Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras

Richard L. Gordon

This paper is an attempt to use the idea of 'Persianism', i.e. the mediated idea of 'Persia' to discuss the reception and reinterpretations of the god Mithras in the Roman Empire. It is specifically intended as an Antidote to the usual assumption that scholars can simply 'interpret' the archaeological evidence and thereby produce 'history'.

This article places Roger Beck’s book The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire (Oxford 2006) into a larger context of various trends recognizable in the Mithraic scholarship especially since 1970’s of the 20th century. The article also raises theoretical and methodological questions concerning Beck’s “gateway text theory” originating from his choice of porphyry as the only Graeco-Roman source giving unambiguous information about the cult’s ideology and religious rationale. The final part of the article draws attention to more specific problems concerning the search for external confirmation of information provided by porphyry in our archaeological and epigraphical material.

"This article deals with the identification and interpretation of the third symbol of the Miles grade on the floor mosaic of the Felicissimus mithraeum in Ostia. In previous scholar-ship, this symbol has usually been identified as a soldier’s sling bag or, alternatively, as a Phrygian cap. The authors of this article question these identifications and hypothesize that this object might represent a bull’s pelvic limb (i.e. hind-quarter) or, less likely, thoracic limb (i.e. fore-leg). They base their argument on the expert opinion of two veterinarians and also on the fact that a bull’s limb is depicted on other Mithraic monuments, notably the altar of Flavius Aper at Poetovio, unlike a soldier’s bag. In the second part of the article, the authors tentatively reflect on why the author of this mosaic might have chosen this particu-lar symbol. They suggest either the possibility that this object might have played a role in Mithraic ritual(s) modelled on some episodes from a Mithras myth, or that it refers to the scene of Transitus and thus accentuates the heroic aspect of Mithras’ personality in the role of deus invictus."

Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras Richard Lindsay Gordon The post-war study of the Roman cult of Mithras owes most to the tireless ef- forts of Maarten J. Vermaseren (1918–1985) in providing access, with the aid of great numbers of monochrome photographs mainly provided by obliging museum directors, to the archaeological evidence, from Mérida to the Euphra- tes, from Hadrian’s Wall in northern England to the Algerian desert, which had accumulated since 1900.1 His vast series with the publishing firm of E. J. Brill of Leyden, the Études Préliminaires aux Religions Orientales dans l’Empire Romain (EPROER), whose first volume was published in 1961, contains numer- ous additions to this primary task of sifting and illustrating the physical evi- dence.2 Vermaseren rightly saw himself as carrying on the torch from the great Franco-Belgian scholar Franz Cumont (1868–1947).3 The latter had made his European reputation as a young man by publishing his two-volume Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra in fascicules between 1894 and 1899,4 and continued all his life to follow new discoveries, among them the most important finds of the 1930 s, the mithraeum at Dura-Europos on the Eu- phrates, the temple beneath the Church of Santa Prisca on the Aventine in Rome, 1 Vermaseren 1956–1960 [references to monuments are in the form: V. + monument num- ber]. Beck 1984, p. 2005: “In a sense [Vermaseren] is [the] second founder [of Mithraic Studies] and has done more than any man living to foster it.” For a handsome tribute to his commitment to the study of the ‘oriental religions’, see Hörig/Schwertheim 1987, pp. ix–x. 2 A rapid overview is offered by Bonnet/Bricault 2013, pp. 2–10. After Vermaseren’s sudden death on 9th September 1985, his wife and Margreet de Boer continued the series (from no. 106) for a while, then briefly R. Turcan, until the foundation in 1991 of the successor series, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, under R. van den Broek, H. J. W. Drivers and H. S. Versnel. A full list of titles from nos. 1 to 113 [1990], will be found in the relevant KvK inventories. 3 The new Corpus began life as a prize-winning submission to a competition organised by the Royal Flemish Academy of Arts and Sciences, presumably during the war, since much of the first volume was able to be read by Cumont in 1946–1947, shortly before his death (Vermaseren 1956–1960, I, p. vii). 4 Cumont (1894–1899, II) contains the archaeological and epigraphic materials then known, together with the ancient texts. The volume contains 493 photos and plans placed beside the relevant description (rather than mainly in a separate section, as in Vermaseren’s case) plus 6 whole-page photo-gravures hors texte, an astonishing achievement for its day. Gordon, Richard.indd 93 30.05.2016 16:02:12 94 Richard Lindsay Gordon and the dozen or so uncovered by Guido and Raissa (de Chirico) Calza in the course of the Fascist excavations of Ostia immediately before and during the Second World War.5 As a young lecturer in comparative religion, who had studied with Mary Boyce at SOAS, John Hinnells was a direct beneficiary of Vermaseren’s work. His original and important studies of the iconography of the torchbear- ers Cautes and Cautopates, and of the Lion-headed God, would have been im- possible without Vermaseren’s catalogue and especially the plates.6 The first volumes of EPROER promised to restore the legitimacy of the wider category ‘oriental religions’ that underwrote the supposed linkage in the case of Mithras between the Achaemenid and the Roman Empires. But it would never have oc- curred to Vermaseren, a reserved man who disliked public appearances, to organize a conference around the theme of Iranian Miθra-Roman Mithras – and that at a time (1971) when academic conferences were relatively uncommon.7 Apart from Hinnells, no one in the field at that time combined the necessary network of contacts, organisational flair, and academic entrepreneurship. It was his familiarity with the classicists and classical archaeologists in Manchester and Newcastle, as well as with Sir Harold Bailey and Ilya Gershevitch in Cambridge, A. D. H. Bivar in London and numerous Iranists from Europe and the US, that enabled him to bring such disparate fields physically into contact in order to focus upon a topic, ‘Mithraic Studies’, that had hitherto not existed as such. However, although the overt intention was to explore the Iranian ‘back- ground’ to the Roman cult – Stig Wikander’s attack on Cumont’s ‘strong’ Iranian scenario had been published exactly twenty years earlier8 – there was in fact little common ground; and there was no expert on the Achaemenid pe- riod in Anatolia present in Manchester to help mediate between them.9 The first 5 Dura (Cumont 1975 [composed around 1940, with a few later additions up to 1946]); S. Prisca and Ostia (id. 1945). As a corresponding member of the Académie des Inscrip- tions in Paris, Cumont regularly reported new Mithraic finds in Italy, where he spent half of each year; cf. e. g. Cumont 1924; 1933. 6 Hinnells 1975 b and 1976. 7 The subtitle of the Acta (Hinnells 1975 c) was ‘The First International Conference of Mithraic Studies’, since by the time it appeared the second conference had already been held in Teheran. The very term ‘Mithraic Studies’ was, as far as I know, a neologism cre- ated by Hinnells. 8 Wikander 1951. The few reviews by ancient historians recognised the force of his argu- ments against Cumont, but he did his case no service by suggesting that the cult must rather have begun in the Lower Danube area. 9 The obvious person would have been Ernest Will (1955), who had argued in favour of the emergence of the Roman cult in Anatolia. Although Carsten Colpe (1975) con- tributed a paper to the Proceedings, suggesting the Mithradatic kingdom of Pontus as the original location of the Roman cult, I cannot remember whether he was present in Manchester. At any rate, he would scarcely count as an expert on Iranian Anatolia. For a whole generation now, Pierre Briant and Amélie Kuhrt and their pupils have fostered Achaemenid studies (cf. also Kellens 1991), and the current situation is quite different. Gordon, Richard.indd 94 30.05.2016 16:02:13 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 95 Mithraic Congress ended up as an implicit admission that the ways had indeed effectively parted.10 In the heady days of western collusion with the Peacock Throne, it seemed attractive – but as it turned out unwise, inasmuch as it exposed a flank to politi- cally-motivated, or simply spiteful, criticism – to tap Iranian funds for academic enterprises for which in the UK there was no support.11 The Second Mithraic congress in Teheran (1975), likewise organised by John Hinnells, employed the same general pattern as the first, this time with a large majority of Iranists of one sort or other;12 but a relatively abstruse theory, Stanley Insler’s hypoth- esis that the bull-killing icon of Roman Mithras was a stellar map registering the date of the Mihragān/Mithrakana, which offered an apparent means of link- ing Iran directly with Rome, attracted a disproportionate amount of interest.13 It soon became clear that the Iranian allusion was impossible, but Insler’s kite triggered a whole series of suggestions based on the same hypothesis of a stellar map.14 That this approach represented a reversion to the allegorical readings of the Renaissance worried very few. The sub-text of these hypothetical ‘identifications’ was that, since the sup- posed star-chart represented a section of the Graeco-Roman representation of the ecliptic (or the heavenly equator, depending on taste), the Roman cult could 10 On the philological side, both Ilya Gershevitch (1975) and Martin Schwartz (1975) gamely attempted to bring the two sides together. One can perhaps regret the absence from the conference of L. A. Campbell, a professor at one of the CUNY colleges in New York, who had been a PhD student of Rostovtzeff at Yale, wrote a thesis on the typology of Mithraic reliefs, and had recently published an extreme re-affirmation of the (partially) Zoroastrian character of the Roman cult (Campbell 1968) in Vermaseren’s series (see p. 97 below). One of the more interesting papers given at the conference, but unfortunately never published, was the late Brian Shefton’s analysis of the iconogra- phy of the cult-relief scene and its debts to the Hellenistic tool-kit of received images. By the time of the third congress organised by Hinnells, in the context of the XVI IAHR meeting at Rome in 1990, there were virtually no Iranists present apart from Jean Kellens and Philip Kreyenbroek (Hinnells 1994). 11 The frontispiece of the Proceedings of the First Congress already showed a bust of the Shahbanou Fara Pahlavi, and she was given the place of honour in the group photo- graph of the Teheran conference. 12 The proceedings were published by the Belgian Iranist J. Duchesne-Guillemin (1978), who had already shown himself interested in the complex relation between Iranian thought and the Roman cult of Mithras (e. g. Duchesne-Guillemin 1955, 1958–1962, 1961). 13 The paper was not however published as part of the Proceedings (Insler 1978). A much simpler astronomic interpretation was offered about the same time by Bausani 1979. 14 Insler’s hypothesis had been pre-empted by Roger Beck’s presentation of a similar theory, without the reference to the Mithrakana, at the American Philological Associa- tion meeting in 1973 (Beck 2004 b, p. 236, n. 2). The basic idea was however very much older, going back well beyond K. B. Stark in the mid-nineteenth century (1865; 1869), Zoega (1817, pp. 129–30) and C. F. Dupuis, ‘citoyen françois’, at the time of the Revolu- tion, to the late Renaissance, cf. Alvar Ezquerra 2008, p. 93, nn. 220–221. Gordon, Richard.indd 95 30.05.2016 16:02:14 96 Richard Lindsay Gordon be studied independently of Iran – there was no ‘background’ after all, or at any rate, none to be troubled by.15 The star-chart hypothesis thus coincided neatly with a parallel argument of the same period, that the Roman cult was created in the area of Rome or Ostia.16 Up to a point, these developments were liberating, since, whether true or not, they assumed the irrelevance of the ‘strong Iranian’ theory inherited from Franz Cumont.17 On the other hand, it was all too easy to move from criticism of Cumont to a complete dismissal of any thematic con- tinuity whatever, which to my mind is a fault in the other direction.18 Thinking in terms of models This brief, highly selective account of the recent history of interpretation could easily be extended backwards to trace the long history of European engagement with the Roman cult of Mithras since the early Renaissance.19 This would have 15 This aim is most clearly visible in D. Ulansey’s fantastic house of cards based on the precession of the equinoxes (1989). Beck (2004 b, p. 236) has provided a list of the pro- posed identifications of Mithras with a constellation: in rough historical order: Sun (Rutgers); Sun in Leo (Beck); heliacal setting of Taurus (Insler); Orion (Speidel); Betel- geuse etc. (J. D. North); Auriga (Sandelin); Perseus (Ulansey); night sky (Weiß); heliacal setting of Taurus, again (Jacobs). Bausani (1979) identified the bull-killing scene with the widespread NE motif of the lion-bull combat, identified as Leo-Taurus, which im- plied a NE origin for the scheme. 16 Vermaseren 1981, pp. 96–103 (96–98); Merkelbach 1984, pp. 160–161; Clauss 2012, pp. 27–29; Jacobs 1999, pp. 27–33. The last substantial effort to ensure an Iranist pres- ence at a Roman Mithraic conference was Ugo Bianchi’s in Rome and Ostia in 1978 (Bianchi 1979 c). Throughout his career, from 1955 onwards, Bianchi of course himself published extensively on Zarathuštra and Zoroastrian and Manichaean dualism (a list in Panaino 2002, pp. 145–146). 17 Cf. the comments of Ries 1977. Nock (1937) represents a much earlier critical appre- ciation of Cumont, but had no perceptible influence on the Continent until Bianchi (1979 b). Bianchi’s main contribution to the conference (1979 a) may be said to be the last substantial effort to delineate the Iranian content of the Roman cult. Of the fairly numerous more recent suggestions from Iranists, that of Boyce and Grenet (1991, pp. 482–490) is perhaps the most substantial, though they rely far too much on Cumont’s ‘Cilician pirates’ scenario. 18 Note König (2015) for a recent effort by an Iranist to establish some degree of direct continuity from western Iran. Unfortunately, given the Classical Greek reception of key items such as Oromasdes, Areimanios or nabarze (e. g. in the personal name ‘Nabar- zanes’) arguments based purely on philological considerations do not cut much ice. See also my comment in n. 36 below. 19 The deliberate collection of such material in Italy goes back to the sixteenth and sev- enteenth centuries, which also saw the classification of Mithraic reliefs and statues as ‘classical art’: for example, no less than three such reliefs decorated the exterior walls of the Casino of the Borghese family (the ‘Villa Borghese’) on the Pincio in Rome, and are now, thanks to Napoleon, in the Louvre. Gordon, Richard.indd 96 30.05.2016 16:02:14 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 97 its own interest as a contribution to the history of ideas.20 The farther back we go, however, the more obvious it is that a straightforward ‘history’ of the Roman cult of Mithras cannot be written: there is plenty of archaeological evidence, but it cannot in itself resolve central questions about origins, pragmatics or mean- ings, ‒ the archaeological evidence is so diverse and enigmatic that it is compat- ible with many different reconstructions. From that point of view, Cumont’s achievement in Textes et monuments was thoroughly ambiguous: by tracing a direct connection between Iran and the Roman world, he created in volume I (1897–1899) a single historical actor, ‘le mithriacisme’, ‘les mystères de Mithra’, with unified beliefs (‘la théologie mithriaque’), that could be the subject of in- numerable constative sentences; yet the diversity of the documentary materials and texts literary and epigraphic assembled in volume II (1894–1896) implicitly subverts the coherence of the single actor or agent posited in the discursive ac- count. The tendency to think of the ‘oriental cults’ as though they were organ- ised religions long preceded Cumont, having been thoroughly institutionalised in the debate in France after 1870 over the supposed ‘decline’ of Roman religion and the ‘triumph’ of Christianity, which Corinne Bonnet and Françoise Van Haeperen have brilliantly illuminated, but it was above all Cumont who turned first ‘the Mysteries of Mithras’ and then the others – the Mater Magna with Attis, various Syrian cults, Isis and Serapis – into organised historical ac- tors with a historical mission.21 This move in turn legitimated the institutionali- sation of a discourse devoted to a religion or quasi-religion named ‘Mithraism’ which has persisted for at least a century. These were the terms that, implicitly at least, framed the more recent discussion rehearsed in the previous section.22 It is no accident that Cumont’s paradigm unravelled in the 1970 s. Its weak- ness was exposed by two accounts of the Roman cult utterly opposed to one another, an ultra-Cumontian one by LeRoy Campbell, a former pupil of Mi- chael Rostovtzeff at Yale, who tried to interpret the Roman monuments en- tirely in terms of the Sasanian distinction between MP mēnōg and gētīg, and a radically non-Cumontian one, by Reinhold Merkelbach, who viewed the cult as pure Platonism in Persian dress, essentially a calque on Plato’s Timaeus, complete with a psychic ascent to heaven modelled on the myth of the Phaedrus.23 20 For a start on this project, focusing on a single monument, the supposed ‘relief of Ot- taviano Zeno’, see Gordon 2004. 21 See their introduction to Cumont 2006, pp. xxiii–xliv; note also Praet (2014) on Cumont and Renan; and Bonnet (2013) on Renan’s conception of the ‘Orient’. 22 Alvar Ezquerra (2008) has attempted to revive this view, conceiving the three major ‘oriental cults’, again conceived primarily as mystery-cults, as at least potential religions in their own right. 23 Campbell 1968; Merkelbach’s ideas developed over a quarter-century (1959; 1962, pp. 171–191; 1965; 1982; 1984, pp. 193–244). The 1984 volume was, fittingly, dedicated to another highly imaginative master of Inszenierungen, Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of Richard and great-grandson of Franz Liszt. Gordon, Richard.indd 97 30.05.2016 16:02:15 98 Richard Lindsay Gordon Such violent differences implicitly cast doubt upon the entire set of cognitive assumptions that produced them.24 The cult of Mithras being then an almost exclusively Continental interest, Campbell’s book disappeared virtually with- out trace. Merkelbach’s work, on the other hand, though no less unhistorical, had two contrasting results: on the one hand, in picking up a suggestion by Martin Nilsson in 1950, to the effect that the Roman cult was the invention of an unknown religious genius, it suggested a way of revalorising the concept of ‘Mithraism as a religion’: the ‘genius’ was someone active in the imperial house- hold at Rome who knew something about Persian religion25 – a thesis that, in one guise or another, has now attained the status of a factoid (a notion that becomes accepted as a fact through frequent repetition). The second result was that Merkelbach’s daring way with evidence provoked a sharp response by Manfred Clauss, who dismissed the Platonism as pure fantasy and insisted that the diversity of the archaeological evidence, especially the Roman provin- cial evidence, be taken properly into account.26 There was however an ultimately more important trend at work elsewhere in the 1970 s, namely the explicit recognition that ‘history’ is by no means the same as historiography, and that the latter, above all non-evenemential (i. e. non- narrative) history-writing, is forced to create its own scenarios, to construct its objects of research, and thus its own units of comprehension, which are in no sense simply given.27 In a word, writing history requires models, which exist in a complex relation to empirical information, since they structure the selection of information considered relevant yet will need in turn to be modified in the light of empirical evidence adduced by others. Models are thus heuristic devices and constantly subject to modification. In retrospect, it was now clear that Ranke’s ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist]’ was just another rhetorical trope legitimating itself through archival research – as though his predecessors had never set foot into an archive. In the case of Roman Mithras, the fashion for reading the bull-killing icon as a star-chart scarcely qualifies as a model in this sense, since it had no implica- tions for anything else than the image itself, and was simply a naïve response to a supposed ‘enigma’. The residual category ‘mystery-religion/cult’ is also too feeble to count as a model, since no one, except Giulia Gasparro drawing on the ‘School of Rome’, has now a clear idea about what it might involve.28 On the 24 Cf. Gordon 1975. 25 Merkelbach 1984, pp. 76; 160–161. 26 Clauss 1990; 2012. 27 See esp. Veyne 1971 and 1974; de Certeau 1971 and 1974; Le Goff/Nora 1974. I ex- clude Foucault’s ‘archéologie du savoir’ from consideration here (which is referred to by de Certeau 1974, p. 34, n. 3), since its implications went much further than the Annales-influenced contributors to the Faire de l’histoire trilogy. 28 Sfameni Gasparro 1979 a–c; 1994. The classification is still going strong in Bowden 2010; Hattler 2013; Bremmer 2014. Gordon, Richard.indd 98 30.05.2016 16:02:15 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 99 other hand a number of recent contributions do count as models in the sense used here. We may certainly include Roger Beck’s ‘star-talk’, which explores possible cognitive procedures that conveyed to worshippers an experience of being ‘a Mithraist’, even though he began as a star-charter.29 Luther Martin’s analogous sketch of ‘imagistic religiosity’, loosely based on the cognitivism of Robert McCauley and Thomas E. Lawson, is likewise a proper model, al- though it exists only in discontinuous form.30 We may also include here Anja Klöckner’s idea of the mithraeum as a ‘mnemotopos’.31 All of these, however, assume the existence of a quasi-religion for which it is meaningful to posit an experience on the part of worshippers. I have myself argued for years in a simi- lar vein, assuming that the task essentially required the scholar to become a Mithraic theologian explaining the cult to a new member. In the past few years, however, in the context of two successive projects at the Max-Weber-Kolleg in Erfurt, ‘Religiöse Individualisierung in historischer Perspektive’ and currently ‘Lived Ancient Religion’,32 I have begun to see this fundamental working as- sumption as mistaken, or at most as a convenient fiction required for the pur- poses of modern academic writing and selling books on an ancient religion or cult called ‘Mithraism’. My current model has four aspects: 1. The primary agents involved in the organisation of such small religious groups, well below the radar of Roman law concerning collegia, were persons committed to their own religious leadership, their own conceptions of religious pragmatics, group order and dynamics.33 Irrespective of nominal social status, this demanded a degree of personal charisma and a minimum of financial re- sources, since they often needed to design and pay for the basic cult furnishings themselves. In a world in which status was for most individuals ascribed, reli- gious leadership of this type, for which, when I need an abstract noun, I use the Weberian term ‘Mystagogentum’, provided a rare chance of status-achievement within certain parameters.34 It is the agency of these individuals that the term ‘Mithraism’ occludes, which implies that they were of no great significance in the grand edifice of a ‘religion’, whereas in my view they, their energies and commitments were absolutely crucial. 29 Beck 2006, pp. 88–239. 30 Martin 2015 (the relevant essays date from between 2006 and 2013); cf. also Bricault/ Prescendi 2009. 31 Klöckner 2011. 32 Individualisation: see the home-page of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe ‘Religiöse Individu- alisierung in historischer Perspektive’, directed by H. Joas and J. Rüpke under www. uni-erfurt.de/max-weber-kolleg/kfg (1. Förderperiode); Lived Ancient Religion (2012– 2017): see www.uni-erfurt.de/…/2012/2012-Ruepke_Lived _ancient_religion. 33 Cf. Egelhaaf-Gaiser/Schäfer 2002; Schäfer 2006; Van Andringa/Van Haeperen 2009; Rüpke 2013. 34 Gordon 2013 a , cf. 2015 a. Gordon, Richard.indd 99 30.05.2016 16:02:16 100 Richard Lindsay Gordon 2. Although these ‘primary’ individuals undoubtedly saw themselves as work- ing in a tradition, the mere stereotypy of the bull-killing image tells us nothing about the communication that actually went on between individual agents and the underdetermined hypothetical others (‘gods’) on the one hand, and between leaders and members/members and non-members on the other. That is why the variability of the small finds, as projected by Marleen Martens on the basis of her finds at Tienen/Belgium, is so important, and indeed counts as a further operative model.35 The underdetermination – the openness to re-interpretation – of a deity such as Persian Mithras provided both the freedom to elaborate in- novation in whatever direction the mystagogue (and his followers) wished and yet itself constituted a challenge to the religious imagination: how do we re- duce the contingency inherent in a cult unsupported by the weight of tradi- tion? Here – whatever the truth about the early history of ‘Roman Mithras’, which, in our present state of knowledge is currently, and in all likelihood for ever, irrecoverable,36 – lay the value of the scattered information about Iranian religion, Zoroaster and the magi that circulated in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds: it provided ‘authentic’ materials that could be appropriated by mysta- gogues in their varied efforts to reduce the contingency of an underdetermined deity.37 ‘Persianism’ is the most suitable term for summarising this process of appropriating ‘external’ knowledge and turning it into new, ‘internal’, evocative material. The oriental garb of Mithras stood proxy for such appropriations, its alterity itself underwriting the claim to universality. 3. The idea that the ‘oriental cults’ were a unified phenomenon requiring a single historical explanation has long been exploded.38 As I have pointed out, it was itself a product of a quite different debate implicitly centred upon the state of France and the colonies after Sédan. The model that inspired it was equally unhistorical, namely the idea that ‘Christianity’ was somehow from the Paul- ine letters or at any rate the date of the Gospels a coherent movement rather than a back-projection by the self-proclaimed victors of the fourth-century power-struggles within the Church, the mythic history created by Euse- bius and the invention of the category ‘heretics’.39 Under the communicative 35 Martens/de Boe 2004. Martin’s appeal to “neural nets ritually encoded by cognitive mapping” is supposed to plug this particular hole (2015, p. 87). 36 I do think, however, that the current commitment to a purely Roman solution neglects important information deriving from Asia Minor (see Gordon 2015 b). Above all, the idea of a creative sacrifice with cosmic implications is unknown in the Greek and Roman world. 37 Gordon 2016 b. 38 Pailler 1989; Bonnet 2006; Bonnet/Van Haeperen 2006; Bonnet/Pirenne-Delforge/ Praet 2009 with Gordon 2014. 39 “The idea [of this book] is to investigate ‘the other side’, by examining the thinkers and movements that were, at the time, embraced by many second-century religious seekers as legitimate forms of Christianity, but which are now largely forgotten …” (Marjanen/ Luomanen 2008, p. ix); cf. already Luttikhuizen 2007. Gordon, Richard.indd 100 30.05.2016 16:02:17 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 101 circumstances of the ancient world, it was simply impossible to assure ‘unity’ or ‘consensus’ even with the type of policing created by the Church in the form of bishops – who were themselves fractious in the extreme. Neither Jews nor ‘pagans’ even considered such coherence an ideological good. In what should it inhere? In this situation it becomes extremely difficult to describe a distinctive set of claims that we can describe as Mithraic, let alone fulfil the contract im- plied by a title such as Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being. Insofar as there was coherence, it was provided by a stereotyped image that could func- tion as a point of evocation in any of a number of roles, a ‘midrashic’ narrative capable of extension alteration and addition, and a simple architectural form, the biclinium (two sets of podia for eating collectively, separated by a central aisle).40 4. Current ideas about the conceptualisation of an entity as vast and diverse as the ‘religion of the Roman Empire’ have not merely abandoned constructs such as the ‘oriental cults’ but moved on to reject the very idea of competi- tion between organised groups in favour of a spatial model of communicative action, in which religious developments follow independent trajectories in in- teraction with provincial or regional administrative and social changes.41 The Empire knew no organised ‘Religionspolitik’, just as the so-called imperial cult was not steered from above but represented a multifarious, plurilocal response in religious terms to the idea of belonging to such a diversified polity notion- ally focused upon the Princeps. Religious action remained to an extraordinary degree local and individual, its most prominent forms organised within the framework of innumerable civic (and village) festal calendars, but with the most dynamic developments emerging from small groups with more or less charis- matic leaders on the one hand and itinerant seers, prophets and holy men on the other. In step with the progressive de-politicisation of the public realm brought about by autocracy, religion emerged as an increasingly autonomous champ in Bourdieu’s sense, not merely through progressive textualisation and historicisation but also through the construction of a range of negative Oth- ers, differences being re-constructed as moral boundaries. One indispensable precondition of this development was the rapid communication, appropriation, adaptation and synthesis of religious ideas, which depended on the ‘hodological space’ created during the late Hellenistic period and the Empire, a space that was itself a function of the administrative and commercial demands of innu- merable local centres.42 40 I fail to understand Luther Martin’s attempt to get rid of the hypothesis of a circulat- ing but variable narrative. 41 Cf. especially Rüpke 2015, an essay that fruitfully pursues topics earlier discussed in 2009. 42 Cf. Horden/Purcell 2000, pp. 123–172; 342–400 (not exclusively about the Roman Im- perial period however); Schuol 2015, and the nice example of Paul’s journeys offered by Cancik 2015. Gordon, Richard.indd 101 30.05.2016 16:02:17 102 Richard Lindsay Gordon Given such a model, it is obviously difficult to maintain the traditional assump- tion that we can meaningfully talk about ‘the Mithraic view’ of this or that. Nevertheless, cosmic order, nature, and personal well-being are three very gen- eral themes that do seem to resonate not simply in the iconographic record but also, albeit faintly, in the very poor textual evidence for claims made within the Mithraic context, as opposed to the so-called ‘ancient literary evidence’, all of it external, indeed mainly Neo-platonist and Christian, and which in my view can only be used as historical evidence after careful consideration of its prior ideological positioning, and the purposes for which the supposed information is being presented. At this point I need to say something about the most im- portant single source of such external information, which comes mainly from Porphyry in the second half of the third century, citing earlier writers, includ- ing Numenius of Apamea and his associate Kronios in the second half of the second century ce, and two voluminous writers, Euboulus and Pallas, whose dates are quite uncertain; Porphyry cites scraps of these volumes when it suits him.43 Why should Neo-platonists have been interested in the cult of Mithras? I have already had occasion to stress the extensive engagement of the late-Clas- sical and Hellenistic world with Achaemenid Persia and its culture, in particular its religion.44 In some strands of this reception, particularly histories of phi- losophy, Zoroaster and his putative date, as well as the themes of cosmic dual- ism and the magi, figured prominently. The wider Graeco-Roman discourse tended however to bifurcate into a negative view of the magi, on the one hand, as magicians and charlatans, and on the other as Persian priests especially capa- ble of discerning hidden truths, practising the true θεῶν θεραπεία.45 One of the 43 This question was first raised seriously by Turcan 1975. For many years I resisted his conclusions, but now believe he was on all substantive questions correct. 44 Virtually all the relevant sources are to be found somewhere in Clemen 1920 a , and dis- cussed in Clemen 1920 b; Momigliano (1975, pp. 123–150) is an indispensable survey of the wider Greek discourse about Persia. See now also the various contributions to Strootman/Versluys 2016. 45 The locus classicus of the negative view is Pliny, HN 30.3–15, based on a Hellenis- tic account to which he adds a pendant dealing with Italy and the western Mediter- ranean. If we disregard the ambivalent reports of Herodotus, e. g. 1.132.3; 140; 7.19; 37.2–3; 43.2, who treats them as priests but also diviners, esp. of dreams (cf. Flower 2007, pp. 279–281), the positive view begins, as far as we know, in the fourth century BCE, with reports of Persian dualism (Diog. Laert., Vit. philos. Prolog. 8–9), cf. Laks 2015, pp. 245–250. The phrase θεῶν θεραπεία is cited from [Plato], 1 Alcib. 121 e by Ap- uleius, Apol. 25.9, cf. Flor. 15.14: … doctores habuisse Persarum magos, ac praecipue Gordon, Richard.indd 102 30.05.2016 16:02:18 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 103 concerns of ‘Middle’ Platonism (say ca. 100 BCE – 175 CE) was to demonstrate the truth of the claim that Plato’s philosophy had reconstituted and perfected the ancient wisdom.46 This ancient wisdom was to be found above all in Homer and Hesiod, in the Greek sages, and in mystery-cults, mainly ‘Orphism’ and the mysteries of Demeter and Korê at Eleusis, and in the myths of the ‘wise’ barbar- ian peoples such as the Phrygians and the Egyptians. Thus Plutarch argues in the fragmentary Festival of Images at Plataea: Ancient natural philosophy, among both Greeks and barbarians, took the form of an account of nature hidden in mythology, veiled for the most part in rid- dles and hints, or of a theology such as is found in mystery ceremonies in which what is spoken is less clear to the masses than what is unsaid, and what is unsaid gives more cause for speculation than what is said. This is evident from the Or- phic poems and the accounts given by the Phrygians and Egyptians. But nothing does more to reveal what was in the mind of the ancients than the rites of initia- tion and the ritual acts that are performed in religious services with symbolic intent (μάλιστα δ’οἱ περὶ τὰς τελετὰς ὀργιασμοὶ καὶ τὰ δρώμενα συμβολικῶς ἐν ταῖς ἱερουργίαις τὴν τῶν παλαιῶν ἐμφαίνει διάνοιαν).47 The crucial word here is συμβολικῶς, ‘with an allegorical meaning’, which in effect meant that any convenient interpretation could be placed on any alleged ritual of which some kind of report could be found. There was simply no limit to ingenuity in the production of ‘strong misreadings’.48 Both Plutarch’s deci- sion to explore the (Greek) philosophical interpretations of the cult of Isis, in itself of no great religious significance but limning a ‘holy mystery’,49 as well as his (passing) interest in the private rites that may not be divulged (τελετάς τινας ἀπορρήτους) practised at the ever-burning naphtha fields on Mt Olympus Zoroastren, omnis divini arcani antistitem, which clearly implies that Zoroaster was himself a magus. 46 E. g. Philebus 16 c 7–10; the best discussion is Boys-Stones 2001, pp. 3–59, 99–122. Van Nuffelen (2011, pp. 27–47) argues that the existence of an ‘ancient wisdom’ was a shared assumption considerably earlier than Cornutus in the mid-first century CE. Some re- adjustments to Boys-Stones’ position relating to the rôle of Posidonius of Apamea in this development are offered by Van Hoof/Van Nuffelen 2013, especially pp. 192–195. I continue to use the familiar term ‘Middle’. 47 Eusebius, PE 3.1.1, 83 c = frg. 157 (p. 95.16–25 Sandbach/Teubner; tr. Sandbach/Loeb, vol. XV with changes), with Van Nuffelen 2011, pp. 50–55. Chaeremon (ca. 15–95 CE) had shown the way by allegorising Egyptian myths in a Stoic sense; Cornutus treated allegory as the typical mode employed by early philosophers, itself then corrupted by poets (35.13 Busch-Zangenberg). 48 The phrase is Harold Bloom’s, cf. Lamberton 1986, p. 298. 49 Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, with the indispensable commentary by Griffiths 1970; cf. Richter 2001, pp. 202–209; Van Nuffelen 2011, pp. 55–65. On De Isid. 46–47, the val- uable excursus in that text on the religion of Persia, see still Dillon 1977, pp. 202–204, emphasising the interest of Ammonius, Plutarch’s teacher, in Persian religion; ‘valuable’ (de Jong 1997, pp. 157–204). Gordon, Richard.indd 103 30.05.2016 16:02:18 104 Richard Lindsay Gordon in Lycia, among them some in honour of Miθra/Mithrês,50 take their inspiration from this theoretical position in Middle Platonism.51 The claim that the religious practice of the early Greeks and the barbarian ‘wise nations’ is derived from the ancient philosophy of early mankind seems to have been elaborated by Numenius and his co-worker (ἑταῖρος) Kronios into a systematic principle or programme, as part of their denigration of the New Academy, which, they claimed, had betrayed Plato’s thinking.52 The introduc- tion to his On the Good (περὶ τἀγαθοῦ) set out the proper method of theological enquiry: one looks first to see what Plato says, then beyond him to Pythagoras, and then, still further back in time: the nations of renown (τὰ ἔθνη εὐδοκιμοῦντα), adducing their special rituals (τελεταί) and their teachings and the cultural institutions that are in accord with Plato, such as the Brahmans, the Jews, the Magi (i. e. the Persians) and the Egyptians.53 It is clear that Numenius did not think that barbarian wisdom was unique in this respect, for he also found ancient wisdom in Homer, Hesiod, the Orphics, Pherecydes, in Greek mythology, the Eleusinian mysteries and elsewhere.54 It was just that Pythagoras and then Plato had expressed the ancient wisdom most clearly. It is thus far from clear to what extent the programme demanded positive knowledge of these eclectic traditions. Plutarch could draw for his De Iside et Osiride (written ca. 120 CE) upon a considerable body of expository information about Egyptian religion, provided mainly by Eudoxus of Cni- dus, Hecataeus of Abdera and the bilingual Egyptian Manetho.55 Numenius himself certainly knew more than a little of Judaism and was widely learned in Greek religious tradition.56 Then what of ‘Persian’ Mithras? Porphyry cites 50 Plutarch, Vit. Pomp. 24.7 (probably from the History of Pompey by Posidonius = FGrH 87 T 11). Mithras (in the alternative (Ionic) Greek form Mithres), is the only deity actu- ally named. 51 Ritter (2001, p. 193) rightly emphasises that Plutarch was keen to oppose the strand of thought that claimed that Greek philosophy was actually dependent upon the wise na- tions, in particular Egypt. 52 Frede 1987, pp. 1034–1036; 1049; Van Nuffelen 2011, pp. 72–83. The argument was mainly offered in Numenius’ On the Academic philosophers’ abandonment of Plato (frgs. 24–28 des Places). Frede (1987, p. 1034) thought Kronios was an older contempo- rary of Numenius who attached himself to the younger man’s views. 53 Frg. 1 a des Places. On Numenius as an allegorical reader, see esp. Lamberton 1986, pp. 54–77. 54 E. g. frgs. 34.15–17 (Homer on the cave of the Nymphs); 36 (Hesiod, Orphics and Phere- cydes on ensoulment); 58 and 59 (true meanings of deities in Greek mythology); 55 (Nu- menius dreaming of the Eleusinian goddesses). 55 See the full discussion by Griffiths 1970, pp. 75–100; also Richter 2001. The main sources for chaps. 46–47 (the excursus on Persian religion) seem to have been Theopom- pus of Chios, Eudoxus again and Hermippus of Smyrna (de Jong 1997, pp. 161–163). 56 Frgs. 1 b and c des Places, cf. Van Nuffelen (2011, pp. 79–80), arguing that the promi- nence of the Jews is most likely due to the fact that almost all the fragments derive from Church Fathers. Frede (1987, p. 1048), on the other hand, basing himself on the fuller Gordon, Richard.indd 104 30.05.2016 16:02:19 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 105 Numenius (with or without Kronios) in his essay On the Cave of the Nymphs in relation to the descent of souls to earth from heaven via the ‘gate’ of Cancer and their ascent after death via that of Capricorn.57 Roger Beck has argued repeatedly that this was the Mithraic belief too, but I can see no evidence what- ever in these passages for specifically Mithraic details.58 Put crudely, the posi- tion is: Porphyry in On the Cave knows some details of Mithraic cult; other passages of that work cite Numenius; therefore Numenius, assumed to be the source of cosmological passages that do not refer explicitly to the cult, must be referring to Mithraic notions. The weakness of the argument requires no dem- onstration. That is not to say that Numenius and Kronios had no information about Persian religion: what they knew was mediated, as they saw it, by the ‘mysteries’ of Mithras. On the Cave of the Nymphs, an extremely erudite, densely allegorical read- ing of the account at the beginning of Homer’s Odyssey Bk 13, 96–112, cf. 345–351, of an imaginary sea-cave on the island of Ithaka, sacred to the Nai- ads (Sea-nymphs), contains two or three passages in which material adduced by Numenius and Kronios seems to be cited, at any rate if we assume that when Porphyry refers to οἱ θεολόγοι he is referring to them and their claimed sourc- es.59 One of these dwells on the purificatory powers of honey: we are suddenly introduced to a Persian ceremony in which the members of the rank Leo have their hands purified not by water, which would be the obvious means, but by honey, because Lions are ‘fiery’, and water, the natural means of purification, is the opposite element to fire (ὡς πολεμοῦν τῷ πυρί).60 Honey is taken instead, on the grounds that it represents a kind of liquid fire. On this peremptory logic, objectively sticky hands are ritually pure.61 Another passage notes that the krater in a Mithraic context is a symbol or allegory of a natural spring, and a little further on alludes to an astrological interpretation of (the) bull as the Moon (since Taurus is the ‘exaltation’ of the Moon, i. e. the zodiacal sign in which it exercises its greatest influence); invoca- tion of the familiar idea that bees (= souls) were born from dead cattle leads on to the claim that souls enter genesis from cattle, and “the god who secretly [brings away] genesis is a ‘bull-thief’ ”, a clear reference to Mithras’ capture of list offered by Celsus, ap. Origen, Contra Cels. 1.14, which omits the Jews entirely, sug- gests that Numenius considered the Jews had been unduly neglected. 57 Porph., De antro 21–24 = frg. 31 des Places; 28 = frg. 32; the same account is given by Macrobius, Comm. in Somn. 1.12.1–4 = frg. 34, and by Proclus, In Remp. 2 p. 128.26– 130.14 + 131.8–14 Kroll = frg. 35. None of these passages is recognised as Mithraic by Cumont, by Scarpi (2002) or by Sanzi (2003). 58 Beck 2000, pp. 159–162 [= 2004 c , pp. 69–72]; 2004 c , pp. 90–92, 282–291, 356–361; 2006, pp. 129–130. Van Nuffelen (2011, p. 80) takes over the claim uncritically. 59 None of them is recognised by des Places as a regular or even as a doubtful fragment. 60 Porphyry, De antro 15 = Simonini 1986, pp. 56/58, with her notes 54 and 55. Unmixed honey was reputed to be hot and dry (Hippocr., Regim. 2.53 [VI p.55613 Littré]). 61 Ibid. 16 = Simonini 1986 p. 59.6–8. Gordon, Richard.indd 105 30.05.2016 16:02:19 106 Richard Lindsay Gordon the heavenly bull before sacrificing it.62 The extreme compression here, and the constant use of ellipse, makes the passage almost impossible to follow;63 but there can be no doubt that behind this there lies considerable knowledge of various lines of interpretation of the Mithraic icon and the narratives of Mithras’ heroic subjugation of it, lines that we cannot clearly establish as ‘internal’ or ‘external’ to the small-group practice. A third passage that may be drawn from Numenius/Kronios starts by al- luding to Egyptian beliefs about Sothis (Sirius) and then moves on to what ‘the theologians’ say about Mithras: Mithras’ proper seat is the (line of) the equi- noxes, since (on the cult-image) he carries a sword, and a sword is the emblem of Ares/Mars, the planet that is the lunar ‘house’ of Aries, the zodiacal sign in which the spring equinox occurs; and he also rides on a bull, which is Taurus, and Taurus is not only the exaltation of the Moon but also the ‘lunar’ house of Venus; and Venus’ solar ‘house’ is (of course) Libra, the zodiacal sign of the autumn equinox.64 This convoluted reasoning produces the conclusion that Mithras is the ‘demiurge’ and ‘lord of genesis (i. e. coming-into-being)’. Since the same passage goes on to provide the sole mention of the names of the two Mithraic torchbearers, Cautes and [Cautopates], in the literary tradition,65 we can again take for granted that this account is indeed based on a knowledgeable Mithraic source: not that it represents ‘what Mithraists believed’ but that it is based on the learned and nimble speculation of one expert, in my terms a mys- tagogue, which, for all we know, may have found followers, on the assumption that it became textualised before Numenius, or whoever Porphyry is using here, picked it up. All these passages referring to Mithras, whether or not they are based on Numenius/Kronios, exemplify an idea of what was meant by ‘ancient wisdom’: whatever the phenomenological diversity of actual ritual practices, mythic nar- ratives and discursive frames in what we call polytheism, all can be reduced to a few underlying principles by using allegory as a means of re-describing the 62 Porphyry, De antro 18: … καὶ βουκλόπος θεὸς ὁ τὴν γένεσιν λεληθότως †ἀκούων†. The last word of the paragraph is corrupt; the sense is usually understood as a word such as ἀνακινῶν, “arouses/stirs to life”: “colui … che segretamente promuove la generazi- one” (Simonini 1986, p. 63, l. 10). Turcan, however, suggested reading ἀπάγων, “brings away”, taking the transitus motif (the point at which Mithras drags the bull into the cave) as an allegory of the entry of souls into the world (1982, p. 207). 63 This may be connected to the prevalence of what Sara Rappe called ‘non-discursive thinking’ in Neo-platonist writing (Ahbel-Rappe 2007). 64 De antro 24. None of this is made explicit; the passage simply runs in translation: “that is why he carries the sword of the zodical sign Aries, and rides on the bull, and the bull is of Aphrodite”. Beck (1976 and 1984, p. 2053 f.) rectified the text and explicated the probable train of thought. 65 The name Cautopates is missing in the text but was brilliantly supplied by the (anony- mous) editors of the Arethusa edition, namely a graduate seminar at SUNY at Buffalo led by the eminent historian of late-antique philosophy, L. G. Westerink (see Duffy et al. 1969, p. 24, ll. 13–16). Gordon, Richard.indd 106 30.05.2016 16:02:20 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 107 overt content and replacing it with a quite different one (allegory is thus the royal road to appropriation). If the textual source used, in our case by Porphyry, itself employs allegory, so much the better. The principles here relevant are: the major indications of the perfection of the cosmic order are the facts that the heavenly bodies are divine and the their courses perfectly regular, but it is also expressed in the anatomy and physiology of human beings; this perfection is the result of the design of a providential demiurge; the world-order is thus in itself benign. The human soul is eternal but subject to vicissitudes; personal moral choices are the major factor in deciding whether a soul will reascend to heaven on death and remain there or be subject to reincarnation. The claim that Mithras has a ‘proper seat’ thus exemplifies the orderliness of the cosmos, with a little help from elementary astrological (Chaldaean = Persian) doctrines; Mithras as ‘bull-thief’ shows that the basic issue, even for Persians, is the human soul-cycle; washing hands with honey illustrates the principle that even bizarre (foreign) ritual practices are meaningful when rightly understood. In order not to amplify this section still further, I will only observe that the other major sources for Mithraic theology used by Porphyry in De antro, and in an important passage of On Vegetarianism (De abstinentia), namely the otherwise unknown Euboulus and Pallas, are cited, whatever the actual scope of their voluminous works, for exactly the same reasons.66 Two of their claims in particular may be singled out: that it was Zoroaster who founded the cult of Mithras in a cave in the mountains of Persia; and that the names of two ranks or grades in the cult, Leo (Lion) and Corax (Raven), prove, via the allegorical method, that the Persians believe in metempsychosis and the continuity of life- forms, such that the human soul, in its eternal existence, may actually at some point ensoul an animal.67 And, finally, a Mithraic soul-journey to the eighth or fixed heaven forms the basis of a passage by Celsus in his deconstruction of the claims of Christianity, the Ἀληθὴς Λόγος, in the barely-intelligible form reported by Origen in his attack upon that work.68 Although this statement has repeatedly been taken as first-hand evidence for such a soul-journey through the planets, it is rather once again an elaborate re-interpretation in Pythagorean terms of some mystagogic claim, since the order of the planets given is not a physical order of distance from the earth but the reverse order of the planetary chronocrators that governed the first hour of each day of the week, beginning with ‘Saturday’ and going backwards to ‘Sunday’. This order is itself the prod- uct of speculation linking time and cosmos, and it is by no means clear what 66 The fullest discussion remains Turcan 1975, pp. 23–43. It is perfectly possible that Por- phyry is actually citing their claims without naming them in some of the passages I have ascribed tentatively above to Numenius/Kronios. 67 Resp. Porphyry, De abstin. 4.16.2–4 (starting with a discussion of vegetarian magi); De antro 6 = Simonini 1986, pp. 44.17–46.2, with her nn. 13–16. 68 Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22. Celsus’ work is thought to have been written between 175 and 181 CE, cf. Lona 2005, pp. 54–56. Gordon, Richard.indd 107 30.05.2016 16:02:20 108 Richard Lindsay Gordon Celsus’ source thought he was up to, since the soul could not possibly have made such a journey.69 It will be obvious from all this that some Middle and Neo-platonists were busy producing their own allegories and adaptations of already partly allego- rised accounts of Mithraic claims produced by individual mystagogues, appar- ently in the eastern Mediterranean, or at any rate in Greek-speaking milieux – that is, precisely the type of interest in Mithras that is more or less completely absent from our epigraphic and archaeological sources in the western Empire. For that very reason it is impossible to take them at face-value as components of a supposedly unified ‘Mithraic theology’. Some of these texts however do provide hints of ways in which our themes may have cropped up, or been in- strumentalised, in Mithraic groups, and it is to these we now finally turn. Since iconographic evidence is virtually our only resource, there is much more that can be said about cosmic order than about either nature or well-being, and the discussions diminish correspondingly in length. Cosmic Order Although for ancient philosophers cosmology was closely associated with ‘natu- ral philosophy’ (physics), for present purposes it makes sense heuristically to distinguish the Mithraic evidence for cosmological representations from con- ceptions of nature (φύσις, natura), understood in the absolute sense as the pur- posive creator of all living things, perhaps even, as in earlier Stoic thought, par- ticularly expressed in the botanical world.70 Of all the newer, widespread small-group cults of the Roman Empire, that of Mithras made the most deliberate and thorough-going use of what we may call the standard Hellenistic geocentric model of the universe. Inasmuch as it was one of the last of these cults to attract widespread attention in the Empire, this is perhaps not surprising; on the other hand, the cult of Jupiter Dolichenus, which expanded at much the same time, shows no such interest, so that we should rather align Mithras with the sort of cosmological awareness that underpinned 69 See again Turcan 1975, pp. 44–61; also Gordon 2016 a. Beck (1988, pp. 73–85) tries to defend the idea that the cult could indeed have intended a temporal rather than a physical sequence, to my mind unconvincingly. The planetary order assumed is: Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Moon, Sun, an order at odds with all known conceptions of planetary organisation in antiquity and which, as I say, can only be arrived at through the notion of chronocrators, i. e. the planet that, on the ordinary scheme of natural dis- tance from the earth, happens to begin each 24-hour cycle (cf. Bouché-Leclerq 1899, p. 480, fig. 42). It is also quite different from another certainly Mithraic order, that of the ‘guardian planets’ of the ranks or grades, mentioned below. This, however, is not a physical but a moral or functional order, intended to describe or justify, i. e. naturalise, the roles of the different ranks developed for the larger groups. 70 Couloubaritsis 2005, p. 208. Gordon, Richard.indd 108 30.05.2016 16:02:22 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 109 the popularity of Aratus’ astral poem Phaenomena (ca. 270 BCE), “the most widely read poem, after the Iliad and Odyssey, of the ancient world”, routinised themes of the imperial propaganda of power, the enduring, multi-medial popu- larity of astrology as a technically superior form of divination, perhaps even the speculative models familiar from the Corpus Hermeticum and ‘gnosticism’.71 I have already mentioned that Roger Beck has installed pre-occupation with the ordered cosmos at the heart of his model of a unified cult of Mithras.72 My view is rather that star-lore formed an ideal resource for individual mys- tagogues in the development of ‘interesting’ motifs and claims, inasmuch as it was, outside the ranks of those who had enjoyed a rhetorical education, a scarce good but also a flexible one (inasmuch as it had long been formed into a gradu- ated body of knowledge), and thus ideal for the process of acquiring modest symbolic capital mediated by the mystagogue to the degree that he himself was interested in stressing intellectual/cognitive appeal rather than concentrating, say, on ritual elaboration. Some of this cosmological awareness is perfectly familiar to anyone with a ba- sic knowledge of the material evidence for the cult, though Manfred Clauss, in an understandable reaction against the excesses of the neo-allegorists, did his best to minimise its import.73 A very ba- sic interest in cosmic order, namely the regularity of the daily cycle of light followed by darkness, is present on virtually all Mithraic reliefs of the bull- killing scene, in the form of a representation of Helios/Sol at the top left, and of Selene/Luna at top right (Fig. 1), thus implicitly invoking the apparent east-west movement of the two luminaries. Far less common, and indeed virtually confined to rather elaborate, and therefore expensive, pieces,74 are Fig. 1: Proložak, representations in an arc above the main scene of Croatia, obverse 71 On the importance of Aratus in establishing a non-technical image of an ordered cosmos, and his ancient reception, see now Gee 2013 (the citation is from Toomer/Jones 2012, p. 132); cosmology and images of power (Gordon 2013 b); astrology in versified form (Boehm/Hübner 2011); Hermeticism and ‘gnosticism’ (Denzey Lewis 2013, pp. 29–52; 103–126). 72 See nn. 29 and 58 above. 73 Clauss 2012, p. 9. On astronomical/astrological motifs, see e. g. Vermaseren 1959, pp. 154–163; Merkelbach 1975 (both very dated); Beck 1976; 1984, pp. 2061–2063; 1988, pp. 34–42 (esp.); 2004 c , pp. 235–291. 74 Gundel 1992, pp. 253–256 Cat. nos. 174–181 lists two such designs painted in the Bar- berini Mithraeum in Rome (V.389 and 390) and one further frg. relief in Italy (V.635, un- known provenance); otherwise the examples are found almost exclusively on four of the series of large Germanic reliefs, which are clearly related to one another in general con- ception, despite numerous differences in detail: Osterburken (V.1292), Heddernheim I Gordon, Richard.indd 109 30.05.2016 16:02:22 110 Richard Lindsay Gordon Fig. 2: Osterburken V.1292, Fig. 3: arc-zodiac Banjevci relief the signs of the zodiac in the standard sequence, from left to right, Aries → Pisces (Fig. 2), which allude prima facie to a claim about the solar identity of Mithras, as Deus Sol invictus Mithras, the zodiac being assembled from the constellations ‘through’ which the Sun seems to pass on its annual journey.75 An equally small number of reliefs goes still further and sets the bull-killing scene within a zodia- cal ring (Fig. 3), thus stressing not merely the immutable temporal succession of seasons but also the ideal cosmic setting and implications of Mithras’ action in killing the bull.76 Beyond the relief, a small number of Mithraic temples, all in (V.1083); Rückingen (V.1137); Groß-Krotzenburg (V.1149); two others, now fragmentary, were clearly not main cult-reliefs: Friedberg (V.1054); Dieburg (V.1271 v. frag.). Since then, the only arc-zodiac to have turned up is the fragment of the cult-relief from the large third-cent. mithraeum beneath the Les Parunis site at Bordeaux (Gaidon-Bunuel 1991, p. 55); while G. Faider-Feytmans (1974, cf. V.956) has convincingly arranged the small bronze zodiacal figures from Angleur/Liège as an arc-zodiac above a now lost tau- roctony. I discuss the arc-zodiac on the relief of Zenobios at Dura (V.40 = Rostovtzeff/ Brown/Welles 1939, pp. 95–100 with pl. XX.2) below, on p. 114 with fig. 6. 75 The sequence begins with astronomical Spring (some point in Aries) and ends with the final sign of Winter (some point in Pisces). This is the most common sequence overall in the case of arc-zodiacs. 76 The only seven cases known are: Vermaseren/Van Essen 1965, pp. 37 and 140 with pls. XXXI, XXXII.1 = Gundel 1992, p. 242, Cat. no. 111 = Pavia 1999, p. 158, lower colour photo (very poorly preserved ring, apparently enclosing a painted tauroctony in the secondary cella at Sta Prisca, Rome, in one of the side rooms (Room Y); V.163 A = Gundel 1992, p. 228, Cat. no. 67 (Catania, Sicily: small fragment); V.1472 = Gundel 1992, p. 228, Cat. no. 68 (Siscia/Sisak, Pannonia Sup.); Zotović 1978 = Gundel 1992, p. 222, Cat. no. 44 (Banjevci/Banjevac, Croatia/Dalmatia; two fragments, Fig. 3 here); V.1870 with Silnović 2014, pp. 66–67 (Split/Salona, Dalmatia; small frag.); V.1161 = Schwertheim 1974, p. 137, no. 116 c (Stockstadt I, Germania Sup., dedicated by a lo- cal haruspex); V.810 = RIB 3 = Gundel 1992, p. 222, Cat. no. 53 (London, Walbrook; dedicated by an emeritus of leg. II Augusta, who was presumably still attached to the governor’s staff). Note that three of these derive from the western Balkans; none is yet known from the western or southern Mediterranean area or the Danubian prov- inces proper. Two monuments represent Mithras as a baby within a zodiacal ring: the Gordon, Richard.indd 110 30.05.2016 16:02:24 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 111 central Italy, where familiarity with astronomical information was presumably most widespread, likewise allude to cosmic schemes, perhaps even to specific astral events; 77 the most unusual of these is the zodiacal diagram on the ceiling of the temple on the island of Ponza (in the Bay of Naples) which encloses im- ages of the Great and Lesser Bear and Draco, thus focusing attention specifically on the North Polar region.78 It is this type of mystagogic speculation that most nearly approaches the claims by Numenius/Kronios and Euboulus/Pallas that Mithras is actually the demiurge; and the abstruse attempt to prove that Mithras occupies a specific position on the heavenly equator ‘at the equinoxes’ by using arguments drawn from astrological schemes.79 But many details of ‘simple’ zodiacal schemes di- vulge astronomical/astrological awareness: for example the representation of the zodiac in the soffit of the arcosolium of the cult-niche of the Phase III Mithraeum at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, which proceeds anti-clockwise and is organised in two sections, places the spring equinox (Aries) at 12 o’clock, with the remainder of the Spring-Summer sequence following down on the left; and the autumn equinox (Libra) roughly at 6 o’clock, with the remainder of the Autumn/Winter sequence following upwards on the right; the Aries and Taurus at the top of a very high quality Syrian relief from Sidon face in opposite directions (Fig. 4), so that Aries can face Helios/Sol, who has been placed uniquely here on the right of the bull-slaying motif, connoting the fact that Aries is the astrological ‘exaltation’ of the Sun; and Taurus turns to Luna, here on the left, to remind those who know that Taurus is the exaltation of the third century altar from the Altbachtal in Trier (V.985 = Schwertheim 1974, p. 190 f., no. 190 b = Gundel 1992, p. 222, Cat. no. 52, who repeats Merkelbach’s quite unwar- ranted speculations); and the Housesteads rock-birth mentioned in n. 80. 77 Allusions to the cosmic order as expressed in the zodiacal sequence: Sette Sfere (V.242, Ostia); Vulci (Pavia 1999, pp. 24–25, colour photos); specific planetary events: perhaps Sette Sfere and Sette Porte (V.287), cf. Beck 1979. A fragmentary basin at Stockstadt I was evidently decorated with zodiacal signs (V.1196, omitted by Schwertheim). The great majority of excavated temples, for example at Ostia, did not explicitly thematise such cosmological allusions, and, so far as we can tell, especially in the provinces, pre- ferred neutral or even domestic decoration. 78 Vermaseren 1974, pp. 9–11 with fig. 6; Gundel 1992, pp. 84, 88, fig. 44, and 208, Cat. no. 18. Beck (2004 c , pp. 151–231) reprints two long articles on the Ponza design, judged by Gundel as ‘overinterpretation’. The two Bears and Draco are illustrated both on the Hellenistic Kugel’s globe in Paris (from eastern Turkey) and the rather inaccurate ‘Mainz globe’ of Roman date (found in western Turkey, Dekker 2013, p. 60 with fig. 2.9 and p. 72, figs. 2–14 a and b). Both globes show the solstitial and equinoctial colures meet- ing at the Pole, which are absent from the Ponza image, which also deviates strikingly from them in placing Ursa Major and Minor one above the other with Draco forming a semi-circle around them rather than separating them with its tail (compare the Eudoxan representation in Dekker 2013, p. 21, Scheme 1.5). Even granted that the position of the Pole in relation to the circumpolar constellations was disputed, the Ponza image is a wild distortion by comparison with more sober star-charts. 79 See p. 106 above. Gordon, Richard.indd 111 30.05.2016 16:02:24 112 Richard Lindsay Gordon Fig. 4: Sidon V.75, top only Moon; the late third-century statue of Mithras’ rock-birth with zodiac from the Housesteads Mithraeum on Hadrian’s Wall divides the zodiac into two sections, on the left Cancer to Aquarius, on the right Leo to Capricorn, as it stands an incomprehensible order, whose fullest sense can only be arrived at on the assumption that it reads the zodiac in terms of the solar houses (on the right) and the lunar houses (on the left), thus cryptically combining planets and signs in one design.80 The only internally-generated text that proves that such visual motifs might sometimes be deployed in ritual contexts is the metrical hexameter verse on the lower layer of paintings at Sta Prisca (Rome): primus et hic Aries astrictius ordine currit, ‘and first in line here runs Aries, (keeping) very strictly (to his place)’,81 a line that evidently opened a verse description of the entire zodiacal sequence, comparable to the twelve lines of Manilius, Astron. 1.263–275, which likewise begin with Aries: aurato princeps Aries in vellere fulgens, ‘First Aries bright-shining in his golden fleece…’, or, more remotely, Aratus’ list at Ph. 545– 552, which however begins with Cancer, i. e. the beginning of Summer, and ends with Gemini, the end of Spring.82 Both Manilius and Aratus tie the zodiac into a more elaborate account of the heavens, including the celestial equator, the two Tropics, and the Poles (Manilius adds the Milky Way), and associated myths, which may also have been the case at Sta Prisca, whose mystagogue around 200 CE was keen to provide an appropriately solemn, i. e. versified, textualisa- tion of at least some of the ritual proceedings. What we lack, however, is any indication of how, and at what points, such verses might have been introduced into ritual performance. 80 Respectively Rostovtzeff/Brown/Welles 1939, p. 110; more fully, Cumont 1975, p. 182 with Plate 30 = Gundel 1992, p. 262, Cat. no. 193 (mistakenly dated to 170/1 CE) with Farbtafel 5 a between pp. 160–161 (the only photographs yet published); Sidon: V.75 = Gundel 1992, p. 113, fig. 53; p. 229, Cat. no. 77, with Beck 1988, p. 34; Housesteads: V.860 = Gundel 1992, pp. 107 and 229, Cat. no. 72, with Beck 1988, pp. 35–38. 81 Line 13 in the enumeration of Vermaseren/Van Essen 1965, pp. 213–217; Vermaseren’s commentary is completely off-beam. 82 As Hyginus, Astron. 4.5 points out. We might indeed also think of non-specialist prose accounts, such as Vitruvius, Arch. 9.3, who stresses the relation between the sun’s course and the change of seasons, or Hyginus, Astron. 4.5, who likewise divides the zodiac into four seasonal groups. Pliny, HN 1.64 does not even list all twelve, taking them to be too familiar, only noting the differentiae, i. e. the solstitial and equinoctial signs. Gordon, Richard.indd 112 30.05.2016 16:02:25 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 113 None of this indicates any coherent or convergent use of astronomical/as- trological information, just as the Numenian (or Euboulan) argument reported by Porphyry in favour of locating Mithras ‘at the equinoxes’ (i. e. the points at which the celestial equator crosses the Tropics and the equinoctial colures) is a wayward allegorisation via two different argumentative strategies of individual items extracted from the bull-killing scene (the bull ‘of Venus’, the sword ‘of Mars’).83 Two further features of the iconographic evidence do however suggest that some effort was sometimes made to develop distinctively Mithraic cosmo- logical features, though once again there is no reason to think that they were in any sense unified. The first of these is the Lionheaded God, whom Cumont identified with Av- estan zruuan- akarana- in the belief that this was a specifically Zurvanite con- cept.84 It cannot be said that much progress has been made since then; the most serious attempt to contextualise the Mithraic deity, by Howard Jackson, while rightly insisting that he represents some sort of kosmokrator with a close relation to late-Roman solar speculation, simply assumed the Neo-platonist representa- tion of a soul-journey, and its negative view of the cosmos.85 Moreover, although he acknowledged the “fluidity evident in the Mithraic iconography” – which John Hinnells had painstakingly documented ten years earlier – he wanted to believe that it was due “to an overarching concern to convey to the viewer what the figure symbolizes, not what particular deity it represents”.86 In my view, however, it is far from clear that Mithraic mystagogues agreed at all on what the figure symbolised: although the statues that survive from Rome and Ostia display some general agreement that he is intimately linked with time, the cycle of the seasons, and power over the firmament (Fig. 5), the images in the north- 83 The triplicity of the ‘seat at the equinoxes’ is clearly visible, e. g. on the Farnese globe (e. g. Dekker 2013, p. 86, Figs. 2.17–20); cf. her Scheme 2.5 on p. 70, which shows the inaccuracy of the Mainz globe in this respect. 84 Cumont 1894–1899, I, pp. 19 f.; 74–85; 294: Αἰών, Saeculum, Κρόνος, Saturnus … Εἱμαρμένη. 85 Jackson 1985; see also the primarily iconographic study by von Gall 1978. 86 Jackson 1985, p. 21 (italics in original); Hinnells 1975 b. Hinnells based his sur- vey on 40 of the 57 monuments entered by Vermaseren under his lemma ‘Aion’. The great majority of these are old finds from before the Great War. So far as I know, only two (possibly three) Lionheads have been discovered since 1975: 1) a small third cent. altar with relief of the Lionhead from the Mithraeum beneath the Les Parunis site in Bordeaux; a crested snake winds its way up each leg (Gaidon-Bunuel 1991, p. 57 f.); 2) a statuette (0.39 m high, 5 kg in weight), apparently of bronze or an alloy, evidently found on the US antiquities market and published on the internet without any of the usual documentary information (or much knowledge of the cult of Mithras) by Touraj Daryaee (UC at Irvine) on 14 May 2014 (see http://www.ancient.eu/article/685). This is an important, indeed unique, item, easily transportable; 3) it has been claimed that a large lion’s head in relief found near the Forum of Zadar/Croatia and now in the Ar- chaeological Museum there must have belonged to an enormous statue, but, quite apart from the implausibility of this idea, there are several peculiarities that suggest caution (Cambi 2003). Gordon, Richard.indd 113 30.05.2016 16:02:26 114 Richard Lindsay Gordon western provinces are quite different, and the one at Dura, located in the cen- tre of the arc-zodiac, just like the one in the Barberini at Rome, who stands lordly on the cosmic globe, appears as a draped bust with solar rays (Fig. 6).87 Elsewhere, however, as on an interesting relief from Sofia/Bulgaria, the figure appears in a quite different narrative context, namely the events following the sacrifice of the bull, and Mithras’ ascent to heaven in Sol’s quadriga (Fig. 7).88 This icono- graphic uncertainty contrasts strikingly with the large measure of agreement over how to design a tauroctony. Nevertheless, divergent as they are, the images the lionheaded god do make clear that Mithraic mystagogues saw here a means of developing a distinctive addi- tion to their sporadic use of standard cos- mology, through speculative elaboration of a cosmic deity inspired by, but differ- ent from, the transcendant beings imag- ined by the Orphic Rapsodies, the Chal- daean Oracles, Christian groupuscules such as the Sethians, or the Aeons of the Corpus Hermeticum. The Lionhead thus Fig. 5: Lionhead, represents a shared, if vaguely conceived, Museo Torlonia, V.543 horizon, an ambition to steer the group into a mildly speculative direction, once again in order to lay claim to additional symbolic capital, a hint of distinction in Bourdieu’s sense, a shaky answer to the question, “Where does it all stop?”, “Is there an ultimate principle?”. And yet, so far as we are permitted to argue from silence, a very large number of Mithraic mystagogues had no interest whatever in moving in this direction, did not care to supply answers to speculative questions. They simply blocked the Lionhead out and got on with their other business. 87 Barberini: V.390; the only colour photos on which the detail is still visible are to be found in Pavia 1999, p. 186. The figure was also represented in this position in the centre of the sequence of seven flaming altars on one of the items that made up the so-called ‘monument of Ottaviano Zeno’ (V.335; Vermaseren 1978, p. 52 with pl. XI) and on a now lost fragment of a relief at Ptuj (V.1510, with the photo in von Gall 1978, pl. XXXI, fig. 9); cf. Cumont 1975, p. 170 f. 88 V. 2320, now in the National Museum, Sofia. Gordon, Richard.indd 114 30.05.2016 16:02:27 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 115 Fig. 6: Relief of Zenobius in the Mithraeum of Dura-Europos, V.40, top only Fig. 7: The Lionhead as pendant to Mithras’ ascent to heaven, V.2320 (detail) The final area of cosmological speculation for which we have a little evidence is cosmogony. Mystagogic interest in creating a specifically Mithraic cosmogony, or at any rate a special account of the very early mythic history of the world, was even less marked than in the case of the Lionhead. One or two elements of such a narrative became standard in the unsystematic sequences of scenes mainly known from the grand reliefs in Germania: one of these, Jupiter establishing a preliminary cosmic order by destroying snake-legged Giants, or Typhon (Fig. 9, middle scene), belongs to what one might call the standard mythic repertoire of Graeco-Roman antiquity, being a fixture in every handbook of mythology.89 The second, however, in which a deity identified as Kronos/Saturnus reclines or sleeps on a rocky bed (Fig. 8) is far from standard, being a philosophical myth probably invented by the Stoic Posidonius in the first century bce: Kro- nos dreamed of the coming world-order, which was communicated to Zeus/ Jupiter; by the date of the Graeco-Egyptian Corpus Hermeticum this had be- come a “most beatific vision”.90 In a very few cases, however, a mystagogue has 89 E. g. Giants: Ovid, Met. 1.151–162; Typhoeus/Typhon: Apollodorus, Bibl. 1.39–44. On the Cumontian account of these scenes, see briefly Alvar Ezquerra 2008, p. 78 f. 90 Plutarch, De facie in orbe lunae 26, 941 e –942 b; cf. Corp. Herm. 10.5: τὴν καλλίστην ὄψιν. Gordon, Richard.indd 115 30.05.2016 16:02:28 116 Richard Lindsay Gordon Fig. 9: Tuenno/Bolzano, Fig. 8: Neuenheim V.1283, V.723. Sole surviving left panel fragment of a panelled relief Gordon, Richard.indd 116 30.05.2016 16:02:30 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 117 tried to go beyond this simple cosmogony; at Neuenheim/Heidelberg (Fig. 8, lowest panel) we find a figure, dressed as Mithras, with the tiara, in the Atlas- position, bearing the cosmic globe on his shoulders.91 Does this imply a specula- tive narrative in which Mithras pre-existed Kronos/Saturn, in turn implying a version in which, as in Euboulus/Pallas, he is himself the demiurge? Or is this simply a proleptic vision of Mithras as world-orderer? Or is this not Mithras at all but a ‘Persian’ deity such as Oromasdes?92 In a similar scene on the Oster- burken relief, on the Outer (Antonine) German Limes, this Persian Atlas kneels beside reclining Kronos/Saturn, and below this scene is represented – uniquely – a bearded divine figure surrounded by a broken rocky ‘cloud’, generally inter- preted as Chaos.93 Given that the dates of these great monuments cannot be far apart, we seem to have a case of communication and ‘midrashic’ development of an originally simpler attempt to sketch out a Mithraic cosmogony, which how- ever remained a purely local effort. The most persistent attempt to push in the same direction occurred, so far as we know, not in Germania at all, but in the Alto Ádige, near Tuenno (Val di Non), where an abraded and fragmentary panelled relief was found some time before 1864 (Fig. 9).94 The reading order of the scenes is uncertain. If we as- sume it starts from the bottom, as in the case at Neuenheim and Osterburken, the scene of Jupiter destroying the Giants is third in order, followed by re- clining Kronos/Saturn.95 These would then be preceded by a unique scene in which Kronos shakes hands with Helios/Sol, who never otherwise appears this early in the sequence; and by what was interpreted by Cumont as an At- las, apparently naked. Returning to the top, we find Kronos/Saturn in another unique scene, facing front, with his harpè held downwards in his right hand towards a rock.96 It is useless to try to make all this out: the figures are too indistinct and cannot be contextualised into other iconographic schemes that might suggest an interpretation. The point to be emphasised is that we have here a case in which a patron was so concerned to elaborate a cosmogony for his small group that he determined to fix the essential points – whatever they were – on the frame of his cult-icon. Once again, however, this development had no future: so far as we know, no one picked it up, and it died with him or his small group. 91 V. 1283 = Schwertheim 1974, p. 184 f., no. 141 a , scene 1. 92 In the topmost scene on this side, but cut off in Fig. 8, we are shown Mithras’ rock-birth (= orginally Mt. Ha, in which, most unusually he is not wearing the tiara, but holds a cosmic globe in his left hand). 93 V. 1292 = Schwertheim 1974, pp. 192–195, no. 148 a , scene 1: “Ein Kopf, umgeben von einem Blumenkranz (Chaos)”. 94 Cumont 1894–1899, II, p. 266 f., no. 114, is somewhat more informative than V.723. White marble; the dimensions of the panel are modest (0.79 m × 0.18 m). 95 Cumont saw Oceanus, the primal sea, here. 96 Cumont saw ‘Jupiter?’; Vermaseren ‘Jupiter or Saturnus’. Gordon, Richard.indd 117 30.05.2016 16:02:31 118 Richard Lindsay Gordon Nature It would be reasonable to conclude from the way in which these efforts at cos- mogony are calqued on mythic material readily available in the Graeco-Roman world, that Mithraic mystagogues, without bothering over properly philo- sophical questions about whether there was a void in the universe, or whether they should be anticorpuscularians, believed generally in the corporeality of the universe, as an ensouled and rational, ultimately benign, construct. Per- haps some did concern themselves with the nature of fire in the universe, one type destructive, another creative – a famous image of a Lionhead from Rome suggests that at least one patron was working with the idea of a creative blast of fiery breath;97 we do not know. But such a vitalist conception of the uni- verse, fully in keeping with Stoic principles, was actually also that sustained more informally by civic religion in the Graeco-Roman world. But, if they agreed about nothing else, Mithraic mystagogues surely were committed to a non-standard representation of the origin both of cereal-culture, as a direct consequence of the sacrifice of the heavenly bull98 – a creative sacrifice quite unknown in Graeco-Roman culture – and of the institution of commensual sacrifice as a communicative institution between gods and human-beings: pre- cisely not as the result of a decisive caesura in divine-human relations but as an explicit imitation of Mithras’ foundational act and the subsequent meal shared with Helios/Sol on the skinned hide of the dead bull. This was not just a de- liberate allusion to the religio-social role of sacrificial hides in civic cult but a claim that it was Mithras who performed the First Sacrifice, that is, a slaugh- ter followed by a shared meal, an ideal pairing that was to be commemorated, within limits, at each gathering of a Mithraic group.99 A crucial intersection between cosmology and human life represented as divinely fostered and guided is the sequence of seasonal change, which is, as we have seen, frequently implied by zodiacal sequences, and explicit in the small number of images which show fruit-trees bare or full of fruit, themselves linked to the two zodiacal signs Taurus and Scorpius, which marked the mid- dle point of Spring and Autumn respectively.100 This concrete instance of vital- ism reminds us of one of the lines of verse at Sta Prisca of which only the first three feet are reasonably secure: Fecunda Tellus cuncta [-----], ‘Fertile is all the 97 V.383 = Merkelbach 1984, p. 305, Abb. 51, without commitment to his neo-Renais- sance ‘symbolic’ interpretation. 98 This is made clear by the frequent representation, as in Fig. 1, of ears of grain sprouting from the dying bull’s tail. This in turn implies a view of man as beneficiary of a divinely- ordered natural world. 99 Taphonomic evidence shows that the meat eaten at these meals was, generally speaking, not beef but primarily the flesh of piglets and chickens. 100 Cf. Vermaseren 1974, pp. 36–43, in relation to the rediscovery of the ‘Ottaviano Zeno’ relief (V.335). Gordon, Richard.indd 118 30.05.2016 16:02:32 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 119 Earth …’.101 This was no doubt the first line of a longer poem celebrating the agrarian prosperity ascribed to a beneficent natural order governed by Deus Sol (invictus) Mithras, yet at the same time insisting upon its full consistency with traditional Roman conceptions of nature. And that in turn evokes a claim by Numenius (or Euboulus) about the significance of honey in the case of the rank of Persians, one up from the Lions: whereas in the latter case honey was understood as a liquid compatible with fire, in the case of the Persians its use in the ritual of initiation marks their function of protecting crops, and represents τὸ φυλακτικόν, the ‘preservation principle’.102 Mythologically, however, vitalism might be pushed to its very limits, in the idea of a ‘fecund stone’ (petra genetrix) that gave birth to Mithras, or the ‘water miracle’, in which dead rock is forced to produce living water. Personal well-being We come finally to the third topic, conceptions of well-being. Here the clas- sification, on the basis of Christian and Middle and Neo-platonist claims, of ‘Mithraism’ as a ‘mystery-cult’, or worse still, a ‘mystery-religion’ has been par- ticularly pernicious, even if the claim is scaled down to the idea that all small Mithraic groups celebrated ‘mysteries’, and that this is what gave them their dis- tinctive character. As I have pointed out, all this stems from the paradigms laid out by Reitzenstein and Cumont in the early twentieth century. Absolutely dominant here is the fictive model offered by Book 11 of Apuleius’ Metamor- phoses, which has become a key text in modern reconstructions of the category 101 Vermaseren/Van Essen 1965, pp. 188–192, l. 1. Vermaseren read with excessive con- fidence Fecunda tellus cuncta qua generat Pales, which is very difficult palaeographically and does not scan either as a metrical imbic senarius or as a 13-syllable hexameter, and both qua and generat must be false. Pales, whose festival was celebrated at Rome on 21st April, was an ancient goddess of the pastures and the herds of sheep/goat, which does not fit well with Tellus, a specifically agrarian divinity/concept. Pales is given the epithet fecunda in [Vergil], Culex 77, but specifically in relation to baby goats in an ide- alised hilly but heavily watered landscape. 102 Ap. Porphyry, De antro 16, cf. Alvar Ezquerra 2008, p. 201. Honey was a well-known preservative against rot and decomposition (cf. Columella, RR 12.45). An intriguing re- lief now in the Museo Civico in Bologna may represent a personal evocation of a similar kind. It represents Cautopates facing front and holding his lighted torch downwards, against a rocky background and apparently standing beside a dead bull; at spectator’s top left is a lunar crescent; by Cautopates’ r. shoulder is a vessel with water gushing forth, and by his l. leg a clump of common reeds, the typical emblem of river deities (V.694). Since Cautopates is often associated with the night, Luna is appropriate; but she was also regularly associated with natural growth and fertility (Cicero, Nat. deor. 2.50; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 20.8 [from Lucilus]), on one view by drawing plants to herself as she herself swells: e. g. Horace, Carm. 4.6.37–40 with Gundel 1933, col. 104 f.; Lunais 1979, p. 49 f.) Gordon, Richard.indd 119 30.05.2016 16:02:32 120 Richard Lindsay Gordon ‘post-classical mystery cults’. The publication of Walter Burkert’s Ancient Mystery Cults (1987) and J. Z. Smith’s Drudgery Divine (1990) helped clarify the costs of such conceptualisations, which are in fact modern stylisations mas- querading as indigenous classifications – as though μυστήρια, τελεταί, ὄργια and so on were ancient scientific terms rather than loose concepts that varied his- torically, locally and in individual usage.103 It may be objected that the very ex- istence of ‘grades’ (a purely modern term without any ancient equivalent) proves that ‘Mithraism’ was a mystery-cult. Yet it is quite uncertain how widespread these were within such groups (would all seven they make any sense in very small groups?) or how standardised the number seven was. Moreover, the floor- mosaic in the Mitreo di Felicissimo at Ostia, which correlates seven ranks with seven planets, includes an additional ‘performative’ index that seems to indicate a function rather than a type of experience, such as a cup for the Ravens, who are sometimes shown as servitors at the First Sacrificial Meal, or a bull’s hindquar- ter for the rank Soldier, implying that they were the butchers.104 How far may we generalise from that one, rather late, representation? It is the classification as a ‘mystery’ that has historically justified the as- sumption, based on acceptance of the Middle and Neo-platonist account of a soul-journey, that post-mortem expectations were high on the Mithraic agenda. Smith’s distinction between ‘locative’ and ‘utopian’ forms of religious claims has certainly helped to loosen this assumption, since it is obvious that both types may co-exist in a given religious formation or tradition.105 Yet it is ex- tremely difficult to demonstrate any Mithraic interest in post-mortem expec- tations on the basis of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence: there is no funerary epigraphy or iconography, the texts at Sta Prisca do not refer to or even imply such expectations, and attempts to argue for ‘Mithraic cemeteries’ are less than convincing.106 That does not of course mean that individual mystagogues had no interest in ‘utopian’ ideas, merely that the topic is not explicitly thema- tised in the material record. There are at least three motifs in the iconography upon which such speculations might have been hung: the provision of never- failing nectar through Mithras’ ‘water-miracle’; Mithras’ ascent to heaven in the quadriga of Helios/Sol (Fig. 7); the possibility of perennial heroic feasting in the afterlife evoked from the First Sacrificial Meal.107 But in raising any of these to 103 Cf. the now fundamental acount by Schuddeboom 2009; also Wellman 2005, p. 313 f. 104 Mitreo di Felicissimo (2nd half of third cent. CE): Becatti 1954, pp. 105–112 with fig. 22; V.299. Ravens as servitors (Cumont 1975, p. 178 f.); the rank Miles and the leg of beef (Chalupa/Glomb 2013). 105 E. g. Smith 1978, pp. 130–142. 106 Hensen 1999. 107 See my suggestions in Gordon 2016 a. In my view, Beck’s (2000) interpretation of the little procession on one face of the now well-known Schlangengefäß found in the never- excavated mithraeum at Mainz , which involves a clear misrepresentation of the identity of the figures, is quite unwarranted. Gordon, Richard.indd 120 30.05.2016 16:02:33 Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Cult of Mithras 121 the status of ‘Mithraic belief’ we once again run the risk of turning ourselves into Mithraic theologians. The best bulwark against the temptations of ‘mystery’ is the concept of small-group religion focused upon relatively creative and energetic leaders, the Weberian ‘mystagogues’, who negotiated a religious offer with their potential ‘customers’ and thereby acquired a form of symbolic capital otherwise unavail- able to them. Such small groups were completely integrated into Greek and Ro- man polytheism. Insofar as ‘oriental cults’ can be said to have existed at all, their pull lay in their provision of new styles and practices, new claims, new speculative nodes, precisely the kinds of material mystagogues needed to attract members to their groups, and which lent themselves to marketing devices such as processions, corporeal exhibitions such as shaving the head or self-laceration, playing with gender schemes, demonstrative placarding and so on. Mithraic mystagogues played rather the cosmological card, focusing on relatively intense, dramatised experiences inside buildings – a major innovation in the context of ancient urban religious practice – and appealing to the desire of socially-mobile individuals, especially those recently released into freedom by the grander lo- cal families, and their descendants, that is, the backbone of the ancient urban economy, for interesting religious experiences, a modicum of symbolic capital and a functioning social network. If these adherents had a common profile, we should think in terms of gender conservatives keen to perpetuate a certain ideal of masculinity founded upon a subjective sense of moral integrity.108 Instead of thinking in terms of secrecy, typical of ‘mysteries’, we should rather appeal for our counter-model to two scenarios: the one is the sixteen known mithraea built or furnished in the excavated parts of Ostia between ca. 160 and 260 CE, some communicating with one another through personal contacts, perhaps even with an informal association of mystagogues (‘priests’), all of them differently laid out, and whose locations and styles were certainly known to all in the neigh- bourhood; the other is the big party thrown by the Mithraic group in Tienen/ Belgium in ca. 275 CE (at the height of the ‘crisis of the third century’ and more or less coinciding with the end of the Gallic ‘Sonderreich’ of Postumus and Tetricus I), attended by around one hundred people, and crowned by the ritual smashing of all the crockery, plates, bowls, drinking cups and incense burners, and throwing the shards into a large pit – a ‘Celtic’ ritual mode, suggesting the ability of ‘Mithras’ to assume any appropriate local form desired.109 108 Alvar Ezquerra (2008, pp. 192–202) sets out what is known about Mithraic ethical demands. I say ‘subjective’ because the evident epigraphic over-representation of slaves and freedmen in the service of the Balkan internal customs officials is undoubtedly due to institutionalised peculation of the part of these men. The idea of ‘doing well’ was evidently disassociated from the actual sources of income that permitted these men to set up such lavish votives. 109 Ostia: Becatti 1954; Bakker 1994, pp. 111–117; White 2012; Tienen: Martens 2004 a–b. Gordon, Richard.indd 121 30.05.2016 16:02:33 122 Richard Lindsay Gordon The dominant type of social catchment in urban contexts, formation and ex- ploitation of networks, the organisational recourse to ‘ranks’ – the graffiti in the Dura Mithraeum show that, if the group were large enough, there might be several intermediate or ‘supernumerary’ positions110 – and the practice, heav- ily institutionalised in mithraea, of dedicating personalised votive altars and tauroctony-reliefs, which exemplifies the thorough-going internalisation of the relation between votive-practice and the desire for long-term prestige within the group, all suggest that ‘doing well’ was central to the aspirations of the members of these small groups, and that what ‘Persian’ Mithras offered, both to mystagogues and to other group-members, was a relatively sophisticated means of articulating these values within an open-ended ritual framework. ‘Persia’ was thus a means of establishing freedom of manoeuvre. Among these freedoms may have been ‘utopian’ post-mortem aspirations, but in my view we know nothing concrete about these. A ‘Platonic’ account, however, involving flight from the world can surely be excluded as the over-generalised interpretation for their own purposes by outside intellectuals. If we can talk about ideal Mithra- ists, they are the handsome young Lions, waiting in line, painted on the walls of Sta Prisca in Rome. Conclusion In offering these pages in honour of John Hinnells, I have tried briefly to sketch his contribution to the study of Roman Mithras, indicate the main fault- lines of research since the 1970 s, suggest some of the problems with the catego- risation ‘mystery cult’, and outline the implications of starting with a primarily sociological model of ‘small-group religion’ in which a major role is played by active, individual players. Both as a Roman historian rather than a Religions wissenschaftler and as a member of the research group ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ at Erfurt, I feel it necessary to work against what I see as over-idealised, re- mythologising accounts that are insufficiently critical both of the Tendenz of ancient texts deemed to be the relevant ‘sources’ and of insufficiently examined received categories in modern research. In the very different academic culture of the late ’sixties, Hinnells already worked along both lines. Abbreviations AcIr Acta Iranica ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt BEFAR Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 110 Rostovtzeff/Broen/Welles 1939, p. 123 f., despite opening with the claim “Dura fully supports St. Jerome”, which of course it does not. 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Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras

Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras

Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras

Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras

Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras

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