traditionally associated with Paul of Tarsus. Indeed, in Smith's Drudgery Divine the comparison finally effected is between non-Pauline Christianities of a 'locative' sort, on the one hand, and 'locative' pagan mysteries, among which those of Attis are selected as a paradigm, on the other. 135 There is good reason for this shift. As Smith amply demonstrates, the practice of comparing Christianity to the mystery cults (and vice versa) was vitiated from the outset by partisan confessional agendas, predominantly those of Protestant theologians seeking to discredit the Roman Church by portraying it as corrupted from Christianity's pristine origins by the mystery cults. 136 Above all, Smith argues, we have to escape the thoroughly compromised comparison of a supposedly fundamental Christian soteriology of 'dying and rising with Christ' with an imagined mystery soteriology of salvation through the death and resurrection of the cult deity. 1 One of the advantages of bringing new Mithraic evidence into play is that it necessarily moves the issue away from that distracting soteriological pattern. One may 131 In characterizing both religions as 'sacramental', I intend first what I here argue: that Mithraism and Christianity alike developed rituals related to events in their myths (or to some other esoteric 'fact'); and secondly that the development of the ritual-myth relationships in each system was a conscious and pervasive process. 132 To an earlier generation of scholars (e.g., S. Angus, The Mystery-Religions (2nd edn, 1928; repr. 1975)) the sort of analogies I have set out and the conclusions I have drawn from the Mainz vessel would have seemed methodologically unproblematic, though possibly quite disturbing in their implications for the stature of Mithraism relative to early Christianity. 133 Undoubtedly, this started as a healthy reaction against an excessive and faulty emphasis on theology and soteriology. Walter Burkert's Ancient Mystery Cults (1987), it seems to me, admirably set the limits of what we can legitimately say about these aspects of the mystery cults. For Mithraism specifically, Clauss's study (op. cit. (n. 3)) was an equally salutary corrective. 134 op. cit. (n. 129), 121-43. 135 ibid., 99-114, 120-43. F ° r m s characterization of early Christianities, Smith builds on (1) the manifestly locative symbolism of their artistic remains convincingly set out in G. F. Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine (1985), and (2) certain 'movements in Palestine and southern Syria that cultivated the memory of Jesus as a founder-teacher', as reconstructed, with equal persuasiveness, in B. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (1988, from

which the quotation is taken (Mack n , Smith 135)). It is important to note that even locative Christianities observed the practices of baptism and cult meal which I have listed as Christian rites in the comparison above. Indeed, Smith (ibid., 129-30) describes Mack's set of Christianities in just such terms: 'a heterogeneous collection of relatively small groups, marked off from their neighbours by a rite of initiation (chiefly, adult baptism), with their most conspicuous cultic act a common meal . . .' For the Attis cult, Smith relies on its characterization in G. Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Attis and Cybele (1985), a characterization with which I am entirely in agreement. My quarrel, it should be clear, is not with Smith's new comparison between locative Christianities and locative mysteries, which I find extraordinarily fruitful, still less with the interpretations on which Smith relies, which I accept as valid and thus leading to a valid comparison. What disturbs me, rather, is the privileging of the Attis cult and its demonstrable lack of a robust soteriology as a template for the mysteries as a whole. That the mystery cults might furnish other soteriologies, other 'utopian' systems differing toto caelo from the type sought but not discovered in the Attis cult, seems for some reason to be inconceivable. We shall return to this problem later. 136 op. cit. (n. 129), passim. This is a vast and complicated story, told with immense learning; I have alluded here only to the most obvious strand scrutinized by Smith, the polemics of 'pagano-papism' (ibid., 120-5). 137 ibid., 89-111; see also above, n. 135.

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS

85

86

BECK ON MITHRAISM

87

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

175

accept (or not) Smith's demonstration that Utopian soteriologies of a dying and rising god, and thus their expression in ritual, were minor and marginal among early Christianities and late or non-existent in, e.g., the Attis cult. T h e 'unconquered' Mithras, however, does not die and therefore does not rise again; so Mithraic 'salvation', whether locative or Utopian, cannot rest on a story of this sort, nor can its rituals express that type of myth or realize that type of salvation. 138 Furthermore, the very novelty of the scenes on the Mainz vessel leads us on from the hackneyed comparison of types of ritual activity (cult meals, baptisms) to fresh analogies which display something more fundamental, the relationship of ritual to cult myth (or other esoteric 'fact') as exemplified in two distinct religions which yet came into being contemporaneously and continued to coexist within the same multicultural empire. 1 What the analogies suggest, then, is a shared sacramental mentality^ a propensity for expressing myth in ritual. If the string of analogies holds, necessarily this sacramental mentality cannot be considered a unique aspect of early Christianity any more than it can of Mithraism. 140 The scenes on the Mainz vessel reveal in a (literally) dramatic way that it was an aspect of the religious imagination of the times. Manifest charter myths for important rituals are actually something of a rarity, at least in the religions of classical antiquity. That indeed is the principal embarrassment of myth-and-ritual theory, especially when it is offered as an omnibus explanation with the myths and rituals forced into a single or a few overarching patterns. Not all rites act out a myth; not all myths tell the story behind a rite. Obvious mutual validation (such as the story of Prometheus' primal sacrifice at Mekone and the apportionment of the parts of a sacrificial animal as between gods and humans) is the exception rather than the rule. 141 Yet the Mainz vessel, a single artifact, yields two novel and precise pairs of ritual and myth: (A) the archery of the Mithraic Father, as a ritual of initiation, imitating the archery of Mithras, and (B) the procession of the Sun-Runner, as a ritual both of cosmic ordering and of esoteric soul-travel, delineating the journey of the Sun and the route of souls. What is perhaps most exciting about the discovery of these two pairs is their definition in historical time. Relative to the artifact on which they are given expression, these are not age-old rites and stories. T h e main building blocks of myth, ritual, 'place', and doctrine which we have here analysed were 'invented' little more than fifty years before. 142 But then, at that point in time the same is true of much in Christianity, necessarily so of its Jesus stories and whatever rites depended on them. Here we reach the crux in the re-evaluation of the religious history of the Roman Empire which, I contend, the scenes on the Mainz vessel urge on us. The story which emerges from J. Z. Smith's comparison is one in which conservative, locative Christianities keep pace with conservative, locative mystery cults. I do not suggest that this is an inaccurate picture, but I do suggest that it is by no means the full picture. On the pagan side, Smith effectively ensured its incompleteness by privileging the Attis cult as a paradigm of the mysteries. 143 His over-reliance on that cult allowed him to establish, 138 Mithras can be brought on to this comparative grid only by redefining it in terms of 'struggle' rather than death. Hence Ugo Bianchi's Mithras as a god of 'vicissitude' ('dio in vicenda'), to which human vicissitude can be related: 'The religio-historical question of the mysteries of Mithra', in idem, op. cit. (n. 1), 3-60, esp. 10-16 (see also Smith, op. cit. (n. 129), 107-8 nn. 40-1). 139 On the approximate date of Mithraism's emergence in the Roman Empire, see above, n. 126. 140 This is all to the good, since claims of 'uniqueness', as Smith vehemently argues (op. cit. (n. 129), 37-46), ruin the comparative enterprise: that which is truly unique (suigeneris) is, strictly speaking, incomparable. Yet Christianity to mystery comparisons were regularly made for that very reason: to advance the former's uniqueness. 141 For a sensible, brief but nuanced statement on the inter-relation of myth and ritual, see (e.g.) W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology

and Ritual (1979), 56-8; for the problems of even a revised myth-and-ritual theory, F. Graf, Greek Mythology: An Introduction (trans. T . Marier, 1993), 50-3. The Mekone story: Hesiod, Theog. 535-61. 142 By 'invention' I do not mean fabrication de novo (i.e., altogether without precedent or antecedents). I mean rather, in the present context, the 'discovery' and consecration of a set of stories as especially relevant to the inventing group and the organization of an apparatus of ritual, initiation, place, art, and structured cult life in order to harness that relevance on the group's behalf. Place and art were particularly important for the Mithraists; for the Christians one would probably substitute 'text'. In this sense of the word, I have attempted to recapture the 'invention' of the Mithraic mysteries and the inventing group in art. cit. (n. 92). In my scenario, the cult's initial explosive growth follows quickly on — to some extent, perhaps, is concurrent with — its invention (see above, n. 126). 143 See above, n. 135.

88

BECK O N MITHRAISM 176

R O G E R BECK

or to appear to establish, two things: first and most obviously, that the dying gods of the mysteries do not rise again and that the mysteries accordingly lacked a robust Utopian soteriology based on stories of divine death and resurrection; secondly, and of almost as much importance, that the locative traditions of the mysteries were very ancient and trailed long histories of self-reinterpretation behind them. The weakness in the first of these positions is that while it allows for locative soteriologies based on dying but unresurrected gods or heroes, it precludes the possibility of Utopian soteriologies based on altogether different types of myth and doctrine. Yet, demonstrably, just such a soteriology may be found in the Mysteries of Mithras. We may never be able — and probably should not try — to define a Mithraist's 'salvation* fully and with complete precision; but at least we know — and know all the better for the Mainz vessel — that it had much to do with that mystery of the soul's descent into mortality and ascent into immortality into which the initiate was inducted in the mithraeum. 144 Let us look more closely at the second position, conceding that for the Attis cult Smith is certainly right: In almost no case, when treating this period, do we study a new religion. Rather, almost every religious tradition that forms the object of our research has had a centuries-old history. We study archaic Mediterranean religions in their Late Antique phases.145 Not so: the exception — and Mithraism is no minor one — was substantially invented a mere half century or so before the dedicator of the Mainz vessel displayed a wellarticulated range of its ritual, myth, and doctrine on his offering. Forcing the mystery cults into a single generic mould seldom works. For Mithraism, the days are long gone when one could credibly claim that the continuities from its Persian antecedents are more significant than its re-creation as the 'Persian' mysteries of the Graeco-Roman world. 146 The reverse to the conservative and locative side of the coin is the radical, the inventive, the Utopian. Fortunately, classicists now have an admirable model for this other side in a study, not of the religions of the period (although religion, specifically Christianity, figures largely therein), but of another aspect of its imaginative and creative life, its literature. In Fiction as History: Nero to Julian™1 G. W. Bowersock describes a burst of inventiveness, starting precisely in Nero's reign, which engendered new forms of fiction, principally the prose romance. These works are chock full of marvels, and they are distinctly Utopian. One of Bowersock's most startling proposals concerns the Scheintod, the 'apparent death' which a character (usually the heroine) undergoes: 144 That Mithraism had a Utopian soteriology which cannot be accommodated to the pattern postulated (rightly or wrongly) for the other cults and that this soteriology had to do with the cosmic soul journey were conclusions reached in the 'final statement' of the International Seminar on the 'Religio-Historical Character of Roman Mithraism* (Rome, 1978: Bianchi, op. cit. (n. 1), xiv-xviii). To appreciate this conclusion one has to read behind the convoluted language needed to secure consensus in the drafting committee, so I shall not quote the statement here. Wisely, the statement also warns against another comparative pitfall: assimilating Mithraic doctrines of genesis and apogenesis unthinkingly to an antimaterial Gnostic or dualistic pattern. 145 op. cit. (n. 129), 107, cf. 120-1. 146 I have attempted to trace Mithraism's continuities as well as its 'inventions' (see above, n. 142) in my recent study of the cult's origins (op. cit. (n. 126), esp. 123-5). The continuities are significant, but they are not definitive. They do not even include, for example, Mithras as bull-killer. The failure of more than a century of scholarship to find the Iranian original of this central cult 'fact' suggests strongly that it too was an 'invention' antedating by little, if at all, its icono-

graphie expression. The new in Mithraism was not a 'rectification' (to draw on another of Smith's illuminating concepts: Imagining Religion (1982), 66-101), in which new myth or ritual is generated within a religion to accommodate an external cultural shock. The fact is that Mithra-worship itself migrated across a huge cultural divide. Although one can identify bits of the linguistic, conceptual, and mythic baggage carried across, they were reconstituted in what is more usefully characterized as a 'new religion' (Merkelbach, op. cit. (n. 2), 75-7) than as Romanized Mazdaism, as Cumont persisted in describing it. On postCumontian scholarship which saw Mithraism essentially as a continuation or collateral branch of Iranian religion, see my survey in op. cit. (n. 2, 1984), 2063-71, in particular on L. A. Campbell, Mithraic Iconography and Ideology (1968), the most thoroughgoing attempt to trace a systematic pattern of Iranian religious thought, much of it highly abstract, in the Roman cult. A. D. H. Bivar's quest for an 'esoteric Mithraism' pervasive throughout the ancient world from Rome to India has recently culminated in his The Personalities ofMithra in Archaeology and Literature (1999)147 (1994).

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

89 177

The question we must now ask is whether from a historical point of view we would be justified in explaining the extraordinary growth in fictional writing, and its characteristic and concomitant fascination with resurrection, as some kind of reflection of the remarkable stories that were coming out of Palestine precisely in the middle of the first century A.D.148 Another radical suggestion is that we see not only the novelist Achilles Tatius' story of the origin of wine but also the last preserved episode of Petronius' Satyricay the story of Eumolpus' cannibalistic will, as plays upon the new rite of the eucharist. 149 With the Satyrica we are back in the Neronian age itself. Necessarily, then, given the relative dates, what is parodied there is the story behind the Gospels, including the sacramental construction placed upon the story, rather than the Gospel narratives as we now have them. While Smith depicts a society of carefully locative cults, Bowersock depicts the same society, the credulous and the incredulous alike, abuzz with Utopian fantasies. Neither picture is false to the original, yet it is within the world of fantastical invention, invention not merely of literary forms but of story and of ritual too, that I would choose to locate the invention of the Mithraic mysteries. Which is not to deny the obvious: that the Mithraists were also the most this-worldly and locative of folk.150 In cult life, undoubtedly, Mithraism made its initiates comfortable in the present order; but it also inducted them into mysteries of an ampler destiny of souls. 151 T h e Mainz vessel documents these inductions. The authors of Religions of Rome rightly indicate why their subject is of special importance and relevance: 152 The history of Roman religion . . . is nothing less than the story of the origin and development of those attitudes and assumptions that still underlie most forms of contemporary religious life in the West and most contemporary religions. As they go on to say, 'this is not just a question of the growth of Christianity'. 153 What changes is the mentality of the whole — pagans, Jews, and Christians alike. While ancient modes persist, something emerges which is familiar, until 'in the religious debates and conflicts of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. we are in a world that is broadly recognizable to us'. 1 5 4 Already at the cusp of the first and second centuries, had we entered the mithraeum at Mogontiacum we would have witnessed some of the first strange glimmerings of a sacramental mentality which, for good or ill, is still with us today. 1 5 r There is a final lesson to be learnt from the Mainz vessel. In the interplay of ritual, myth, and cosmology, a high degree of ideological sophistication lurks beneath these crude images of an inelegant regional pottery. That something so subtle should appear so early in the cult's history — and on the margins of empire at that — should cause us to re-examine our stereotypes of the simple religion of soldiers and freedmen. '[T]hose who ask "What was Mithraism anyway?" just may conclude that it was nothing much,

148

ibid., 99-119, quotation at 119. ibid., 125-38: Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Cleitophon 2.2; Petronius, Satyrica 141.2-11. In the latter, Bowersock argues that the word play testamentwn/diathêkê is an intentional part of the parody. 150 On Mithraism as a conformist's religion: R. L. Gordon, 'Mithraism and Roman society', Religion 2 (1972), 92-121 (reprinted in Gordon, op. cit. (n. 11, 1996)); W. Liebeschuetz, 'The expansion of Mithraism among the religious cults of the second century', in Hinnells, op. cit. (n. 2), 195-216. 151 The ritual depicted in Scene B of the Mainz vessel is both locative and Utopian: locative in that it affirms the actual physical order of the heavens as the science of the times describes it, Utopian in that it admits the individual human initiate into a soul journey within that vast spatio-temporal order. In a recent article (see 149

above, n. 65) I have argued that it was to celebrate this soul journey as well as to commemorate their deceased colleagues (a locative response) that the Mithraists of Virunum met, as their album records, mortalitatis causa on 26 June 184. I also remark there on some striking modern comparisons: the terrible consequences, in the cults of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate, of propelling oneself or others physically rather than symbolically on a celestial journey analogous to the Mithraists'. 152 BNP History, x. 153 ibid. 154 ibid. 155 For a forceful restatement, within the Christian theological tradition, of the primacy of ritual, see Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (1998).

90

BECK ON MITHRAISM 178

ROGER BECK

a n d p e r h a p s n o t a serious religion after all,* asserted N . M . S w e r d l o w . 1 5 6 H e could n o t have b e e n m o r e w r o n g . T h e issue is n o t , however, a single s c h o l a r ' s o v e r - r e a c t i o n . T h e real s t u m b l i n g block for classicists h e r e is classicism itself, an i n g r a i n e d bias against allowing t h a t a n y t h i n g of intellectual w o r t h m i g h t g r o w i n d e p e n d e n t l y of t h e t r a d i t i o n s of t h e élite as we have sanctified t h e m in t h e literary c a n o n (a w h o l l y illogical e x c e p t i o n being m a d e for t h e early C h r i s t i a n s ) . 1 5 7 If s o m e t h i n g does a p p e a r to e m e r g e a m o n g t h e lower o r d e r s , a n t i q u i t y ' s n o n - c h a t t e r i n g classes, 1 5 8 it m u s t b e derivative — or illusory. 1 5 9 It will n o t b e easy to reverse t h i s way of t h i n k i n g o n t h e M i t h r a i s t s ' behalf, for t h e y are scarcely s y m p a t h e t i c subjects for m o d e r n t i m e s . B u t m a l e to a m a n t h o u g h t h e y were, 1 6 0 a n d b y universal scholarly c o n s e n t c o n f o r m i s t s to their social order, 1 6 1 t h e evidence of t h e M a i n z vessel leads one to c o n c l u d e t h a t t h e y m a y j u s t h a v e created an a d v a n c e d religion of r e m a r k a b l e originality after all. VII. APPENDIX: ON THE ALLEGED INCOMPATIBILITY OF THE THEORY OF SOLSTITIAL SOUL GATES WITH MITHRAIC DOCTRINE

In his influential Mithras Platonicus Robert Turcan claims that the theory of soul gates at the solstices is incompatible with the doctrines of Mithraism by the following argument. 162 (1) T h e theory of solstitial gates presupposes a thema mundi (horoscope of the world) with Cancer (the summer solstice) rising and Capricorn (the winter solstice) setting; (2) Mithraism, as evidenced in the 'close association of the tauroctony with Aries' (the sign of the spring equinox), presupposes a thema which 'dates the origin of the world and of life from the spring equinox'; (3) themata (1) and (2) are mutually exclusive, implying different cosmogonies; (4) therefore Mithraism could not have taught the theory of the soul's entry and exit through solstitial gates. Clearly, the first question to ask is, does Mithraic cosmology in fact imply one version of the thema mundi and the theory of solstitial gates another? It is important to realize, however, that a negative answer could be given on either of two grounds. It could be the case either that Mithraic cosmology and the theory of solstitial gates imply the same thema, or that one or the other or both of them are quite independent of any particular version of the thema. In the second case, Turcan's argument would fail not because Mithraic cosmology and the theory of solstitial gates share the same version of the thema but because at least one of them implies nothing about the thema at all. It is the latter tack that I shall take here. 156 op. cit. (n. 20), 62. Swerdlow is reacting, with reason, to excesses in the astronomical/astrological interpretation of Mithraism. 157 Though the current trend is rather to elevate the Christians up the social scale: e.g., R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (1996), 29-47, following esp. W. A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians (1983). Contra, Keith Hopkins, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 185-226, at 207-13. Hopkins's tripartite stratification (élite, sub-élite, masses) is here more useful than the bipartite (élite versus the rest). He construes early Christianity as a movement led by thoroughly literate members of the sub-élite recruiting from that class and the masses. 158 I exclude epigraphic chatter, which in Mithraism, as in other cults, emanates from anyone who could afford a dedication with an inscription. Typically, though, such communication is confined to the titles of the god and the career of the dedicator. It says next to nothing about cult or individual ideology. 159 Cultural 'trickle down' is conceivable, seepage upwards not. Hence, finally, that reluctance, noted in Section iv, to allow testimonies about Mithraic doctrine to mean what they say. True originality is drained out of Mithraism by interpreting its doctrines as the construction of philosophers. That the philosophers might actually have learnt from the Mithraists about solstitial soul gates and other such things seems not to be an option. One should not, of course, go to

the other extreme of romanticizing Mithraism as a people's religion, exclusively the product of proletarian thought. Learned input, especially astrological, played a part, and I have suggested a conduit, exempli gratia, in the person of Ti. Claudius Balbillus (Beck, op. cit. (n. 92), 126-7). 160 The b a d press that an all-male cult can now expect may be illustrated from an important work by a leading literary scholar. In The True Story of the Novel (1996), 68, Margaret Ann Doody casually condemns Mithraism for expropriating the taurobolium from the female devotees of the Great Goddess and then excluding them. The inadvertent insertion of 'Mithraic' into S. Angus' sentence 'The most impressive sacrament of the Mysteries was the taurobolium' (Doody, 494, n. 7; Angus, op. cit. (n. 132), 94) is revealing — as is the pseudo-history so generated. 161 See above, n. 150. Again, Hopkins's tripartite stratification is useful (above, n. 157). We should think of Mithraism as a religion of the sub-élite (including freedmen and even slaves, where they wielded a measure of actual power and enjoyed a measure of material resources) — and of those striving to get a foot on the lowest rung of the sub-élite ladder. Is it perhaps just intellectual snobbery that makes it hard to envisage such folk embarked autonomously on a high cognitive enterprise? 162 op. cit. (n. 61), 88-9.

91

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS M Y S T E R I E S OF M I T H R A S

179

At first sight, at least, it does seem germane to question the thema's relevance. Even if the Mithraists did have their own version of the thema, i.e., a particular doctrine concerning the disposition of the heavens at creation, is that a reason why they could not also have shared with others a common theory about the entry and exit of souls through solstitial gates? In fact, the theory would be compatible with any configuration of the thema, and one wonders why Turcan should have thought otherwise. Actually, there is only one attested version of the thema mundi. It is that recorded by Firmicus Maternus and Macrobius. 1 6 3 It sets the planets each in the sign of its 'house', 1 6 4 and, as Turcan correctly observes, Cancer in the ascendant, i.e., rising in the east. Turcan states that the doctrine of solstitial gates postulates this thema. But this is not so. T h e doctrine and the thema are logically independent, in that either one could be maintained without the other. There is a fortuitous link in that the thema places the solstitial signs at the rising and setting points, i.e., on the horizon to east and west, while in a more general way points of communication between the upper and the nether worlds were also thought to lie to the east and (especially) the west. Cumont thought that the link was significant, even causal, but did not demonstrate that it was anything more than a coincidence. 165 There is no evidence that the thema developed out of any theory of the location of spirit gates or vice versa, and the positioning of the solstitial signs in the thema is better explained as the consequence of the thema1's own internal logic: i.e., Cancer is in the ascendant to allow the planets, located each in its own house, to rise in succession at about equal intervals of time during the first day of creation. Alternatively, we may accept the ancients' own explanation: the signs are where they are so as to place Aries, their leader, in the position of honour in midheaven. 166 In addition to Cumont, Turcan relied on H. de Ley for the postulated link between the thema mundi and the doctrine of solstitial gates. 167 While Cumont was speculative, de Ley was simply mistaken. He states that Porphyry in the context of the passage on the solstitial gates {De antro 21-9) also discusses the thema. What Porphyry discusses is not the thema, but the system underlying the thema, the arrangement of planetary houses. 168 T h e De antro is altogether silent on the thema, and there is not the slightest intimation of it in the background. 169 T h e proof is that Porphyry lists both the 'diurnal' and the 'nocturnal' houses of the planets. T h e latter are irrelevant to the thema mundi — but highly germane to the subsequent argument concerning the equinoctial 'seat' of Mithras. 1 7 0 T h e doctrine of solstitial gates, then, neither implies nor is implied by the thema mundi. What of Mithraic cosmology, and in particular that part of it explicit in De antro, namely the 'seat' of Mithras at the equinoxes? Again, in a formal sense, there is no reason why a particular cosmic location for the god should imply or be implied by any particular thema mundi. Nevertheless, let us follow Turcan's argument and see why it is that he postulates for the Mithraists a thema different from the attested one.

163 Firmicus, Mathesis 3.1; Macrobius, In Somnium 1.21.23-7. For a description of the thema mundi and further references, see À. Bouché-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque (1899), 185-7. The earliest mention of the thema, though without specifics, is by the first-century A.D. astrologer Thrasyllus (CCAG 8.3.100.27-30). 164 Thus, Moon in Cancer, Sun in Leo, Mercury in Virgo, Venus in Libra, Mars in Scorpius, Jupiter in Sagittarius, Saturn in Capricorn. For the planets proper, these are their 'diurnal', as opposed to 'nocturnal', houses. See Bouché-Leclercq, op. cit. (n. 163), 182-92. 165 F. Cumont, Recherches sur le symbolisme funéraire des Romains ( 1942), 3 8-41. 166 Firmicus, Math. 3.1.18; Macrobius, In Somn. 1.21.23. 167 op. cit. (n. 62), 20. 168 One may well ask why Porphyry (or his sources) introduced and described the system of houses (ch. 22), which at first sight has no obvious connection with the solstitial soul gates. The answer is twofold. (1) It provides the reason why the Saturnalia, a festival of liberation and hence a prototype for the exit

of souls from mortality, is celebrated at the winter solstice when the sun enters Capricorn (23): Capricorn is the house of Saturn. (2) It underpins the highly complicated and compacted (and textually corrupt) argument linking the symbols of the tauroctonous Mithras to the equinoxes which are his 'proper seat' (24): see above, n. 68. Since the Mithraists used the astrological houses in their cosmology, it is possible, indeed probable, that they are Porphyry's ultimate source for the system in the present context. 169 De Ley's error is perpetuated in Simonini's commentary (op. cit. (n. 62), 191): 'Porfirio introduce il thema mundi . . .' Simonini cites J. Flamant, Macrobe et le néo-platonisme latin (1977), 452 (n. 253), but Flamant says only that Porphyry 'donne cette domiciliation . . . et fait allusion à la "géniture" du monde selon les Egyptiens, mais il ne lie pas les deux choses'. Even this is mistaken, for what Porphyry alludes to is 'genesis into (eis) the cosmos' not the genesis of the cosmos. Scholarship has rendered the De antro, never an easy text, virtually unnavigable in places. 170 See above, n. 68.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

92 l8o

ROGER BECK

According to Turcan, the Mithraists believed that the world was created or, more precisely, vivified by Mithras in the springtime. It was a belief inherited from the cult's Iranian antecedents, and it was to this vernal creation that their tauroctony was made to allude. Futhermore, it was as 'demiurge and master of genesis' that the tauroctonous Mithras is set at the equinoxes (one of which, of course, is the spring equinox) in the cosmology of De antro 24. Cogent evidence is adduced by Turcan both for the springtime creation in the Iranian tradition and for a widespread Greco-Roman view that the year, if not the world, begins in the spring. 171 Hence Aries, the sign of the spring equinox, becomes the first and leader of the signs. Metaphorically, too, creation is the springtime of the world. We may suppose, then, that for the Mithraists, as almost universally, spring was the season of new beginnings, and its symbols the tokens of new beginnings. Whether they also believed that the world was actually and literally created in the spring is another matter, but let us grant it for the sake of the argument. What follows? It would follow that the standard thema mundi becomes, from a Mithraist's point of view, inaccurate — but not for the reasons Turcan supposes. T h e standard thema, Turcan argues, is incompatible with Mithraic cosmology and vernal creation because it has Cancer rising in the east and Capricorn setting in the west. But rising and setting signs have to do with the time of day, not with the season of the year. What determines season is rather the location of the sun. T h e sun in the attested thema mundi was situated, like all the planets, in its house. T h e sun's house is Leo, and when the sun is in Leo it is high summer (late July to late August). So the Mithraists, if they believed in a vernal creation, would have had to construct or adopt — though there is no evidence that they did either — a thema with the Sun in Aries, not, as Turcan supposes, a thema with Aries rather than Cancer in the ascendant. Mithraic cosmology, as interpreted by Turcan, does not therefore imply a thema incompatible with the standard thema mundi in respect of the signs occupying the rising and setting points at creation. At every stage, then, Turcan's argument fails in logic, because the implications are not as stated. Nothing in their cosmology prevented the Mithraists from subscribing to — or themselves inventing — the theory of the gates of souls at the solstices, and there is no inconsistency within the material deployed by Porphyry concerning the solstitial gates and the 'seat' of Mithras at the equinoxes. T h e Mithraic data in the De antro may once more be construed at face value, for here at least it is not the Mithraists' ancient interpreters, still less the Mithraists themselves, who contributed the 'esprit confus et confusionniste' of which Turcan complains. 172

171

op. cit. (n. 62), 54-6.

172

ibid., 89.

CHAPTER FIVE

History into Fiction: The Metamorphoses of the Mithras Myths

Dedicated to Reinhold Merkelbach, whose explorations of ancient narrative and the mystery cults have always seemed to me profoundly well oriented, even when I would not follow the same path in detail. This article is neither about a particular ancient novel nor about the genre of the ancient novel in general. But it is about story-telling in the ancient world, and about the metamorphosis which stories undergo when they pass through the crucible of religious invention. Its subject, then, is narrative fiction — narrative fiction as the construction of sacred myth and of myth's dramatic counterpart, ritual performance. The fictions I shall explore are the myths and rituals of the Mithras cult. Some of thesefictions,I shall argue, are elaborations of events and fantasies of the Neronian age: on the one hand, events in both Italy and the orient centred on the visit of Tiridates of Armenia to Rome in 66; on the other hand, the heliomania of the times, a solar enthusiasm focused on, and in some measure orchestrated by, the emperor himself. What I am not offering is an explanation of Mithraism and its origins. In the first place, our subject is story and the metamorphosis of story, not religion. In the second place, I would not presume to 'explain' Mithraism, or any other religion for that matter, by Euhemeristic reduction to a set of historical or pseudo-historical antecedents. In speaking of the 'invention' of Mithraism and of its 'fictions', moreover, I intend no disrespect. I would use the same terms for Christianity (in which I happen to believe). By 'invention' I mean, in the literal sense, the discovery by its founders of the religion's fundamental truths; and by 'fictions' I mean the stories and the ritual performances in which those truths were expressed. I do not imply that the Mithraists wilfully

BECK ON MITHRAISM

94 284

ROGER BECK

or naively misconstrued recent history. Stories from the recent past, I shall suggest, furnished Mithraism not with the substance of its mysteries, but with some of the themes, incident and coloration of its myths and rites. As a first example of the transformation of narrative in the crucible of religion, let me offer what has already been proposed for the journey of Tiridates to Italy within the Christian story. Tiridates travelled overland in great pomp and at huge public expense, feted by the cities through which he passed (Dio 63,1-2). Now Tiridates was a magus, he was accompanied by other magi, and the the land journey itself was dictated by religious scruple: as good Zoroastrians they would not pollute the element of water with their bodily discharges.1 It was thus a notable 'journey of the magi', and, as Albrecht Dieterich pointed out long ago (1902), nicely positioned chronologically to serve as the matrix for that other tale of magi on the move, the familiar Nativity story in the second chapter of Matthew's gospel. Fiction migrates through religion along a two-way road. The flow of narrative traffic in the other direction, from the fictions of religion to the fictions of secular literature, has been plotted, most recently and most brilliantly, by Glen Bowersock. In Fiction as History (1994), Bowersock describes a burst of inventiveness, starting in Nero's reign, which engendered new forms of literature, principally the prose romance. These works are full of marvels, one of which is the Scheintod, the tale of the 'apparent death' of one of the characters, usually the heroine. 'The question we must now ask', says Bowersock (1994: 119), 'is whether from a historical point of view we would be justified in explaining the extraordinary growth in fictional writing, and its characteristic and concomitant fascination with resurrection, as some kind of reflection of the remarkable stories that were coming out of Palestine precisely in the middle of the first century A.D.' Another daring suggestion is that we read not only Achilles Tatius' story of the origin of wine (2,2-3) but also the last extant episode of Petronius' Satyrica (141), the story of Eumolpus' cannibalistic will, as plays upon the Christian rite of the eucharist and the myth of its institution (Bowersock 1994: 125-138). With the Satyrica we are back in the Neronian age itself.

1

These magi were of course the genuine priestly article, not —pace Pliny (NH 30,14-17), our source for the story — mere magicians. Tiridates' 'priestly' status (sacerdotium) is also indicated by Tacitus (Ann. 15,24).

95

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

285

This alchemy of stories is rich, strange, and rapid, and it seems to operate with a peculiar intensity in the latter half of the first century A.D. One of its products, I suggest, was the myth of Mithras, specifically the stories involving Mithras and the Sun. I shall start with the output as we find it in Mithraic myth andritual,retxirning in due course to the postulated input from the history of the Neronian age. The output is first apprehended visually. As is well known, verbal accounts of the Mithras stories are lost, but a rich monumental art, with many narrative scenes, survives. Neither the input nor the output is in itself particularly contentious or ambiguous. The events in question and people's reactions to them are reasonably well documented by the historians Tacitus (Ann. 15,24-31), Suetonius (Nero 13), and Dio (63,1-7), and by the elder Pliny (NH 30,16-17); and the Mithraic scenes are mostly shown in multiple exemplars and are relatively easy to decipher at the literal level.2 What is at issue, then, is solely the postulated connection, which is a causal one: that certain Mithraic scenes are as they are because certain anterior historical events, and the construction placed on them by contemporaries, were as they were. As everyone knows, Mithras caught and sacrificed a bull. On the hide of the slaughtered bull Mithras, together with the Sun god, held a banquet. This banquet is the second most important scene in Mithraic art, after the socalled 'tauroctony' ; indeed, the two scenes are sometimes sculpted on opposite sides of the same reversible relief, as is the case with this example from Fiano Romano, now in the Louvre (see below). It was to replicate this banquet of the gods in ritual that the Mithraists held their cult meal, reclining on the side benches which are such a distinctive feature of all extant mithraea.

2

Because the disposition of the scenes on the monuments varies, the order of the episodes in the story of Mithras cannot be reconstructed definitively (Beck 1990). Indeed, there was probably no canonical order. For recent explications by leading authorities in the main line of Mithraic scholarship, see Turcan 2000, 45-61, 95-98; Clauss 1990, 71-110.

BECK O N MITHRAISM

96 286

ROGER BECK Fig. 1. The banquet of Mithras and Sol: reverse of a relief from Fiano Romano (V641,3 Musée du Louvre; photo: Chuzeville)

One of Mithraism's notorious paradoxes is that although Mithras is himself Sol Invictus, the 'Unconquered Sun',4 he and Sol appear in the banquet scene as separate persons feasting together. Moreover, the two share several other adventures. In another scene, Mithras ascends behind Sol in the latter's chariot (scene 'X'). 5 Then there are scenes in which the two gods are shown entering into a compact of sorts, either as equals with a handshake (scene 'W'), or as liege lord and vassal (scene 'S'). In the latter, Sol kneels before Mithras who brandishes some object aloft.6 There is also a scene, less frequent, of the two gods at an altar with pieces of meat on a spit or spits

3 4

5 6

V = Vermaseren 1956-60. Recently, M. Weiss (1998) has advanced a theory that Mithras and the Sun are always distinct persons in the Mysteries. On this hypothesis, the formula Deus Sol Invictus Mithras refers to the two gods (the Sun God and Unconquered Mithras) in parataxis. Since we are here concerned with the mythic adventures of the two gods, it is unnecessary to make the traditional case for their unity in other contexts. Letters refer to Richard Gordon's catalogue of the peripheral scenes on the 'Rhine-type' and 'Raetian-type' monuments (1980). Interpreted either as a Persian cap or the haunch of the bull. On the alternatives, see Beck 1987, 310-311.

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

97

287

(scene 'LP). All these scenes are well exemplified on the monuments here reproduced as figures 2 and 3. The first monument (fig. 2, V1430) is the upper part of the right-hand border of a lost tauroctony from Virunum in Noricum: the third, fourth and fifth scenes from the top are, respectively, 'X' (Mithras in Sol's chariot), ' W (the iunctio dextrarum), and 'S' (Sol kneels to Mithras). The second monument (fig. 3, V1584) is an altar from Poetovio in Pannonia: it displays on its front a conflation of scenes ' W and 'LP (the hand-shake over an altar with a spit of meat).7 Fig. 2. Scenes from the Mithras myth: fragment of a relief from Virunum (V1430, Landesmuseum fur Karnten, Klagenfurt; photo: U.P. Schwarz)

7

Also a raven swooping down to peck at the meat.

BECK O N MITHRAISM

98 288

ROGER BECK Fig. 3. Scenes from the Mithras myth: altar from Poetovio (V. 1584, Ptuj, Mithraeum ffl; photo: Pokrajinski Muzej, Ptuj)

Mithras' weapon in the bull-killing is a knife or short sword. But for reasons which will soon be apparent, we should note his other weapon, the bow and arrow. As one might expect of a Persian god, Mithras is a formidable archer.8 On the left side of the Poetovio altar (fig. 3, above) his bow, his quiver, and his short sword are displayed together. On the right side the socalled 'water miracle'9 (scene 'O') is shown. This scene, in which Mithras wields his bow to elicit water from a rock (normally for a pair of suppliants), is a fairly common one. In the Virumum fragment (fig. 2, above) it is the sixth down from the top. Two scenes of Mithraic ritual are also germane, for they show the activities of the two gods Mithras and Sol replicated in ritual by their earthly surrogates, the two most senior officers in the cult's sevenfold hierarchy of grades, namely the Father {Pater) and Sun-Runner (Heliodromus). We have already noted that the feast of Mithras and Sol was replicated sacramentally in the initiates' own banquet. Until recently this was the only Mithraic ceremony of mimesis known to us. Now, however, a pottery vessel from a mithraeum in Mainz has revealed two other such rites, each involving one of the two senior officers. The two rituals are displayed in separate scenes moulded

8

9

See esp. the hunt scene in the frescos of the Dura mithraeum, where Mithras appears as a mounted archer (V52); likewise on side A of the Dieburg relief (V1247). The term is modern.

MYTHMAKING A N D OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

99 289

10

in relief on either side of this vessel. Since its pottery type was discontinued by about 125, n the vessel is one of Mithraism's earliest documents. Rituals do not spring up overnight, so the practices shown were likely in place in the early years of the second century. If I am right, they postdate the historical events to which they allude by a mere half century or so. In the scene on one side of the vessel (scene A, fig. 4, below), the Father of the Mithraic community, clad like Mithras in Persian dress, imitates the god's archery in a rite of initiation by drawing his bow at the naked initiand (with the mystagogue as the third figure behind).12 Fig. 4. Mainz vessel, scene A: 'the archery of the Father' (photo: Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz)

The scene on the other side of the vessel (scene B, fig. 5, below) shows the Sun-Runner in procession; he is the third figure in the file of four, and he is escorted by three other cult members, the one who immediately precedes him bearing a lowered wand and the one who follows a raised wand;13 an 10

The vessel was discovered in 1976 and published by H. G. Horn in 1994. See also Merkelbach 1995. I offer an ampler explication in Beck 2000. 11 The pottery is dated by V. Rupp (1987: 54-9) to the first quarter of the first century. I am told that a somewhat later date, c. 120-40, is now under consideration. 12 Compositionally, as was pointed out by Horn (1994: 25-28, Abb. 25-26), the scene is very similar to the frescos of initiation in the Capua Mithraeum (Vermaseren 1971: Plates 21-28). 13 The wand-bearers play the roles of the esoteric minor deities Cautes and Cautopates, whose function is to symbolize oppositional pairs. On the monuments their regular attributes are torches, one raised (Cautes) and the other lowered (Cautpates). See Beck 2000: 156-157.

BECK O N MITHRAISM

100 290

ROGER BECK

initiate in breastplate, probably of the 'Soldier' {Miles) grade, leads the procession. Fig. 5. Mainz vessel, scene B: 'the procession of the Sun-Runner' (photo: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz)

That the principal figure is indeed the Sun-Runner, imitating Sol (just as the Father imitates Mithras), is apparent from his attributes: the whip, with which the Sun manages his team of horses, and the rayed solar crown. The. latter does not appear well in profile and is indicated only by the single spike at the top of the head.14 The intent of this ritual procession is less obvious than the intent of the Father's ritual archery, and it would serve no purpose to discuss it here,15 for the esoteric 'meaning' would be a distraction. What concerns us instead is what we see on the surface, the performance alone as event or 'happening': a cult dignitary, with appropriate escort and accoutrements,16 parades in imitation of the Sun god.

14

The best representation of the Sun-Runner's rayed crown is found in the panel for the grade in the floor mosaic of the Felicissimus Mithraeum in Ostia (V299): the attributes of each of the seven grades are displayed in a sequence of frames running, ladder-like, the length of the aisle. The Felicissimus crown is obviously a stage prop (it has strings for tying beneath the wearer's chin), which drives home the point that performance in imitation of the Sun complemented telling stories about him in the medium of visual art. 15 I discuss the ritual's intent fully in Beck 2000: 154-167. 16 The Sun-Runner's escort alludes not only to the esoteric (see above, n.13) but also to the exoteric, the accompaniment of a Roman magistrate by his lictors (see Beck 2000: 165166).

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

101 291

Through these scenes of myth andritualthere runs a common thread, the deeds and interaction of two sharply differentiated characters. The contrast is conveyed by garb. Mithras and his human counterpart, the cult Father, bespeak the Persian and, for a Roman, the exotic; Sol, in heroic nudity (not of course replicated by his human agent, the Heliodromus) and with expected attributes, signals the familar home culture. A distinction, then, between £us' and 'them'; but a distinction without hostility or confrontation. Quite the contrary: feasting together, harmony; yet not parity either; for in one of the scenes Sol kneels to Mithras and is in some manner invested or commissioned by him. This much for output. For input, we return to the story, the historical story, of Tiridates' journey to Rome to receive his kingdom and his crown at the hands of Nero. I shall touch later on the ethos of these events and on the personalities of the protagonists. Two incidents, however, require immediate mention, for they are what brings Mithras and Mithraism squarely into the picture. First, at the coronation, Tiridates hailed Nero with the carefully prearranged formula: T have come to you, my god, to kneel to you as I do to Mithras too' {proskynêsôn se hôs kai ton Mithran, Dio 63,5,2). Secondly, at some time during this state visit, Tiridates, who was himself a magus and had brought other magi with him, 'initiated' Nero into 'magian feasts' (magicis etiam cenis eum initiaverat, Pliny NH 30,6,17).17 May we, then, relate in some way the various Mithraic scenes of investiture, compact and allegiance to the homage and coronation of Tiridates? Likewise, the banquet scene to the 'magian feasts' into which Nero initiated Tiridates? In fact, scholars have long done so. In 1933, in one of his most thoughtful and elegant articles, Franz Cumont argued that what I have termed input and output are indeed related. But the relationship postulated by Cumont was not direct and causal. Since Mithraism for Cumont was an outgrowth of Mazdaism, incubated long before among the so-called 'Magusaeans', the Iranian diaspora in Anatolia, he assumed instead that the cult had already adopted Iranian and Mazdaist concepts of sovereignty and its conferral. Tiridates' coronation conformed to the same pattern because Tiridates, too, was an Iranian and a Mazdaist. The coronation story and the Mithraic scenes resonate with each other because they are. traceable to the same source in Mazdaism, not because the latter were generated out of the former. The same applies to the banquets. For Cumont the 'magian feast' of Nero and Tiridates 17

See above, n. 1.

102

BECK O N MITHRAISM 292

ROGER BECK

was necessarily cognate to the Mithraic cult meal since both were manifestations of what at root was the same Mazdayasnian religion. The Cumontian scenario would be hard to dispute, were the Mithraic myths and rites demonstrably in place in Roman Mithraism at the time of Tiridates' visit. But they are not; there is in fact no evidence for them, or indeed for any element of the Mysteries, prior to the 90's, a generation later.18 Consequently, a more plausible, yet more exciting, scenario may be entertained: that the scenes of myth and ritual were constructions on what happened in those years, fictions created therefrom; they were its ideological children, not its ideological cousins.19 What was it about the events and ethos of those times that could trigger a metamorphosis into the stories of a new religion? Space precludes rehearsing in full the accounts of Tacitus (Ann. 15,24-31), Dio (63,1-7), and Suetonius (Nero 13), so I shall highlight instead a few salient features. Consider first the scale and pageantry of events, their huge geographical sweep. The prelude to the climactic event of the coronation was Tiridates' sumptuous progress through the cities of the empire, the magian journey which quite possibly, as we have already noted, spun off into the Christian myth. This in turn was preceded two years before by a massive display of arms in the East, not in the customary destruction of battle, but in a splendid parade of the pride of the Roman legions and the Parthian cavalry as accompaniment to the negotiations for Tiridates' coming investiture (Tac. Ann. 15,29). It was an occasion, most unusually, of mutual respect between Rome and Parthia, between 'us' and 'them', expressed notably in the Roman general Corbulo's diplomatic courtesy and Tiridates' lively interest in things Roman (Tac. Ann. 15,30). Tacitus (ibid.) gives us some examples of the questions which Tiridates put to his Roman host at a banquet. In a curious coincidence, one of them concerns the very practice which we see in the Fiano Romano Mithraic banquet scene (above, fig. 1). 'Why', asked Tiridates, 'do you light the altar in front of the augúrale by setting a torch to its base (subdita face)T That is precisely the action performed by one of the torchbearers in the Mithraic scene, though it occurs there in a mythical/magical world in which the fire is set at (elicited from?) the altar's base not by a torch but by a caduceus, and the firing of the altar is no longer constrained by physical realism: a stone 18 19

On the earliest evidence, see Beck 1998: 118-119. For a scenario of the founding of Mithraism in the Flavian age, see Beck 1998.

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

103 293

structure appears to replace the presumed wooden original.20 Mere coincidence? Or could it be that a story about a question asked at a banquet in honour of a Persian prince given by the lieutenant of a would-be solar avatar — the point about Nero will be made below — has somehow, in the alcheriiy of religious formation, metamorphosed into a detail in a charter myth about a banquet shared by two gods, one Persian, the other occidental and solar, replicated performatively in a cult meal presided over by a 'Father' in 'Persian' regalia and a so-styled 'Sun-Runner'? Whatever the case with the detail, the more general causal relationship may well stand: that the story, true or false, of the actual banquet in the actual world played some part in the generation of both the mythic banquet and the performative cult meal. The 'magian feasts' of Tiridates and Nero two years later may not have been the sole item of historic input. My postulate in all this, I emphasize again, is that in newly minted religions, of which Mithraism and Christianity are the prime examples in the Roman empire of the first century,21 stories about actions in our real world generate and give colour to stories about actions, both mythic and ceremonial, in the larger other world to which the religions offer access. The historicity of stories set in the actual world of specific time and place (Corbulo feasted Tiridates, Tiridates initiated Nero into 'magian feasts', Jesus feasted his disciples shortly before his execution 'under Pontius Pilate') concerns me as a student of history and of the history of religions in particular, but not as a student of narrative. In the present context, then, we do not need to ask 'did these events happen?' but rather 'were these stories told?' and, more precisely, 'were they current when the cult myths and rituals were generated?' The stories from the 60's postulated here for Mithraism were certainly told: how else could they have survived in the sources? That they were current in the Flavian age, when Mithraism, in my view, was founded, is for the most part equally self-evident, although of course this or that detail might be an embellishment of our immediate source. 20

We do not know the 'historic' answer to Tiridates' question, for Tacitus does not record it; presumably, it would have been obvious to his Roman readers. In the mythic scene, the reason why the torchbearer ignites the altar base with a caduceus must of course be esoteric to the Mysteries; for an answer, see Turçan 1986. Here, however, our concern is not with 'meaning' but with surface changes to the telling or showing of an event. 21 From a different point of view, both Mithraism and Christianity are also very old religions, the latter a continuation of Judaism, the- former a blended development of GraecoRoman paganism and Iranian Mazdaism.

104

BECK O N MITHRAISM 294

ROGER BECK

Let us consider next the aura surrounding the main players on our mid60's stage: first, Corbulo as the chivalrous paradigm of Roman honour and practical effectiveness;22 next, Tiridates, magus and prince, exceptionally pro-Roman, 'in the bloom', as Dio reports (63,2,1), 'of age, beauty, lineage, and intelligence'. Thirdly, Nero: not of course the degenerate tyrant of the classical historians and the fearful Roman élite; rather, the Nero of public image, of popular imagination, of self-construction — in a word, Nero the showman. Qualis artifex! — and his greatest creation his own heroic self. The acid test of such inventions is their resistance to death. Nero is one of those very few whose celebrity, or notoriety, is so vivid and stupendous that it challenges the very fact of their own demise. Surely he can't be dead? He will return! Scheintod again. Historically, Neronian pretenders did indeed emerge from time to time — in the East, significantly (Suet. Nero 57; Tac. Hist. 1,2; 2,8-9); and on the supernatural plane a wild Christian visionary, John of the Book of Revelation, scripted Nero into his apocalypse in the guise of the Satanic beast.23 Of Nero's showmanship, we should notice particularly its solar spin. Two incidents reveal how Nero was equated with the Sun god, specifically with the Sun as charioteer. On the so-called 'Golden Day' during Tiridates' visit, the purple awning protecting the theatre audience from the sun 'was embroidered', so Dio reports (63.6.2), 'with a figure of Nero driving a chariot, with golden stars gleaming all around'. Secondly, in another context, the aftermath of the great fire and the punishment of the supposed Christian arsonists, Nero paraded among the people dressed as a charioteer (Tac. Ann. 15,44). This too was in mimesis of the Sun, representing the triumph of divine over criminal fire. It is, I suspect, the historical precedent for the Mithraic procession of the Heliodromus, now known to us from the Mainz vessel (scene B: above, fig. 5).24

22 23

24

Admittedly, as seen through the Tacitean lens (Ann. 15,25-31). Rev. 13. Nero or — better still from my perspective — an imagined Nero redivivus is the favoured candidate for the beast whose 'number' is 666 (13:18; Duling and Perrin 1994: 454-455, 458). J.W. van Henten's scepticism concerning Nero redivivus is germane only to the Sibylline Oracles (Van Henten 2000). I am grateful to Jan Bremmer for alerting me to this article during ICAN 2000. I argue the case in Beck 2000: 166-167.

105

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

295

It is hard to think of a time more conducive, in retrospect, to the emergence in Rome of so-styled Mysteries of the Persians, or of historical events and players more likely to metamorphose into stories about and rituals commemorating the adventures and relationship of a Persian god and a Sun god, stories and rites of a shared banquet,25 stories of a shared ride in the solar chariot, stories of treaty and investiture. The only surprise is the inversion of precedence. In the historical story the would-be solar avatar is the superior of the Parthian prince. In the cult myth and the cult economy the Persian God rules supreme. There is, however, a curious precedent for the Mithraic dyarchy with Sol as junior partner in the situation which pertained when Nero, while on tour in Greece, left Rome and Italy in charge of a certain freedman. Thefreedman'sname was Helios; 'and so,' says Dio (63,12,2), 'the Roman empire served two autocrats, Nero and Helios' — or, if one prefers, '... Nero and the Sun'. And what, lastly, of the god's archery, mimed by the cult Father, as seen in scene A of the Mainz ritual vessel (above, fig. 4)? For that we might turn to a strange and overlooked episode in Dio's account of Tiridates' stay in Italy. At Puteoli Nero, through his freedman Patrobius, gave gladiatorial games at which Tiridates, in a show of honour to the latter, 'shot at wild beasts from his elevated seat and, if one can believe it, transfixed and killed two bulls with a single arrow' (Dio 63,3,2). This is not, I emphasize, the origin or the prototype of the Mithraic bull-killing. Mithras kills with a knife, not with an arrow; more important, this 'historical' story simply cannot carry singlehandedly, as cause to effect, thefreightfor that most central mythic act in the Mysteries. Nevertheless, I do suggest that the episode, or, more precisely, the report of it and the image of a Parthian prince shooting bulls from his seat of honour (ek tês hedras), contributed in some manner both to the

25

There is an irony here. Historically, the 'magian feasts' of 66 were a failure. Pliny tells us that Nero found his initiation ineffective and so repudiated it. For Pliny of course this was all about magic, not Mazdaism, since in substance as well as etymologically he construed 'magian' as 'magical'. However, that it was really with things 'magian' that Nero lost patience is suggested by the story in Suetonius {Nero 56) that he once urinated on a statue of Atargatis, the Syrian goddess. Nero's gestures, though bizarre, were seldom pointless. Let us allow that Atargatis is here a stand-in for Iranian Anahita, the goddess of the element of water. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic and blasphemous reversal of Tiridates' 'magian' scruples against polluting that element by bodily discharge on a sea voyage to Italy.

BECK O N MITHRAISM

106 296

ROGER BECK

(separate) stories of Mithras as bull-killer and as archer and to the ritual practice of seated archery by Mithras' surrogate, the cult Father.26 Even as we have it in Dio, the story is highly charged and already so far into the world of the extraordinary that it challenges credibility (ei ge toi piston). Here was a Parthian exercising Parthian skills, not at the margins of empire where Parthian archery symbolized alien menace, but as honoured guest in the empire's heartland and at one of its prime ideological foci, the presidential box at the games. There was no more potent place for the generation of authoritative images; nor, one might conjecture, could there have been an image more potent for nascent Mithraism than that of a 'Persian' prince, the celebrity of the moment, killing bulls with his astounding archery in that (literally) 'spectacular' context. Myth, as Kathleen Coleman (1990) has demonstrated, was the performative idiom of the Roman arena, where executions, to quote from her evocative title, were 'fatal charades ... staged as mythological enactments'.27 From those games at Puteoli, I suggest, new myths were generated. They were generated out of the staging of the archetypal (to a Roman) image of the 'Parthian Bowman' in a context which vividly and violently reversed its moral chargefromnegative to positive. Let us suppose, then, that Tiridates-as-archer in the actual world evolved into Mithras-as-archer in the mythic world and into the Mithraic Father-asarcher in the ritual world. Now traffic between the actual world and the worlds of myth and ritual flows in both directions. In fact, while the transmutation of history (or 'history') into myth and ritual is both rare and elusive, the reverse process is both commonplace and readily demonstrable. But it is only so in the obvious and perhaps trivial sense that myths are brought into the actual world every time the story is enacted in theatrical or in ritual performance. Among those re-enactments, however, are certain remarkable instances when, in a deliberate fiction, the mythic world is elided into the actual world and 'myth' really does becomes 'history'. A mythic narrative is then recognizable in an historical event precisely because the event was programmed and played out as such. The myth of Mithras-as-archer, I suggest, re-enters the actual world in just such an event. 26

27

Cult doctrine, in due course, was to assign Mithras his 'proper seat' (oikeian kathedran) in the heavens, specifically 'at the equinoxes ... on the [celestial] equator* (Porphyry De antro nympharum 24). For the gruesome juxtaposition of mythic performance and criminal punishment, see the imaginary but entirely realistic programme of theatrical entertainments in Apuleius Met. 10,29-35.

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

107 297

The new 'hero' of our archery story is the emperor Commodus, and the venue is once again the arena — but not only the arena. Commodus' feats in the arena are of course notorious, as is his personation of Hercules there and elsewhere (Edmundson 2001). But Commodus, as Edmundson documents, personated other gods, and the arena was not the sole venue of his creative performances. The Historia Augusta (SHA Comm/9) tells us that 'he polluted the rites of Mithras, when something is said or done there fictitiously for a show of terror, with a real homicide' (sacra Mithriaca homicidio vero polluit cum illic aliquid ad speciem timoris vel did vel fingi soleat). The figure of the Father as bowman on the Mainz vessel now reveals dramatically the means by which mimetic action designed for terror in Mithraic initiation could be perverted into 'actual homicide'. In the same passage we are told that Commodus also had some cripples dressed up as anguipede giants (by swathing them in bandages from the knees down) and that he 'finished them off with arrows'. Here the location is presumably the arena. Now the battle with the anguipede giants is part of the Mithras myth, quite often represented among the side scenes.28 However, it is there performed not by Mithras but by Jupiter, whose weapon is of course not the bow but the thunderbolt. To add to the complications, the story of disguising and massacring the cripples as anguipedes is also related by Dio (72,20 (Xiphilinus)), who sets it explicitly in the arena but with Commodus in the role of Hercules and his weapon the club, not the bow. Either, then, Commodus himself mixed and matched his roles or else the stories did precisely that on his behalf. From a narrative perspective it matters little which. The point is that Commodus or stories about Commodus relocated the archery of Mithras and of the Mithraic Father from the worlds of myth and ritual and re-actualized them in our 'real' world of space and time. Thus, fiction back into history — or 'history'. In conclusion, I return to the time when the stories of the Neronian age, in my scenario, underwent their sea change into the stories of Mithraism; specifically, to that passage in the epic of the Flavian age which carries our only testimony both to the story and to the image of the bull-killing Mithras in all of high classical literature, Statius Thebaid 1.720-721.29 The reference 28

29

Gordon 1$80: scene ' B \ The composition of the Thebaid predates virtually all extant iconic representations of the bull-killing. Statius' allusion is thus one of the very earliest testimonies to both image and story. See Gordon 1978: 161-164.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

108 298

ROGER BECK

comes at and as the climax of Adrastus' appeal to Apollo in various manifestations, the last of which is Mithras: ... seu Persei sub rupibus antri indignata sequi torquentem cornua Mithram. (... or Mithras beneath the crags of the Persian cave twisting the horns loath to follow.) Notoriously, if one has in mind the standard image of the tauroctony, this is a misdescription, for Mithras normally grasps the bull's muzzle; he does not 'twist' its horns. Consider, however, solely the climactic hemistych: torquentem cornua Mithram. Given that cornu/-ua torquere (to 'twist horn') is a not uncommon poetic periphrasis for drawing a-bow,30 what would a Roman audience hear in that phrase, 'horn-twisting Mithras', and what might a Campanian poet, who at the time of Tiridates' fabulous feat of bullslaying Parthian archery at Puteoli was in his teens or twenties, intend by it? Literally, of course, the 'horns' have been so modified in advance that the image of Mithras graspingJhe horns of an actual animal is inescapable. But that Statius is also playing with the connotations of 'horn twisting' as archery seems to me highly probable, especially when the ultimate referent beyond Mithras, Phoebus Apollo, is himself an archer god. It is not even necessary to suppose autopsy on Statius' part; only that rumour reached him of a princely Persian bowman 'twisting horn' for the enthusiastic spectators at Puteoli and that the story worked on his poetic imagination, just as it worked on the mythopoeic imaginations of those who constructed the stories and rituals of Mithraism.31

30 31

ThLL s. cornu, ü,3,c; m,5,e. This article was first presented as a paper to the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN 2000) at Groningen on July 27,2000. I wish to thank Maaike Zimmerman and her colleagues for providing such a stimulating forum and, not least, that rarity in such ventures, a lecture venue where the visuals could be displayed to perfection!

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS HISTORY INTO FICTION

109 299

Bibliography Beck, R.L. 1987. 'Merkelbach's Mithras', Phoenix 41,296-316. Beck, R.L. 1990. Telling the story: the limits of narrative in the visual representations of the myth of Mithras', abstract in: J. Tatum and G.M. Vernazza (eds), The Ancient Novel: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives, Hanover NH, 106. Beck, R.L. 1998. 'The Mysteries of Mithras: a new account of their genesis," JRS 88, 115-128. Beck, R.L. 2000. 'Ritual, myth, doctrine and initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New evidence from a cult vessel', JRS.90,145-180. Bowersock, G.W. 1994. Fiction as History: Nero to Julian, Berkeley: University of California Press. Clauss, M. 1990. Mithras: Kult una Mysterien, Munich: Beck. Translated (2000) by R.L. Gordon as The Roman Cult of Mithras: the God and his Mysteries, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Coleman, C. 1990. 'Fatal charades: Roman executions staged as mythological enactments', JRS 80,44-73. Cumont, F. 1933. 'L'iniziazione di Nerone da parte di Tiridate d'Armenia', Rivista di filologia 11,145-154. Dieterich, A. 1902. 'Die Weisen aus dem Morgenlande', Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 3,1-14. Duling, D.C., and N. Perrin. 1994. The New Testament: Proclamation and Parainesis, Myth and History, 3rd éd., Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. Edmundson, J. 2001. 'Commodus in the arena: myth, tradition and contemporary spectacle', paper presented at trie meeting of the American Philological Association, January 2001. Gordon, R.L. 1978. 'The date and significance of CIMRM 593 (British Museum Townley Collection)', Journal of Mithraic Studies 2, 148-174. Reprinted as [chapter] VII in Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World: Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art, Aldershot: Variorum, 1996. Gordon, R.L. 1980. 'Panelled complications', Journal of Mithraic Studies 3, 200-227. Reprinted as [chapter] IX in Image and Value (see preceding entry). Horn, H.G. 1994. 'Das Mainzer MithrasgefaB', Maimer Archaologische Zeitschrift 1, 45-80. Merkelbach, R. 1995. 'Das Mainzer MithrasgefaB', ZPE 108,1-6. Rupp, V. 1987. Wetterauer Ware: Eine romische Keramik im Rhein-Main-Gebiet, Schriften des Frankfurter Museums fur Vor- und Friihgeschichte 10. Turcan, R. 1986. 'Feu et sang: apropos d'un relief mithriaque', CRAI1986,217-31. Turcan, R. 2000. Mithra et le mithñacisme, 2nd ed. revised, Paris: Belles Lettres. Van Henten, J.W. 2000. 'Nero redivivus demolished: the coherence of the Nero traditions in the Sibylline Oracles', Journalfor the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 21, 3 17. V+number: see next entry. Vermaseren, M.J. 1956-60. Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae, 2 vols, The Hague: Nijhoff.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

110 300

ROGER BECK

Vemiaseren, MJ. 1971. Mithriaca I: the Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere. Leiden: Brill. Weiss, M. 1998 'Mithras, der Nachthimmel: Eine Dekodierung der rõmischen Mithras-Kultbilder mit Hilfe des Awesta', Traditio 53>. 1-36.

CHAPTER SIX

Apuleius the Novelist, Apuleius the Ostian Householder, and the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres: Further Explorations of an Hypothesis of Filippo Coarelli

(Note: This chapter has been been reset from the original. The pagination of the original article has been imported into the present text. The figures, which did not reproduce well in the original article, have been deleted. A new diagram of the 'Quattro Tempietti' area has been made in place of the original Figure 1. For the layout of the Seven Spheres Mithraeum, see the diagrams in Chapters 4 and 16.)

[p. 551] In 1989, the Roman archaeologist and topographer Filippo Coarelli advanced the daring hypothesis that the proprietor of the Casa di Apuleio at Ostia was the same person as Apuleius of Madauros, the author of the (to us) well-known novel, the Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses). This identification, if true, is more than a mere prosopographical curiosity. The Casa di Apuleio (II.viii.5) is contiguous with, and has access to, the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres ('Sette Sfere', II.viii.6). These two structures, in turn, are integrated into the design of a larger, pre-existing complex, the area of the Tour Temples' ('Quattro Tempietti', II.viii.2). The Ostian householder, then, seems to have been deeply involved in the religious life of his community, in particular with one of the mystery cults. So, of course, both in his own right and in the persona of his hero Lucius, was Apuleius the author. The mysteries of the Golden Ass were those of Isis, while the mysteries celebrated in the complex of the Casa di Apuleio were those of Mithras. It is one of the enigmas of the novel that Mithras is the name chosen by Apuleius for the mystagogue and priest who first inducts Lucius into the mysteries of Isis. If Apuleius the novelist was indeed the Ostian householder and patron of the Mithraists of Sette Sfere, it would cast an interesting light not only on the author and his work but also on Mithraism in the local context.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

112 2

APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

Whether in this instance text and artifact are really linked is likely to remain an open question, but it is one whose implications are worth some further exploration. The quest, moreover, fits the theme of this collection - though it concerns neither Judaism nor Christianity, it is at least set in the ancient Mediterranean world - and I hope that it will pique Peter Richardson's interest. On one of Coarelli's arguments a negative answer has to be returned, but it is not [pp. 551-2] fatal to the identification, and the removal of a false linkage will leave the hypothesis more plausible. Coarelli's Argument Let us first review Coarelli's reasons for identifying the author with the householder, together with his interpretation of the house in its sacred context. Reason 1 Fundamental to the argument is the relationship of the house to the Mithraeum and to the complex of the 'Quattro Tempietti'. The house and the Mithraeum are contemporary mid second-century CE buildings with a common wall (on the Mithraeum's east side and the west end of the house), and there was interconnection between them. Coarelli (1989, p. 38) notes that the more public rooms and, significantly, the kitchen were located at the Mithraeum end of the house. The area of the Four Temples is an older, Republican complex. Against earlier views that the house represented a new private intrusion on a sacred public precinct, Coarelli (pp. 27-32) argues persuasively that the complex had integrated residential and religious functions from the outset. Whatever the case, it is clear that the house and the Mithraeum were integrally planned and that the Mithraeum was coordinated with the row of the Four Temples: it is located directly behind them and precisely aligned with the centre of the row (see Figure 1). Reason 2 The owner of the house is securely attested by his name on two lead water pipes discovered in the area immediately to the south (Coarelli, pp. 27, 33). He was L. Apuleius Marcellus. The gentile name is not otherwise attested at Ostia. The praenomen is the same as the author's, although that is often interpreted as a reflex from the name of the novel's hero (Coarelli, pp. 39-40). The significance of the cognomen, in Coarelli's account, will be immediately apparent in the next paragraph. Apuleius the author certainly lived in Rome for a time, and certain details of Book 11 of the Golden Ass which are set there are generally believed to be autobiographical. Some maintain that he wrote the Golden Ass for a specifically Roman audience (Dowden, 1994). That Ostia might have been his residential base at the time cannot be excluded. The chronology would fit with that of the Casa di Apuleio (Coarelli, pp. 38-40). [pp. 552-3]

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

113 3

Figure 1 Spatial relationships of the 'Quattro Tempietti', the 'Casa di Apuleio' and the 'Sette Sfere' Mithraeum, Ostia Reason 3 In the precinct of the Four Temples there is what was probably the base of an equestrian statue, and a stone found nearby (CIL 14.4447)1 probably records its dedication and the person represented (Coarelli, p. 34). He was a man of distinction, the city's 'patron', who also attained the consulship, Q. Asinius Marcellus. The statue would date to the time of the reconstruction of the precinct area in mid century (shortly after 148 CE, from the stamps on the drainage tiles: Coarelli, p. 32). It was a public dedication, but Coarelli (p. 35) reasonably argues that the householder Apuleius would have played an influential part in the choice of honorand for the precinct, as in its restructuring. Coarelli's reason for pursuing the link between L. Apuleius Marcellus and Q. Asinius Marcellus lies, of course, in the Golden Ass. At Met. 11.27, m e v e i 7 point at which the author breaks cover, as it were, and assigns to his narrator Lucius his own home town of Madauros, an Asinius Marcellus is introduced. Lucius has a dream in which a devotee of Osiris (Serapis) appears to invite 1 CIL = Corpus inscriptionum latinarum (1863-1974), ed. by the Berlin Royal Academy, Berlin: Reimer.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

114 4

APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

him into the god's initiation, an event which Lucius was already expecting. The devotee could be recognized by a lame left foot. On awakening, Lucius hastens to find the devotee, whom he quickly indentifies among the god's pastophori. He is Asinius Marcellus, and he has himself had the complementary dream in which he was ordered by the god to induct the 'man from Madauros' (Madaurensem). The name Asinius, as the narrator makes explicit, is appropriate in the light of Lucius' retransformation from asinine to human shape. But of more consequence is the fact that precisely here Lucius the narrator is now assimilated to Apuleius the Madauran author. If Lucius/Apuleius or (to bring the two into a single focus) L. Apuleius is 'getting real', surely reality cannot here be denied Asinius Marcellus. It seems, then, that Apuleius is paying a compliment here to an actual Roman friend (and, presumably, fellow devotee of Isis and Osiris), Asinius Marcellus. The pair, on Coarelli's hypothesis, are identical with the contemporary L. Apuleius Marcellus and Q. Asinius Marcellus, linked as developer and honorand in the same Ostian precinct. To suppose otherwise is stretching coincidence too far. Apuleius' Ostian cognomen is explained likewise as a tribute to a senior friend and likely patron, [pp. 553-4] Reason 4 Remarkably, Apuleius the novelist gives the Isiac priest who rescues and inducts Lucius into the mysteries the name of Mithras. This somewhat surprising choice is understandable if the author is the Ostian Apuleius who integrated and privileged a Mithraeum in the redesign of his house and the whole precinct. More needs to be said on this choice of nomenclature, given its centrality to J.J. Winkler's reading of the novel in Auctor & Actor (1985), which is probably still the most influential critical work (at least in English) on the Golden Ass. I shall return to this topic below. Reason 5 Coarelli (pp. 36-8) rightly draws attention to the cosmology of the Mithraeum of the Seven ^Spheres (see Beck 1979,1988: pp. 12-14, 1992: pp. 4-7, 1994; Gordon, 1976, 1988: pp. 50-60). As its (modern) name indicates, its floor mosaic depicts seven stylized semicircles representing the seven spheres of the planets; the mosaics on its side benches (on which initiates would have reclined, as in all Mithraea, for their cult meal) are embellished with symbols of the signs of the zodiac and images of six of the planetary gods (the seventh, the Sun, being represented by Mithras, the 'unconquered Sun god', in his image as bullslayer at the head of the aisle). Coarelli compares this cosmology with the cosmology found in the works of Apuleius, and in particular with the order of the planets found in two passages (De dogmate Platonis 1.11, De mundo 2), which he concludes is the same as that found in the disposition of the images of the planetary gods around the Seven Spheres Mithraeum.

115

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

5

Coarelli is correct about the broad similarity between the ideologies of the Mithraeum (and Mithraism in general) and Apuleius. Both can be characterized as Platonic. But so, at that time, could much else. The broad comparison, then, is of little use in postulating a precise causal link. The particular comparison of planetary orders, however, if it were correct, would be much more telling, especially if, as Coarelli contends, it was also unique, that is, unattested elsewhere in antiquity. Unfortunately, on this Coarelli is entirely mistaken, and our first task will be to prune away this spurious link. There is, however, a better, if less decisive, connection between novel and Mithraeum to be put in its place, [pp. 554-5] Cosmic Sequence In addressing the shared planetary order which Coarelli postulates, one should note first that its two occurrences in Apuleius are in works whose authenticity is disputed (Harrison, 1996). If the order were indeed found only in the Mithraeum and in the two Apuleian passages, and if we were to accept the identity of the two Apuleii, then the shared order might help to confirm the genuineness of De dogmate Platonis and De mundo. However, as will be shown, the premise of the unique shared order is false, so the two works in question remain of doubtful relevance to any inquiry about the identity of Apuleius the author. The order of the planets in De dogmate 1.11 and De mundo 2 is as follows (from farthest to nearest): Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Sun and Moon. It is not unique to Apuleius (or Pseudo-Apuleius) and Serte Sfere; rather it is the order given by Plato himself in the Republic (616-17) and the Timaeus (38). What distinguishes it from the order which was in more general use in antiquity is the relative positions of Mercury, Venus and the Sun. With good reason, the ancients determined that the slower a planet moved, that is, the longer it took to complete its apparent circuit of the Earth (technically, its sidereal period), the farther its orbit from the Earth. But Mercury, Venus and the Sun have the same mean (geocentric) sidereal period: on average - but the Sun precisely - they take a year to complete a circuit. These three planets, then, were located between Mars (approximately two years) and the Moon (one month), but their assigned location relative to each other, being arbitrary, varied. Mainly in order to locate the Sun in a ruling position in the middle of the sequence, Hellenistic and subsequent astronomy favoured the order (progressing inwards): Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon. But the older Platonic order persisted too. However, the Platonic order is not what one finds in the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres - nor, for that matter, anywhere else in Mithraism (on esoteric and exoteric planetary orders, see Beck, 1988). Coarelli argues that the order in

BECK ON MITHRAISM

116 6

APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

the Mithraeum is a modification of the Platonic order. What one finds, following his zig-zag across and down the side benches, is: [pp. 555-6]

First, of course, the Sun has been excluded. But the Sun, as Coarelli admits, is present in the Mithraeum in the image of the bull-killing Mithras at the head of the aisle. Any reading of the Mithraeum's planetary order should accordingly take into account the position of that image relative to the other six images. As a glance at the layout above will show, the Sun's position at Sette Sfere is incompatible with its location in the Platonic sequence. Second, and more seriously, the Platonic sequence can only be read back into the other six planets by transposing Venus and Mars (see layout). Coarelli finds a reason for the transposition in the need to move the image of Mars close to the symbol of the dagger set into the floor mosaic nearby. But this begs the question; or rather, it assumes that there is a question (why did the designers effect the transposition?) to be answered. The simpler, and surely correct, supposition is that with three of the seven planets out of place no intention to exemplify the Platonic order at Sette Sfere is discernible.2 The Novel and the Mithraeum If a particular planetary sequence cannot link the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres to the author Apuleius, there is another shared concern which can. More accurately, there is a shared concern which, if one entertains the hypothesis of a single Apuleius behind both novel and Mithraeum, comes sharply and profitably into focus. [556-557] 2

1 am not convinced that a better explanation than my own (Beck, 1979) has yet been offered: that the order commemorates the positions of the planets relative to the Sun at the spring equinox of 172 CE. This can be reconciled most simply with the chronology of Coarelli's hypothesis on the assumption that the mosaics of the planetary gods on the faces of the side benches were added (adapted?) at that date. They are, in a sense, redundant to the Mithraeum's basic cosmology, the full set of planets being already represented by the spheres in the aisle mosaic.

117

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

7

One may start with the reason why Sette Sfere is embellished as it is with elaborate cosmological symbols (Beck, 1992: pp. 4-7, 1994: pp. 106-10). Emphatically, it was not an arbitrary matter of taste. Though it might seem a contradiction, the cosmological decor was actually quite functional. We know this not by inference from the archaeological remains, but directly from the written testimony of an ancient author. In his essay 'On the Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey' (De antro nympharum), the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry informs us of the function and design of the archetypal Mithraeum, and thus of the intent of all Mithraea (Sette Sfere happens to be the extant Mithraeum in which that design is most explicit): Similarly, the Persians [that is, the Mithraists] call the place a cave where they introduce an initiate to the mysteries, revealing to him the path by which souls decend and go back again. For Eubulus tells us that Zoroaster was the first to dedicate a natural cave in honour of Mithras, the creator and father of all ... This cave bore for him the image of the cosmos which Mithras had created, and the things which the cave contained, by their proportionate arrangement, provided him with symbols of the elements and climates of the cosmos. (De antro 6, trans. Arethusa edn.) In other words, a Mithraeum is called a 'cave' (a fact, incidentally, confirmed by archaeology) because a cave is an image of the universe and the Mithraeum is intended to be, precisely, a microcosm. Accordingly, it is equipped (exactly as we find it at Sette Sfere) with cosmological symbols. The function of this form is to effect, presumably by ritual action, induction into a mystery of the soul's descent and return (Beck, i988).3 Specifically, then, what L. Apuleius Marcellus' Mithraic neighbours were up to, what they used their 'cosmic model' for, was the miming of a soul journey. Being a religious mystery, that soul journey was more than mere cosmic tourism; it represented, presumably, the Mithraic soul's salvation under the aegis of the cult's god, Mithras the Unconquered Sun. [pp. 557-8] Turning to the Golden Ass, we find set in the centre of the novel the story of Cupid and Psyche, the story, that is, of Soul in her quest for Love, a story of union, separation and re-union, a story of journeyings both literal and spiritual, a story of descent to the underworld and return. Most would agree that it is a paradigm of Lucius' own journey, a journey that will bring him out of the realm of blind and malicious Fate to the kindly Providence of Isis. However that may 3 A further ancient testimony, which specifically refers to the seven planetary spheres, is Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22 (quoting Celsus): 'These things are intimated in the doctrine of the Persians and their Mysteries of Mithras. They have a symbol of the two celestial revolutions, that of the fixed stars and that assigned to the planets, and of the road of the soul through and out of them (diexodou). The symbol is this: a seven-gated ladder (klimax heptapylos) with an eighth at the top'.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

118 8

APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

be, we have incontrovertible evidence that there were Mithraists who interpreted the figures of Cupid and Psyche as germane to their own mysteries. A relief set in the wall of a Mithraeum at Capua depicts the pair (Vermaseren, 1971, pp. 223, PL 20). It might indeed have been commissioned for the Mithraeum; it might also have been a pre-existing piece recycled into the Mithraeum opportunistically as a metaphor of its initiations. The Gods The Casa di Apuleio and Mitreo delle Sette Sfere were constructed as elements in the remodelling of the complex of the Quattro Tempietti. The Mithraeum, as we noted, is centred on the north side immediately behind the row of temples. Coarelli does not discuss the gods of the temples, although, arguably, they are germane to the Golden Ass, particularly to the story of Cupid and Psyche. The original developer of the complex and the builder of the temples in the first century BCE was a prominent Ostian, P. Lucilius Gamala (Coarelli, p. 29). There is general agreement that the temples are the four dedicated to Venus, Fortuna, Ceres and Spes (with some uncertainty about the last) which are listed among Gamala's achievements in CIL 14.375. An inscribed altar found in the easternmost confirms it as that of Venus (CIL 14.4127). Each of these gods, or the abstract which she personifies, is of some importance to the novel and to its inset allegory, the story of Cupid and Psyche: 1

Venus, at one level, is both the villain of the allegory and a somewhat comical figure. Jealous of Psyche's beauty, she sets her son to punish the presumptuous girl, and when Cupid falls in love with her, she persecutes Psyche relentlessly until Jupiter (who, incidentally, has an open-air shrine, the Sacello di Giove (II.viii.4), in the same Ostian precinct) calls a happy ending and blesses the union of the couple. But Venus is also a more serious and dangerous figure both as the goddess of sensual love - hence a symbol of one half of Lucius' problems - and, more benignly, as a major manifestation of Isis, invoked as [pp. 558-9] Venus caelestis by Lucius when he hails the rising full moon at the turning point of his fortunes (11.2).

2

Ceres too plays a role, though a more minor one, in the story of Cupid and Psyche. It is to her shrine that Psyche comes in her wanderings, tidying the disarrayed harvest offerings and appealing (though in vain) for protection in return (6.1-3). Psyche invokes Ceres, qua Demeter of Eleusis, as a mystery god. These too are mysteries of descent and return (demeacula ... remeacula) - as, with very different modalities, were those

119

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

9

practised in the neighbouring Ostian Mithraeum. It is remarkable that in the frame narrative, when Lucius makes his appeal to the lunar Isis (11.2), he invokes her first as Ceres alma and second, as we have noted, as Venus caelestis. 3

The centrality of Fortuna to the Golden Ass needs no demonstation, for it is agreed by all. Lucius, as the priest (whose name, we shall subsequently learn, is Mithras) explains, has been brought unawares through the persecutions of 'blind Fortune' (caecitas fortunae) 'into the protection of Fortunae with sight' (in tutelam ... fortune ... videntis) (11.15). This Providence is of course Isis.

4

In the Golden Ass, the gods Venus, Ceres and Fortuna are all explicitly related to Isis as her manifestations. The same cannot be claimed of Spes (Hope), though hope too plays its part in the novel. Hope, often enough cruelly disappointed, is what keeps both Psyche and Lucius going. Observe how at the turning point, immediately before Lucius invokes the lunar Isis as Ceres and Venus, hope (of salvation) is linked with fate to describe the crisis (11.1): fato scilicet iam meis tot tantisque cladibus satiato et spem salutis, licet tardam, sumministrante ('Fate was now glutted with my ... disasters and served up, albeit late, some hope of salvation').

These points of comparison should not be pressed too far. I do not wish to suggest that the Golden Ass is some sort of roman-à-clef It is more a matter of enhancing one's reading of the novel on the working hypothesis of the identity of its author with the redesigner of the Ostian sacred precinct. Two general considerations about ancient temples are worth bearing in mind here. First, visiting temples and contemplating their design and sacred furniture (statuary, and so on) were in themselves modes of spiritual journeying (Eisner, 1995, pp. 91-3) - thus analogous to the pilgrimage (I use the word advisedly) of a Lucius or a Psyche. Second, in rhetoric the temple, qua building, and the disposition of its features and furniture could serve as a standard mnemonic for fixing the sequence of an argument or narrative (Eisner, 1995, pp. 76-80). The [pp. 559-60] congruency of a narratological construct with a spatial construct visually comprehended would thus be greater for the ancient mentality than for ours. In form, a temple complex could well be a potential narrative. Let us now turn to the last of the temples integrated with the complex, the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres. The god Mithras plays no part in the Golden Ass, although his name, as we have seen, is appropriated for the priest of Isis and Lucius' initiator. There is, however, a Mithraic deity of some importance who does figure in the novel. We have met her already. She is the Moon, in the guise of which Isis herself appears at the turning point of Lucius' fortunes,

120

BECK ON MITHRAISM 10

APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

when a relenting fate at last seems to offer hope, and whom he then invokes as Ceres and Venus. The Moon is precisely positioned in the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres. Not only is her image as planetary god close to the entrance (on the left bench as one enters) but, more importantly, hers is the first of the seven spheres in the floor mosaic as one prepares to proceed up the aisle.4 The aisle of the Mithraeum with its progression of arciform planetary spheres forms a centred perpendicular axis to the row of the Four Temples. At the foot of the aisle and the start of this planetary progression one stands at the sphere of the Moon. Otherwise stated, if we are to integrate Mithraeum, temples, and novel, it is at this point, spatially and temporally, that one encounters Isis-Luna. What are the implications, if we allow the merging of the two Apuleii? The first point to be made is that while the temples of the original complex were (presumably) places of public access, the Mithraeum most certainly was not. It follows that if the entire redesigned complex (that is, Four Temples, Shrine of Jupiter, Nymphaeum, Mithraeum, Casa di Apuleio) functioned as one of the templates of the novel and its inset allegory, it was a template incomprehensible to those outside the community of the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres. On another tack, however, one would hardly suggest that the novel was intended for a Mithraic audience. Such a suggestion would be incredible in itself and, more to the point, contrary to what the novel tells us about its readership. The audience of the Golden Ass is the sympathetic outsider. This is both implicit in the narration and explicit at the climax of Lucius' initiation [pp. 56061] (11.23). However well intentioned (desiderio forsitan religioso), the reader's curiosity concerning Lucius' experience has to be denied. The narrator will convey it enigmatically. What the reader hears will be true - but incomprehensible. Here are the two sentences containing the revelation: Igitur audi, sed crede, quae vera sunt... Ecce tibi rettuli quae, quamvis audita, ignores tamen necesse est ('so hear the truth, but take it on trust ... Look, I've told you things you can't possibly know, even though you've heard them'). In fact, what Lucius relates is utterly transparent. It is an encounter with the gods, in particular Isis-Proserpina, expressed in the idiom of celestial/ underworld soul-travel. One wonders why Lucius emphasizes its opacity. Coarelli's hypothesis furnishes a possible answer. The Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres is a part of the complex which furnishes what I have called one of the templates for the composition of Golden Ass. But it is a secret part, reserved, as it were, for Apuleius as the redesigner of the complex, the householder with access to the Mithraeum, and the novel's author. What will not be understood 4 Although the spheres are represented as indistinguishable arcs, the inmost in the nest of arcs is necessarily the Moon's, since her sphere is closest to earth. On the position of Luna's image as planetary goddess, see n. 1 above.

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

121 11

by the 'minds of the uninitiated' (profanorum intelligentias) is the significance of the Mithraic overtones latent in the description of the Isiac initiation and explicit in the name of the Isiac priest, Mithras. Once attention is drawn to them, the latent Mithraic overtones are obvious enough. Principally, they reside in the description's solar emphasis. Lucius may 'tread the threshold of Proserpina' (= Isis), but the one god whom he singles out as there encountered is the Sun (= Mithras). Even the language is redolent of Sol-Mithras illuminated in the dark of the Mithraic 'cave': node media vidi solem candido coruscantem lumine. At the close of the initiation, when Lucius is revealed to an admiring public (11.24), it is in the guise of the Sun that he appears: sic ad instar Solis exornato me ... Finally, the initiatory experience itself is described as a journey (there and back again) which may be read as both infernal and celestial: I came to the boundary of death and, having trodden the threshold of

Proserpina, / travelled through all the elements and returned. In the middle of the

night I saw the Sun flashing with bright light. I came face to face with the gods below and the gods above and paid reverence to them from close at hand, (trans. Hanson)

When we recall that a standard meaning of elementum is 'planet', the celestial dimensions of the journey are clear. But the celestial voyage is characteristic of [pp. 561-2] Mithraism, and nowhere more explicitly than at Sette Sfere. An initiate processing up and down its central aisle does indeed 'travel through all the elements and return'; at the foot of the aisle he does indeed 'tread the threshold of Proserpina', for the first of the spheres is the Moon's; and at the head of the aisle he has approached and adored de proximo the Sun in the person of the bull-killing Mithras. As Merkelbach (1995, p. viii) has taught us, some of the language of the Golden Ass (especially in Book 11) is to be read quite literally at the level of ritual performance. Applying Coarelli's hypothesis, we find that the full significance of Lucius' initiation, of which the uninitiate reader 'will necessarily remain unawares' (despite the flaunting of Mithras' name), is that it tracks through a particular spatial complex of which the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres is the key component, at least in the author's template. Mithras That Apuleius uses the name 'Mithras' for his Isiac priest is one of the major props of Coarelli's hypothesis. The choice of name has long fascinated critics of the Golden Ass. It is placed by Winkler at a climax in his interpretation of the novel (1985, pp. 233-46). Having rejected a number of other explanations of the

BECK ON MITHRAISM

122 12

APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

narrator's stance in the concluding book, including- to me (Beck 1996a, pp. 140, 146-7) anyway - the very satisfactory one that Lucius adopts the role of aretalogos and temple exegetes, Winkler suggests a more subversive, indeterminate, humorous stance. That stance is exemplified in naming the Isiac priest 'Mithras'. It is not meant to convey additional religious authority, but rather to reproduce, through surprise, the shock of an initiatory experience. In a rather silly analogy, Winkler compares it to 'introducing the pope in the last chapter of a detective novel and calling him Martin Luther' (p. 245). Coarelli's hypothesis, I suggest, retains the element of playfulness which Winkler rightly sees in the choice of name but gives it a point which it otherwise lacks. Shock value is an unconvincing explanation. Theophoric names referring to a god in the context of another's cult are not uncommon, even among the Christians where one might suppose them especially offensive. As an example, let me cite bishop Mithres of Hypaipa who participated in the Council of Nicaea (Gelzer et al., 1995 [1898], p. 225). The name, then, is not unrealistic or portentous in itself. But it is, if Coarelli is right, a highly charged 'mystery' whose significance lies in the template of the Ostian sacred complex, [pp. 562-3] Conclusion So far we have looked at some of the implications of Coarelli's hypothesis for a reading of the Golden Ass. In this Conclusion we should turn to the implications for Mithraism and especially the Sette Sfere community (on Mithraism in Ostia, see Laeuchli, 1967; Bakker, 1994, pp. 111-17, 204-7; Rainer, 1984). There is space to make two brief points. First, there is, to my knowledge, no other Mithraeum in the Roman world so integrated into the plan of a major building complex. Usually, in an urban context Mithraea were located opportunistically in rooms within larger buildings serving other functions, mostly non-religious (White, 1990, pp. 47-59). There was good reason for this. Ideologically, the Mithraeum is a 'cave' representing the universe; thus, its exterior and its relationship to other structures are irrelevant. At Sette Sfere, following the norm, no attention was paid to the exterior; as far as one can tell, in appearance it was simply a wing of the Casa di Apuleio. Actually, though, it is integrated into the plan of the Quattro Tempietti complex. Indeed, in a sense it is at the apex of the complex. However, that 'fact' would not be apparent to the casual visitor. In other words, the 'fact', and hence the full plan of the complex, are esoteric truths, comprehensible only to a Mithraist - and of course to Apuleius the householder and designer. It is worth noting that our 'fact' is entirely independent of the householder's identity. It does, though, suggest a person of some forcefulness and originality, in that he

MYTHMAKING AND OTHER FICTIONS APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

123 13

took this particular Mithraic community down the unusual path of integrating their 'cave' into a larger complex of sacred space, albeit without compromising their 'mystery'. This brings us to the second point: Apuleius the novelist, if the householder is he, as Mithraic patron, and the Mithraists as clients of Apuleius the novelist. On the former, it is unnecessary to imagine the novelist as a full-blown Mithraic initiate, let alone as a crypto-Father of the community. Patronage by the elite without full participation is attested elsewhere. As I have argued (Beck, 1996b, p. 179), the dedications by the laticlave tribunes, persons of senatorial rank, in the Mithraeum in their house in Aquincum is best explained as a local practice of elite patronage rather than as a succession of elite Mithraists recruited there and only there. As for the Sette Sfere Mithraists as clients of Apuleius the novelist, I have already argued that they were [pp. 563-4] certainly not the intended audience of the Golden Ass. Indeed, it is unnecessary to suppose that even a single Mithraist at Sette Sfere was cognizant of the authorial template in which his Mithraeum figured, although some of them must have been aware of the integration of Mithraeum with temple complex on which the template was based. Nevertheless, Coarelli's hypothesis does imply a certain level of sophistication in the mysteries and their initiates. Mithraeum and house are so closely integrated that one cannot suppose that an immense spiritual and cultural gulf separated Apuleius and his Mithraic clients. Sette Sfere in any case, with its elaborate astrology, is one of the most 'learned' of Mithraea; so one may readily postulate a two-way exchange between its initiates and Apuleius, that most religiously curious of authors. The idea in itself is not preposterous. Indeed, we know for a fact that Mithraists at some stage did communicate with the intelligentsia. Accurate information reached the Neoplatonists and Porphyry in particular, and Pallas and Eubulus (Turcan, 1975) must have talked to Mithraists in order to write their books on Mithras. There is a tendency these days to 'dumb down' the Mithraists, to set them in an unintellectual world apart (for example, Swerdlow, 1991; contra, Rainer, 1984, arguing for a higher social and cultural level for the Ostian Mithraists). If nothing else, Coarelli's hypothesis poses in a vivid way the more likely picture of the Mithraists as including folk both intelligent and imaginative. References Bakker, J.T: (1994), Living and Working with the Gods: Studies of Evidence for Private Religion ... in the City of Ostia (100-500 AD). Amsterdam: Gieben. Beck, R. (1979), 'Sette Sfere, Sette Porte, and the Spring Equinoxes of AD 172 and 173', in U. Bianchi (éd.), Mysteria Mxthrae, Leiden: Brill, 515-30.

BECK ON MITHRAISM

124 14

APULEIUS THE NOVELIST, APULEIUS THE OSTIAN HOUSEHOLDER

— (1988), Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries ofMithras, Leiden: Brill. — (1992), The Mithras Cult as Association7, SR 21, 3-13. — (1994), 'Cosmic Models: Some uses of Hellenistic Science in Roman Religion', in T.D. Barnes (éd.), The Sciences in Greco-Roman Society, Apeiron, 27.4, Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing, pp. 99-117. — (1996a), 'Mystery Religions, Aretalogy and the Ancient Novel', in G. Schmeling (éd.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill, pp. 131-50. — (1996b), The Mysteries of Mithras', in J.S. Kloppenborg and S.G. Wilson (eds), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, London: Routledge, pp. 176-85. Coarelli, F. (1989), 'Apuleio a Ostia?', Dialoghi di Archeologia, 7, 27-42. Dowden, K. (1994), The Roman Audience of The Golden Ass', in James Tatum (éd.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 419-34. Eisner, J. (1995), Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gelzer, H., Hilgenfeld; H. and Cuntz, O. (1995) [1898], Patrum Nicaenorum Nomina, Stuttgart: Teubner. Gordon, R.L. (1976), The Sacred Geography of a Mithraeum: The example of Sette Sfere', Journal ofMithraic Studies, 1, pp. 119-65. — (1988), 'Authority, salvation and mystery in the Mysteries of Mithras', in J. Huskinson, M. Beard and J. Reynolds (eds), Image and Mystery in the Roman World, Cambridge: Alan Sutton, pp. 45-80. Hanson, J.A. (ed. and trans., 1989), Apuleius, Metamorphoses, Loeb Classical Library, 44, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harrison, S.J. (1996), 'Apuleius', in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 131-2. Laeuchli, S. (1967), Mithraism in Ostia, Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Merkelbach, R. (1995), ¡sis Regina - Zeus Sarapis, Stuttgart: Teubner. Rainer, M. (1984), 'Die Mithrasverehrung in Ostia', Klio, 66, pp. 104-13. Swerdlow, N.M. (1991), 'On the cosmical mysteries of Mithras', Classical Philology, 86: pp. 48-63. Turcan, R. (1975), Mithras Platonicus, Leiden: Brill. Vermaseren, M.J. (1971), Mithriaca I: The Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere, Leiden: Brill. White, L.M. (1990), Building God's House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews, and Christians, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Winkler, J.J. (1985), Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading ofApuleius's Golden Ass, Berkeley: University of California Press.

IV MITHRAS AND THE HEAVENS: FIRST EXPLORATIONS

Introduction The four articles in Part IV all appeared in the second half of the 1970s in the Journal of Mithraic Studies. They represent my first engagements with Mithraism and they all discuss the astronomical and astrological elements of the Mithraic mysteries. As 'first explorations' they have their faults and limitations, the main one being the assumption that a lost Mithraic system, ideologically coherent, was there for scholarly reconstruction, could we but crack the code of the iconography of the monuments. I was also innocent of semiotic theory and naively optimistic about reading symbols for their 'meanings'. Nevertheless, these articles still have their uses. Nothing in them has been shown to be preposterously 'off the mark'. And as explorations of the role of astral lore and learning in the making of representations (both mental and public) in the Mithraic mysteries they remain, I believe, viable and valid. The first article (Chapter 7) proposes an emendation to the text of Porphyry's De antro Nympharum [Chapter 24] concerning the 'proper seat' of Mithras 'at the equinoxes'. The emendation restores the admittedly tortuous astrological logic with which Mithras' celestial location was explained by reference to the iconography of the tauroctony. Conversely, the sacred fact of Mithras' location at the equinoxes warrants and explains the iconography. Properly emended, the text is a rare and illuminating piece of esoteric cult explication. To my knowledge, my emendation has not been challenged. The second article (Chapter 8) explores the astronomical and astrological significances (note plural!) of the Mithraic torchbearers, Cautes with his raised torch and Cautopates with his lowered torch. These attendant deities are a perennial concern of mine, for they instantiate in the most explicit way what I now describe as the second 'axiom' or 'ultimate sacred postulate' of the Mithraic mysteries, 'harmony of tension in opposition' (Chapter 3). The torchbearers are associated inter alia with the opposed zodiacal signs of Taurus and Scorpius. When problematized, this association poses one of the most fruitful questions one can ask of Mithraic astral lore: if Mithras has his 'proper seat ... at the equinoxes', why are his divine companions not also associated with the equinoctial signs, Aries and Libra, but instead with the two signs following the equinoctial signs, Taurus and Scorpius? In subsequent studies (since neither time nor space permit it here) I shall attempt additional answers to those proposed in Chapter 8. Meanwhile, in light of David Ulansey's hypothesis constructed on Taurus and Scorpius as the prior, archaic equinoctial signs (see Chapter 11), I draw attention to my challenge to this hypothesis in its earlier, Cumontian form on p. 5.1 see no reason to modify my avant-la-lettre scepticism of Ulansey's theory. The third and fourth articles (Chapters 9 and 10), on the highly unusual zodiac on the ceiling of the Ponza Mithraeum, is the most far-ranging, geographically and temporally, of my explorations of astronomical and astrological symbolism in the Mithraic mysteries. Though I do not regret its scope (at that early stage in my researches it was better to go

128

BECK ON MITHRAISM

too far than not far enough), in retrospect I see the necessity of restraining what one might call 'symbol-hopping' so as not to dissipate the impact of the most fruitful and convincing of the links drawn. Ironically, the importance of my study of the Ponza zodiac rests on the answer to the one question I failed to ask, but which was fortunately provided in time for me to include in a postscript to Part II of the article (Chapter 10). In the article I argue at some length that the snake extending in a semicircle alongside the zodiac from Leo to Aquarius represents the eclipsing monster whose head and tail coincide with the lunar nodes (anabibazon = the ascending node; katabibazon = the descending node). In hindsight, I should of course have asked whether an eclipse, visible from Ponza or nearby, had in fact occurred during the period when the Ponza Mithraeum is likely to have been active. Perhaps a positive answer, which in the event was volunteered by an astronomer with whom I was in correspondence, Dr W. Schlosser of the Ruhr-Universitàt, Bochum, seemed too good to be true. A solar eclipse was indeed visible from or near Ponza on 14 August 212, and (as 'icing on the cake') the ascending node was then in Leo and the descending node in Aquarius, the signs against which the head and the tip of the tail of the Ponza snake are set. The probability that the eclipse of 212 and the design of the Ponza zodiac are causally unrelated is surely minuscule. 1 Someone who had witnessed or knew about the eclipse commissioned the zodiac. From that we can make two inferences: first, that the commissioner and/or the designer (if they were different persons) considered the celestial phenomenon not only noteworthy in itself but also germane to the Mithraic mysteries; second, that he (in this context inevitably a 'he') was both imaginative and learned enough to deploy effective and economical eclipse imagery and to do so in such a way as to communicate precise astronomical information (ascending node in Leo, descending node in Aquarius). Here is an example of what I call Mithraic 'star-talk', symbols made to function as quasi-language signs (see Introduction, p. xxv). The Ponza snake is actually a 'first' in western astronomical symbolism. Much later, and probably from Indian or Iranian astronomy, the terms caput draconis and cauda draconis (the 'dragon's head'; 'the dragon's tail') were adopted in the West as synonyms for anabibazon and katabibazon.2 One cannot, of course, hail our Ponza Mithraic designer as the symbol's inventor, but he is its first known occidental user.

1 In a new essay (Chapter 12) I discuss arguments from the improbability of unintended coincidence, and I consider a case in which the probability can be quantified. 2 In my article (Chapter 10, p. 88), I erroneously implied that Dorotheus of Sidon (first century BCE) used the terms 'dragon's head' and 'dragon's tail' for the nodes. I am grateful to David Pingree (personal communication) for pointing out that these terms are used only in the chapter heading composed by the Arabic translator. While in confessional mode, I should mention that my 1987 article on the history of the symbolism of the lunar nodes (The Anabibazontes in the Manichaean Kephalaia', Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 69, 193-5) to which I would refer the reader in search of information about these peculiar pseudo-planetary entities, gives an erroneous value for their period of revolution: for 28 2/3 years read 18 2/3 years. Nothing in the article hinges on this careless mistake. The reader may also be assured (or not) that this will be the last such occasion in the present collection when I am aware of a non-trivial error that must be corrected.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Seat of Mithras at the Equinoxes: Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum 24

Porphyry's De antro nympharum, an allegorical explication of Odyssey 13.102-112, contains a number of references to Mithras and his cult. Given the paucity of the literary evidence on Mithraism, these are of considerable importance. One of the most interesting and most puzzling is the passage in ch. 24 in which Porphyry discusses the assignment of the equinoxes to Mithras as his 'proper seat', citing in support certain details of iconography together with their astrological implications. Unfortunately, the text is somewhat unsound at this point, and despite emendation the argument of the passage remains quite illogical and its data (at least in part) strangely irrelevant to the point that they are supposed to illustrate. Perhaps because the astrological allusions are in themselves rather complicated and obscure, the full extent of the passage's deficiencies has not as yet been realized. In what follows, I shall try to demonstrate first that a major emendation is called for and secondly that the acceptance of a lacuna at a particular point in the text will restore logic and cogency to Porphyry's argument and at the same time solve the purely textual difficulties. While the exact wording of the lacuna cannot be indisputably established, I would claim that its significant contents can be fully recovered and that its origin can be ascribed to haplography with reasonable certainty. Below are given (1) the text as I would emend it, showing the postulated lacuna with an approximation to the original wording, (2) August Nauck's version in the Teubner edition (Porphyry, 1887: 73),2 and (3) the version of the recent Arethusa edition (Porphyry, 1969: 24) :3 ( i ) rep fièv odv MLSpa OÍKCIOV KaOéSpav rrjv Karà ràs lcn)p.epLas vnéra^av' 810 Kpiov ¡lev €pei %Apt)Lov £c¡)8¿ov rrjv p.axaipav, erroxeîrai 8e ravpco *Apo8¿rr¡s' cos /cat o ravpos. 8rjfuovpyòs 8è cov o Midpas Kaï yevécrecos 8€(T7r¿T7)s Karà ròv íarffjucpivòv rera/crat KVKXOV . . . 8r¡fuovpyos 8k cov M , 8r¡p,iovpyos cõv V. (2) reo fM€V o$v Mídpa OÍKCÍOV Ka648pav rrjv Karà ràs larrjfiepíaç vnéraÇav' 810 Kpiov pÀv ép€i *Aprj¿ov £w8¿ov rr)v /iá^atpav, hro^írai 8e ravpco iApo8Lrr)s> eos /cat ó ravpos 8r)fuovpyòs cov [O Midpas] /cat yeveoecos 8€crrr6rr¡sm Kara ròv ítTTjfiepwòv 8è réra/crai KVKXOV . . . 4 (3) T