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The Genius of Mithraism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Arthur Darby Nock
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Extract

Since Sir Henry Stuart Jones has included Mithraism among his many interests, it seems appropriate to offer to him on this occasion some remarks on its general significance. No phenomenon in Imperial paganism has attracted as much attention, and this is natural.

Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum

quis in versamur, quis vivimus rebus, potesse.

Let us make another provisional attempt to determine the pretium verum of Mithraism.

We see in it something of eastern worship detached from its native content and developed in a new milieu; apparently it had no oecumenical organization; certainly it tolerated other gods, and lent itself to an unchecked local diversification of forms. In all these respects it was essentially on a par with the other ‘oriental religions in Roman paganism.’ Nevertheless, it differed from them in various significant ways. The normal exclusion of women and the moral demands made of the initiate have often been remarked; but that is not all.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1: Papers Presented to Sir Henry Stuart Jones , 1937 , pp. 108 - 113
Copyright
Copyright ©Arthur Darby Nock 1937. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Article in Hastings, J., Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics viii, 752 ff.Google Scholar; Quarterly Review ccxxi (1914), 103 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 Cf. E. Wüst in P-W s.v. ‘Mithras, col. 2145 f.; Nock, in Gnomon vi (1930), 33 ffGoogle Scholar.

2a The priests of cult societies for the Syrian deities need not have been professional.

3 Julian is speaking in terms of his own personal devotion when he says of the Romans, Orat. iv, p. 155 B: εἴ σοι μετὰ τοῦτο ϕαίην ὡς καὶ τὸν Μίθραν τιμῶμεν καὶ ἄγομεν Ἡλίῳ τετραετηρικοὺς ἀγῶνας, ἐρῶ νεώτερα.

3a Mr. Le Roy Campbell of Yale University, who kindly read this article in proof, makes an alternative suggestion which may well be right— that ‘Perses’ is an artificial piece of archaism invented to give atmosphere.

4 Rostovtzeff, , Röm. Mitt. xlix, 1934, 194 ffGoogle Scholar. Cumont, CR Ac. Inscr. 1934, 90 ff., suggests that these men may have learned Mithraism from the Hadrianic garrison of Palmyra. This is possible; but see below for Palmyrenes in Dacia apparently worshipping Mithras.

5 We know very little as to the type of religion prevalent in Parthia during this period. Cumont, , Riv. fil. lxi (1933), 145 ffGoogle Scholar., has shown reason for believing that the Tiridates who visited Nero knew something like our Mithraism; but in general we may suspect that ritual practices such as were common in the Achaemenid period predominated.

6 Cumont, , Textes et monuments ii, 535 f.Google Scholar; add from the Mithraeum at Gimmeldingen, ‘… fanus consacra(tus) per Potentianum patrem’ [A.D. 325: J. Leipoldt, Die Religion des Mithra (H. Haas, Bilderatlas zur Religionsgeschichte, Lief, xv), p. xix].

7 Les mystères de Mithra,3 170.

8 CIL vi, 2151 = Textes ii, p. 96, inscr. 18; cf. p. 118, inscr. 141 ‘… sacerdoti … sacerdotes.’

9 CIL iii, 4417= Textes ii, p. 147, inscr. 372.

10 CIL iii, p. 1770.

11 CIL iii, 7728.

12 Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain,4 276, n. 39.

13 I can quote only CIL x, 1560 (Puteoli)— ‘servitor deorum,’ which does not profess to be an official title, and vi, 377 pater deoru omnium.

14 Textes ii, p. 134, inscr. 257.

15 The term ‘privati’ in a dedication in the Mithraeum at Bingen (published by Finke, H. in RGK, xvii Bericht, 1927, 75Google Scholar) seems to be in contrast with the higher grades of initiation; another text from Bingen (ibid. p. 74) mentions a pater sacrorum and a matricarius.

16 Thus at Rome we find an antistes who is leo and has not yet reached the highest grade (Textes ii, p. 101, inscr. 45).

17 Cf. Nock, in Jackson-Lake, , Beginnings of Christianity v, 177Google Scholar.

18 The two terms are clearly synonymous.

19 Cumont, , Harvard Theological Review xxvi (1933), 155Google Scholar.

20 Cf. Nock, Conversion, 38 ff., 56 ff.

21 M. P. Nilsson, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1933, col. 253, has pointed to the attractive power of Mithraic cosmogony.

22 Cf. Nock, , in Gnomon xii (1936), 610 ffGoogle Scholar.

23 At the same time we must distinguish between Mithraism as a religion on the one hand and the literary dissemination of Iranian ideas on the other; I hope to return to this topic elsewhere.

24 On this epithet Berlinger, L., Beiträge zur inoffiziellen Titulatur der römischen Kaiser (Diss. Breslau, 1935), 20 ff.Google Scholar, has some very valuable remarks and has properly stressed the importance of Heracles. The art-cycle of Mithras' achievements has a certain analogy to the Ήρακλέονς πράξεις, as they are called in the ‘Tabula Iliaca’ (O. Jahn, Griechische Bilderchroniken, 43).

25 The barbarian cosmogonies quoted by philosophers under the Empire (as earlier by Aristotle) are given as interesting illustrations; only at the lower intellectual level of the Hermetica is one a dogma.

26 CIL xiv, 66; cf. Cumont, CRAc. Inscr. 1934, 106, on the term ἀκέραιοι, as applied to initiates at Dura.

27 E.g. Vita Opilii Macr. 12 (savage punishments of sexual offences); Vita Pescenii 6.6 ‘rei veneriae nisi ad creandos liberos prorsus ignarus’—an interesting contrast with the concubine of Marcus Aurelius. On the Greek novel and its ethical sentimentalism cf. M. Braun, Griechischer Roman u. hellenistische Geschichtschreihung, 35, n. 1, 62 ff. and index s.v. ‘Gewissen’; on popular morality cf. Reinach, S., Arch. Rel.-Wiss. ix (1906), 312 ffGoogle Scholar. I suspect that certain scruples at the popular level fused in a measure with the salvationism which spread downwards from Pythagorean and Platonic circles; cf. Gnomon xii (1936), 610 fGoogle Scholar.

28 Cf. F. Saxl, Mithras; Deubner, L., Gnomon ix (1933), 372 ff.Google Scholar; and note the phrase in a Mithraeum at Ostia, ‘deum vetusta religione in velo formatum’ (of Caelus): G. Calza, N. d. Sc. 1924, 73.

29 Cf. Nilsson, M. P., Arch. Rel.-Wiss. xxx (1933), 141 ffGoogle Scholar.

30 Cf. Nock, , JTS xxxvii (1936), 305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 For a new monument of the period found in Rome cf. R. Paribeni, N. d. Sc. 1933, 478 ff.; it must be Mithraic, but the sun god, as Paribeni remarks, resembles Juppiter Heliopolitanus more than Mithras.