Mithras and Mithraism: San Clemente, Ostia Antica, and London
A languid stone’s throw from the Colosseum, under both the twelfth century church of San Clemente and the fourth century basilica which lies beneath, there is a temple of Mithras where I often take folk.
It is a relentlessly evocative site, and bears testament to an all-male religion which once flourished across the Roman Empire—from Northumberland to Nubia; from Spain to Syria. The “Mysteries of Mithras” as it is mentioned in antiquity spread especially through the Roman military from the first to the fifth centuries before fizzling out as another monotheistic religion which had originated in the Eastern Roman Empire supplanted the polytheistic Roman religion which had tolerated (rather than embraced) Mithraism.
The “mystery” (literally meaning “unspoken”) element is key to why so little is known of the cult: it was a secret religion, to be practised only by initiates. Our knowledge of Mithraism is therefore necessarily sketchy, and what we do know of it comes not from texts but from archeological evidence: sculpture, painting, a notable mosaic, archeological finds, and occasional dedicatory inscriptions.
Those ancient written sources which refer to the cult and which do survive are not particularly reliable. The secretive nature of the religion means that no textual sources from initiates exist, and those which do are almost certainly inaccurate: a garbled mix of hearsay and muddled gossip.
One of the most important ancient references is made by the pro-vegetarian Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry of Tyre writing on the cusp of the third and fourth centuries, as the popularity of Mithraism waned.
Roman Mithraists believed their cult had been founded by Zoroaster who dedicated to Mithras, creator and father of all, a cave in the mountains bordering Persia [which was abundant] in flowers and springs of water.
In the late nineteenth century, the hitherto neglected study of the Mithraic cult was espoused especially by Franz Cumont. Cumont’s thesis followed Porphyry’s writings and he saw Mithraism in the Roman Empire as an Romanised version of Zoroastrianism, the Persian state religion (still practised by a minority in modern Iran, it one of the oldest active religions in the world).
In fact, the deity Mithra (without an “s”, the name is not exactly the same) is one of the most ancient in the Indo-Iranian pantheon, and the etymology of his name goes back to a meaning “that which causes binding”. Mithra is attested as early as the fourteenth century BCE, when he is mentioned as one of the deities whose name is invoked to guarantee a contract between the Hittite and the Mitanni kingdoms of Anatolia.
In Avestan, the proto-Iranian language of Zoroastrianism, this then becomes the word for “covenant” or “contract” and Zoroastrianism makes reference to Mithra Ahura. Ahura means “lord”, which refers to Ahura Mazda with whom Mithra is paired and by whom he is legitimised. He is not, however, a major deity in his own right.
In the late nineteenth century, Cumont’s studies perhaps employed a certain amount of force in fusing these eastern elements with what was known of Roman Mithraism to reveal it as a Romanisation of Zoroastrianism.
Undoubtedly there is some sort of connection, the names are too close for there not to be. How much is borrowed, and where this happened is a subject of much discussion. Rome itself has been considered the birthplace of Mithraism, though borrowed elements (including Mithras’ clothing, about which more shortly) suggest a development in the eastern part of the Empire.
Plutarch, writing in the late first century, over a century after the events he describes, says that the Cilician pirates (Cilicia was what is now southern Turkey) ousted by Pompey were Mithraists. This is from John Dryden’s seventeenth century translation:
There were of these corsairs above one thousand sail, and they had taken no less than four hundred cities, committing sacrilege upon the temples of the gods, and enriching themselves with the spoils of many never violated before.
Here Plutarch lists a battery of sanctuaries and temples. He continues:
They themselves offered strange sacrifices upon Mount Olympus, and performed certain secret rites or religious mysteries, among which those of Mithras have been preserved to our own time having received their previous institution from them.
Plutarch, Life of Pompey. Chapter 24, 5
Presumably the Mount Olympus he refers to is that often referred to as Lycian Olympus in what is now south west Turkey, and his appears to be a reference to an Eastern iteration of the religion rather than the version which spread through the Roman army. It is certainly rather at odds with what we know of Roman Mithraic services taking place certainly indoors and usually underground. On top of a mountain is about as dramatically not underground as one can get.
