1.
Introduction.
Ordinarily, we may think that a cult’s
geographical origin belongs among those elementary facts which can be taken for
granted by the relevant scholarship, and casually assumed by every discussion.
The origins and early development of the cult of Mithras in the Roman Empire,
however, have remained a perpetual subject of dispute. As everyone knows, the
modern founder of Mithraic studies, Franz Cumont, believed that the cult was,
in a strong sense, Iranian, transmitted by hellenised ‘mages’ whose teachings
were slowly transformed through the centuries until the cult achieved its final
form in the late Hellenistic period. Unfortunately, during the century since
the publication of his major work, Textes
et monuments figurés relatifs au mystères de Mithra
(1896-1900), the archaeological proof required to confirm the role of the
hellenised ‘magi’ and the transmission of their cult to the West has not been
found. The tradition of scholarship that built upon Cumont’s work has found it
difficult to respond to this discrepancy between his model and the empirical
evidence. The latter indicates that mithraea appear suddenly towards the end of
the first century AD[i],
seemingly without antecedents, but all conforming to a similar architectural
plan. The first mithraea and inscriptions appear at the same point in time, and
clearly form part of the same cult even though they are found in geographically
distant and culturally distinct areas. On any account of the origins of the
cult, this geographic distribution is difficult to explain.
The usual solution of the issue of how
the cult was introduced into the Roman world is to appeal to the army.[ii]
This explanation works well when we are dealing with the areas where the army
was stationed permanently, but fails to explain the existence of mithraea in
areas not occupied by the army after the end of the first century, such as the
three Gauls or Dalmatia.[iii]
The aspects of the cult that might be thought to appeal to the military, such
as loyalty, bonding through initiation rituals, and the formation of small
close-knit male groups, do not seem likely to have had much appeal outside that
social context. On the other hand, the fact that the cult was established in a
commercial area such as Ostia suggests that they were perceived as attractive
and useful by non-military personnel. Disregarding the heavy concentration of
mithraea along the Rhine-Danube Limes,
obviously in relation to the army, many other mithraea seem to owe their
existence to their proximity to the Roman road system. One of the problems in
discussing the development of the cult is that the foundation dates of mithraea
do not fall into a clear chronological and geographical pattern: the
chronological distribution does not display any coherent relation to geographic
location. This problem is further complicated by the difficulty of dating many
mithraea with any accuracy.
An additional problem is the difficulty
of calculating the number of men in the cult, at any period of its development,
which hampers any examination of its growth. The small size of mithraea appears
to indicate an emphasis on small groups; perhaps ten to fifteen men could fit
in an average sized mithraeum, which leads us to believe that the overall
number of adherents was also quite small. This underestimation of the total
number of cult members then leads to a conflict with the fact that the
archaeological evidence is widespread. In order to make an impact in the
archaeological record, a certain amount of wealth within the cult would be
necessary; such a situation is unlikely if we were dealing with a small
marginal group. The quantity of archaeological evidence is too large to have
been created by an organisation made up of a small population, especially
taking into consideration that the inscriptions associated with the cult
indicate that the members were not rich social elites.
These two facts, the sudden appearance
of the cult at numerous apparently unconnected locations, and the lack of
reasonable figures for the population of Mithraists at any given time, make it
difficult to use the purely archaeological evidence as the basis for a coherent
social history of the cult. After struggling with the archaeological record, I
turned the problem on its head, and began to look at sociological models to see
if it might be possible to create a model of cult dynamics that would fit the
archaeological evidence. It is of course true that the construction of a
hypothetical model of a specific cult, especially a mystery cult with its
secrecy and initiations, is merely an exercise which can only produce an ideal
type which cannot claim to be a true representation of past events. Such a
model is to be understood simply as a heuristic device, a tool for
interpretation, prediction, and integration of existing research data. A model
of the social organisation of the cult can serve to fill in some of the gaps in
the archaeological record by offering a theoretical history of the cult that
can be matched up with the archaeological evidence. If the model can give an
insight into the structure and growth mechanisms of the cult, then various
estimates of the numbers of adherents can be proposed, though keeping in mind
that any figure used is only a convenient peg to hang the model upon, as a real
total calculation is not feasible. The problem of the geographical distribution
may also be related to the social organisation of the cult, so the model may
give a framework that allows for an explanation of the difficult geographical
and chronological distribution of mithraea.
A sociological model of the cult also
needs to incorporate the timeline of the cult’s history. With over three
centuries of cult activity represented in the archaeological record, it would
not be prudent to assume that the cult stayed exactly the same from beginning
to end. More important, we must keep in mind that archaeological evidence from
those three centuries contains only a fraction of the material that existed,
and may have enormous gaps due to the non-survival of certain materials. If the
cult did practise a policy of secrecy (as would be normal for an initiation
type cult) then the possibility of material survival is even more restricted, thus
limiting the evidence that would support the proposed history created by the
sociological model. The most important imponderable here is the nature and form
of Mithraic worship before the creation of the characteristic building type of
the permanent mithraeum. Comparative evidence strongly suggests that a new
(mystery) cult cannot be expected to leave much trace in the archaeological
record during its early phases. It is only relatively recently that improved
investigative methods have made it possible to recover timber buildings: a high
proportion of recently discovered mithraea in the northwestern provinces turn
out to have been constructed in this fashion. In timber-poor areas, however,
this consideration is of less importance, and we can assume that the worship of
Mithras was conducted in a relatively makeshift manner that has left few, if
any, traces.
Although no written account of the
doctrines nor belief-structure of the cult has survived from antiquity, careful
analysis of the iconographic sources and other archaeological evidence has
produced a coherent interpretation of the beliefs of the Mithraic cult.[iv]
This information is indispensable in creating a sociological model of the cult
and speculating how it may have functioned.
2.
A social-science model for initiatory cults.
The following general description of
cult dynamics based on modern social science can be applied to many types of
cult. The application of social science to ancient history demands an
interdisciplinary approach, and has been applied, for example by Rodney Stark,
to the ‘miraculous’ growth of the early Christian church.[v] The dynamics of cult
behaviour and development have been studied in depth by social scientists
during the past 40 years. The social mechanisms by which individuals are
converted to a cult, and the pre-conditions required for propagation of cults,
can be understood through models of social networks and religious economies.
For example, one of the important advances in social science has been to
discredit the idea that people convert to a new cult because the official or
dominant religion is not serving their perceived needs.[vi] Conversion is not the
result of looking for a new ideology because the current one is insufficient:
it is rather a matter of “bringing one’s religious behavior into alignment with
that of one’s friends and family members”.[vii] It is thus individuals’
“investment in conformity” that induces them to adopt a given cult, once their
interpersonal relationship network comes to consist predominantly of cult
members. A social network is made up of personal contacts with other people
usually because they are the members of the same household, neighbourhood, or
family, but may also include professional relations.
The two most important needs a cult must
satisfy if it is to be successful, are material and psychological (spiritual).
If these are not met at both the individual and organisational level, the cult
will fail. Stark argues that a successful cult will provide members with direct
rewards to members, satisfy desires for scarce goods, and offer compensation
for unattainable goals.[viii]
Direct material rewards include status, financial gain, and useful social
relationships. Money and privilege are relatively scarce goods for many people,
especially in the quantities they desire: in these cases the cult provides some
access to these kinds of scarce resources through its structure and power base,
or is in a position to offer alternatives. Religious compensations are offers
made relating to goods that do not exist in this world, such as life after
death or salvation of the soul. A successful cult must be able to produce
sufficient rewards and cohesion among its members so that the organisational
side can function and the cult can continue to propagate itself. In order to
grow, a cult must access new social networks: religious movements fail when
they become closed or semi-closed networks and are unable to sustain growth.
There is power in numbers, so an
effective cult needs not only to get members to maintain growth, but it needs
the right kind of members. A small number of highly motivated and dedicated
members will pay off better for the cult than a large number of marginally
interested or ‘free rider’ members. Here initiatory cults have an advantage,
since they admit only really motivated individuals. The process of initiation
shifts the individual from the status of an outsider to that of an insider, who
now has access to the collective power of the group. Further initiations or
selective admission to higher levels again limits access to the cult’s power
structure. If there are several levels of initiation, the individual’s
commitment is strengthened each time he passes to a higher level. Each
initiation or change of position in the hierarchy can be seen as a new bond to
the cult. The positive compensation for the individual’s commitment is
increased access to the internal power structure and rewards, plus a connection
or affiliation to the entire network of cult members, which results in further
rewards, prestige, and power. Initiation cults create a system of positive
enforcement among a group of adherents who have all ‘passed the test’ and so
become bonded to each other, and to the group as a whole, emotionally, socially
and, in some cases, economically. An initiation cult is founded upon the
obligation to maintain secrecy in relation to the revelation(s) so vouchsafed,
which increases the value of the commitment. A cult can also use negative
sanctions, such as ostracism, physical punishment, or life imperilment, against
individuals whose commitment is faint-hearted or who try to leave the cult.
Cults that have been created ex nihilo by a charismatic individual
generally last only as long as the creator and his first group of adepts are
able to maintain their belief in the cult’s doctrine. Such devotion or
commitment to a charismatic person is difficult to routinize, or to pass on to
a second generation of adherents who enter the cult after the passing of the
original founding members. Either the cult withers away, or it undergoes an
organisational and doctrinal re-valuation or restructuration that permits
growth on a different basis, allowing new incoming members to gain material and
personal rewards, thus eliminating the requirement of contact with the charismatic
founding individual. On the other hand, cults may also form around a ritual, or
a holy site, or even out of a fragmented existing religion, so that they are
not dependent upon an individual founder.[ix]
The life expectancy of a cult depends
upon its ability to maintain and increase the number of adherents. To
understand how a cult performs in society, one can use the social-science model
of “religious economy”, a simple enough term referring to the notional totality
of all religious activity taking place in a society, but provocatively
described by Stark in commercial terms, such as ‘market’, ‘clients’, and
‘firms’.[x]
A new cult is at greatest risk in a pluralistic religious market because it is
difficult to compete for a market share among a population of potential
customers with many options available. Most clients will choose the most
convenient religions, usually the main stream ‘firms’. New start-up religious
firms have not only to compete with the established firms, they must also
compete among each other for the available marginal or deviant clients, that
is, those who are willing to look outside standard solutions. A new or marginal
religious firm is best served by catering to a select clientele in order to be
successful. By adapting and continuing to provide an attractive product through
careful adjustment of the cult’s ideology and organisation, in keeping with
changes in the political, economic and social climate, the cult can ensure
itself a long working life. As in all markets, the product must be desirable
and functional to maintain adherence or commitment. These claims by Stark have
been criticised by historians of ancient religion because they seem to
misrepresent the degree and nature of competition in a flexible, polytheistic
religious system such as that of pagan antiquity. But we can perhaps retain
them in a general way for the new, essentially non-civic cults of the ‘long’
Hellenistic period, such as those of the Mater Magna, Isis and Sarapis, IOM
Dolichenus and Mithras. These cults developed new types of non-traditional
organisation together with universal, non-particularistic claims relating to
individual ‘well-being’ in the world, even though they were by no means all
‘mystery cults’.
One last issue relating to the
introduction of a new cult into a society is its “cost-effectiveness” in
cultural terms. As Stark points out:
People are more willing to
adopt a new religion to the extent that it retains cultural continuity with
conventional religion(s) with which they are already familiar.[xi]
The more elements that correspond to the
current belief system, the less new material the convert has to assimilate. The
re-interpretation of familiar items can give authority to the cult’s doctrine,
appearing to reveal new truths about standard beliefs.
3.
The use of social networks: a comparison between Christian and Mithraic
organisation.
Before applying these general cult
criteria to the Mithraic mysteries, I would like to compare it with the early
Christian church order to bring out the differences in organisation and use of
social networks.[xii]
Archaeologically, the cult
of Mithras appears ‘suddenly’ in the last quarter of the first century (AD) in
several locations geographically distant from one another.[xiii] What does this imply
about its date of foundation? Comparison with early Christianity is
instructive. We know from the written documents that have survived in the New
Testament and elsewhere that an organised Christian church, or churches, had
existed since the missionary journeys of Paul, now dated between AD 50/1 and
his execution in AD 64. Yet recognisably Christian artefacts are virtually
absent from the archaeological record before about 180 AD.[xiv] If we did not possess the
written texts, a circumstance entirely due to its historical success, we would
no doubt also assume that Christianity came into existence during the
mid-second century AD.
In the case both of Christianity and
Mithraic cult, there needed to be a sufficient quantity of at least moderately
prosperous adherents before sufficient collective wealth could be accumulated
to make an impact in the archaeological record. It is hardly surprising that
there is no archaeological evidence for the cult of Mithras before the end of
the first century: small cults that appealed to people far below the elite
would not have the financial resources or the motivation to build permanent
structures in stone. It is important to remember that even the earliest known
mithraea, such as those at Mainz, Heddernheim-Nida III, Pons Aeni
(Pfafffenhofen am Inn) and Caesarea Maritima, appear to have been at least
partly stone-built structures, which implies a considerable accumulation of
wealth and self-confidence among cult-members in the last couple of decades of
the first century and the early second century AD. The wealth aspect holds true
even if the buildings were merely rented quarters in existing ranges of
buildings (as was certainly the case at Caesarea). It must also be remembered
that (a) other early mithraea may have been discovered in the past, but their
initial phases could not be dated (in all these early cases this has been
possible solely thanks to their fine wares); and (b) the primitive methods of
early excavation, indeed, with a few notable exceptions, up to and even after
the Second World War, meant that analogous structures in non-durable materials,
such as those recently discovered at Krefeld-Gellep, Wiesloch, Künzing and
Tienen, would probably not have been recognisable as a mithraeum, and many such
structures may thus have been lost, at least in timber-rich areas. Therefore it
is important to keep in mind that the first appearance of the Mithraic cult in
the archaeological record is probably not the starting point of the cult’s
existence, but rather the moment when it had sufficient wealth and motivation
to create durable structures.
The geographic distribution of the two
cults indicates an important difference in their modus operandi. Christianity is an urban phenomenon, with places of
worship as a ‘central place’ serving a local congregation. As the network
extended to neighbouring urban areas, facilities for accommodating the
congregations were adapted and finally built when the necessary funds were
available. As the size of the local Christian social network grew,
progressively larger churches were constructed. The Christians spread from one
urban centre to neighbouring urban centres. The map of the distribution of
cities known to have had churches reveals a slow, general movement westward
from the eastern part of the Roman empire. Geographically speaking, the
Christian church spread organically by means of new social network connections
established in contiguous areas. By contrast, the first mithraea appear within
a short period in very distant parts of the Empire.[xv] Within a period of about 20
years, four of the first known mithraea were built or at least occupied, all
following a very similar architectural plan adapted from the cult dining-room
of the Hellenistic world, but hundreds of kilometres apart, ranging from
Caesarea Maritima in Judaea to the Wetterau limes (Heddernheim III). The
decisive factor here seems to be cult-organisation, which creates a consistent
cult expression, rather than dispersion from a specific geographical origin,
which leads to replication of analogous structures in contiguous areas. The
buildings associated with the cult of Mithras do not appear to be dependent on
the cult’s point of geographical origin.[xvi]
As mentioned before, conversion to a cult
occurs through social networks. The difference between the two cults’
artefactual and geographical patterns suggests that the social networks of
early Christianity were very different from those of the Mithraists. At the
point it first appears in the archaeological record, the cult of Mithras was
clearly not using a network dependent upon a fixed local congregation, but one
associated with a highly mobile social group or organisation.[xvii]
4.
A model of the cult of Mithras.
A sociological model of the cult may be helpful
because archaeology is by nature an incomplete science. Archaeological evidence
contains only a fraction of the material that existed, so recreating a picture
of the past with archaeological remains is like trying to put together a puzzle
with only one fourth of the pieces. This forces us tentatively to
reconstruct the missing pieces with the
help of written sources, historical data, and a great deal of human ingenuity.
Even so, there will still be blanks, and worse, pieces that are difficult to
interpret and fit into the reconstructed areas. For the Mithraic cult, we have
only the durable material evidence and little help from written and historical
sources. In this case, a model of how the cult and its members were organised
may help us to recreate the development of the cult and understand how the geographically
disparate sites in the archaeological record were established.
The archaeological evidence in the form of mithraea
points to a cellular or modular organisation of groups of men. The
iconographical information indicates that there was a hierarchical grade system
accessed through initiations. The consistence of cult expression in
geographically distant sites points to a well-developed modular organisation
capable of maintaining and supporting conformity in the structures used by cult
members. A cult that uses small groups of men organised into cells could use a
vertical structure of grades for the cells and a horizontal structure for an
all encompassing hierarchy, thus eliminating a central figure of authority and
central administration and so creating a flexible and adaptable network. This
would mean that the relations between members and their positions in the grade
system were the most important parts of the overall organisation. The cult
authority would reside in the enforcement of the grade system and the strength
of the interpersonal relations and commitment between members.
A vertical module would consist of a single cell of
members, representing adherents from the lowest grade, Corax, to the highest,
Pater, and brought together by their immediate social network. A horizontal
structure would consist of all the members of the same grade throughout the
entire cult, with an implied or virtual relation to all other members of the
same grade.
Vertical movement (advancing up the grade structure)
within the cell is controlled by initiation rituals and perhaps the fulfilment
of other ritual, financial and moral requirements. Additionally, advancement
could have been negotiated through the social network by positive personal
contact between members. A problem with vertical advancement is that the
members of a given grade are in direct competition for openings to the next
higher level (it seems unlikely that such openings were unrestricted, since
that would have devalued them, and thus have reduced the motivation to attain
them). Such competition can have a negative effect on group cohesion: it is
actually a method used by ‘pyramid’ commercial cults to eliminate members who
do not show sufficiently high motivation. As the mysteries of Mithras used initiation
rituals to select only highly motivated individuals, the problem of
‘horizontal’ peer-group competition was probably solved by limiting the size of
the modules or cells, so that competition between members of the same grade
would have been minimised. The Virunum album seems to provide an illustration
of this process at work.[xviii]
This size limitation would probably have had a positive effect for the personal
contact between members of the same grade who were not from the same cell.
Horizontal movement in the cult would mean moving
from one cell to another. This implies the possibility of entering a new cell
at a specific grade obtained elsewhere, as is probably the case with Trebius
Alfius and C. Flavius Nectareus, each of whom seems to have joined the Virunum
mithraeum with the initial grade of Pater, in the years AD 183 and 190
respectively.[xix]
For example, a member of the grade miles
presumably would have been able to leave his original cell and join another
cell while maintaining his accredited grade. This kind of open-door policy can
only work when there is a high level of confidence in the initiation system’s
ability to produce trustworthy adherents, and we know that honesty and fidelity
are two of the virtues extolled by the Mithraists. The confidence level needed to make such
transfers work is probably due to the initiation process which creates a basic
measure of an individual’s commitment to his cell or group. If that rite of
initiation is accepted as common currency among all the members of the cult,
even among members who have not previously had direct personal contact, then
individual movement between cells would have been feasible. The use of an
accepted value for a member’s commitment through out the entire cult structure
would have been a necessary part of the cult’s structure, perhaps a feature
needed for accommodating members that were part of a mobile structure like the
army.
The crucial point for determining the
value of a member’s commitment was the initiation into the cult. The scenes
painted along the fronts of the podia in the Capua mithraeum around AD 220-40
give some idea of the admission ritual.[xx] Further information is
provided by the scenes in barbotine technique on the recently published Mainz
krater.[xxi]
The early date (ca. AD 120-40) of this vessel provides some reason for thinking
that the initiation process was already established and even visually codified
by the time of the cult’s first appearance in the European archaeological
context.[xxii]
The most important scene in the present context depicts a young man (the
initiand), in a scanty tunic, who is raising his arms, which are apparently
bound together, in front of his face, as though in fear, and a second man, much
more substantially dressed (the initiand’s mystagogue), who is raising his
right hand in a gesture denoting “I have something important to declare”; and a
third man in a Phrygian cap (evidently the Pater),
seated on a chair, aiming an armed bow at the terrified initiate. All these images suggest how the
initiation process worked. A person would be introduced to the cell by a
sponsor, an existing member of the cult, and be accepted as a candidate for
initiation. After full filling the necessary requirements (whose precise nature
is unknown), the initiand would pass a first initiation, still under the
protection of his sponsor. Presumably there were initiations into each grade,
but it is not known whether there were further sub-divisions within the grades.
To raise the value of commitment to the cult, the initiation procedures had to
be difficult, even life threatening. The violence and the emotional distress of
initiation-rituals in the cult have been pointed out by Beck.[xxiii]
Undergoing such an experience creates strong bonds between the members.
The small size of most mithraea implies
that a limited, close knit group was seen as model. However, if a cult is to be
successful, it needs to be able to integrate new members and expand into new
social networks while maintaining substantial continuity of structure and
belief. To understand how new members entered the cult, a model of
organisational dynamics can be used. The first question to be answered relates
to the minimum and maximum number of men in a cell. On the basis of the
conventional understanding of the sevenfold grade-structure, it would seem that
seven individuals, one occupying each grade, would constitute a minimum number
of men. But the arrangement of podia in mithraea does not seem to reflect an
organisation based on the number seven. The podia are often – perhaps usually
-- of equal lengths, along the sides of the room or building, which indicates a
roughly equal distribution of members on each side. But seven men cannot be
divided evenly by two (unless we assume that one member, say the Corax, did not
recline but served). The direct relation between the ‘cosmic topography’ of a
mithraeum and the podia suggests that the members would be equally divided
between them.[xxiv]
In the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres at Ostia, for example, each bench is
divided into six sections and each section is associated with an astrological
sign. If one man was assigned to each sign, then there would be six men on each
bench, giving a total of twelve. A man in reclining position needs a space
roughly 1.40 – 1.50 by 0.80 to1.00 m, so the minimum room required for six men
would require a podium size of 4.80 by 1.40 m. Two podia of 5 m. in length
would therefore provide sufficient space for twelve men in reclining position,
aligned one after another, feet towards the walls, heads towards the central
aisle, most probably looking in the direction of the cult niche. The smallest
mithraea conform to this minimum size, confirming that a minimum number of
twelve men divided among two podia is probably the smallest size of a cell.
But how is one to fit the occupants of
seven grades into a minimum number of twelve men? I would suggest that the
reclining positions were filled in the following manner: one Pater and one
Heliodromus, doubling as representations of Mithras and Sol, followed by two
Persians, doubling as the torch-bearers Cautes and Cautopates, and then with
each of the subsequent grades being represented by two men, so two Lions, two Miles, two Nymphs, and two Coraces. This gives a total of
twelve men, each one occupying a space aligned against a different astrological
sign. The grades with two men may have been differentiated through the
associated astrological sign, so that the grade of Lion/Gemini would not be the
same position as Lion/Capricorn.
Table 1, Grades and astrological
signs, plus planets, arranged in the order presented at Sette Sfere ( after
Gordon, 1996).
rising spring Sun
North
|
Pater Aries
Jupiter
|
Heliodromus Pisces
Saturn
|
falling autumn Moon
South
|
|
Persian Taurus
Jupiter
|
Persian Aquarius
Saturn
|
|
|
Lion Gemini
Mercury
|
Lion Capricorn
Venus
|
|
summer
Day
|
Miles Cancer
Mercury
|
Miles Sagittarius
Venus
|
Winter
Night
|
|
Nymph Leo
Luna
|
Nymph Scorpio
Mars
|
|
|
Corax Virgo
Luna
|
Corax Libra
Mars
|
|
But this hypothetical scheme does
not provide any information about the
total number of men who were members of the cell, it provides a purely ideal or
static picture containing only twelve men, and does not explain how new members
could be integrated. The growth of the cult of Mithras is an historical fact:
many, if by no means all, mithraea had to be increased in size at least once in
their lifetimes as cult-buildings. We can conclude from the dimensions of the
largest mithraea, such as those at Mainz (if Huld-Zetsche’s hypotheses are
correct), the ‘palazzo imperiale’ and the Mitreo degli animali at Ostia (V.
250; 278), Spoleto (V. 673), or the temple Vermaseren calls Carnuntum III
(V.1682), that many more than twelve men could have participated in a given
banqueting ritual.[xxv]
A podium 20 m in length could accommodate 24 to 25 men, giving a total of 48
-50 men present simultaneously. So in order to allow growth, our model must to
be able to accommodate more than one or two individuals for each grade. From
the geographically distant placement of mithraea, the cult must have had
well-established growth mechanisms that allowed each cell to expand to a
certain size and then divide into new cells maintaining the grade structure in
order to have created such a wide dispersal pattern.
The organisation of the grade system is
fairly well understood through inscriptions and images.[xxvi] By applying a model of
the cult into the known grade structure, we can model a cell’s size
mathematically using a pyramidal structure. While there is not any concrete
evidence that the Mithraic cult used a pyramidal structure, this kind of
organisation is the most successful and stable and fits well with an initiation
type cult. Such a model needs to be able to accommodate new members while
maintaining a roughly pyramidal structure – a classic exponential pyramid
scheme is implausible, since it would imply the following numbers:
1 Pater
2
Heliodromus
4
Persian
8 Leo
16
Miles,
32
Nymphus
64
Corax.
This would mean that the lowest group,
Corax, would be too large to allow close personal contact both for the
horizontal and vertical structure.. Moreover the reduction to a single person
at the top suggested by the above exponential model does not fit well with a
system of cells that appeared to have had members that could move from one cell
to another. The reason is that, in the classical pyramid scheme, each member is
directly linked with a superior member and has control only over those junior
members directly linked to him. Another objection is that, if we assume that
the numbers of places in each grade were limited as in the above classic
pyramid scheme, then the integration of new members would become impossible
after the cell had reached 127 members. Classical pyramid schemes deal with
growth by having an unlimited number of levels, creating a vertical power
strategy with a single person at the top of an unlimited number of levels. For
the Mithraic cult, the seven grades create a limited number of levels in a
pyramid structure, indicating that the growth mechanism has more ‘horizontal’
volume than vertical. The creation of new cells through the division of
existing large cells would be the logical manner to accommodate a growing
number of adherents.
I would suggest that the growth
mechanism relied, in part, on the close relations established between the
sponsor and his initiands. For, as is suggested by the mystagogue-figure who
accompanies the initiand on several of the Capuan panels, and in the scene of
the supposed initiation of the Corax on the Mainz vessel, there apparently was
a great deal of direct, personal control over the initiand. Such rituals act as
a mechanism to control behaviour and commitment. Such intimate personal contact
is a usual, probably indispensable, feature of a close and durable social
network. Members may have had an affiliation to their sponsor that helped to
decide which members went into the new cell when the original cell became too
large. This relationship may have mimicked the client patron system well known
in Roman society. Such replication of social experience is exactly what we
would expect to find in a cult, which needs to be, in Stark’s terms, culturally
cost-effective. Gordon long ago argued that the cult of Mithras mirrored Roman
social experience, and saw the cult as “a confirmation of ordinary social
experience”.[xxvii]
Although, or just because, the cult of Mithras does not mirror official Roman
religion, it needed some form of cultural familiarity to have been attractive
to potential adherents without their being required to invest an unrealistic
amount of effort in new learning.
The movement of members from one cell to
another along the horizontal structure would, as mentioned above, be assured by
the accepted value of the initiation, allowing a member to be integrated into
the vertical structure under a new ‘patron’. This horizontal movement may mean
that the relation between sponsor and initiand (in imitation of the
client/patron relationship) was less strong than ‘horizontal’ bonds within the
grades, implying that the doctrine and authority of the cult served an
important role in unifying the overall structure of the cult. Concretely, this
would mean that an initiand would have had a sponsor who could have been in any
level of the grade system, but the initiand would enter the cult at the level
of Corax, and thus come more directly under the influence of the peer-group
rather than of his sponsor. It would not make much sense for a member of the
lowest level to be able to sponsor other new initiands, but it may have been
possible. The question of when a member could become a sponsor is an
interesting one, and would clarify a great deal how the growth mechanism
worked, but is a question that cannot be answered. A layering of personal
networks, administrational structures and religious doctrine would have given
the cult more opportunity to provide the members with the rewards associated
with prestige by presenting a multitude of organisational positions.
We do not know how quickly an adherent
might move up the ladder of grades, but, given the complexity of the knowledge
or insights to be assimilated, the moral character to be acquired, and the
financial outlay involved, the rate of advancement is unlikely to have been
rapid. The higher the grade, the more commitment was required from the
cult-member, so that the amount of financial and other commitment demanded at
the highest levels may also have served to slow the upward movement of cult
members. It is also probable that there were some members who did not desire to
move up in the structure, and were content to stay in a certain grade for many
years. Again, the long-term growth of the cult’s development must taken into
account. When the cult was new, the cells were small, even tiny, and
advancement relatively easy; but as time passed the popularity of the cult
presumably produced an excess of adherents, and consequently more obstacles to
advancement were needed in order to increase the value of the commitment. These
same obstacles were relaxed when the cult was no longer so popular, as a means
of maintaining membership. We do not know how promotion from one grade to
another was effected, but there certainly had to be an accepted and fair
method, and the long success of the cult points to a system that worked well.
As I have argued above, the classic
exponential pyramid is not a suitable model for the cult of Mithras, as we know
that a system of cells using a pyramid structure of only 7 levels was used.
While we do not know how many men occupied each grade, we can start with a
small model using the structure of grades in table 1, and add members to show
growth. New members enter the cult in the lowest level of Corax and were
probably servers. The need for secrecy would imply that the ‘servers’ were
members of the cult and not uninitiated serving slaves. For administrative
needs, there may have been a chief of each grade, and it may have been only the
chief of each grade who was seated on the podium during banquets, especially in
the smaller mithraea.[xxviii]
Table 2, Men occupying the grade
system, columns 1 showing the places and grades aligned with the podia on each
side of a mithraeum, columns 2 showing chiefs or administrative heads, columns
3 showing a pyramidal distribution of members in the grades.
|
1
|
Pater
(Aries/Jupiter)
|
Heliodromus
(Pisces/Saturn)
|
1
|
|
|
1
|
Persian
(Taurus/Jupiter)
|
Persian
(Aquarius/Saturn)
|
1
|
|
2
|
1
|
Lion
(Gemini/Mercury)
|
Lion (Capricorn/Venus)
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
1
|
Miles
(Cancer/Mercury)
|
Miles
(Sagittarius/Venus)
|
1
|
3
|
4
|
1
|
Nymph
(Leo/Luna)
|
Nymph
(Scorpio/Mars)
|
1
|
4
|
5
|
1
|
Corax
(Virgo/Luna)
|
Corax
(Libra/Mars)
|
1
|
5
|
The mathematical model presented in table 2
gives a total cell size of 42 men. The division of the grades Lion, Miles,
Nymph, and Corax into two subgroups allows a larger number of men to be in the
grade while maintaining close personal control over the members. This would
mean that, on entering the cult, a new initiand would have a direct personal
relation to his sponsor, who would be in a superior grade, while also being
subordinate to the administrative head of the Corax grade, and ultimately under
the control of the Pater. In this way, the member is connected to the cult
through personal, administrative and doctrinal bonds, in addition to his
initiation.
A tabular model of growth can be
estimated by allowing a steady rate of new members and upward movement in the
grade levels. This model is only useful for seeing the possible structure of
growth and does not take into account horizontal movement of members among
cells.
Table
3. Growth table based on a cell with members arranged as in table 2, with new
members entering through the grade of Corax and members moving up to higher
grades (in rows 1-6). Numbers in bold
indicate an administrative head while numbers in parentheses show the division
of members between the head(s) of a grade.[xxix]
(Row)
|
Pater
|
Helio.
|
Persian
|
Leo
|
Miles
|
Nymph
|
Corax
|
total
|
1.
|
1
|
1
|
2
(1)(1)
|
2
(2)(2)
|
2
(3)(3)
|
2
(4) (4)
|
2
(5) (5)
|
42
|
2.
|
1
|
1
|
2
(1)(2)
|
2 (3)(3)
|
2
(4)(4)
|
2
(5)(5)
|
2 (6)(6)
|
51
|
3.
|
1
|
1
(1)
|
2
(2)(3)
|
2
(4)(4)
|
2 (5)(5)
|
2 (6)(6)
|
2 (7)(7)
|
62
|
4.
|
1
(1)
|
1
(3)
|
2 (4)(4)
|
2
(5)(5)
|
2 (6)(6)
|
2 (7)(7)
|
2 (8)(8)
|
76
|
5.
|
1
(2)
|
1
(3)
|
2 (4)(4)
|
2 (5)(5)
|
2 (7)(7)
|
2 (8)(8)
|
2 (9)(9)
|
83
|
|
The cell size in row 5 of table 3 gives
83 men, who obviously could not all fit at the same time into the majority of
mithraea, but perhaps they did not need to. If the mithraeum was the place
where the rites took place, perhaps only a proportion of members of each grade
needed to be present inside. The evidence of Tienen (Belgium), where a grand
feast of at least 100 people was held one summer around AD 275 outside the (small) mithraeum,
apparently to celebrate the repair of the building, shows us that the number of
men participating in the feast largely exceeded the capacity of the mithraeum[xxx].
By the time that the cell had reached the size shown in row 5 of table 3, the
lowest group of Corax would be rather large for close personal contact, while
the grade of Pater has three members, a figure which seems large for a single
cell.[xxxi] When the cell had reached the size of 76 or
83 men, it would seem logical that it would be divided into two smaller yet
complete cells in order to accommodate further growth while maintaining the
necessary close personal contact. The two new cells could probably use the same
mithraeum if there were no strict calendar of mandatory ritual banquets. As we
do not know the reasons and frequency for celebrating the ritual banquet, it is
not possible to speculate further about how and when the mithraeum would be
used.
A mithraeum was certainly needed to
house cult images, and was evidently the place where a ritual banquet took
place. Complex initiatory cults generally require the members to learn a great
deal about its structure and belief system. The information or ‘knowledge’
presented at the higher levels is obscured from the lower levels, access to new
information or ‘deeper truths’ being one of the rewards offered for commitment.
Lower grades are not privileged to know the most sacred of truths presented by
the cult: as Apuleius suggests in the ‘Isis-book’ of The Golden Ass, the revelation of the next level of knowledge can
only be attained through personal, including financial, engagement. A period of
preparation for the initiation into the next grade would have been required.
The mithraeum itself may even have served as a ‘classroom’ for preparing the
initiation to a higher grade. The training and preparation of each man who
wished to progress to a higher grade could have taken place in the mithraeum,
using the cult-icon as a teaching support. The individual grades can be
understood as forming ‘micro-cells’ within the vertical structure of the entire
community. As the example of the Patres
patrum at Dura-Europos indicates, such a structure could have also been
extended to the horizontal structure, i.e. a ‘macro-cell’ consisting of members
of the same grade from different cells.
The mathematical model in Table 3 is of
course an idealised picture of growth, but it gives us a starting place for
considering how mithraea could have been organised. It is quite possible that
some cells were very stable once they reached their maximum size. This would
have been a normal result when the cell was established within a stable social
network and absorbed all of the potential members. The short-term success of
the individual cell is assured, but not the long-term success of the overall
cult. In the situation where men were not bound to a geographical location, but
were constantly being moved every few years, each time they moved they would
come into new social networks and then there would be new openings to be filled
in a cell. Taking this mobility a step further, it is possible that cells may
have divided and re-form with members from other cells that already existed in
the area and from displaced members from other cells. This kind of cell
formation would be analogous to the use of vexillations
in the army, where men from different units were assigned to a temporary
formation in order to perform specific tasks in areas where their unit was not
stationed. On this analogy, a Mithraic temple might sometimes have been a
temporary structure needed only for short time, given that the members may
never have returned to that area after moving on. If the men who had been
temporarily stationed in an area were established long enough to connect to a
local sedentary social network, then a cell may have been formed in that place
and would be maintained by the local non mobile members. This would have been
advantageous both for the mobile members and the sedentary local members. The
local members would have new contacts through the cult, and future members who
would come into the area would have an already established cell of their cult
available, plus a mithraeum already constructed and in use.
This model suggests how the cult could
have been organised into cells that primarily made use of a horizontal strategy
for growth by dividing the cells to create many small pyramidal structures. The
complexity of personal, administrative, and religious relations ensured a
stable organisation even when the cult members moved from one cell to another.
This mobility of members either in a geographical or organisational sense gave
the cult and its members practically unlimited possibilities for expansion into
existing and new social networks.
5.
The relation between cult numbers and mithraea
Let us now go back to the first
mithraea that appear in the archaeological record. Beck has suggested that a
small founding group entered the Roman world from Commagene as late as the
third quarter of the first century AD.[xxxii] Such an initial group
would have needed very powerful and deliberate conversion methods to have
created any archaeologically-visible impact in the Roman world by the end of
the century: the principal objection is that rapid conversion growth rates are
statistically rare among cults. One exception is the Mormon Church, one of the
fastest growing cults in the modern world. By means of an effective conversion
strategy along established social networks, obligatory high birth rate among
members, and few restrictions for new members, this sect has managed an
historical rate of increase of 43 % per decade during the twentieth century.[xxxiii]
As a restrictive initiatory cult which excluded women, and within the entirely
different world of antiquity, the cult of Mithras could not possibly have had
anything approaching such a high rate of sustained growth.
But, we can test Beck’s date
by making two projections, one assuming an initial group of 100 and the other
of 1,000, increasing at a rate of 40 % per decade, and starting in the year AD
70.[xxxiv]
This would give the following population figures:
Table 4.
Cult numbers based on a
40% growth per decade, starting with 100, and 1,000 members.
Year
|
70
|
80
|
90
|
100
|
110
|
120
|
130
|
140
|
No. of
Men in founding group
|
100
|
140
|
196
|
274
|
384
|
537
|
752
|
1053
|
1,000
|
1,400
|
2,744
|
3,841
|
5,377
|
7,527
|
10,537
|
14,751
|
Could a cult consisting of 196 men have
made such an impact on Roman society by around AD 90 that the poet Statius (Theb. I.719-20) could refer to the god
Mithras in the expectation of being understood by his audience? By increasing
the number of men in the founding group from one hundred to a thousand, with a
40% rate of increase per decade, the sum of 2,744 members in the year 90
presents a more significant group, but not when we consider that the cult was
most probably spread over the Roman empire. Even with a large founding group of
1,000 members, reaching a population of 7,537 in the year 120, it is hard to
say if this is an adequately large number. Could seven and a half thousand men,
spread over the empire, be sufficient to make an impact on the archaeological
record? It was not sufficient for the Christians; Stark estimates the Christian
population at 7,530 in the year 100.[xxxv] In Rome, the earliest
catacombs date from ca AD 150; the great bulk of Christian archaeology dates
from after AD 250, indeed from after Constantine.
Even if we increase the base numbers in
this way, the total number of adherents in AD 100 seems too small to have
produced the known archaeological evidence. There is also the problem of the
similarity of the grade structure with the army. What would be the cultural
advantage for a founding group composed of Commagene court officials based in
Rome in using a hierarchical structure analogous to that found in the Roman
army? The years around AD 70 do, as Beck has pointed out, seem to be
significant in the cult’s development, but in my view it is incredible that a
cult that only began in the Flavian period could in such a short time have
accumulated the numbers of adherents and the cultural adaptations implied by
the archaeological evidence - especially a secret cult that used violent
initiations, and that was not linked to the rich social elite.
The scenario looks more plausible
however if we shift the founding group back in time, to the previous favourite
candidate, the Cilician pirates of Plutarch, Vit. Pomp.24.[xxxvi]
If we assume a maximum group of 1,000 cult members in the Roman world in 60 BC,
and a growth rate of 23% per decade, we obtain the following figures[xxxvii]:
Table 5. Estimated growth starting
with 1,000 members in the founding group at a rate of 23% per decade:
Year BC AD Number
of members
________________________________________________________________________
60
1,000
40 1,512
20 2,286
01 2,811
20 4,252
40 6,431
60 9,729
80 14,718
100 23,266
120 27,387
140 41,433
If we assume that the cult spread first
within the army, there would have been sufficient time for it to imitate a
military hierarchy, develop a range of initiation rituals, create a codified
iconography and a standardised architecture by the time of the earliest
archaeological evidence. On the hypothesis of a growth-rate of 23% per decade,
the cult would have had around fifty thousand members by the middle of the
second century AD. While the rate of increase of most cults slows over time, as
the potential pool of interested persons is absorbed into a cult, access to new
social networks can offset a growth decline for a certain period of time. While
there is not any simple way to quantify the effect on the growth rate, the fact
that the cult was open only to men and that the population of men was
statistically superior due to female infanticide must also speak in favour of a
reasonable growth rate. But even the numbers in Table 5 are not large enough to
approach Beck’s estimate of the cult’s membership in the Severan period of some
1,200,000 adherents, that is 2% of the hypothetical total Roman population of
60 million.[xxxviii]
A constant growth rate of 23% with a founding group of 1,000 in BC 60 only
gives 384,431 members for the beginning of the Severan period.
Historical events may also have
sporadically affected the growth rate once the cult was in an established
network. For example, the crisis of AD 69 may have had an effect within the
army: those who belonged to the cult of Mithras had a system of trust among
each other which must have been advantageous during that time of crisis and
loss of leadership. This may have created an upsurge in conversions and
increased the overall number of members. The period around the year AD 70 may,
as Beck has suggested, have been important for a different reason, namely as
the period when the cult’s astrological aspects were developed through the
influence of Ti. Claudius Balbillus.[xxxix]
But even on the conservative estimate of
a founding group of 1,000 members, there is still the problem of the lack of
archaeological evidence before the end of the first century AD. There are too
few known mithraea, and they date from the end of the century. There are two
main considerations here. The first is the archaeological recognisability of
mithraea built of non-durable materials. On the one hand, a mithraeum
constructed of wood is not easy to identify as such. A trench cut in the earth,
baulked up with wood or sods to construct the podia and covered with a
temporary roof, would in an average archaeological context offer hardly more
than rows of postholes with perhaps a small amount of ceramic and faunal finds.[xl]
It is only recently, with aggressive light-industrial building on green-field
sites away from the core areas of Roman settlements that such temples have been
found, especially in Germany, in considerable numbers.
The second consideration is the issue of
temporary and/or non-specialised versus permanent and/or specialised places of
worship. In its early years, as it certainly did later, the cult may have used
rooms in insulae (such as the Casa di
Diana at Ostia), or temporary quarters in large buildings, such as baths or horrea, or structures in non durable
materials. These quarters would simply have been given up when no longer
required. This would be intelligible for a cult using a mobile social network
and who were committed to secrecy. The decision to build permanent (stone)
mithraea may be explained as the result of the acquisition of sufficient
numbers, and so a wealth platform, and/or of Romanisation, or it may reflect a
reduction in the cult’s need for secrecy. The most plausible explanation is
doubtless pragmatic: for a mobile cult using temporary structures, there would
come a point at which it would be more efficient to build a stone mithraeum for
long-term use - many individual adherents might be passing through the area, or
be stationed nearby for short periods. That is, at some point it would become
sensible to develop a building strategy for present and future use rather than
constantly build temporary structures each time one was needed. A stone
mithraeum could then be seen as a permanent substitute for a temporary wooden
structure.[xli]
6.
Conclusion
The model shows that the cult relied
more upon the stability of its organisation and trustworthy personal networks
than on a central authority housed in a permanent structure. The hardest thing
to see in archaeological remains is relations between people: in the case of a
cult based on secrecy and initiations, it is not surprising that it should not
start to make an impact in the archaeological record until late in its history.
From the model, we can understand that some mithraea were temporary structures:
not the permanent centre of a hierarchically organised cult, but merely
structures that housed a proportion of the cell members for a ritual banquet.
A successful cult creates a social
structure that gives its members material and psychological benefits. As we
have seen, the psychological implications of a social network made up of men
bonded through initiation rituals may have been very important in the cult’s
success. Organising men into cells with further sub-divisions into grades
allowed close personal contact between, and control of, cult members. The
absence of a central point meant that the cult was able to profit in its growth
from its members’ relatively far-flung social contacts. The resulting numerical
strength in turn made it possible, and plausible, for adherents to ‘cash in’
their social contacts not only for their own benefit but also for that of other
adherents in the same cell. In a society based on patronage and personal
face-to-face contact, the conjunction of this- and otherworldly ‘salvation’ was
an important incentive to adherence. Especially in the army, where men were
frequently transferred to other locations, one could be assured of having
significant social contacts through the medium of the cult wherever one found
oneself.
The aspect of material reward may have
been linked to the power base that resulted from the social network created by
the cult. Such a movement would need to have provided sufficient material
rewards to satisfy the personal desires of the members. In my view, this could
have been easily accomplished through commercial activity using the social
network. I am not suggesting that the mysteries of Mithras were an ‘economic
cult’, as the term is now understood, rather that it must have had material
rewards that consisted of tangible financial benefits. People are attracted to
a cult that promises earthly rewards when they believe that they merit them but
are not receiving them in the desired quantity.[xlii] From the epigraphic
evidence, we know that it was not the wealthy social elites who were attracted
to the cult, but rather the middling economic class, the army, the patrimonial
bureaucracy, and the local sub-elites who were not wealthy enough to move in
the upper circles but had hopes of improving their lot. These groups fit the
profile of people who believe they deserve more but are not getting it.
The development of a hypothetical model
of the growth of the cult of Mithras may not have solved any of the problems
inherent in Mithraic studies, but it does suggest the possibilities offered by
a social-science approach to ancient history. The problem of the widely
scattered geographical locations of Mithraic finds can be seen as the physical
remains of a widely spread mobile cult that lacked a central authority. The
small size of mithraea is not a conclusive indication of the total number of
members in a cell, since the total population is rather a function of the
organisational structure. While my estimates of the numbers of Mithraists in
the early years are probably too conservative, it may be hoped that my general
model may be found useful when more information, and more sophisticated
excavation techniques, become available.
Acknowledgements : I would like to express my thanks to Dr
Richard Gordon, who’s contribution in the form of sound advice and textual
emendation, has substantially improved the quality of this article, and to
Fiona McHugh for her help.
November 2003, Lausanne
[i] Beck, R., “The
Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis”, Journal of Roman Studies, 1998, 115-128 at 118.
[ii] Daniels, C. M., “The role of the
Roman Army in the spread and practise of Mithraism” in John Hinnells, ed. Mithraic Studies, Vol. II, 1975,
249-274.
[iii] Walters, V., The Cult of Mithras in the Roman Provinces
of Gaul, Brill, Leiden, 1974. Walters remarks that only two inscriptions
can be attributed to army sources. The discovery of several mithraeums in
France : Gaidon-Bunuel, M. A., “Les mithraea de Septeuil et de Bordeaux”, Revue du Nord-Archéologie, 73 :
1991, 49-58, and Fixot, M. (éd.)
Le site de Notre-Dame d’Avinionet à Mandelieu, Monographie du Centre
de Recherches Archéologiques 3, Paris, 1990.
[iv] Gordon, Richard, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World,
Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art, Variorum, Aldershot, 1996. Clauss,
Manfred, The Roman Cult of Mithras, The
God and his Mysteries, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, translated by
Richard Gordon, 2000. Turcan, Robert, Mithra
et le mithriacisme, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2000.
[v] See Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1996 ; with the discussion contained in Journal of Early Christianity 6.2
(1998), particularly K. Hopkins, “Christian number and its implications”, pp.
185-226.
[vi] Lofland, John, and Stark, Rodney,
“Becoming a World-Saver: a theory of conversion to a deviant perspective”, American Sociological Review, 30, 1965,
862-875.
[ix] Groups which use an existing
religion as a basis are more properly called sects.
[xii] Given the different spheres of
social networks that these two cults used, I do not think it necessary to bring
up the idea of a competition between them.
[xiii] Beck, R., “The Mysteries of
Mithras: A new account of their genesis”,
Journal of Roman Studies, 78 (1998), 115-128 at 118.
[xiv] Snyder, Graydon F., Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of
Church Life before Constantine. Mercer University Press, Macon, GA, 1985.
[xv] Beck,” Mysteries,”118.
[xvi] It is this lack of connection with
a founding place that presents one of the enduring problems in Mithraic
studies. On the other hand, the typical mithraeum closely resembles
dining-rooms attached to Hellenistic temple-complexes.
[xvii] This applies only to the first
groups that are archaeologically visible: the cult obviously widened its social
networks within one or two generations of this period, see for example Clauss, Cult, p.23-8.
[xviii] G. Piccottini, Mithrastempel in Virunum (Klagenfurt,
1994), 44-51, has brilliantly shown that CIL
III 4816 and two other fragments of a marble inscription (AE 1994: 1335) list the later entrants into the cell in the same
order of seniority as AE 1994: 1334,
and plausibly deduced that it marks the sole known case of the formation of a
new Mithraic cell when the existing one became too large – in this case, when
it had apparently reached almost 100 members. It seems extremely unlikely that
all those named had indeed survived, in some cases for 20 years; yet only four
names are marked with the theta nigrum
(indicating that they are deceased), and all of them occur in the first group,
the list of the subscribers to the refurbishment of the mithraeum, whose deaths
are noted in the addendum to the heading: et
mortalitatis causa convener(unt).
[xix] Piccottini, 34f. = AE 1994: 1334, col. II l.10; col. III
4f. As Piccottini points out, there are good reasons why a formal album of this
kind would only record the highest grade. I. Huld-Zetsche, ‘Ein Mithräum
in Mainz’, Archäologie in
Rheinland-Pflaz 2002 (Mainz, 2003), 75-8 at 76 fig.3, has published a fine
bone ink-well from the Ballplatz Mithraeum in Mainz, rightly remarking that it
shows that it was necessary in the cult’s day-to-day life to write documents
which could not conveniently be kept on wax tablets -–precisely, one may think,
lists of grade acquisition and membership, as well as financial records and, no
doubt, liturgical texts of the kind we possess in scraps from Sta Prisca and
Dura-Europos.
[xx] Vermaseren, M. J., Mithraica I: The Mithraeum at S. Capua Vetere, Leiden 1971, 24-48.
[xxi] H.-G. Horn, “Das Mainzer
Mithrasgefäß,” Mainzer
Archäologische Zeitschrift 1 (1994), 21-66, with Beck, “Ritual”,
passim.
[xxiv] Gordon, Richard, “The sacred
geography of a mithraeum: the example of Sette Sfere”, in: Image and Value in the
Graeco-Roman World, Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art, Variorum,
Aldershot, 1996.
[xxv] Carnuntum (V 457, 1682)
[xxvi] For a brief recent account, see
Clauss, Mithras (n. 4 above), 131-40.
Since the implication of my argument is that the grade-system was more or less
universal in the cult, I will not here discuss the recent suggestions that it
was effectively confined to central Italy, or was only a rather extraordinarily
elaborate system of ‘under-priests’. I will just remark that the evidence of
Dura-Europos is extremely inconvenient for both views, a) because the closest
iconographic analogies of Dura are with the Danube area, b) because it seems
clear that all initiates at Dura were in one grade or another, and in one or
two cases we seem to be able actually to follow individual careers.
[xxvii] Gordon, “ Roman Society”, 95.
[xxviii] If, as Clauss argues,
each of these grades in fact represents a priest in the cult, then there would
be two priests for each grade, excepting the two highest of Pater and Heliodromus,
but this does not give any indication of how many members aside from the
priests could be in a cell. Given the initiation system and the close personal
networks which the Mithraic cult structure seems to imply, a system of priests,
i.e. elite persons having set roles and duties apart from the ordinary members,
would not seem to fit the profile of a cell based organisation which allowed
for growth. The post of priest would be a blocking mechanism for vertical
advancement and limit the chances for ordinary members to move upwards in the
cell structure. Advancement in the grades was certainly one of the incentives
offered by the cult, and as mentioned before, access to more power within the
organisation is one of the rewards necessary for personal fulfilment in a cult.
[xxix] This table gives an average growth rate of
23%, which is based on the admission of 9 men to an already established cell
(from table 2) assuming that each row is a 10 year period. This growth rate per
decade is acceptable for a moderately successful modern cult.
[xxx] Forthcoming publication, but see review by R.
Gordon in EJM online.
[xxxiii] Stark, Rise, p. 7; idem, “Modernization and Mormon Growth”, in: A Sociological Analysis of Mormonism,
Marie Cornwall, Tim B. Heaton, Lawrence Young eds. (University of Illinois
Press, Champaign, 1994), 1-23.
[xxxiv] Beck does not attempt to quantify
the founding group: the numbers proposed are my own, 100 to 1,000 men would
seem to cover the description of a small founding group.
[xxxv] Stark, Rise, p. 7, table 1.1.
[xxxvi] Plutarch’s description of the
pirates’ rites is often considered insufficient proof of the introduction of
the cult into the Roman world, since he says merely that the Cilician cult continues ‘to this day’
(i.e. ca AD 120). But Plutarch’s remark, which can hardly have been taken from
his probable source, Posidonius, does reveal that an Anatolian cult of Mithras
was known to him. In the absence of any other date for a founding group,
Plutarch provides a convenient base line for our projection.
[xxxvii] The growth rate of 23% is taken from table
3, based on an exponential growth for a single cell of 42 men, giving 9 new
members for the first ten years, 11 additional new members after 20 years, and
14 new members during the third decade. This rate is acceptable for a
moderately successful cult today.
[xxxviii] Beck, in The Oxford Classical Dictionary³ p.
991.
[xl] Good recent examples
are Künzing and Krefeld-Gellep
[xli] Quite likely this
‘translation into stone’ also occurred in the case of other equipment in the
mithraeum, such the cult relief panel, particularly the revolving reliefs, a
technical feat in stone, but a very sensible use of material in wood. Wood
survives in the archaeological record only under particular, rarely met,
conditions, and given the importance of cult icons, a wooden image would more
likely be destroyed than lost.