Mithraism
MITHRAISM. The name Mithraism, with its equivalents in other languages, is a modern term for a cult known, at least to Christian writers and in later antiquity, as "the mysteries of Mithras," but for which the most neutral term is "the Roman cult of Mithras." Its usual organization was based on small, exclusively male groups that gathered for sacrificial meals in honor of the originally Indo-Iranian god Mitra/Mithra/Mithras. Owing to the virtually total loss of ancient discursive accounts, almost all important aspects of the cult are more contentious. Much of what passes as received knowledge about Mithraism has little or no evidential basis.
History of Research
The mythological compilations of the High Renaissance, particularly L. G. Giraldi's De deis gentium (1548), assembled virtually all the classical texts relating to the god Mithras, then identified with Helios-Apollo, but these provided no coherent account either of the god or of the Roman cult. However, a handful of inscribed reliefs from Rome and elsewhere showing Mithras stabbing a bull to death enabled antiquarians such as Martin de Smet/Smetius (c. 1525–1578) and Steven Pigge/Pighius (1520–1604) to correctly identify them. Throughout the early modern period to 1700, the key text was Statius Thebais 1.719f.: Persaei sub rupibus antri—indignata sequi torquentem cornua Mithram, "[Apollo addressed as the god] who, beneath the rocks of a Persian cave, twists the resistful horns—Mithras." The god's act in stabbing the bull to death was understood as an allegory of the Sun's role in furthering agricultural fertility; indeed the god himself was often interpreted as the Good Husbandman.
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