Mystery religion
Overview
Any of various secret cults of the Greco-Roman world.
Derived from primitive tribal ceremonies, mystery religions reached
their peak of popularity in Greece in the first three centuries ad.
Their members met secretly to share meals and take part in dances and
ceremonies, especially initiation rites. The cult of Demeter produced
the most famous of the mystery religions, the Eleusinian Mysteries, as
well as the Andania mysteries. Dionysus was worshiped in festivals that
included wine, choral singing, sexual activity, and mime. The Orphic
cult, by contrast, based on sacred writings attributed to Orpheus,
required chastity and abstinence from meat and wine. Mystery cults also
attached to Attis, Isis, and Jupiter Dolichenus, among others.
Main
any of various secret cults of the Greco-Roman world that offered to
individuals religious experiences not provided by the official public
religions. They originated in tribal ceremonies that were performed by
primitive peoples in many parts of the world. Whereas in these tribal
communities almost every member of the clan or the village was
initiated, initiation in Greece became a matter of personal choice. The
mystery religions reached their peak of popularity in the first three
centuries ad. Their origin, however, goes back to the earlier centuries
of Greek history.
Etymologically, the word mystery is derived from the Greek verb myein
(“to close”), referring to the lips and the eyes. Mysteries were always
secret cults into which a person had to be “initiated” (taken in). The
initiate was called mystēs, the introducing person mystagōgos (leader of
the mystēs). The leaders of the cults included the hierophantēs
(“revealer of holy things”) and the dadouchos (“torchbearer”). The
constitutive features of a mystery society were common meals, dances,
and ceremonies, especially initiation rites. These common experiences
strengthened the bonds of each cult.
History » Hellenic roots » Dionysiac
In every Greek city the god Dionysus was worshipped by fraternities and
sororities and also by mixed communities. Dionysus was a god of
fruitfulness and vegetation but especially of wine. The Dionysiac
festivals provided an opportunity for stepping outside of the daily
routine. The festivals included not only drinking wine and engaging in
sexual activity but also participating in such significant features of
Greek civilization as choral singing and mimes. In many cases, only the
initiated could participate in the ceremonies. As almost every Greek did
join in, initiation into the Dionysiac cult might be compared to tribal
initiations. It seems that initiation into the Dionysiac Mysteries was
accompanied by initiation into sexual life. The act of producing
offspring, however, could never be wholly separated from the thought of
death, so that the worshippers of Dionysus were aware of a mystic
communion among the ancestors, the living generation, and the future
members of the community.
History » Hellenic roots » Eleusinian
The most important sanctuary of Demeter (Ceres), the goddess of grain,
and her daughter Kore (Persephone) was in the city of Eleusis in Attica,
between Athens and Megara. Famous religious agricultural festivals—known
as the Greater and the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries—celebrating the
sowing, sprouting, and reaping of the grain, were reenacted in this
city. The cycle of the grain, pictured in the myth of Kore (Persephone),
was thought to be parallel to the cycle of man. The myth, as told in the
Homeric hymn to Demeter, tells how Hades (Pluto, or Pluton), god of the
netherworld, wanted a wife and how he carried off Kore into the depths
of the earth. Her mother, Demeter, through long days of searching,
during which she came to Eleusis, refused to make the grain grow.
Finally, Hades was bidden to send Kore back to earth. She came back to
light as the grain maiden and gave birth to her son Plutus (Kore, “the
maiden”; Pluton, “the rich one”; Plutus, “wealth,” especially in grain).
But, because Kore had eaten a pomegranate seed, a symbol of death and
birth, she could not be completely released, and a compromise was
reached by which she spent one-third of the year with her husband, the
rest with her mother. Satisfied with this, Demeter caused grain to grow
again and taught the Eleusinians her rites. The entire story of Demeter
and Kore was elaborately reenacted in the Eleusinian ceremony. Just as
in the myth Kore was carried away to marry Hades and to give birth to
Plutus, so was grain thrown into the field and buried in the earth to
bring forth new life. Just as grain came up out of the ground and was
reaped to yield man’s bread and to be used as seed, so was a girl taken
from her parents and her virginity “killed” to bring forth new
offspring. And when a man died, he was buried in the earth to partake
mystically in the cyclic renewal of life. This was the message of
Eleusis: out of every grave new life grows—for the initiates there are
“good hopes” for a glorious immortality in the afterlife.
Although there were festivals of Demeter throughout Greece, the true
Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis only. At first, the cult
of Demeter was local and initiation was tribal rather than personal. By
participating in the mysteries, a man became a full member of the civic
body. This was changed when Eleusis was annexed to the Athenian
territory about 600 bc. Initiation lost its importance as a means of
conferring civic status; it became a purely religious ceremony. Every
Athenian was admitted to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and soon the
mysteries were open to every Greek, so that the ceremonies received an
“international” character. Whoever wished to be initiated, however, had
to go to Eleusis. It was a day’s journey from Athens, a longer distance
from most of the other Greek cities. The mystery rite became no longer a
tribal ceremony. Each person had to decide for himself whether or not he
wanted to be initiated. This development was possible only because
Athens had become a large city with a differentiated culture that gave
the individual ample choice of a way of life, including religion.
Both Dionysiac and Eleusinian mysteries had a wide range of meaning.
Their essence was not contained in any written record but only in the
festivals themselves—the holy days of the community. Many participants
appreciated only the superficial level of the ceremonies and considered
them as an opportunity for having a good time—good company, good food,
intoxication, and sometimes (in the Dionysiac cult) sexual pleasures.
The ceremonies were open to a deeper understanding, however, that was
not made explicit by any theology or by any set of creeds but by the
religious action itself, which contained the meaning and conveyed it to
the participants without the interposition of words. Therefore, it was
not possible to disclose to the noninitiated the mysteries by words, but
it was treachery to reveal the secret dances.
History » Hellenic roots » Secular mystery communities
A society of initiates could drop its religious connections and become
merely a social club. But because secrecy, common meals, and common
drinking were implied, the Greeks and Romans regarded such clubs as
mystery societies; they did not differentiate between religious
associations and private clubs. The role of aristocratic clubs in
Athenian politics was very important. In 415 bc the famous mystery
scandal occurred. Several aristocratic societies conspired to overthrow
the Athenian democracy. In order to pledge all members, a common crime
was committed in which each member had to participate. One night the
members of the social clubs took hammers and removed the genitals of the
many Hermes statues in the city. Whoever would desert the common
political cause would be denounced by his former friends for having
committed a crime against religion, and many witnesses against him would
be at hand. The people of Athens immediately understood that a
conspiracy was developing. By a series of severe trials, the
conspirators were traced and exiled. The speech of the orator Andocides,
one of the conspirators, delivered in his defense in 400 or 399 bc, when
the old affair was again taken up in a trial, still survives. The title
of the oration is “On the Mysteries.”
The secular mystery clubs continued throughout Greek and Roman
history, and it was often difficult to distinguish them from religious
associations. The Romans were especially distrustful of secret
societies. This suspicion was justified in the case of Catiline, who led
a conspiracy that attempted to overthrow the government in 63 bc. But
Trajan, the Roman emperor from ad 98 to 117, did not allow the citizens
of Nicomedia (modern İzmit, Turkey) to form a club that planned to
provide a fire brigade, and he only reluctantly allowed the citizens of
Amisus (modern Samsun, Turkey) to establish an association for
charitable purposes.
History » Hellenic roots » Orphic
Besides community initiations, there were ceremonies for individual
persons of deeper religious longing. Such persons were called Orphics
after Orpheus, the Greek hero with superhuman musical skills who was
supposedly the author of sacred writings; these writings were called the
Orphic rhapsodies and they dealt with such subjects as purification and
the afterlife. It is possible to reconstruct a common pattern for these
initiations of individuals, although an Orphic “church” never existed,
and the doctrines of the many small communities of individualists varied
on a broad scale.
Many Orphics seem to have had a strong feeling of sin and guilt. They
believed that there was a divine part in man—his soul—but it was wrapped
up in the body, and man’s task was to liberate the soul from the body.
This could be achieved by living an Orphic life, which included
abstinence from meat, wine, and sexual intercourse. After death the soul
would be judged. If a man had lived a righteous life, his soul would be
sent to the meadows of the blessed in Elysium; but, if he had committed
misdeeds, his soul would be punished in various ways and perhaps sent to
hell. Following a period of reward or punishment, the soul would be
incarnated in a new body. Only a soul that had lived a pious life three
times could be liberated from the cycle.
History » Hellenic roots » Pythagoreans
The Orphic creeds were the basis of the Pythagorean brotherhood, which
flourished in southern Italy beginning in the 6th century bc. The
Pythagoreans were aristocratic fraternities that sometimes had a
political scope. Their main achievements, however, lay in the fields of
music, geometry, and astronomy. They discovered that these subjects
could be explained by numbers and ratios. Combining Orphic eschatology
(the study of the last things, especially death and afterlife) with
their discoveries, they invested music, geometry, and astronomy with
religious values. According to their doctrine, the original home of the
soul was in the stars. From there it fell down to earth and associated
with the body. Thus, man was a stranger on the earth, and he had to
strive to liberate himself from the ties of the flesh and return to the
soul’s celestial home.
History » Hellenic roots » Platonists
The philosophy of Plato (c. 428–348 or 347 bc) by no means resulted from
connections with a mystery cult. Yet Plato did take up many ideas from
earlier Greek religion, especially from the Pythagorean brotherhood and
from the Eleusinian communities, and often described his philosophy in
terms derived from the mysteries. For example, the notion of searching
and finding, so important in Eleusis, became an important notion in
Plato’s philosophy: the philosopher should never cease or relax in his
quest for truth. A value was thus attached to the very act of searching.
Later mystery religions, in their turn, borrowed freely from the rich
imagery of Plato’s dialogues and are thus deeply tinged with Platonism.
In the Timaeus, which is an exposition of his theory of the universe,
Plato also developed his theory of the soul. The earth is surrounded by
the spheres of the seven planets; the eighth sphere is that of the fixed
stars. Beyond the eighth sphere is the realm of the divine. The sphere
of the fixed stars, moved by the divine, continuously turns to the right
at an even speed. This clockwise rotation affects the spheres of the
planets, although they have their proper movement, which runs to the
left, or counterclockwise. The sphere of mortality begins with the
planets. The original home of each soul is in one of the fixed stars. As
a result of the movement of the spheres, the soul falls through the
planetary spheres to earth, where it is united with the body. The soul
must then try to liberate itself from the body and ascend to the fixed
star from which it fell. In later generations this picture was vividly
worked out. The soul, in the course of its fall through the planetary
spheres, was thought to acquire the qualities of the planets: sloth from
Saturn, combativeness from Mars, lust for power from Jupiter,
voluptuousness from Venus, greed from Mercury. After death, when the
soul returned to the fixed star, it discarded these qualities, just as
the mystēs, in certain initiations, discarded his everyday garment
before entering the sacred place.
Many other traditional religious images were taken over by Plato,
including the music of the spheres, the migration of the soul, the
soul’s remembrance of its celestial origin, and the idea of rewards for
the righteous and punishment for the wicked. Later mystery associations
adopted these concepts, which Plato had expressed so beautifully, and
were deeply influenced by Plato’s explanations.
History » The Hellenistic period
When Alexander the Great conquered the Asiatic kingdoms as far east as
the Indus River, the Greek world was extended immensely. The religious
ideas in Greece itself and the western part of the Alexandrian Empire,
however, changed very slowly, because the Greeks, now masters of the
world, felt no need for change.
In the Messenian town of Andania mysteries were celebrated in honour
of the goddesses Demeter and Kore. A long inscription of 92 bc gives
elaborate directions for the conduct of the rites, although, naturally,
it gives no details of what went on during initiation. The mysteries in
honour of the Cabeiri (gods of fertility) on the island of Samothrace
attracted great attention in this period. These gods were thought to be
helpers of the seafarers, and initiation into their mysteries was looked
upon as a general safeguard against all misfortune but particularly
against shipwreck. The Dionysiac Mysteries, with their revels and
merriment, continued throughout the whole of Greek history. Together
with most of the elements of Greek civilization, this cult was
transferred to Italy. In 186 bc a scandal about the Bacchanalia—the
Latin name for the Hellenistic Dionysiac Mysteries—so upset the Romans
that a decree of the Senate prohibited them throughout Italy, except in
certain special cases. These mysteries were celebrated in a lower middle
class milieu and involved gross sex parties and violence conducted under
the cover of mystery secrecy.
The important developments in the mystery rites during the
Hellenistic period took place in the Greek Orient, where elements from
the Greek and Oriental religions were blended. Contact with Greek
civilization completely changed life in the Orient, where the knowledge
of writing had been confined to a few priests and scribes. Society first
disintegrated after the conquest of Alexander and then developed along
new lines. Changes in religion were inevitable, and some influence of
Oriental traditions upon the Greeks was bound to follow. But the process
was a slow one and became manifest only a few centuries later.
With regard to the institution of kingship, however, syncretism
worked quickly. Ancient Near Eastern kingship was originally sacral. The
Syrian and Egyptian inhabitants of the newly created Greek kingdoms
inevitably regarded the Greco-Macedonian kings as semidivine beings. The
Greeks themselves soon submitted to this mixture of politics and
religion. Such a mixture was perfectly natural to the Egyptians and
Syrians, who did not perceive the structure of society as an
abstraction, such as “the state” or “the nation,” but saw the unity of
the body politic in the person of the king. He was the symbol of the
security and help that man derives from an orderly society. Mystery
rituals, called royal mysteries, were developed especially in Egypt.
According to traditional Egyptian religion, the ruling pharaoh was an
incarnation of Horus (the sun-god), his mother or wife an incarnation of
Isis (the heavenly queen), and his deceased father an incarnation of
Osiris (the god of fertility). In Hellenistic times, Osiris was commonly
known by the name Serapis. These gods became equated with Greek gods:
Isis with Demeter and Aphrodite; Horus with Apollo and Helios; Serapis
with Zeus, Dionysus, and Hades (Pluto). Both Greek and Egyptian myths
were adopted for these divinities.
One of the suburbs of Alexandria, the newly constructed Greek capital
of Egypt, was called Eleusis after the city of Demeter in Greece, and
the Eleusinian Mysteries were instituted in a Greco-Egyptian adaptation.
Dionysiac Mysteries were introduced on an even greater scale, so that
the royal court was temporarily thrown into turmoil by the number of
Bacchic ceremonies in which the king was considered to be a
reincarnation of Dionysus. The Pythagorean concept of the migration of
the soul was also taken over and was blended with the Egyptian belief in
the reincarnation of the sun-god Horus in the reigning king.
The cult of rulers thus introduced ideas from the Greek Orient into
Greek communities. But the mixture of religion and politics was a great
obstacle for the propagation of the Greco-Oriental mysteries in the
Mediterranean world. Even the numerous Greeks who lived in Egypt and
Syria maintained the traditional Greek concept of the separation of god
and man, and it was only after the political aspect of the mysteries was
discarded that the religious elements could gain a life of their own.
Inscriptions discovered on the Greek island of Delos demonstrate this
well. The worship of Serapis was introduced at Delos during the time the
island was temporarily a naval base of the Greco-Egyptian kings. When
the Egyptian influence on the island receded, the cult of Serapis not
only remained but reached new heights. The Romans later used Delos as a
free port for the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and from there the
worship of Serapis and Isis spread to most of the harbours of the Greek
world and to the cities in the Bay of Naples, whence it was brought by
Italian merchants to Rome.
The combination of mystery elements with ruler worship is also
evident in the kingdom of Commagene (eastern Turkey and northern Syria).
Here, the kings assigned large funds to construct throughout the country
gigantic sanctuaries, where festivals of the gods and the royal
ancestors were celebrated annually on the kings’ anniversary days. Long
inscriptions discovered in the remains of these sanctuaries bear
striking similarities to the language of the mysteries. The ceremonies,
however, seem to have contained little true religion.
History » Roman imperial times
The great period of the mystery religions began when the Romans imposed
peace upon the Mediterranean world. The Dionysiac, or Bacchic, societies
flourished in the whole empire—in Greece proper, on the Greek islands,
in Asia Minor, along the Danube River, and especially in Italy and at
Rome. Hundreds of inscriptions attest to Bacchic Mysteries. In some
circles, Orphic and Dionysiac ideas were blended, as in the community
that met in the underground basilica near the Porta Maggiore (Major
Gate) at Rome. There was also a blend of ideas in the community for
which the Orphic hymns were written. The members of this community
(probably in Asia Minor) assembled at night in a clubhouse and held
their services by the light of torches. Their rite consisted of a
bloodless sacrifice and included the use of incense, prayer, and hymns.
In addition to the mystery cults that were familiar from earlier times,
the national religions of the peoples of the Greek Orient in their
Hellenized versions began to spread. A faintly exotic flavour surrounded
these religions and made them particularly attractive to the Greeks and
Romans. The most popular of the Oriental mysteries was the cult of Isis.
It was already in vogue at Rome in the time of the emperor Augustus, at
the beginning of the Christian era. The Emperor, who wanted to restore
the genuine Roman religious traditions, disliked the Oriental
influences. But men of reputation, such as Messalla, a general and
patron of writers, were strongly inclined toward the Isis Mysteries.
Isis, the goddess of love, was the patroness of many of the elegant
Roman courtesans. The religion of Isis became widespread in Italy during
the 1st and 2nd centuries ad. To a certain extent, the expansion of
Judaism and Christianity over the Roman world coincided with the
expansion of the Egyptian cults.
Far less important was the influence of cults from Asia Minor. By 200
bc the Great Mother of the Gods (Magna Mater) and her consort Attis were
introduced into the Roman pantheon and were considered as Roman gods.
Their cult seems to have been encouraged especially under Emperor
Claudius about ad 50. The Great Mother was characterized by her
universal motherhood, especially over wild nature. The mysteries
symbolized, through her relationship to Attis, the relations of Mother
Earth to her children and were intended to impress upon the mystēs the
subjective certainty of having been united in a special way with the
goddess. There was a strong element of hope for an afterlife in this
cult. The Persian god Mithra (Mithras), the god of light, was introduced
much later, probably not before the 2nd century. The cult of Mithra was
concerned with the origin of life from a sacred bull that was caught and
then sacrificed by Mithra. According to Persian sources, the bull by its
death gave birth to the sky, the planets, the earth, the animals, and
the plants; thus Mithra became the creator of life. From Syria came the
worship of several deities, of which Jupiter Heliopolitanus (the local
god of Heliopolis; modern Baʿlabakk, Lebanon) and Jupiter Dolichenus
(the local god of Doliche in Commagene; modern Dülük, Turkey) were the
most important. Adonis (a god of vegetation) of Byblos (in modern
Lebanon) had long been familiar to the Greeks and was often considered
to be closely related to Osiris; the myths and rituals of the two gods
were similar. Adonis’ female partner was Atargatis (Astarte), whom the
Greeks identified with Aphrodite. At the time of Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, in the latter half of the 2nd century ad, a pseudo-prophet
named Alexander the Paphlagonian devised a great mystery spectacle
centred around a holy snake called Glycon and had great success during
his lifetime.
The height of Syrian influence was in the 3rd century ad when Sol,
the Syrian sun god, was on the verge of becoming the chief god of the
Roman Empire. He was introduced into Rome by the emperor Elagabalus
(Heliogabalus) in about ad 220, and by about ad 240 Pythian Games (i.e.,
festivals of the sun god Apollo Helios) were instituted in many cities
of the empire. The emperor Aurelian (270–275) elevated Sol to the
highest rank among the gods. Sanctuaries of Sol and the gods of other
planets (septizonium) were constructed. Even the emperor Constantine the
Great, some 50 years later, wavered between Sol and Christ. For some
time his religious policy was devised so as to allow the coexistence of
both religions. Finally, Christianity was accepted as the official
religion.
The different mystery religions were not exclusive of one another,
but they appealed to different sociological groups. The middle class of
the Greek and Roman cities preferred the Dionysiac societies, the
festivals of which were a cult of beauty and merriment. Isis was
worshipped by lower middle class people in the seaports and trading
towns. The followers of the Great Mother in Italy were principally
craftsmen. Mithra was the god of soldiers and of imperial officials and
freedmen. There were no special societies for slaves; but they were
usually admitted to the societies, and, during the time of the festival,
all men were considered equal.
Beliefs and practices » Common features in Roman imperial times
For the first three centuries of the Christian Era, the different
mystery religions existed side-by-side in the Roman Empire. They had all
developed out of local and national cults and later became cosmopolitan
and international. The mystery religions would never have developed and
expanded as they did, however, without the new social conditions brought
about by the unification of the Mediterranean world by the Romans. In
the large cities and seaports, men from the remotest parts of the empire
flocked together. Many people were removed from their accustomed
surroundings and suffered from loneliness. They longed for new
acquaintances and for assimilation, and they needed the assurance that
only the knowledge of belonging to a community can give. Economic and
political conditions in the Roman Empire also accelerated the growth of
the mysteries. Members of a mystery society helped one another. For a
lawyer, a craftsman, or a contractor, membership in a club could be the
road to success. Furthermore, there is less opportunity for private
initiative in a society ruled by a monarch than in a democratic society.
The individual who felt that his initiative was frustrated by the
preponderance of the imperial structure might well turn to a community
that offered him the hope of a better future. The mystery societies,
thus, commonly satisfied both a taste for individualism and a longing
for brotherhood. At least in principle, the members of the communities
were considered equal: one man was the other man’s brother, irrespective
of his origin, social rank, or nationality.
Because membership in each of the mystery communities was a matter of
personal choice, propaganda and missionary work were inevitable. In the
religions of Isis and Mithra, missionary zeal was particularly obvious.
The followers of Isis and Mithra considered Rome to be the centre of
their worship, and the city was called sacrosancta civitas (“sacred
city”) in an Isis romance written in the 2nd century ad by the Latin
author Apuleius.
Beliefs and practices » Common features in Roman imperial times »
Priesthood
The organization of the mystery religions was rather loose. The priests
of Dionysus were wealthy laymen, as the priests in Greece always were.
The Roman community of the Great Mother had a large group of priests
(the galli), headed by a chief priest (the Archigallus). They were
eunuchs who wore female garb, who kept their hair long and perfumed with
ointment, and who celebrated the goddess’ rites with wild music and
dancing until their frenzied excitement found its culmination in
self-scourging, self-laceration, or exhaustion. Besides the priests
there were priestesses and many minor officials. The followers were
organized according to their function in the ritual procession as
bearers of the tree (dendrophori) or bearers of the reed (cannophori).
The men who carried the statue in the rites of Jupiter Dolichenus were
called the sedan-chair men (lecticarii).
The higher grades of the Isis Mysteries were reserved to persons born
of the priest caste of Egypt. To be born into this caste was more
important than talent or skill. This limited the quality of the priests
and was a serious disadvantage in the community’s competition with other
religions. But a second way of advancement within the religious group
was devised for men of Greek or Roman origin. In Egypt, there was a
group of elevated laymen—the porters of the holy shrine (pastophori).
They were inferior in rank to everyone of the priest caste; but in Greek
and Roman countries the rank of the pastophori became a surrogate for
the native priest caste of Egypt. The pastophori were, in fact, the
religious leaders of the communities.
Beliefs and practices » Common features in Roman imperial times » Rites
and festivals
A period of preparation preceded the initiation in each of the
mysteries. In the Isis religion, for example, a period of 11 days of
fasting, including abstinence from meat, wine, and sexual activity, was
required before the ceremony. The candidates were segregated from the
common folk in special apartments in the holy precinct of the community
centre; they were called “the chastely living ones” (hagneuontes).
In all the mystery religions the candidates swore an oath of secrecy;
the oath of the Isis Mysteries is preserved on papyrus. Before
initiation, a confession of sins was expected. The candidate sometimes
told at length the story of the faults of his life up to the point of
his baptism, which was commonly a part of the initiation ceremony, and
the community of devotees listened to the confession. It was believed
that the rite of baptism would wash away all the candidate’s sins, and,
from that point on, his life would be changed for the better, because he
had enrolled himself in the service of the saviour god.
In the Mithraic ceremonies, there were seven degrees of initiations:
Corax (Raven), Nymphus (Bridegroom), Miles (Soldier), Leo (Lion), Perses
(Persian), Heliodromus (Courier of the Sun), and Pater (Father). Those
in the lowest ranks, certainly the Corax, were the servants of the
community during the sacred meal of bread and water that formed part of
the rite.
The initiation ceremonies usually mimed death and resurrection. This
was done in the most extravagant manner. In some ceremonies, candidates
were buried or shut up in a sarcophagus; they were even symbolically
deprived of their entrails and mummified (an animal’s belly with
entrails was prepared for the ceremony). Alternatively, the candidates
were symbolically drowned or decapitated. In imitation of the Orphic
myth of Dionysus Zagreus, a rite was held in which the heart of a
victim, supposedly a human child, was roasted and distributed among the
participants to be eaten.
The baptism could be either by water or by fire, and the rites often
included actions that had an exotic flavour. Sulfur torches were used
during the baptism ceremony; they were dipped into water and
then—contrary to the expectations of the observers—burned when drawn out
of the water. In a dark room a script would suddenly become visible on a
wall that had been prepared accordingly. Instructions still exist for
producing a nimbus effect—the appearance of light around the head of a
priest. The priest’s head was shaved and prepared with a protective
ointment; then a circular metal receptacle for alcohol was fixed on his
head; it was set aflame in a dark room and would shine for some seconds.
In the Dionysus and Isis mysteries, the initiation was sometimes
accomplished by a “sacred marriage,” a sacral copulation. Two cases are
known in which a priest speaking from the statue of the god ordered a
credulous woman to come to the temple and be the god’s concubine, the
part of the god being enacted by the priest.
The initiation ceremonies were usually accompanied by music and dance
and often included a large cast of actors. In the Dionysiac societies,
especially elaborate provisions were made for mimic representations. The
names of the sacred roles varied from place to place; among the roles
were: Dionysus and Ariadne (a vegetation goddess and wife of Dionysus),
Palaemon (a marine deity), Aphrodite (the goddess of love and beauty),
Proteurhythmos (the inventor of elegant rhythm), the “foster-father of
Dionysus,” Kore, Demeter, Asclepius (the god of medicine), Pan (the god
of flocks and shepherds), Curetes (long-haired youths), nymphs (minor
nature goddesses), shepherds, sileni and satyrs (creatures of the wild,
part man and part beast), maenads (female attendants who shared in the
nocturnal orgiastic rites of Dionysus), the “guardian of the grotto,”
and centaurs (a race of beings half man and half horse).
The ceremonies always contained a prayer for the welfare of the
emperor and for the good fortune of the whole Roman Empire. In fact, the
amalgamation of religion and politics was sometimes so close that the
designation “imperial mysteries” is used. The pattern of imperial
mystery ceremonies could vary widely. This was especially true of the
Dionysiac rites. In the clubs of the upper middle class and wealthy, for
example, the festivals were chiefly social events. But the members of
these communities were grateful for the security and peace and for the
opportunity to make a good living that the emperor guaranteed to them.
They felt loyalty toward the Roman Empire and expressed this by
ceremonies of the imperial mysteries.
Dionysus was the patron god of the important international society of
actors, and their reunions were celebrated in the mode of Dionysiac
Mysteries. When an emperor travelled in the empire, responsibility for
dignified receptions of him was handed over to the society of actors.
Because his route was known beforehand, a voyage of the emperor was
turned into a series of pompous festivals that were organized in a
manner closely resembling mystery ceremonies.
The meetings of the mystery clubs were often named after the common
meal. The Dionysiac meetings were called stibas (“straw”) because the
participants ate their dinner sitting on straw. The meals of the
followers of Serapis and Attis were called klinē (“couch”), because the
diners lay on couches.
Beliefs and practices » Common features in Roman imperial times »
Seasonal festivals
The religions of Dionysus and Demeter and of Isis and the Great Mother
had something of an ecclesiastical year. The seasonal festivals were
inherited from old tribal ceremonies that had been closely associated
with the sowing and reaping of corn and with the production of wine. The
dates varied greatly according to the geographical conditions and the
emphasis of the seasonal rites in the country in which the mysteries had
originated. Dionysiac festivals were held in all four seasons; vintage
and tasting of the new wine were the most important occasions. But the
religion of Dionysus was closely associated with that of Demeter, and,
thus, sowing and reaping were also celebrated in Dionysiac festivals. In
the religion of the Great Mother, a hilarious spring festival
celebrating the renewal of life was enacted in Rome.
The festivals of the Isis religion were connected with the three
Egyptian seasons caused by the cycle of the Nile River (inundation,
sowing, and reaping). About July 19, when the whole country was almost
desiccated by the heat and the drought, the high waters of the new flood
miraculously arrived from Ethiopia. On that day, just before sunrise,
Sirius (the Dog Star, or the star of Isis) would make its first
appearance of the season on the horizon. This was the sacred New Year’s
Day for the Egyptians, and the festival of the Nile flood was their
greatest festival. There were, in addition, the festivals of sowing and
reaping. But because the Egyptian year was a solar year of 365 days
without intercalation (leap years), the seasonal festivals that were
fixed upon a particular date were retarded by one day every four years
and complete confusion resulted. The Romans fixed the calendar of Egypt
by introducing an intercalary day every fourth year. In Roman times,
important Isis festivals were held on December 25, January 6, and March
5. The March festival, as it was celebrated in Corinth, is described at
length in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass. It was a spring
festival that celebrated the beginning of the seafaring season. A ship
was carried on a cart (carrus navalis) through the city. It was followed
by a procession of choruses, candidates, mystai in bright clothes
wearing masks, and priests carrying the insignia of the goddess. The
ship was let into the sea, and the participants returned to the temple,
where initiation ceremonies, banquets, and dances were held.
In the religion of Sol, the festivals were determined by astronomy.
The greatest festival was held on December 24–25, at the time of the
winter solstice. Because from this date the length of the day began to
increase, it was regarded as the day of the rebirth of the god and of
the renovation of life.
Beliefs and practices » Literature
The mystery communities had religious hymns, but almost nothing of them
has been preserved. The initial words of some hymns from the Sta. Prisca
Mithraeum in Rome are known, and some Isiac poems exist. More important
is a text of 40 sentences in which the goddess Isis reveals herself; it
was found at four different and geographically distant places and was
probably exhibited in every Isis sanctuary. Narratives of the miracles
wrought by the gods were preserved in many temple libraries; examples of
these narratives, on papyrus and on stone, have been found. According to
a recent theory, the literary genre of the romance was developed from
these narratives. The last part of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius is an
Isis text and narrates in detail the initiation into the Egyptian
mysteries.
Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek name for the Egyptian god Thoth, was
the reputed author of treatises that have been preserved. Thoth was the
scribe of the gods, the inventor of writing, and the patron of all the
arts dependent upon writing; he was sometimes thought of as an attendant
of Isis and sometimes as the repository of all wisdom. These treatises
are not exactly mystery texts, but they are works of revelation on
occult subjects and on theology. Because the pagan mysteries had no
official creed, each congregation of initiates was free to construct a
theology of its own and to change it again. The Hermetic writings were
attempts to provide a theology for a particular community. Although no
authorized interpretation could exist for a doctrine that was in
constant fluctuation and although none of the Hermetic treatises could
claim to be the correct interpretation of the pagan mysteries,
nevertheless, the texts give an instructive picture of spiritual life in
mystery communities.
There are some contemporary texts that shed light on the mystery
communities. Plutarch, the Greek biographer, wrote the philosophical
treatise “About Isis and Osiris,” which gives an interpretation of the
Isis Mysteries. Arnobius, a 3rd-century Christian apologist, described
an interesting semiphilosophical, semireligious mystery community known
as the viri novi (“the new men”). Arnobius seems to have lived among
them in North Africa for a time before his conversion to Christianity.
They had a religious doctrine of the soul, with marked affinities to the
teachings of the Neoplatonic thinkers Plotinus and Porphyry.
Only fragments are preserved of the Chaldean Oracles, a theosophical
text in verse that was composed by Julianus the Theurgist and his son
late in the 2nd century ad and had great influence on the Neoplatonists.
The work combined Platonic elements with Persian or Babylonian creeds
and was regarded by the later Neoplatonists as their basic religious
book, something of a heathen bible. The doctrine of the Chaldean Oracles
was associated with esoteric fire rituals. Julianus and his followers
were called theurgists—i.e., men who could perform divine operations.
Their religion was partly one of meditation about the hidden and
wondrous magical processes within the cosmos.
Beliefs and practices » Theology
The creeds of the mystery religions were never worked out to the same
extent that the Christian creeds were. Nevertheless, the doctrines of
the mysteries may be called a theology. One of the central subjects in
mystery writings was cosmogony—the theory of the origin or creation of
the world. In the Hermetic treatises, in the Chaldean Oracles, and in
the little known writings of Mithraism, the cosmogony was modelled after
Plato’s Timaeus, and it always dealt with the creation of the soul and
with the soul’s subsequent fate.
The theological doctrine of the soul and the myth about its celestial
home, its fall, and its redemption were inseparable. The sequence is
beautifully told in the “Hymn of the Soul,” preserved in the Acts of
Thomas, an apocryphal account of the journeys and death of the apostle.
The hero of the hymn, who represents the soul of man, is born in the
Eastern (the yonder) Kingdom; immediately after his birth, he is sent by
his parents on a pilgrimage into the world with instructions to take a
pearl from the mouth of a dragon in the sea. Instead of wearing his
heavenly garment, he dresses in earthly clothes, eats earthly food, and
forgets his task. Then his parents send a letter to rouse him. As soon
as he has read the letter, he awakes and remembers his task, takes the
pearl, and begins the homeward journey. On the way, his brother (the
Redeemer) comes to accompany him and leads him back home to his father’s
palace in the east. This myth is a figurative representation of the
theological doctrine of the soul’s fall and its return to heaven.
Many of the questions that were the subject of later Christian
theological discussions were already eagerly debated in the mystery
religions. In a Hermetic treatise, for example, the existence of God was
proved from the evident order of the world. This argument, which had
first been formulated by Zoroaster, a 7th-century Iranian prophet, was
expressed in the form of questions: Who could have created the heavens
and the stars, the sun and the moon, except God? Who could have made
wind, water, fire, and earth (the elements), the seasons of the year,
the crops, the animals, and man, except God?
Passionate debates were held about the question of whether man was
subject to blind fate. The Stoics (proponents of a Greek and Roman
school of philosophy holding that men should be free from passion and
calmly accept all occurrences as unavoidable) had adopted the doctrine
that all events are determined by the stars. Thus, for many Greeks and
Romans astrology became the only sensible method of studying man’s life
and fortune. But for others the idea that man could achieve nothing by
his own will was frightening, and they wanted to be liberated from this
fear; the mystery religions promised to liberate them. The theology of
the mystery religions admitted that the stars ruled the world and
especially that the planets had evil influences. But the highest god of
the religion (for example, Serapis in the Isis Mysteries) stood far
above the stars and was their master. A man who decided to become a
servant of this god stepped out of the circle of determination and
entered into the sphere of liberty. The god could suspend determination,
because he ruled over the stars; he could unravel the threads of the
Moirai (the three spinners of fate); he could save his servant from
illness and prolong his life, even against the will of fate. In the Isis
Mysteries there was a theology of grace foreshadowing Christian
doctrine.
In many of the mystery cults, there was a marked tendency toward
henotheism—the worship of one god without denying the existence of other
gods. Thus, Isis was the essence of all pagan goddesses; Serapis was the
name uniting the gods Zeus, Pluto, Dionysus, Asclepius, Helios, and even
the Jewish god YHWH (Yahweh). In the religion of Sol, an elaborate
syncretistic theology was developed to show that all known gods of all
nations were nothing but provisional names for the sun god.
Religious art and iconography
Much of Greco-Roman art was executed for use in the mystery communities.
The Dionysiac monuments are by far superior to all others in artistic
quality. This is to be expected, because the worship of Dionysus often
took the form of a worship of beauty. Nevertheless, the other
communities also produced a great number of art objects.
Religious art and iconography » Architecture
The mystery religions developed different types of edifices for their
purposes. Every Greek city had temples and precincts of Dionysus. The
Isis Mysteries adopted the Greek temples, frequently adding a cupola.
Many Isis temples were modest in size, but the temple at Pergamum
(modern Bergama, Turkey) was a great basilica with a vaulted roof and
strong towers, in the fashion of the best Roman architecture. The Isis
temple that the emperor Domitian erected on the Campus Martius (the
Field of Mars) in Rome at the end of the 1st century ad was a stately
building, and the Temple of Serapis (the Serapeum) at Alexandria was a
huge construction. The subterranean basilica near Porta Maggiore in Rome
(used by an Orphic or Pythagorean society) was a strong and magnificent
structure hidden in a large garden. The Mithraic sanctuaries were
artificial caves illuminated from above by light shafts. They were built
for communities of 50 to 100 persons.
The buildings were designed to be functional for the religious
ceremonies. The Mithraeum under the church of S. Clemente at Rome
contained a system of underground galleries for initiation ceremonies.
Beneath the temple of the Egyptian gods at Pergamum, subterranean
passages existed for the use of the priests. One of the paths led into
the huge, hollow statue of the god, so that the priest could speak from
the mouth of the statue. By another secret way, an officiant could climb
the huge corner towers of the temple to make announcements from there.
The Serapeum at Alexandria was directed toward the east; on a certain
day of the year, at a certain time, sunbeams directly struck the head of
the god’s statue. This same temple was so arranged that those waiting to
be initiated could hire rooms in an adjacent building during the time of
preparation before the ceremony.
Because the use of water was such an important element in most of the
mystery rites, the location of the temples was often determined by the
availability of water; Mithraic sanctuaries were always erected on the
spot at which a fountain had its source. In the temples of Isis, a
cistern for holy water was required; in Delos and in a house at Pompeii
in Italy, a system of water basins could imitate the flood of the Nile.
The Dionysiac temple at Corinth had an underground system of tubes and
barrels that could be operated by buttons from the outside. The priest
showed the worshippers of the god a barrel filled with water. They left
the temple together, and the door was sealed from without. By pressing
the buttons, the water was let out of the barrel, and wine was poured
in. The following day, when the seal was removed, the spectator
witnessed the Dionysiac miracle of water turned into wine.
On the ground floor of the Mithraic sanctuaries at Ostia, mosaic
pavements showed the seven grades of the initiation and their symbols
together with the ladder of the seven steps that led to religious
salvation. In initiation ceremonies the mosaic was perhaps used to
indicate the place where the different participants were to take their
places.
Religious art and iconography » Statuary
A great many statues were exhibited in the temples and shrines of the
mystery gods. They were usually executed in the traditional Greek style.
In the sanctuary of Isis and Serapis at Thessalonica (modern
Thessaloníki), in northern Greece, there were statues of a whole series
of Greek goddesses, each of whom was identified with Isis in one way or
another to show that the Egyptian goddess was the essence and synthesis
of Greek religion. In the 4th century bc the sculptor Bryaxis created a
famous colossal statue of Serapis in the temple at Alexandria. It
represented the god—as a combination of the Greek gods Zeus (the father
of the gods), Hades, and Dionysus—seated upon a throne, with Cerberus,
the three-headed monster, beside him. An interesting statuette found at
Cyrene (modern Shaḥḥāt, Libya) shows a female initiate of Isis. The
woman is wrapped from feet to waist like a mummy; but the upper part of
her body is free, and she is wearing the crown of Isis on her head. The
statue thus showed how an initiate would first die and subsequently
resurrect in triumph during the ceremony. Many terra-cotta statues of
Isis and her son Horus have survived from Roman Egypt; they are similar
to the later statues of the Christian Madonna and Child. Syrian statues
of Jupiter Heliopolitanus represent the god in a rigid attitude, like a
pillar. In the base of some of these statues are holes, into which
sticks could be inserted for the purpose of carrying the statue in
procession. In Mithraic sanctuaries a great number of statues,
especially of the gods of the planets, were exhibited. Statues of the
Mithraic time god were also frequent; they were often hollow and were
constructed so that they could spit fire.
Religious art and iconography » Reliefs
The Dionysiac reliefs are numerous. They show symbols of the religion,
such as the shepherd’s staff, the winnow (an ancient device for
separating chaff from grain), and the phallus; they depict the gay life
of satyrs and maenads, shepherds and shepherdesses; and they represent
the “golden age” of the gods with tame and wild animals enjoying a peace
that the god had instituted. A great silver dish dating from about the
4th century ad and found at Mildenhall, England, shows the swift and
elegant dance of the maenads. Dionysiac sarcophagi represented Bacchic
revels and the pastime of the Erotes and Psyches in afterlife. Many
reliefs of the Isis Mysteries also survive. They display the mystical
cista (a receptacle for carrying sacred objects) with the snake of
Horus, the priest carrying holy water in a procession, female attendants
with a ladle, and a man in a dog’s mask, who represents Anubis (the
guardian god). Other Isiac reliefs show Isis riding on a dog, symbolic
of her position as goddess of Sirius (the Dog Star).
In Mithraic caverns there was always a relief depicting the god
sacrificing the bull. Representations of the sacramental meal were also
frequent; a relief recently discovered in Konjic, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, shows a banquet at which the initiates are wearing masks,
among them a lion, a raven, a soldier, and a Persian. Two reliefs—at
Rome (now at Modena, Italy) and at Housesteads, England (the best
preserved fort along Hadrian’s Wall)—depict the creation of the world
out of an initial egg; in this case, Orphic and Mithraic ideas were
amalgamated. Other episodes of Mithraic mythology that were commonly
displayed include the birth of Mithra from a rock with the shepherds who
welcome him and his dealings with the sun god.
The stucco reliefs in the subterranean basilica near Porta Maggiore
are of outstanding quality. In the central episode, Sappho—an early
Greek poetess who supposedly killed herself in a “lover’s leap” from the
island of Leucas into the Ionian Sea—is shown leaping toward Apollo, the
god of the sun; this symbolized the soul’s transcendence into more
favourable existence. Many of the reliefs in the basilica allegorize
episodes from Greek mythology in the fashion of the Pythagoreans, who
found a hidden religious or philosophical meaning behind the mythical
tales of the Greek tradition.
Religious art and iconography » Painting
There are few paintings from the temples of the mystery religions that
have been preserved; nevertheless, some of these deserve comment. The
superb Dionysiac frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei
Misteri) at Pompeii show the initiation of a girl into the Bacchic
Mysteries: in one fresco she is lifting the cover of a sacred casket; in
a second scene three followers of Dionysus are practicing lecanomancy
(divination by the inspection of a bowl filled with water); in a third
scene the girl is unveiling an erect phallus and because of this she is
being flagellated; finally, she is seen dancing in happy bliss. A number
of Isiac frescoes, preserved in the temple of Isis at Pompeii, show the
sacred dance of the initiates, the presentation of an urn filled with
the ritual holy water to the initiates, the coffin of Osiris and his
resurrection, and episodes from the cycle of Io, a Greek heroine equated
with Isis. Isiac frescoes dating from the time of the emperor Caligula
in the 1st century ad are also found in the ruins on the Palatine at
Rome. In the Mithraeum under Sta. Prisca in Rome, two layers of frescoes
were found that show the procession of the initiates toward ritual
sacrifice of a bull, called Suovetaurilia, and the sacred meal of the
sun god and Mithra. Sometimes a fresco replaced the relief of the
sacrifice of the bull. The initiation ceremonies are shown in the
Mithraic sanctuary at Capua (in western Italy): the candidate,
accompanied by the mystagōgos, is blindfolded, kneels down, and lies
prostrate. At Rome, in the tomb of Vincentius and Vibia, who worshipped
the god Sabazius (a Thracian form of Dionysus), frescoes show how Vibia
was carried away by Death, as Kore had been carried away by Hades, how
she was judged and acquitted, and how she was introduced by a “good
angel” to the sacred meal of the blessed.
Religious art and iconography » Mosaics
A mosaic at Antioch represents the Phoenix—the solar bird who died and
resurrected from its own ashes and who was its own father and son at the
same time—with sunrays encircling its head. A Dionysus mosaic at
Cologne, Germany, depicts in several panels the life of satyrs and
maenads and also Bacchic symbols such as the winnow (an implement of
purification) and the oyster (which has to be liberated from the shell
as the soul from the body). The room evidently was used for banquets and
Dionysiac merrymaking.
Mystery religions and Christianity
Christianity originated during the time of the Roman Empire, which was
also the time at which the mysteries reached their height of popularity.
This was by no means an accident. The Christian theologian Origen wrote
in the 3rd century that it was part of the divine plan that Christ was
born under the emperor Augustus: the whole Mediterranean world was
united by the Romans, and the conditions for missionary work were more
favourable than ever before. The simultaneousness of the propagation of
the mystery religions and of Christianity and the striking similarities
between them, however, demand some explanation of their relationship.
The hypothesis of a mutual dependence has been proposed by
scholars—especially a dependence of Christianity upon the mysteries—but
such theories have been discarded. The similarities must rather be
explained by parallel developments from similar origins. In both cases,
national religions of a ritualistic type were transformed, and the
transformation followed similar lines: from national to ecumenical
religion, from ritualistic ceremonies and taboos to spiritual doctrines
set down in books, from the idea of inherited tradition to the idea of
revelation. The parallel development was fostered by the new conditions
prevailing in the Roman Empire, in which the old political units were
dissolved, and the whole civilized world was ruled by one monarch.
People were free to move from one country to another and became
cosmopolitan. The ideas of Greek philosophy penetrated everywhere in
this society. Thus, under identical conditions, new forms of religious
communities sprang from similar roots. The mystery religions and
Christianity had many similar features—e.g., a time of preparation
before initiation and periods of fasting; baptism and banquets; vigils
and early-morning ceremonies; pilgrimages and new names for the
initiates. The purity demanded in the worship of Sol and in the Chaldean
fire rites was similar to Christian standards. The first Christian
communities resembled the mystery communities in big cities and seaports
by providing social security and the feeling of brotherhood. In the
Christian congregations of the first two centuries, the variety of rites
and creeds was almost as great as in the mystery communities; few of the
early Christian congregations could have been called orthodox according
to later standards. The date of Christmas was purposely fixed on
December 25 to push into the background the great festival of the sun
god, and Epiphany on January 6 to supplant an Egyptian festival of the
same day. The Easter ceremonies rivalled the pagan spring festivals. The
religious art of the Christians continued the pagan art of the preceding
generations. The Christian representations of the Madonna and child are
clearly the continuation of the representations of Isis and her son
suckling her breast. The statue of the Good Shepherd carrying his lost
sheep and the pastoral themes on Christian sarcophagi were also taken
over from pagan craftsmanship.
In theology the differences between early Christians, Gnostics
(members—often Christian—of dualistic sects of the 2nd century ad), and
pagan Hermetists were slight. In the large Gnostic library discovered at
NajʿḤammādī, in upper Egypt, in 1945, Hermetic writings were found
sideby-side with Christian Gnostic texts. The doctrine of the soul
taught in Gnostic communities was almost identical to that taught in the
mysteries: the soul emanated from the Father, fell into the body, and
had to return to its former home. The Greeks interpreted the national
religions of the Greek Orient chiefly in terms of Plato’s philosophical
and religious concepts. Interpretation in Platonic concepts was also the
means by which the Judeo-Christian set of creeds was thoroughly
assimilated to Greek ideas by the early Christian thinkers Clement of
Alexandria and Origen. Thus, the religions had a common conceptual
framework. The doctrinal similarity is exemplified in the case of the
pagan writer and philosopher Synesius. The people of Cyrene selected him
as the most able man of the city to be their bishop, and he was able to
accept the election without sacrificing his intellectual honesty. In his
pagan period he wrote hymns that closely follow the fire theology of the
Chaldean Oracles; later he wrote hymns to Christ. The doctrine is almost
identical.
The similarity of the religious vocabulary is also great. Greek life
was characterized by such things as democratic institutions, seafaring,
gymnasium and athletic games, theatre, and philosophy. The mystery
religions adopted many expressions from these domains: they spoke of the
assembly (ekklēsia) of the mystai; the voyage of life; the ship, the
anchor, and the port of religion; and the wreath of the initiate; life
was a stage and man the actor. The Christians took over the entire
terminology; but many pagan words were strangely twisted in order to fit
into the Christian world: the service of the state (leitourgia) became
the ritual, or liturgy, of the church; the decree of the assembly and
the opinions of the philosophers (dogma) became the fixed doctrine of
Christianity; the correct opinion (orthē doxa) about things became
orthodoxy.
There are also great differences between Christianity and the
mysteries. Mystery religions, as a rule, can be traced back to tribal
origins, Christianity to a historical person. The holy stories of the
mysteries were myths; the Gospels of the New Testament, however, relate
historical events. The books that the mystery communities used in Roman
times cannot possibly be compared to the New Testament. The essential
features of Christianity were fixed once and for all in this book; the
mystery doctrines, however, always remained in a much greater state of
fluidity. The theology of the mysteries was developed to a far lesser
degree than the Christian theology. There are no parallels in
Christianity to the sexual rites in the Dionysiac and Isiac religion,
with the exception of a few aberrant Gnostic communities. The cult of
rulers in the manner of the imperial mysteries was impossible in Jewish
and Christian worship.
The mysteries declined quickly when the emperor Constantine raised
Christianity to the status of the state religion. After a short period
of toleration, the pagan religions were prohibited. The property of the
pagan gods was confiscated, and the temples were destroyed. The precious
metal used to coin Constantine’s gold pieces was taken from heathen
temple treasuries. To show the beginning of a new era, the capital of
the empire was transferred to the new Christian city of Constantinople.
The centres of pagan resistance were Rome, where the old aristocracy
clung to the mysteries, and Alexandria, where the pagan Neoplatonist
philosophers expounded the mystery doctrines. When Julian the Apostate,
Roman emperor from ad 361 to 363, tried to reestablish pagan worship, he
found allies at Rome and Alexandria. After his death, the pagan
opposition to Christianity continued for one more generation. The Roman
aristocrats multiplied their efforts to maintain the piety of the
mysteries, and the pagan philosophers tried to refine their theology by
oversubtle interpretations. In 391, however, the Serapeum at Alexandria
was demolished, and in 394 the opposition of the Roman aristocracy was
crushed in battle at the Frigidus River (now called the Vipacco River in
Italy and the Vipava in Slovenia).
Only remnants of the mystery doctrines, amalgamated with Platonism,
were transmitted by a few philosophers and individualists to the
religious thinkers of the Byzantine Empire. The mystery religions
exerted some influence on the thinkers of the Middle Ages and the
philosophers of the Italian Renaissance.
Reinhold Merkelbach
