Full text of "The Religion of the Mithras Cult in The Roman Empire"

THE RELIGION OF THE MITHRAS CULT IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE This page intentionally left blank The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun ROGER BECK OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddies Ltd., King's Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0-1 9-8 14089-4 978-0- 1 9-8 14089-4 13579 10 8642 To Richard Gordon, John Hinnells, and Luther Martin This page intentionally left blank Preface This book has been many, many years in the making. So it is appropriate that I dedicate it to the three scholars who over the years have helped me most along the way with their friendship, encouragement, and wise counsel on the Mysteries of Mithras and how to address them. There are of course many others who have generously aided me, and I hope they will excuse me if I do not repeat here the acknowledgements recently made in the collection of my past articles and new essays, Beck on Mithraism. I do however want to thank my editor Hilary O'Shea for her trust and forbearance over what must surely be one of the lengthiest projects to come to fruition and a record-holder in deadlines overrun. I also want to thank my research assistant Norman Valdez for his skilful production of the diagrams. Since Chapter 1 is entirely programmatic, I shall refrain from introducing my subject and outlining my methods here. Let the Table of Contents which follows serve as a map of the road ahead. This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Figures xiv Abbreviations xv 1. Introduction to Interpreting the Mysteries: Old Ways, New Ways 1 1 . An agenda 1 2. A word on ontology 8 3. Template for a re-description of the Mithraic mysteries 10 4. On comparisons 12 5. On cognition 13 6. Synchronic versus diachronic; structure and meaning versus historic cause and effect; interpretation versus explanation 14 7. Conclusion 15 2. Old Ways: The Reconstruction of Mithraic Doctrine from Iconography 1 6 1 . A gateway to an interpretation of the mysteries: Porphyry, De antro nympharum 6, on the form and function of the mithraeum 16 2. The traditional route: from the iconography of the monuments to the myth of Mithras to the beliefs of Mithraists 17 3. The merits and achievements of the traditional heuristic procedure 20 4. The shortcomings of the traditional heuristic procedure 22 Appendix: some remaining methodological problems for the explication of the Mithras myth as represented on the figured monuments 25 3. The Problem of Referents: Interpretation with Reference to What? 26 1 . Iconography and the problem of referents 26 2. Referents in the surrounding culture? 26 3. Iranian referents? 28 4. Celestial (astronomical/astrological) referents? 30 5. Conclusion 39 4. Doctrine Redefined 41 1. Back to Porphyry, De antro 6 41 2. 'Induction into a mystery': the doctrinal misconstruction of De antro 6 41 x Contents 3. Teaching versus enacting the 'descent and departure of souls': the commonsensical answer 42 4. An expectation of appropriate behaviour 43 5. 'Reason for the wise, symbols for the vulgar' 44 6. Mithraic doctrine and its stakeholders: various views 50 7. Doctrine and belief: the Christian 'faith paradigm 53 8. Mithraic doctrine: three main issues 56 9. (i) Generalizing about Mithraic doctrine from unusual monuments 57 10. (ii) What do we mean by 'doctrine' in the context of the Mithraic mysteries? An array of answers 59 1 1 . (iii) Doctrine and the ordinary initiate 63 12. Conclusion 63 Transition: from old ways to new ways 65 5. The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I. Introduction and Comparisons 67 1 . Religion as a system of symbols: an anthropological approach 67 2. Are Geertzian description and interpretation applicable to the symbol system of the Mithraic mysteries? 69 3. Yes, Geertzian description and interpretation are possible, provided we begin not with the tauroctony but with the mithraeum and the grade structure 70 4. A culture within a culture: Mithraism as a subsystem within the cultural system of Graeco-Roman paganism. The hermeneutic implications 71 5. The symbol complex of the grade hierarchy 72 6. A modern comparator: the symbol system of the Chamulas 74 7. The construction of space in Mithraic and Chamula cultures 77 8. Mithraism's second axiom: 'Harmony of Tension in Opposition' 81 Appendix: on Porphyry's De antro nympharum as a reliable source of data on the Mithraic mysteries 85 6. Cognition and Representation 88 1. The cognitive approach: ontogenetic/phylogenetic versus cultural 88 2. Gods in mind: cognition and the representation of supernatural beings 93 3. Negotiating representations 94 4. Reintegrating the wise and the vulgar 96 Appendix: comprehending the pantomime: Lucian, On the dance 99 Contents xi 7. The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II. The Mithraeum 102 1 . The symbol complex of the mithraeum as 'image of the universe' 1 02 2. The blueprint for the mithraeum 103 3. To represent \% to be 112 4. The blueprint continued: the planets 113 5. An improved reconstruction 115 6. Symbols, representations, and star-talk 116 7. The view from the benches: analogies of world view and ethos to 'Scipio's dream' 117 8. The Chamula church 119 9. Other 'images of the universe' in antiquity: (i) the Pantheon, Nero's Domus Aurea, Varro's aviary, the circus 120 10. Other 'images of the universe' in antiquity: (ii) orreries and the Antikythera Mechanism, the sundial 123 1 1 . The mithraeum as symbolic instrument for 'inducting the initiates into a mystery of the descent of souls and their exit back out again' — with some modern comparisons 128 12. To 'experience', to 'surmise', and to 'represent': Dio's Twelfth (Olympic) Oration 133 13. Religious experience as modelled by biogenetic structuralism and 'neurotheology' 136 14. The 'cognized environment': the mithraeum as material representation of the initiate's cognized universe 141 15. The cognized universe and celestial navigation: the case of the Indigo Bunting 149 16. Conclusion 150 8. Star-Talk: The Symbols of the Mithraic Mysteries as Language Signs 153 1. Introduction: 'star-talk 153 2. Mithraic iconography as 'un langage a dechiffrer' (R. Turcan) 154 3. Can symbols function as language signs? The question as posed in cultural anthropology 155 4. Crossing Sperber's bar: the case for Mithraic astral symbols as language signs 157 5. Star-talk: ancient views concerning its speakers, discourses, semiotics, and semantics 164 6. Origen's view: 'heavenly writings' and their angelic readers 166 7. Augustine's view: star- talk as a demonic language contract 167 8. Origen again: the demonic misconstruction of star-talk 169 xii Contents 9. Stars talking theology: the 'heretical' interpreters of Aratus as reported by Hippolytus {Refutatio 4.46-50) 170 10. Make-believe star-talk: Zeno of Verona's baptismal interpretation of the zodiac 175 11. 'Rolling up the scroll': Maximus Confessor and the end of history 177 12. Pagan views (astronomers, astrologers, philosophers); stars as both speakers and signs 178 13. The divinity and rationality of celestial bodies: Ptolemy and Plato 179 14. The Platonist view of how the stars communicate and how we understand them; implications of the cosmology of the Timaeus 183 15. The celestial location of meaning 186 16. Conclusion 188 9. The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III. The Tauroctony 190 1 . Introduction: the exegesis and interpretation of star-talk discourse 190 2. The exegesis of star-talk in the tauroctony: A. The constellation signs 194 3. Exegesis (continued): B. Sun, Moon, Mithras, bull (again), cave 197 4. Exegesis (continued): C. Map and view; boundaries and orientation; time and motion. Similar structures: the augural templum and the anaphoric clock 200 5. Exegesis (continued): D. Further meanings of the torchbearers: the lunar nodes; celestial north and celestial south; heavenward and earthward. Meanings of the 'typical' and 'untypical' locations (Cautes left and Cautopates right versus Cautopates left and Cautes right) 206 6. Exegesis (continued): E. Being in the north/ above or in the south/below versus going northward/up or southward/down. The solstices, the equinoxes, and yet further meanings of the torchbearers 209 7. Exegesis (continued): F. Two paradoxes: (1) cold north and hot south versus hot north and cold south; (2) descending from heaven and growing up on earth versus dying down on earth and ascending to heaven. Terrestrial meanings of the torchbearers 212 8. Exegesis (continued): G. Where and when? 'Mithras the bull-killer' means 'Sun-in- Leo' 214 Contents xiii 9. From exegesis to interpretation. An esoteric quartering of the heavens 216 10. The implications of Sun-in- Leo and the esoteric quartering. Conjunctions and eclipses; victories and defeats 222 1 1 . The origins of the esoteric quartering and the definition of an ideal month 227 10. Excursus: the esoteric quartering, a lost helicoidal model of lunar motion, and the origin of the 'winds' and 'steps' of the Moon. The identity of 'Antiochus the Athenian' 240 Conclusions: a new basis for interpreting the mysteries 257 References 26 1 Index of Mithraic Monuments 273 Index of Ancient Authors 274 General Index 278 List of Figures 1. Zodiac from Taurus to Scorpius 32 2. The mithraeum as 'image of the universe' 103 3. The Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres, Ostia 104 4. A horizontal planar sundial 126 5. Tauroctony (V417) 194 6. Tauroctony (VI 11 8) 195 7. Southern paranatellonta 197 8. Tauroctony with zodiac (V8 10) 199 9. Tauroctony constellations rising from east 201 10. Tauroctony constellations setting in the west 202 1 1. Zodiac circle with tauroctony constellations 203 12. The Moon's orbit in relation to ecliptic 206 13. The solar year and Mithraic cosmology 210 14. An 'ideal' draco nitic month 220 15. Planetary positions at new moon, 5 July 62 bce 229 16a. 'Helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 1 243 16£. 'Helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 2 244 16c. 'Helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 3 244 17 a. The winds and steps of the Moon, 1 250 17b. The winds and steps of the Moon, 2 251 Abbreviations ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der rbmischen Welt BNP Beard, North, and Price 1998 CCAG Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum EM Etudes mithriaques = Duchesne-Guillemin (ed.) 1978 EPRO Etudes preliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain JMS Journal of Mithraic Studies JRS Journal of Roman Studies MM Mysteria Mithrae = Bianchi (ed.) 1979 MS Mithraic Studies = Hinnells (ed.) 1975 NEB New English Bible OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary SM Studies in Mithraism = Hinnells (ed.) 1994 V Corpus Lnscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (= Vermaseren 1956—60) This page intentionally left blank 1 Introduction to Interpreting the Mysteries: Old Ways, New Ways 1. AN AGENDA A study of the 'religion' of an ancient cult may seem to entail an artificial, even perverse, distinction between the cult's religion and the cult itself, as if 'religion' were somehow the cream to be skimmed from the surface of the institutional milk. Such an undertaking would indeed be strange, especially these days when students of religion in the Roman empire are with good reason more interested in social formation than in theologoumena. Please then be assured that in advancing a new interpretation of the 'mysteries' of Mithras I am not proposing to treat Mithraism as a self-contained and free-standing system separable in principle from actual Mithraists. We need not — indeed should not — think of the 'religion' of the Mithras cult as a sort of pre-existent package deal which a person bought into, as it were. Rather, we should see it as an aspect of a collaborative human enterprise of a particular time, place, and culture, constantly re-created and sustained by those initiated into it. Its contemporaries spoke of 'the Mysteries of Mithras', not of 'Mithraism'. The latter, like all such '-isms', is but a modern label devised for comparison and taxonomy (cf Stoicism, maenadism, and so on). Contemporaries of course made no distinction between the 'Mysteries' as an institution in the socio-cultural scene and the 'mysteries' as the peculiar sacred business or 'religion' of that institution. The conventions of modern English orthography (initial capital versus initial lower-case) allow me to draw this distinction. I stress that the distinction is for hermeneutic purposes only. The 'mysteries' (lower-case 'm') are inseparable from the 'Mysteries' (capital 'M'), and it is senseless to look for a point where the one starts and the other leaves off 'What do you mean by "religion"?' is a fair question, to which I shall return three rather different answers. First, by 'religion' I mean what the theologian Gerd Theissen means by 'religion' in his book The Religion of the Earliest Churches (1999). Let me set this out formally: 2 Interpreting the Mysteries The Mithraic religion (i.e. the 'mysteries' of Mithras) : the institution of the Mithras cult (i.e. the 'Mysteries' of Mithras) (Beck) :: 'The religion of the earliest churches' : 'earliest churches' (Theissen). This is a relational definition. I am also in sympathy with Theissen's own working definition of religion as a cultural sign language which promises a gain in life by corresponding to an ultimate reality', with the important proviso that the 'ultimate reality' is subjective: 'the statement . . . merely takes up the way in which the religions understand themselves; it does not expect anyone to adopt this understanding' (1999: 2). My second answer is to say what I do not mean by 'religion'. As will become clear soon enough, I do not mean a 'faith or a 'belief system'. That is the old 'package deal' approach. It never was appropriate to ancient paganisms, even to the mystery cults. Few now accept its applicability to very early forms of Christianity. As a model it is a retrojection from later times of creed and dogma. For my third answer I turn to an ancient expert on religion, Plutarch of Chaeronea, writing at the turn of the first and second centuries ce. In his essay on Isis, her cult (mostly in Egypt), and her theological meaning, Plutarch describes the 'mysteries' of Isis as the gift of the goddess {On Isis and Osiris 27, trans. Gwyn Griffith): Nor did she allow the contests and struggles which she had undertaken, and her many deeds of wisdom and bravery, to be engulfed in oblivion and silence, but into the most sacred rites she infused images, suggestions and representations of her experiences at that time (alia tais hagiotatais anamixasa teletais eikonas kai hyponoias kai mimemata ton tote pathematon), and so she consecrated at once a pattern (didagmd) of piety and an encouragement (paramythion) to men and women overtaken by similar misfortunes. (Emphasis added) Eikonas kai hyponoias kai mimemata. I propose to treat the 'religion' or 'mysteries' of the Mithras cult as a system of (literally) 'likenesses and underthoughts and imitations' apprehended and realized by the initiate as the gift of Mithras. Just as 'likenesses' include but are not limited to material icons, so 'imitations' include but are not limited to mimetic rituals. As for the 'underthoughts', 'mental representations' best approximates the sense in which I take the term. My study of the 'religion' of the Mithras cult is thus a study in cognition, a study of how the initiate gets to know his mysteries in the context of the life and physical environment of the mithraeum, the 'cave' in which he and his cult brothers assembled. The scholarly consensus is that the Mithraic mysteries were coterminous with the cult of Mithras; in other words, that wherever Mithraists met in a mithraeum, there too Mithraic mysteries were celebrated. To some this may seem self-evident, true only as part of a definition and hence trivial: Mithraism was a mystery cult; obviously, then, it had its mysteries and was nothing without them. Interpreting the Mysteries 3 The ubiquity of its mysteries, however, is precisely what distinguishes Mith- raism from the other 'mystery cults'. The mysteries of Isis were not coterminous with Isism, which was a much broader, more multiform phenomenon altogether. Initiation into a mystery, such as we read about in the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, was but an option — and an option which we cannot assume was on offer in all or even most Isiac communities. The same is true of the other so-called 'mystery cults'. Mithraism's distinctiveness in this regard is stated forcefully and without qualification by Giulia Sfameni Gasparro in an important study of the cult of Cybele and Attis, where it is all the more telling because the Mithraic mysteries are not there her primary concern (1985: p. xiv): 1 'it [Roman Mithraism] constitutes an organic and autonomous religious context which had so entirely assumed a mystery "shape" that, of all the cults with an initiatory-esoteric structure in Antiquity, this alone deserves to be defined as a "mystery religion".' I shall begin, in Chapter 2, with a critical look at twentieth-century approaches to the interpretation of the Mithraic mysteries. For the most part, these follow in, or react against, a tradition set by Franz Cumont in his magisterial two-volume study of the cult at the close of the nineteenth century (Cumont 1896, 1899). For all the gains in our understanding of the Mithraic mysteries effected in — or in opposition to — the Cumontian tradition, we sense that hermeneutics has now reached something of a dead end. This is as true of the relatively recent astronomical/astrological interpretations (Beck 2004c: 235-49) as of the more conservative approaches. As a consequence of this hermeneutic failure, a narrow positivism has in some quarters replaced interpretation. Hard facts about the cult, its membership, and its physical remains are valued above the interpretation of its mysteries, a venture which is deemed at best 'speculative' (Clauss 1990*2, 2000) and at worst mere invention, the misattribution of high theology to unsophisticated folk manifestly incapable of sustaining it (Swerdlow 1991). In Chapters 2 to 4, then, we shall explore the shortcomings of the traditional hermeneutics, especially in its heuristic procedure and in the classic approach to deciphering doctrine by way of the cult myth and the iconography of the monuments which carry the myth. In particular, I shall identify five problems with the traditional approach. In ascending order of seriousness these are: first, an undervaluing of the admittedly very small body of literary testimony to the mysteries in favour of an almost exclusive concentration on the monumental, that is, iconographic, testimony; 1 Sfameni Gasparro's study of the Cybele/Attis cult has acquired additional significance in that it was used by J. Z. Smith (1990: 126—9) to establish, for purposes of comparison with early Christianities, a paradigm of the pagan mystery cults as uniformly 'locative' (this-worldly) rather than 'utopian' (other-worldly). In effect, by making an exception of Mithraism, Sfameni Gasparro disallows Smith's extension of her description of the Cybele/Attis cult as a paradigm for all ancient mysteries (see Beck 2000: 174, n. 135). For the full account of her views on Mithraism qua mystery cult, see Sfameni Gasparro 1979c. 4 Interpreting the Mysteries secondly, an undervaluing of the design of the mithraeum, in comparison to the iconography of the 'figured monuments' (monuments figure's), 2 as a store and expression of ideological meaning; thirdly, an assumption — albeit a waning one — that doctrine is the primary object of the heuristic quest; fourthly, as a complement to the third problem, the positivist assumption that, absent doctrine, the mysteries cannot have been a serious and sophisticated cognitive enterprise; fifthly, the total disregard of semantics and semiotics, a failure to ask not merely what the iconography means but also how it means. 3 And not just the iconog- raphy; the design of the mithraeum too, and of the rituals enacted there. In fairness, one cannot fault an interpretation for failing to take into account methods which lay beyond its time horizon. So rather than speak of a sixth deficiency, I shall list as 'an opportunity' the availability of new methods pio- neered by cognitive science, especially in anthropology and psychology, during the last decade or so. More on this later. From Chapter 5 onwards I shall propose a new hermeneutics based on a new heuristic procedure. In place of the hermeneutics of doctrine, I shall offer an interpretation of the mysteries as a system of symbols, both complex and orderly, apprehended by the initiates in cult life and especially in ritual. Indeed, to experience the mysteries, I shall argue, was precisely to apprehend the symbols. At least, that is the most fruitful way I now see of describing the mysteries. As a banner text for this enterprise we might take a phrase from a passage of Origen, Contra Celsum 1.12. Origen claims that a distinction which he drew within Egyptian religion between the approaches of the wise (sophon) and the vulgar (idioton) is valid also for the 'Persians' (by whom he means the Mithraists). The 'mysteries' (teletai) of the Persians, he says, 'are cultivated rationally by the erudite but realized symbolically by common, rather superficial persons {par' hois eisi teletai, presbeuomenai men logikos hypo ton par' autois logidn, symbolikos de ginomenai hypo ton par' autois pollon kai epipolaioteron)' (trans. Chadwick). My aim is not to show that the rank and file got it right while their betters got it wrong — for that would be to accept the distinction between the two types of initiate at face value — but rather that mysteries 'come into being via their symbols' and are apprehended in that form by their initiates, both high and low. Interpreting the mysteries of Mithras as a system of symbols inevitably places me in a particular anthropological camp, the symbolist camp, 4 and from my perspective the most important proponent of the interpretation of cultures and their religions as systems of symbols is Clifford Geertz (1973). My new hermeneutics will be unashamedly Geertzian — which reveals that it is 'new' only 2 For want of a better, I use a literal translation of Cumont's term for the sculptures and frescos which carry the iconography. 3 If the author were to be brought to trial on these charges, he would plead guilty to the third. Of a fault more usually imputed to him, the extravagance of his astronomical interpretations, he remains entirely unrepentant. 4 Catherine Bell (1997: 61—92) has a good survey of the symbolists. Interpreting the Mysteries 5 in its application to Classics. 5 To an anthropologist it will be very old news indeed. Before attempting to apply the new hermeneutics to the mysteries in any detail, I shall postulate some fundamental principles of the Mithraic mysteries to direct and control our analysis of the symbol system. Obviously, I shall not backtrack and propose these principles as Mithraic 'doctrines'. Rather, they are what the anthropologist Roy Rappaport, in an important study which was the culmination of his life's work (1999), called the ultimate sacred postulates' of a religion, and Gerd Theissen, in his work of the same year (1999), 6 called a religion's 'axioms'. Since 'axiom' is the simpler term, I shall use it, remarking that in this context it loses, at least for the secular scholar, its implications of 'logical deduction from'. Although they are known to their religion's members and are usually explicit, axioms are not generally understood by them as a limited set. As such, they are strictly a scholar's hermeneutic device. Axioms' are the overarching truths of a religion which ultimately sanctify, and so sanction, the thoughts, the words, the deeds, of its members thinking, speaking, and acting within the context of that religion. They are obvious, simple, and often tautologous or merely definitional. Generally, they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable, and they are invalidated not by argument but only by the death of the religion in question. In this sense, all Mithraic axioms are now invalid because there are no Mithraists left to live by them. An example, often cited by Rappaport, 7 of a religious axiom is the Jewish Shema ('Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One'), words which are ideally the first a child learns and the last the dying hope to utter. Theissen (1999: 271-307, esp. 273) finds just two axioms for the early Christian churches, covenantal monotheism (inherited of course from Judaism) and acceptance of Jesus as the effective redeemer, the latter encapsulated in the saying 'Christ is Lord'. For the Mithraic mysteries I shall propose, likewise, just two axioms (ultimate sacred postulates): 1. deus sol invictus mithras. As every ancient Mithraist once knew (presumably it was explained to the illiterate), and as every modern student of Mithraism now knows, this is the god's cult title and the normal formula for dedications; it establishes that the religion's effective power is a god, is the SUN, is UNCONQUERED, is MITHRAS. 5 'No work has appeared so far which applies the theory of Geertz to any Greco-Roman religion (Segal 1989: 155). An exception, in spirit if not in explicit alignment, might be Gordon 1980£. 6 Theissen, as the subtitle of his book ('creating a symbolic world 1 ) makes explicit, also aligns himself with the symbolist tradition. Mithraism, however, was demonstrably the more literal 'symbol system'; for while early Christianity may by metaphor be called 'a marvellous cathedral of signs' (Theissen 1999: 306), the mithraeum was designed and constructed, literally and physically, as a symbol-equipped 'image of the universe' (Porphyry, De antro nympharum 6). 7 1999: see index s. 'Judaism, Shema . 6 Interpreting the Mysteries 2. 'harmony of tension in opposition'. This axiom is presented here as it appears in Porphyry De antro nympharum 29, at the conclusion of a list of fundamental oppositions (e.g. night and day): palintonos he harmonie kai toxeuei dia ton enantion. It was originally a saying of Heraclitus (Fr. 5 1 DK). Elsewhere (Beck 2000: 167-71) I have argued that it was the Mithraists who adapted it and integrated it with the list of opposed pairs. 8 However, the principal expression of this axiom of 'harmony of tension in opposition' in the Mithraic mysteries is the pair of images of the torchbearing divinities: Cautes with his raised torch and Cautopates with his lowered torch. 9 These two axioms find expression in an indeterminate number of motifs (the term, the concept, and the relation of 'motifs' to 'axioms' are Theissen's — 1999: 271—82, 290—1). Examples of an important motif in the Mithraic mysteries would be descent and ascent. I further propose that axioms and motifs operate in various domains. Four domains are particularly germane to the Mithraic mysteries: (1) the sacred story, the deeds of Mithras; (2) the cosmos; (3) the sublunary world; (4) the destiny of human souls, and in particular the souls of the initiates of Mithras. These four domains are not mutually exclusive. Obviously, the sublunary world is a part of the cosmos. Thus domain 2 contains domain 3; and, in accordance with ancient cosmology, domain 3 is at rest at the centre of domain 2, which moves in a complex dance around it. Furthermore, 'domain' is not intended solely in the literal sense of an area — or, since we are dealing with a three-dimensional universe, a volume of space in which activities take place and power is exercised. The cosmos and the sublunary world (domains 2 and 3) are clearly domains of that sort, but the Mithras story and the destiny of human souls (domains 1 and 4) are clearly not. Rather, the latter are, as it were, envelopes for divine and human actions, actions which take place in cosmic or earthly space. They have a temporal dimension, but not one that is reducible to dating on any earthly continuum of linear time. As to the relating of domains, much of the narrative of the first and fourth domains has to do with bridging the second and third domains, the terrestrial with the celestial or cosmic. 8 I also argued that the image of Mithras as bowman is an expression of this axiom, as is the image on the Mainz ritual vessel of the cult Father miming the archery of Mithras in an act of initiation (Beck 2000: 149-54, 167-71). 9 It may be objected that with the second axiom I am crudely mistaking the medium for the message. Many would argue (Levi-Straussian structuralists, for example) that eliciting and recon- ciling oppositions is simply the way in which religions and other socio-cultural systems work. True enough, but my point will be that in the Mithraic mysteries, untypically, the oppositions are displayed on the surface — literally so in the iconography — and are so omnipresent and explicitly structured that 'harmony of tension in opposition' may reasonably be claimed as an axiom. Interpreting the Mysteries 7 The symbol system conveying the axioms and motifs of Mithraism in their several domains are manifested concretely in three distinctive structures: (1) the physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony (with its occasional reverse, the banquet scene, and other peripheral scenes); (2) the physical structure of the mithraeum; (3) the organizational structure of the seven grades. I shall pay particular attention to the first and second of these structures because, unlike the third, they are attested ubiquitously in the Mysteries. What you will not find in these chapters is a comprehensive reconstruction of Mithraic theology and other beliefs; or of the myth cycle in all its episodes. Those goals, which dominated much of twentieth-century Mithraic scholarship, I no longer consider either achievable or, for that matter, worth pursuing. I shall distinguish four modes in which, singly or concurrently, the symbol system of the Mithraic mysteries could be apprehended by its initiates: (1) ritual action; (2) the perception of meaningful iconography; (3) the giving and receiv- ing of words (logia, explications, teaching, esoteric epigraphic phrases, etc.); (4) ethical behaviour consonant with the mysteries (e.g. Mithraic Lions behave in an esoterically appropriate leonine way). The first three modes are esoteric; they characterize types of internal behaviour within the cult and (literally) inside the mithraeum. The last is more public; presumably, one is expected to behave in an ethically appropriate fashion not just to one's cult brethren but also in one's wider social relations. Further, I shall argue throughout, but specifically in Chapters 8 and 9, that the Mithraic mysteries, across their axioms, motifs, domains, structures, and modes, communicated symbolically in a peculiar idiom. This idiom is a form or jargon of one of Graeco-Roman culture's most pervasive languages, the language of as- tronomy and astrology. Partly to avoid the clumsy repetition of those two constituents, and partly because a new or at any rate radically different concept requires a new term, I shall call this idiom 'star- talk'. By 'star-talk I do not intend merely talk in words or symbols about the stars. I intend also, following the ancients' own conception of the stars as language signs and the heavens as text, the talk o/the stars. From the ancient point of view, this is the primary celestial language of which the discourses of astronomy, astrology, and astral symbolism such as we find in the Mithraic mysteries are earthly replications. Primary star-talk is thus a highly peculiar language, in that the celestial bodies which are its signs and signifiers are themselves also its speakers, holding discourse in and by their rotations and revolutions. And if not they, then the power or powers who move them. From the modern scientific perspective, of course, primary star-talk does not exist: the stars are without mind or meaning, and so do not and cannot communicate. Here, however, what science tells us can and cannot transpire in the physical heavens is of less relevance than the construction placed upon the physical heavens by the human mind in the particular cultural context of 8 Interpreting the Mysteries Graeco-Roman antiquity. The ancients' supposition that the stars communicate is of far more interest to us than the scientific fact that they don't. However, even if for analytical purposes we entertain the ancients' conception of an astral language, a more cogent objection remains. 'Star-talk', in my definition of the ancients' conception of it, is a language of symbols; and a language of symbols, it has been argued by the anthropologist Dan Sperber (1975), is an oxymoron: symbols are not language signs. Consequently, before I can deploy 'star- talk' in my description of the Mithraic mysteries, I have to clear what one might call 'Sperber's bar'. I must show not only that star-talk was deemed a language by the ancients, but also that as a (to us) imaginary language it does indeed function as a language on criteria that Sperber set as the necessary conditions for language status. Specifically, I must show that astral symbols, as deployed in the Mithraic mysteries, can and do function as language signs. From my past interest in interpreting certain aspects of the mysteries by reference to Graeco-Roman astronomy and astrology, a sceptical reader might suspect that I am ushering back in through the back door as astral 'language' the same disreputable creature whom I have expelled through the front door as astral 'doctrine'. In a sense, that is indeed what I am doing. Nevertheless, I plead that the creature has undergone a reformation. No longer is it the 'astral truths of the mysteries'; rather, it is the 'truths of the mysteries astrally expressed'. It is now medium, not message. Of the five problems of traditional Mithraic hermeneutics, I identified as the most serious 'the total disregard of semantics and semiotics, a failure to ask not merely what the iconography means but also how it means. And not just the iconography; the design of the mithraeum too, and of the rituals enacted there.' The concept of star-talk as a language and as the proper idiom of the Mithraic mysteries is intended to remedy that deficiency. It will enable us to translate traditional substantive ('what') questions into modal ('how') questions of com- munication, of the giving and apprehending of signs and symbols, and ultimately of cognition itself. In posing and answering the old questions in this novel way, we shall actually be traversing much the same traditional terrain of cult theology, cosmology, and salvation. 2. AWORD ON ONTOLOGY Some of our categories are obviously anchored in the actual world: their matter or, rather, propositions about their matter are susceptible, at least in principle, to empirical verification. This is mainly so of matter which falls within the categories of 'structure' and 'mode'. The categories themselves are no more than heuristic and hermeneutic organizing principles. Accordingly, my statement that the mys- teries were conveyed and given expression in three structures and four modes is actually just a claim (non-factual, hence neither verifiable nor falsifiable) that the Interpreting the Mysteries 9 mysteries can be re-described most effectively in terms of those categories so delimited. However, what you find brigaded under the banners of the three structures and four modes are facts; or at least the propositions which assert them can be empirically verified or falsified. It is a fact, verifiable from the extant exemplars, that there were Mithraic icons and mithraea designed so and not otherwise. It is a fact that there was a (probably non-ubiquitous) hierarchy of grades ordered so and not otherwise. It is a fact that the initiates performed certain actions, and not others, of a sort which we call 'ritual'. In the preceding sentence I have deliberately problematized 'ritual'. It would have been all too easy to say simply, 'it is a fact that the initiates performed certain rituals rather than others'. That, however, would beg an enormous onto logical question. What makes a particular action a ritual? Or more precisely, how does one verify/ falsify empirically the proposition that such-and-such a piece of business is a 'ritual', for example a 'sacrifice' rather than routine butchery? Of course we all 'know the difference' — or think we do — but how can we confirm it empirically on real-world criteria and without appeal either to our own modern scholarly taxonomies (as above) or, more dangerously, to a meta-realm of 'the sacred'? The problem is well posed by Dan Sperber (1996: 24), whose solution we shall follow. It is the representations of sacrifice in the minds of those who perform and witness the deed, not the sacrifice qua sacrifice, that belong in our common world where empirically verifiable/falsifiable propositions can be made about them. Whether or not one wants to reduce these representations to states or changes in the neural circuitry of the brain, 10 the fact remains that for every representa- tion there must necessarily be a corresponding neural event. These events, whether mental or neural or both, occur in the course of nature in the empirically accessible world. Ontologically, according to Sperber (1996), cultural phenomena, of which religions constitute a set, are clusters of representations of two types, 'mental' and 'public'. Mental representations are obviously those discussed in the preceding paragraph. Public representations are the expression of mental representations in the common world: the observable ritual, the visible icon, the legible text. Of all these representations, mental as well as public, one can state that they are/were so and not otherwise. Those propositions, in principle if not in practice, are subject to empirical verification/falsification. 11 10 Sperber 's explicir materialism points him that way (pp. 9—31), but there is no need to follow. His theory of representations, as I employ it here, is compatible with a dualist position, provided one accepts that every mental representation is physically anchored in a corresponding neural state or event and is hence part of an individual's physical history; hence an event in the material history of the world; hence accessible in principle to verification/falsification: either it did happen or it did not happen. 11 'Of course, we have records of only a few of the public versions and none of the mental ones, but complementing observations with hypotheses about unobserved — and even unobservable — entities is plain normal science' (Sperber 1996: 27). 10 Interpreting the Mysteries Consequently, under modes' I speak not of Mithraic 'ritual' and so on per se, but of the apprehension' of the Mithraic 'symbol system' in and by 'ritual action', in and by 'the perception of meaningful iconography', in and by 'the giving and receiving of words', in and by esoterically appropriate 'ethical behaviour'. What I seek to describe and to analyse is the interplay of those mental and public representations the sum of which constituted the mysteries. Like 'structures' and 'modes', my categories of 'axioms', 'motifs', and 'domains' are in and of themselves just scholars' heuristic and hermeneutic devices for ordering representations. But they too are grounded in the actual world. Our postulated 'axiom' deus sol invictus mithras is also a dedicatory formula, hence a public representation in Sperber's sense, existing openly in the actual world. Moreover, it was a public representation only because it was a (complex) mental representation in the minds/brains of the initiates. Precisely because we suppose it a definitive representation of Mithras we identify it as an 'axiom'. In sum, we may say that ontologically all axioms, motifs, domains, structures, and modes, are, or are reducible to, mental and/or public representations or clusters of representations (as defined by Sperber 1996). 3. TEMPLATE FOR A RE-DESCRIPTION OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES In this section I lay out in summary form the re-description of the Mithraic mysteries developed over the preceding sections. The description comprises six propositions, A— F. Each proposition except the last (F) has alternative openings (Al and A2, Bl and B2, etc.). This is to reflect different perspectives: the first line represents the mysteries as an autonomous system acting on the initiate; the second line represents the mysteries from the initiate's point of view as something apprehended and accepted. Obviously, my preference is for the latter, for it captures the interplay of mental and public representations of which the mysteries, as a matter of fact, consisted. Elsewhere (Beck 2004c 45—9) I have presented a third alternative which better reflects the ancient way of looking at things: it represents the mysteries from the divine perspective as the gift of the god, mediated in part by a 'prophet' or 'law- giver' ('Zoroaster' for the Mithraists) and received by the initiate. 12 Unsurpassed as a paradigm for this third way is Plutarch's account of the transmission of her mysteries by Isis in the form of 'likenesses and underthoughts and imitations' {On Isis and Osiris 27), a passage we examined at the beginning of this chapter. 13 12 An imaginary first-person 'Mithraic aretalogy' on the Isiac model is interleaved with the summary description presented in the second, initiate-centred form only. 13 Compare the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 270- 4, 470—82, on Demeter's institution of her mysteries and her mandate to the Eleusinian princes. Interpreting the Mysteries 1 1 A description of the Mithraic mysteries Al. The mysteries give symbolic expression to . . . A2. In the mysteries, the initiate apprehends symbolically . . . two axioms or ultimate sacred postulates: 1. DEUS SOL INVICTUS MITHRAS 2. 'Harmony of tension in opposition.' B 1 . These axioms are conveyed . . . B2. The initiate experiences these axioms . . . in an indeterminate number of motifs: e.g. the motif of descent and ascent. CI. Axioms and themes operate . . . C2. The initiate apprehends the axioms and themes . . . in one or more of four domains: 1 . the sacred story, the deeds of Mithras 2. the cosmos 3. the sublunary world 4. the destiny of human (especially initiates') souls. D 1 . The complexes of symbols conveying the axioms and motifs of the myster- ies in their various domains are manifested concretely. . . D2. The initiate apprehends the symbol complexes conveying the axioms and motifs of the mysteries in their various domains . . . on structured sites; in the mysteries there are three principal and distinctive structures: 1 . the physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony (with its reverse = the banquet scene, plus peripheral scenes) 2. the physical structure of the mithraeum 3. the organizational structure of the seven grades (note: only the first two structures are attested ubiquitously). El. The symbols are activated . . . E2. The initiate apprehends the symbols . . . in one or more of four modes: 1 . ritual action 2. the perception of meaningful iconography 3. the giving and receiving of words (logia, explications, teaching, esoteric epigraphic formulae) 4. ethical behaviour consonant with the mysteries (e.g. Mithraic Lions behave in an esoterically appropriate leonine way). F. The mysteries' common symbolic idiom across axioms, motifs, domains, structures, and modes is the language of astronomy/ astrology or star-talk. 12 Interpreting the Mysteries 4. ON COMPARISONS I am confident that this new heuristic/hermeneutic approach and template for a re-description of the Mithraic mysteries, developed as they are from recent initiatives in anthropology (Rappaport, Sperber) and Christian origins (Theis- sen), will allow us to make more interesting, deeper, and better-nuanced com- parisons than heretofore. The making of interesting comparisons, I agree with the distinguished scholar of ancient religions, Jonathan Z. Smith (1990), is at the heart of the enterprise of the study of religion. The importance of Smith's comparative project has been endorsed and its centrality emphasized in the recent work of a senior New Testament and Christian origins scholar, Burton Mack (2001: 59-80)." Accordingly, you will encounter here comparisons not only with the systems of Christianity in its early forms, 15 but also with those of cultures closer to us in time and as distant as the indigenous Chamula of southern Mexico (Gossen 1979); also with those of certain contemporary Western 'cults' (in the modern sense), in particular the celestially oriented cults of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate, groups which achieved notoriety in the 1990s for the bizarre murder-suicides of their initiates. 16 Wide comparisons over space, time, and levels of economic and scientific sophistication help us both to familiarize the exotic and — no less important — to exoticize the familiar. We aim to create, as it were, a level playing-field for all mysteries, in particular one on which those of Mithras are not set at a disadvan- tage with those of Christ. Though no longer in the spirit of Christian triumph- alism, we classicists still tend to overprivilege the latter, especially on the intellectual plane. We may (or may not) concede some intellectual value to the ancient philosophical allegorizations of the pagan mysteries. But by and large we treat the real-life initiates as an intellectually scruffy lot, reserving our respect, if not our liking, for the minds of their Christian rivals. 'J erusalem ' might have wanted little to do with Athens', but we extend it honorary Athenian citizenship nonetheless. Not so the pagan mysteries. 14 Mack's Christian origins project aims at an explanation of Christian myth-making which disengages the extant texts and their predecessors (e.g. 'Q') from the 'historical Jesus'. As a result, his reconstructed early Christianities approximate more closely to the pagan mysteries than did previous paradigms of Christianity at its genesis. Welcome to our pagan field, where the historical Mithras never was a problem! 15 For some novel comparisons, made possible by the discovery and identification of previously unknown Mithraic rituals on the Mainz cult vessel, see Beck 2000 (171-8). 16 Beck 1998^: 343. Cf. J. Z. Smith's well-known comparison of the Jonestown cult with Dionysiac maenadism (1982). Interpreting the Mysteries 1 3 5. ON COGNITION As one of the shortcomings of the traditional interpretations of the Mithraic and other ancient mysteries, we have identified the lack of adequate semiotics and semantics, specifically of a paradigm of how symbols in the mysteries convey meaning. To that semantic deficiency we added the absence of any cognitive theory, that is, a paradigm of how the initiates apprehended the symbol systems of their mysteries. Classical scholarship here tends to take a commonsensical approach (as it does all too often), supposing it sufficient that the initiates believed their beliefs, that they thought their thoughts (if the mystery is allowed intelligent and intelligible content), 17 and that the rest was affect or more-or-less edifying emotion. Since we postulate that Mithraism was a serious cognitive enterprise, it is incumbent on us to have at least a working paradigm of cognition in the context of religion. Fortunately, the new cognitive science of religion (CSR) provides just such a paradigm. As an approach to a particular subset of mental and cultural phenomena, CSR is part of a more general cognitivist methodology which I shall describe at the start of Chapter 6 when I begin to employ it in my hermeneutics. Suffice it to say here that Dan Sperber's theory of representations, which I adopted above, exemplifies this method. 18 A precursor of the cognitivist approach is a theory known (not very informa- tively) as biogenetic structuralism . 19 Biogenetic structuralism proposes a model of the operation of the human brain and the autonomous nervous system function- ing as an integrated whole, especially in certain non-everyday situations, notably meditation, ecstasy, and participation in ritual. It is, of course, the theory's focus on religious states of mind and their corresponding physiological states that 17 Particularly unfortunate is the assumption that belief starts where rational thought leaves off (e.g. Hopkins 1999: 323, asterisked note), as if the mental state of the initiate could be signalled by little coloured lights switching on and off green for rational thought, yellow for belief, and red for emotion. It is, perhaps, the last gasp of Platonist psychology. 18 Jensine Andresen (2001*2, 200l£) gives a good overview of the new cognitive approach in the study of religion. See also the articles in Pyysiainen and Anttonen 2002. Apart from Dan Sperber's works already cited (1975, 1996), the most important studies germane to our hermeneutics are by E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley (1990), Harvey Whitehouse (2000), Pascal Boyer (2001), and the authors/editors of the recently inaugurated 'Cognitive Science of Religion Series' (Altamira Press): Whitehouse 2004; Pyysiainen 2004; Barrett 2004; Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004; Whitehouse and Martin 2004. For the neural processes of the conscious brain/mind, I rely (as a rank layman) on Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi (2000); for the evolutionary history of the same, on Steven Mithen (1996). I here acknowledge my deep indebtedness to Luther Martin for integrating me, quite recently, into the CSR enterprise (Beck 2004£). 19 See Laughlin 1997; Newberg and d'Aquili 1998. Of central importance is d'Aquili etal. 1979 on ritual. 14 Interpreting the Mysteries attracted my attention. This approach too I shall describe in more detail when I come to make use of it towards the end of Chapter 7. 20 6. SYNCHRONIC VERSUS DIACHRONIC; STRUCTURE AND MEANING VERSUS HISTORIC CAUSE AND EFFECT; INTERPRETATION VERSUS EXPLANATION If one were to ask why, for example, the tauroctony is composed of a certain set of symbols in a certain arrangement, one of two different sorts of answer may be returned: first a synchronic answer, that the tauroctony is so and not otherwise because it gives expression, via an apparent narrative episode, to the axioms and certain key motifs of the Mithraic religion; secondly a diachronic answer, that the tauroctony is so and not otherwise because it is the end product of a historical evolution, whether of an underlying set of ideas or of the iconography itself (or both). These two broad types of answer are not of course mutually exclusive, but they should be kept distinct, at least conceptually. One should differentiate clearly between an explication in terms of meaning and an explication in terms of antecedents. My study takes a synchronic approach. I shall attempt to explicate the mysteries as a symbolic system in terms of the system's meaning(s) and structure. To some extent, this is inevitable. There is simply not enough evidence to reconstruct the development of the tauroctony (to retain that example) in the way in which historians of Christian origins can reconstruct, through the methods of source-, redaction-, and form-criticism, not only the development of early Christianity's pre-canonical texts but also the earliest forms, social and ideological, of the religion itself. In part, however, my choice of approach is deliberate. In these chapters I am more concerned with interpreting the mysteries than with explaining them historically in terms of cause and effect. 21 There are of course diachronic stories to be told, not only about the social formation of the Roman Mysteries of Mithras but also about the development of the cult's mysteries. Indeed, the whole Cumontian narrative of the transmission of Mithra-worship from Persia to Mesopotamia to Anatolia to Rome was as 20 Here again I wish to acknowledge a debt: to Colleen Shantz (2001) for alerting me to biogenetic structuralism and its explanatory potential. Latterly, biogenetic structuralism has evolved into so-called 'neurotheology', a development which poses problems for the secular academic. We shall have to face this problem when we come to it in Ch. 7, sect. 13. 21 'Interpretation and 'explanation' are technical terms in the anthropology of religion. Although they are not mutually exclusive, scholars tend to take one route or the other. Explanations translate or reduce a religious system into other terms; interpretations explicate the system largely in (but not on!) its own terms. See Lawson and McCauley 1990: 12—18. Explanation is these days generally preferred to interpretation, being deemed the more 'scientific' of the two. Interpreting the Mysteries 1 5 much (if not more) about the creation and modification of a set of beliefs as about the institution and transformations of a social group. Paradoxically, to validate my synchronic account, I found that towards the end of this study, specifically from section 1 1 of Chapter 9 and in Chapter 10,1 had to tell an elaborate diachronic story. This, you will find, is not even about the mysteries of Mithras, or at least not primarily so. Rather, it is the reconstructed history of a set of astronomical and astrological — that is, 'star-talk' — concepts and representations in which, I claim, the prehistory and origins of the mysteries of Mithras are embedded. 22 Large though that claim is, there is fortunately no need to say more about it here at the outset. 7. CONCLUSION Such, then, is our hermeneutic agenda. In the next chapter we shall look at the traditional interpretations of twentieth-century Mithraic scholarship and their fons et origo in the great two-volume work of Franz Cumont, which appeared in the closing years of the century before. Concurrently, we shall start to lay the foundations of our new approach. 22 The role of the great astrologer-politician Ti. Claudius Balbillus in the story is treated in an essay in Beck 2004f: 323-9. See also Beck 1998a, 1999, 2001, both on Balbillus and on the earlier role of the kingdom of Commagene as the matrix of Mithraic astrology. Old Ways: The Reconstruction of Mithraic Doctrine from Iconography 1. A GATEWAY TO AN INTERPRETATION OF THE MYSTERIES: PORPHYRY, DE ANTRO NYMPHARUM 6, ON THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF THE MITHRAEUM An exploration such as ours should have a specific point of departure, gateway data, as it were, to use as a concrete example as one starts to address the theoretical issues. For our gateway into the Mithraic mysteries I have chosen a passage from Porphyry, De antro nympharum 6, on the form and function of the mithraeum: Similarly, the Persians call the place a cave where they introduce an initiate to the mysteries, revealing to him the path by which souls descend and go back again. For Eubulus tells us that Zoroaster was the first to dedicate a natural cave in honour of Mithras, the creator and father of all. This cave bore for him the image of the cosmos which Mithras had created, and the things which the cave contained, by their propor- tionate arrangement, provided him with symbols of the elements and climates of the cosmos, (trans. Arethusa edition) Porphyry, a Neoplatonist of the third century ce, here tells us two things of great importance. In the context of a foundation legend about an archetypal mithraeum, 1 he specifies first the esoteric significance or meaning of Mithraism's sacred space and secondly the function of that space within its mysteries. (1) The mithraeum is designed as, and called, a 'cave' because it is meant to represent the 1 Porphyry derives his information from a predecessor, Eubulus. Eubulus, and probably the Mithraists too, ascribed the institution of Mithraism to the Persian sage Zoroaster. This sort of attribution to a remote and alien sage was common in antiquity (Momigliano 1975). It is ahistorical, although Zoroaster himself, as the prophet of Iranian Mazda-worship ('Zoroastrian- ism'), is of course real enough. By 'Persians' Eubulus means the Mithraists, not real-life Persians. Our passage also contains the information that the original mithraeum 'was located in the mountains near Persia and had flowers and springs'. The reference to water is significant but does not immediately concern us here. Old Ways 17 universe. (2) It is an 'image of the universe' in order to realize a mystery of the descent and return of souls. De antro 6 is actually the sole explicit testimony from antiquity as to the intent of Mithraism's mysteries and the means by which that intent was realized. Porphyry moreover, was an intelligent and well-placed theoretician of contem- porary religion, with access to predecessors' studies, now lost. 2 So his remarks, you might think, would be an obvious entry point to an interpretation of the mysteries. In fact, however, De antro 6 has never been Mithraic scholarship's point of departure. So before we set out thence, I should review the traditional route and justify my divergence. First, though, notice two interesting features of the passage which will recur in our discussions: (1) The intent of the mithraeum's design is to enable initiation into a mystery. Ritual is signalled as well as (rather than?) belief. In due course, we shall need to look carefully at Porphyry's language and its modern explications in order to assess the balance. (2) More obvious is the emphasis on symbols and on symbolism as the driving mechanism for what the Mithraists accomplish in their mithraeum: the mithraeum is an 'image' (eikona) of the universe; it is made so by a certain disposition of 'symbols' {symbolois) within it. 2. THE TRADITIONAL ROUTE: FROM THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE MONUMENTS TO THE MYTH OF MITHRAS TO THE BELIEFS OF MITHRAISTS The heuristic royal road, opened more than a century ago by Franz Cumont (1896, 1899), starts from the iconography of the monuments. From the monu- ments, and especially from the icon of the bull-killing Mithras, the so-called 'tauroctony', 3 first (1) the cult myth, centred on the story of Mithras, is recon- structed, and then (2) from that myth the cult's doctrines and beliefs are deduced. 4 2 e.g. Eubulus, as in the present passage. 3 The term is modern. 4 Cumont did not invent this heuristic procedure entirely de novo. As we shall see, it has its roots in antiquity; and long before Cumont early modern scholars and antiquarians had explicated the mysteries piecemeal by interpreting the iconography of the monuments, especially the tauroctony: see e.g. the early interpretations of the Ottaviano Zeno monument, V335, discussed in Vermaseren 1978: 8—17, pis. XI, XII). Cumont's accomplishment was (1) to collect the data of the 'monuments figures', thus rendering the iconography amenable to systematic interpretation, and (2) to recon- struct from the scenes on the monuments the first credible Mithras myth, postulated as the object of the Mithraists' beliefs and the expression of their doctrines. For simplicity's sake, I concentrate here on the story of Mithras himself. For Cumont this was but a part, albeit the central part, of a grander story, likewise told in scenes on the monuments, involving divine powers other than Mithras. Cumont's ultimate goal, as Richard Gordon pointed out (1975: 216), was the full theology embodied in the totality of scenes and symbols. 18 Old Ways This heuristic procedure involves two stages. Logically, it must indeed be so, for one cannot deduce doctrine and belief from myth without first deciphering the story told by the scenes on the monuments (by no means a straightforward task, as we shall see). Nevertheless, in practice, the two parts of the programme are usually run in tandem: meanings are deduced while the narrative is expli- cated. Furthermore, not all of the symbolism on the monuments contributes to the narrative, at least not in any obvious way. When that is so, the symbols are translated directly into doctrines and beliefs with little or no reference to the story. An example would be the explicit astrological symbolism with which the monuments are so richly embellished. The architecture of Cumont's fundamental study, Textes et monuments figures relatifs aux mysteres de Mithra, makes this heuristic procedure — iconography to story to doctrine and belief — abundantly clear. Note first, however, the emphasis in the title: it is the 'monuments figures', those monuments which carry inter- pretable iconography, which are privileged. The silent deficit in that title, the mithraea, the epigraphy, and the small finds, could not be addressed as ad- equately as the iconography until they were catalogued in a more appropriate format half-a-century later in M. J. Vermaseren's Corpus Inscriptionum et Mon- umentorum Religionis Mithriacae (1 956-60). 5 Although Cumont's interpretive first volume (1899) 6 starts with the literary texts, it disposes of them in forty-four pages (pp. 3-46), only twenty-six (pp. 21-46) of which concern the Greek and Latin texts directly relevant to the Graeco- Roman Mysteries. The monuments, in contrast, occupy 168 (pp. 53-220) out of the remaining 174 pages (pp. 37-220) of the first part ('Critique des documents') of this volume. 7 Even if we deduct the first seventeen pages (on the mithraea and small finds) and the last eight ('interet artistique') of these 168, that still leaves 143 pages devoted to the iconography of the 'monuments figures', the story they tell, and the meanings they convey. Manifestly, this is the engine of Cumont's project, a perception confirmed when we find the very same data deployed again as 'La doctrine des mysteres', the title of the fourth chapter in the volume's second part ('Conclusions'). As 'The Doctrine of the Mithraic Mysteries' it occupies the same position in the popular, still current English translation of those 'Conclusions' published as a separate book (Cumont 1903). Among the leading twentieth-century interpreters of Mithraism, Robert Tur- can exemplifies most transparently the continuation of Cumont's heuristic pro- cedure. The fourth chapter of his short, general study of the cult is entitled 'L'Imagerie mithriaque', and it opens thus (Turcan 2000: 47; emphasis mine): 5 A high point in the display of the full range of the archaeological evidence is undoubtedly Manfred Clauss's survey of the cult (1990, trans. 2000). 'Small finds' are now receiving proper attention: see Martens and De Boe 2004, the proceedings of a conference devoted to the subject in 2001. 6 Vol. 1 was published afterVol. 2 (1896). Vol. 2 is the actual collection of texts and monuments. 7 The balance, a scant six pages, is assigned to the inscriptions. Old Ways 19 Le mithriacisme nous est accessible surtout et directement par Viconographie. C'est dire l'importance des monuments figures qui doivent servir de base a toute discussion sur les origines, la formation et la signification du culte greco-romain de Mithra. Mithraism is directly accessible to us above all through the iconography, which speaks to the importance of the figured monuments which ought to serve as the basis of all discussion on the origins, the formation, and the meaning of the Graeco-Roman cult of Mithras. There could be no clearer programmatic statement. In the ground it covers (though not of course in its findings, which mark a real advance over those of Cumont), 8 Turcan's chapter on 'imagerie' runs more or less parallel to Cumont's chapter on 'doctrine'. The difference is that while Cumont's title signals the latter part of the course and its goal, Turcan's signals the earlier part and the starting line. In a nice symmetry, the equivalent chapter in the other of the two most recent general surveys (Clauss 1990; English translation 2000) signals the middle of the course, the cult myth: 'Mithras-Legende', 'The sacred narrative'. In an article explicating an iconographically unusual detail in the banquet scene on the reverse of the Fiano Romano tauroctony (V641), 9 Turcan spells out this heuristic procedure more fully, but with equal clarity and with his customary eloquence (1986: 221). I quote the passage in extenso, for we shall need to return to it to take up various threads in its argument. Bear in mind that the strangeness ('bizarrerie') of the particular detail which he is addressing is the prompt for a more generalized reflection on where the iconography of the monuments leads us and how it conducts us there. Note especially the emphasis on doctrine as the end product of the imagery of the monuments, and on the inculcation of doctrine, in a liturgical or ritual context, as the goal of initiation into the mysteries. Note too how iconography functions as or like a language of instruction in the transmission of doctrine. La bizarrerie de la representation doit tenir pour une grande part au fait quelle s'eflorce de transcrire par une image quelque chose d'un enseignement philosophico-religieux. D'une part, en effet, nous savons que le mithriacisme a integre, adapte certaines theories grecques, voire certains mythes grecs . . . Et d' autre part, une caracteristique essentielle de ce culte est qu'il se repand par l'image, moyennant une initiation et une liturgie qui comportent l'explication rituelle des images. L'iconographie n'y a, comme on sait, aucune fin esthe- tique. Elle se veut porteuse d'une doctrine. D'une extremite a l'autre du monde romain, avec certaines variantes autour de figures fondamentales, elle vehicule un meme enseigne- ment. C'est un langage a dechif&er, et Ton ne peut guere hasarder de dechiffrement qu'en 8 Mainly in the shedding of the baggage of Mazdaism, of which Cumont supposed Mithraism to be the Roman form or expression, in favour of a more Graeco-Roman ideology; also in a heightened attention to the cult's principal icon, the tauroctony, and to the scene of the banquet which both follows the bull-killing in the myth cycle and serves as the charter for the cult meal. 9 For present purposes, the specific detail does not matter: in fact, it is the flames which spring up at the base of an altar where one of the torchbearers points the head of a caduceus. 20 Old Ways se fondant sur la semantique courante des motifs ou des attributs, en fonction de certaines idees communes au monde greco-romain. [The strangeness of the representation has to do in large measure with the fact that it is trying to transcribe by an image some piece of philosophical or religious teaching. On the one hand we know that Mithraism integrated and adapted certain Greek theories, certain Greek myths . . . On the other hand an essential characteristic of this cult is that it spread by means of the image, through an initiation and a liturgy which carried the ritual explication of the images. The iconography, as we know, has no aesthetic purpose. It is meant to be the carrier of a doctrine. From one end of the Roman world to the other, with certain variants on fundamental figures, it conveys the same teaching. It is a language to be deciphered, and one can only try deciphering it by relying on the then current semantics of the motifs or attributes, in terms of certain ideas common to the Graeco-Roman world.] 3. THE MERITS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE TRADITIONAL HEURISTIC PROCEDURE Of course there is good warrant for the traditional Cumontian procedure — were there not, scholars would hardly have followed it for the duration of the twentieth century. The most obvious and compelling reason is the sheer quantity of the iconographic evidence. Notoriously, there are no extant sacred texts, other than a few short symbola, from within the Mysteries of Mithras; and even from the external but contemporary ancient sources which discussed or touched on the Mysteries there are only some brief and fragmented testimonies. By contrast, an amazing plethora of monuments with narrative scenes and other groupings of symbols survives, mostly in the form of relief sculpture, but also in fresco and in sculpture in the round. 10 Mithraism typically expressed itself in and through the medium of the visual arts, just as early Christianity typically expressed itself in and through the medium of the spoken and, before long, the written word. Accordingly, it was as proper and as inevitable that Mithraic scholarship, or at least that part of it concerned with interpreting the mysteries, should start with the monuments and their iconography as that the scholarship of early Christian- ity should start with New Testament criticism. 11 One begins, rightly, where the data is thickest, most voluminous, and most complex. 10 The abundance of the archaeological evidence, in stark contrast to the paucity of the literary remains, is stressed by Clauss (2000: pp. xxi, 15). 1 ' More precisely, with the criticism of early canonical and extra-canonical literature and its postulated antecedents (e.g. the 'Q' gospel) in both narrative and non-narrative forms. The aim is twofold: (1) to identify and differentiate the earliest forms of Christianity (ideological as well as social), and (2) (for those who maintain that the goal is achievable) to isolate and characterize 'the historical Jesus'. The second of those two quests has no counterpart in Mithraic scholarship, although a search for Mithraism's actual human founder(s) is a legitimate historiographical endeav- our (Beck 1998). It is worth noting that these days the scholarship of Christian origins does not work exclusively with and from the written record. Archaeology too plays a substantial role: see e.g. the use of recent archaeological evidence from the Lower Galilee in Crossan 1998: 209—35. Old Ways 21 Secondly, focusing first on the iconography of the monuments, and in par- ticular on the icon of the bull-killing Mithras, places the emphasis where, one senses intuitively, it belongs. The tauroctony is one of Mithraism's few defining essentials. Every Mithraic group, as far as one can tell, displayed one in a prominent location, usually in a special niche at the end of their mithraeum. Indeed, it was the icon's presence there that privileged that part of their sacred space. Often, the mithraeum was embellished elsewhere with secondary exem- plars of the tauroctony, 12 and there seem also to have been small portable versions, perhaps for private devotion. 13 Since it was manifestly the focus of the Mithraists' attention, surely it ought to be the primary focus of the scholar's attention too; and if the primary focus, why not the heuristic point of departure? The argument for the centrality of the tauroctony is sound, and in fact there are no nay-sayers. Again, an analogy with the interpretation of Christianity (though not in its most antique forms) is germane. The siting of the image of the crucified Jesus in the sanctuary above the altar persists as a norm in Western church design from the Middle Ages onwards. From it one could infer, even in default of all other evidence, the centrality of the crucifixion in the Christian system. So it is with the image of the bull-killing Mithras and the event which it both represents and proclaims. Although, for good reason, I select a different entry point into the mysteries, we must and shall pay no less attention to the icon of the tauroctony. Thirdly, the iconography conducts us, both directly and via the myth, to Mithraic praxis. The tauroctony in relief form sometimes carries on its reverse a second scene, in which Mithras and the Sun god feast together. 14 The two gods recline on the hide of the slaughtered bull. Their banquet, then, is manifestly the next episode in the myth. It follows immediately on the bull-killing. But is it just an event of myth, a culmination in a story told of the gods? Again, it is the iconography, not the texts, that tells us otherwise. The banquet of the gods, so the monuments make clear, was replicated in the cult meal which the initiates celebrated together on the ubiquitous side-benches which are the mithraeum's defining feature. In other words, the story of the banquet of Mithras and Sol is the charter myth of the initiates' cult meal. In an analogous fashion, the story of Jesus's 'last supper' is or, more precisely, became the charter myth for the Christian cult meal and the liturgy of the eucharist which developed from it. The difference is that while we discern the relation of myth to ritual in certain forms of early Christianity from the literary 12 Vermaseren lists over fifty as certainly or most probably from the same mithraeum at Sarmizegetusa (Dacia), V2027-2140. 13 e.g. the roundel, only 7.5 cm in diameter, found in the Caesarea mithraeum but likely of Danubian provenance (Bull 1978: 79-83; pi. II, fig. 4). On small and miniature icons, see Gordon (2004). 14 e.g. V1083 (Heddernheim I). The scene also occurs on separate reliefs; also as a side-scene on complex tauroctonies. See Beck 1984: 2010 f, 2083 f. 22 Old Ways sources (i.e., the gospels, their antecedents, and the Pauline epistles), 15 for Mithraism we discern it from the iconography, notably from those representa- tions of the banquet which elide the celestial and mythic event into the terrestrial and actual. This they do by intimating in one way or another that the partici- pants and attendants are not only deities (Mithras, Sol, Cautes, Cautopates) but also initiates of various grades in the hierarchy. The banquet transpires at both levels or in both worlds simultaneously: it is the heavenly feast of Sol and Mithras, but it is also the feast of their earthly surrogates, the Father and the Sun-Runner, with Mithraic Lions and Ravens in attendance. 16 From the icon- ography, then, we may reasonably deduce that the Mithraic cult feast was not simply a meal shared and enjoyed by the initiates — though it was certainly that too and never less than that 17 — but also a sacrament, if by 'sacrament' we may understand a ceremony whose participants understand it to reach, through symbols, into a world beyond that in which it was performed. Starting, then, from the iconography, one can establish first the link between two crucial events in the Mithras myth, the bull-killing and the banquet, and then the link, which is a charter relationship, between the events of myth and Mithraism's normative ritual. 18 These are huge pieces of the mysteries. If the iconography can guide us so far, why backtrack to a different point of departure? Finally, the iconography, unlike the texts, never imparts erroneous informa- tion. In its own bailiwick it is incontrovertible. Its data are self-evidently authen- tic. One cannot argue, for example, with the fact that the tauroctony regularly includes a dog, a snake, a scorpion, and a raven. That, manifestly, is how the Mithraists decided to compose their icon. It is simply so and not otherwise. What better base, then, from which to launch one's hermeneutics? 4. THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE TRADITIONAL HEURISTIC PROCEDURE Unfortunately, iconography's bailiwick does not extend very far. As soon as we start to interpret the iconography, to say what it 'means', we enter the domain of error, or at least of potential error. There is of course a considerable zone of '5 Mark 14: 22-5, Matt. 26: 26-9, Luke 22: 17-19, 1 Cor. 11: 23-5. I subscribe to the widely held modern view that this 'charter' was imposed, in the light of the crucifixion/resurrection, on a pre- existing common meal in the Jesus movement (Crossan 1998: 423—44; Theissen 1999: 121—60). 16 For the relevant monuments see Clauss 2000: 108-13; also Beck 1984: 2010 f., 2028, 2083 f. In the Konjic banquet scene (VI 896) only a Lion and a Raven can be identified with certainty from among the four attendant figures as grade-holders (Turcan 1999: 225—7). 17 According to J. D. Crossan (1998: 427, on 1 Cor. 11: 17-22), Paul upbraids his Corinthian followers on precisely this point: that the well-off Christians had perverted the common meal by admitting their poorer members only to token communion, not to shared food. Certain it is that the eucharist did eventually develop into a purely symbolic meal, a mistake — if it is a mistake — which the Mithraists apparently avoided. 18 'La liturgie ordinaire', as Turcan rightly calls it (2000: 78). Old Ways 23 agreement in the interpretation of the monuments (for example, on the intent of the banquet scene, as discussed above), and little likelihood that the consensus of scholars there is completely mistaken. However, this clear zone of agreement soon gives place to thickets where the intent of the iconography is by no means self-evident and the inferences which are hazarded can at best be no more than plausible. 19 Here an ancient text such as Porphyry's De antro has a clear advantage. The intent of the mithraeum's symbolism may or may not be what Porphyry says it is, but at least we are listening to a contemporary of the Mysteries making the inference, and there is a good chance that he is drawing (albeit at second hand) on sources within the Mysteries. This likelihood I shall discuss in due course. In contrast, no ancient authority tells us why, for example, the tauroctony regularly includes a dog, a snake, a scorpion, and a raven. We are on our own — though not resourceless. The iconography, garrulous enough on its own turf, is mute on meaning. A defect of Clauss's survey in particular (1990, 2000) is the casual assumption that, because the archaeological data (i.e. excavated mithraea and their furnish- ings, 'figured monuments', 20 epigraphy, small finds) are hard data and in them- selves incontrovertible, their esoteric intent will to some extent be self-evident, at least to the trained eye of the classicist. Contingently, no doubt, most of Clauss's inferences are correct. But the method, because it is entirely ad hoc, is actually more speculative than the speculation of the systematic interpreters whom he faults (1990: 8; 2000: p. xx). 21 Let us allow that the Cumontian method has successfully reconstructed the story of Mithras — which in broad terms it has; 22 also, that some of the story's most important non-narrative implications are thereby revealed, for example the charter implications of the mythic banquet of Mithras and Sol for the cult meal of the initiates in the here and now. What then? Have we exhausted the recoverable 'meaning' of the monuments and of the mysteries thereby? We have not — and the five faults in twentieth-century hermeneutics and heuristic procedure, which we identified in the preceding chapter (sect. 1), still remain to be addressed. 1 9 Which is not a reason for not making them: in this field warrantable or grounded speculation is not a vice but a necessity. 20 I shall use this literal translation of Cumont's monuments figure's (in future without quotation marks) because English has no suitable corresponding phrase. 21 A good example of Clauss's randomness of interpretation is his treatment of the torchbearers (2000: 95-8). 22 All of the comprehensive surveys of the Mysteries retell the basic story, though with somewhat different 'spins': Cumont 1903: 130-40; Vermaseren 1960: 63-88 (56-8 on the bull-killing); Turcan 2000: 95-8; Clauss 2000: 62-101 (108-13 on the banquet). Merkelbach 1984 is the most idiosyncratic: the episodes in the story are correlated each with one of the grades (pp. 86— 1 33), except for the bull-killing itself which is first correlated with all seven of the grades (pp. 80—2) and then explicated at greater length as a cosmogony (pp. 193—208). On some remaining methodo- logical problems for the explication of the Mithras myth, see the appendix to this chapter. 24 Old Ways Of those five faults, we are already on the road to rectifying the first two. These were (1) undervaluing the literary evidence as against the monumental, and (2) undervaluing the mithraeum as against the figured monuments. 23 The choice of Porphyry, De antro 6 as our gateway to the mysteries redresses the balance on both counts. It is text, and it privileges the mithraeum. It confronts us with the fact — or the possibility, if one harbours reservations about the reliability of the testimony — that the mithraeum, symbolizing the universe and enabling a mystery of the descent and return of souls, was itself a store of esoteric meaning no less than the figured monuments which it con- tained. 24 The three more serious faults remain. These we identified as: (3) the presump- tion — admittedly, less pervasive now than formerly — that a Mithraic 'doctrine' or 'faith' is the ultimate object of the heuristic quest and the category into which narrative and non-narrative iconography are to be translated; (4) the contrary — and now more prevalent — positivist assumption that, in default of self-evident doctrine on the figured monuments, the iconography conveys little of sign- ificance above and beyond the story told — hence that the mysteries cannot have been a serious and sophisticated cognitive enterprise; and (5) the disregard of semantics and semiotics, a failure to ask not merely what the iconography means but also how it means. This last fault is by far the gravest, for it empowers the other two with an illusory confidence that common sense and the standard tools of classical scholarship suffice. In addressing these three fundamental heuristic flaws, I shall also lay the groundwork for an alternative and, in my opinion, better approach. This new method, as well as making greater use of the literary texts, especially Porphyry's De antro, will return us to the iconography of the figured monuments and the design of the mithraeum viewed as the two principal complexes of symbols in an integrated system of symbols. In effect, we shall pull back from that second stage in the traditional explication of the iconography, the translation of the myth conveyed by the figured monuments into doctrine. This retreat from 23 The figured monuments, it is clear, are valued because they tell a story, while the mithraeum does not. Consequently the former, especially the tauroctony, are seen as the conveyors of esoteric meaning, the latter primarily as venue for the mysteries and above all for the cult meal. 24 Devaluing or ignoring De antro 6 has led to bizarre consequences. Thus Clauss, in his earlier background chapters on 'Religious perspectives in the Roman empire' and 'Mystery religions' (2000: chs. 2 and 3), admirably describes the very cosmology and theory of the destiny of souls which undergirds Porphyry's testimony in De antro 6. Yet, in his chapter on the mithraeum (2000: ch. 7), in the meticulous description of its material remains, you will find not a word about the mithraeum's function as a highly intelligent contemporary source reports it! Although Clauss does indeed cite De antro 6 and mention the mithraeum's cosmic symbolism, it is clear from the wording of the original German edition (1990: 60) that he does not see the symbolism as functional: 'Der Kultraum wird somit ein Abbild der Welt, durch die der Mensch schreitet, hin zu Gott, der im Hintergrund sichtbar wird.' Note, too, how Michael White, in an otherwise admirable descriptive section on the mithraeum in a book on the topic of 'building god's house in the Roman world' (1989: 47—59 and title), is entirely silent about this aspect of the mithraeum's intent. Old Ways 25 hypothetical doctrine back to actual symbols will eventually help us confront on firmer ground that basic semiotic question which classical scholarship, with its commonsensical methods, has failed to pose — let alone answer — concerning Mithraic iconography: do symbols mearii If so, what do they mean and howl First, however, to the chimaera of doctrine, which we shall approach via the question oi referents: to what outside itself and the narrated myth does the rich and complex iconography of the monuments refer? Reference and referents will be the topic of the next chapter. APPENDIX: SOME REMAINING METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS FOR THE EXPLICATION OF THE MITHRAS MYTH AS REPRESENTED ON THE FIGURED MONUMENTS 1. Some of the episodes remain obscure, because details in the scenes that represent them are difficult to discern on account of weathering and smallness of scale. For example, what is the object which Mithras brandishes over Sol's head in the 'commissioning' scene (Gordon 1980d: 216, scene 'S'; Hinnells and Gordon 1977—8: 213—23; Beck 1987: 310—13): a haunch or forequarter of an ox, a Phrygian cap, both of the above (on different monuments of course), something else altogether (e.g. a military sack)? 2. The sequence of the episodes in the myth is not guaranteed by the composition or, rather, by the disposition of the scenes on the complex monuments. There are broad regional norms, not strictly observed, for the sequence of the subsidiary scenes around the bull-killing, but there is certainly no canon. (On the regional sequences, from which earlier scholars tried to deduce a history of the cult's spread — unsuccessfully, in my view— see Saxl 1931; Will 1955; Beck 1984: 2074-8; Gordon 1980d; Turcan 2000: 53-60.) The absence of a canonical sequence of scenes suggests that the myth as an ordered narrative was not of primary importance to the Mithraists (cf. the pre-passion gospel narratives in early Christianity). Scholars are therefore surely justified in searching the scenes, individually or in limited sets, for intent beyond the mere narration of a story. 3. The bizarre, unnaturalistic quality of the representation of the principal event, the bull-killing itself (contrast, in this respect, the all too shocking realism of the crucifixion in the Christian passion narratives). The problem with 'reading' the tauroctony as an incident in a story is not so much the miraculous — for example the transformation of the bull's tail into ears of wheat — as the clutter of detail: that Mithras should slay a bull — that is, the core of the event — is credible at the level of episode in a narrative; that he should do so in the company of a dog, a snake, a scorpion, a raven, and two clones of himself, one with an elevated torch, the other with a lowered torch, is not. Manifestly, we have to do with an aggregation of symbols, and we need to ask, to what end? An important distinction between the tauroctony as 'theophany' and the framing side-scenes as bio- graphic narrative is drawn by Zwirn (1989). To the non-narrative intent of the tauroct- ony 's clutter of detail we shall return, more than once, in the chapters which follow. The Problem of Referents: Interpretation with Reference to What? 1. ICONOGRAPHY AND THE PROBLEM OF REFERENTS If we are to interpret the iconography, or the myth which we have reconstructed from the iconography, we have to decide what we will interpret it with reference to. This is not a given in the iconography in the way that it is a given in some of the written testimonies. For example, in De antro 6 Porphyry interprets the mithraeum as an image of the cosmos complete with 'symbols of the elements and climes of the cosmos', and he attributes that interpretation to the Mithraists themselves (via Eubulus). Consequently, if we think Porphyry's interpretation worth exploring, we know exactly where to look — to cosmology. And when, later in his essay, he talks about the signs of the zodiac, about planetary houses, about solstices and equinoxes, we know that we must focus particularly on astronomy and astrology in their Graeco-Roman manifestations. The iconography, with the one major exception of the explicit astronomical symbols, gives us no such leads. We are on our own and must choose which way to look. Clauss's solution, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is to ignore the problem and to treat the referents of the iconography as somehow self-evident. If there is incoherence or apparent contradiction, this merely proves that Mithraism was not 'a unified religion' (2000: 16). In fact, it does no such thing: it shows only that the researcher has begged the question and so absolved himself from a serious search for systematic referents and meaning. 2. REFERENTS IN THE SURROUNDING CULTURE? Turcan's approach to the question of referents is altogether more reflective and sophisticated. In the passage I have already quoted (1986: 221), he addresses the problem as one of deciphering a language, and he bids us use as a reference text the 'common ideas of the Graeco-Roman world': 'C'est un langage a dechiffrer, The Problem of Referents 27 et Ton ne peut guere hasarder de dechiflrement qu'en se fondant sur la seman- tique courante des motifs ou des attributs, en fonction de certaines idees com- munes au monde greco-romain.' In other words, look to the relevant ideas in the Mysteries' surrounding culture and in particular to the customary meanings of the iconographic symbols we want to decipher. This is sensible advice, and it has led in practice to substantial findings concerning many aspects of the Mysteries, not least by Turcan himself. 1 Iconographic symbols, however, are notoriously slippery signifiers, whose meanings' are difficult to decipher precisely because of their multivalence, the multiplicity of their referents. How, then, do we decide to what part of antiquity's common culture we should refer, in order to decipher what any given symbol 'means' within the mysteries? Again, Turcan has helpful answers, which we may summarize in three principles: (1) select the most usual connotations; (2) do not force the data into an a priori scheme; (3) consider the whole context in which the symbol is deployed. (1). In the article from which I have quoted, the symbol at issue is the caduceus, the rod entwined by a pair of snakes in a figure-of-eight. In the banquet scene on the reverse of the Fiano Romano relief (V461), one of the torchbearers extends a caduceus towards the base of an altar, and at that exact place flames appear to leap up from the ground. Turcan (1986: 221-6) argues that since the caduceus is the customary attribute of Mercury, and since Mercury is the conductor of souls (psychopompos), the caduceus will maintain this connotation of the conduct of souls in the novel context of the Mithraic banquet scene. So the eliciting of flames by the caduceus refers to the dispatch of human souls, 2 and the scene expresses, among other things, Mithraic doctrine on this matter. I have no quarrel with Turcan's conclusion. Indeed, I find it entirely plausible. Neverthe- less, the principle on which it rests, that the symbol carries its most usual connotation, is a working assumption, not a self-evidently true premise. It is not inconceivable — indeed it is quite likely — that the Mithraists sometimes employed their symbols in unusual ways and with unusual connotations. (2). Turcan (1986: 218-21) rightly pointed out that preconceived schemes had led his predecessors into untenable identifications of the symbols in this exemplar of the banquet scene. Cumont (1946), in applying a doctrine of the 1 e.g. Turcan 1981 on the idea and practice of sacrifice within and beyond the Mysteries. The best example of this approach, in my view, is Gordon 1980^ on the grades, where reference is made to the stock of Graeco-Roman animal lore in order to understand better what it meant to be a Mithraic Lion or Raven. This method also helps one draw distinctions between Mithraic ideas and the ideological mainstream of pagan antiquity. As Gordon has commented (pp. 22—3), new cults, especially in their ideologies, must walk a fine line between innovation and conservatism. They must remain comprehensible and familiar and yet must offer something appealing in its cognitive distinctiveness — a new and different way of understanding the world, yet recognizably still the old ways renovated. 2 Whether into or out of the world (or both) must still be determined (Turcan 1986: 223). 28 The Problem of Referents four elements, had identified the flames as water; Leroy Campbell (1968: 189), in line with his blended Neoplatonic and Iranian interpretation, had identified the altar as an urn for water. Neither identification is at all plausible. Nevertheless, the interpreter must have some point of reference in the ideas current in the culture, if only as a working hypothesis: one cannot interpret out into a void. In fact, Turcan in his study of this banquet scene oriented his explication towards Stoic ideas of the nature of the soul. Turcan's interpretation is superior to Cumont's and to Campbell's not because he avoids a preconceived referent among current ideas, but because the symbols fit his referent without forced and implausible identifications. (3). Turcan's interpretation of the Fiano Romano banquet scene carries added persuasiveness because he integrated it with the scene of the tauroctony on the obverse of the relief in a single explication. The blood of the sacrificed bull, he explained, has soaked the ground at the base of the altar, and it is from the blood so shed that souls are elicited in fiery form by the torchbearer's caduceus (1986: 224 f). The context is enlarged and the interpretation is enriched in relation to its postulated referent, the Stoic conception of the soul. It is hard to quarrel with this criterion of comprehensiveness. As a working principle it is indeed admirable. One notes only that it affords no guarantee of certainty in interpret- ation. A cluster of visual symbols has much greater elasticity than a sequence of words. How can we tell if we have divined the correct, or even a correct, 'meaning'? 3. IRANIAN REFERENTS? In following Turcan's principles of interpretation, I have accepted his assumption that the culture to whose 'common ideas' we should refer is that of the 'Graeco- Roman world'. Historically, however, Mithraic scholarship has always looked as well to the Iranian world, and particularly to the ancient religion of that world, Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism. Of this Turcan is, of course, well aware; he would not deny, any more than I would, an Iranian component in, or in the background to, these self-confessed 'Persian' Mysteries. It is a matter, finally, of emphasis: how much weight one gives to things Graeco-Roman and how much to things Persian; also whether one construes the 'Persian' component as genuinely Iranian or as reinvented Perserie. This is not the place to confront this question directly, let alone try to answer it. 3 My present concern is merely with its implications for heuristic procedure. Here we need only note the fact that, historically, Mithraic studies evolved around the question. 4 Cumont himself started with the working assumption that the mysteries of Mithras were the Roman expression of Mazdaism, and that 3 Tentative answers: Gordon 1975, 1978, 2001; Beck 1998^. 4 For a survey, see Beck 1984: 2063-71; updated in Beck 2004c: 27-9. The Problem of Referents 29 was the conclusion which he thought the data finally warranted. Although the last three decades of the twentieth century saw a swing towards interpreting the mysteries much more by reference to their Graeco-Roman context, scholars continue to put forward Iranizing interpretations, either in whole or in part. 5 It is not merely uncertainty about the culture of the referents of Mithraic iconography that complicates our heuristic procedure. The iconography is sel- dom so straightforward that one can assign different components of a standard composition to unambiguous referents in one culture or the other, labelling, for example, this item in the tauroctony 'Graeco-Roman' and that 'Iranian'. Even to suggest such a distribution is to expose its absurdity. If both cultures are indeed represented in the mysteries, their presence is necessarily blended in the iconog- raphy of the monuments. We face, once again, the multivocality of the symbols: they can 'speak' different cultures simultaneously. In point of fact, certain components of the iconography are indeed unilingual; or rather, they speak about referents in one culture only. These are the explicit astronomical symbols, and what they refer to are things in the heavens as constructed in Graeco-Roman culture, for example the zodiac and its signs. To my knowledge, there is no equivalent feature in the iconography that refers solely to a referent in Iranian culture or in Mazdaism. The classic case is the bull-killing Mithras himself. Iranian Mithra is not a bull-killer: why, then, do the occidental icons represent him as such? 6 If straightforward Iranian referents are hard to come by for the persons represented on the monuments, how much more difficult it is to decipher there a pure Iranian/Mazdean ideology. It is not my intention to decry the search for Iranian/Mazdean antecedents to, or elements in, the referents of Mithraic iconography. That search has undoubt- edly been a fruitful one. 7 My point is only that, in the absence of referents which are themselves manifestly and exclusively Iranian or Mazdean, the conclusions can only be more or less credible, more or less plausible, but never certain. 8 The question of Iranian or Mazdean antecedents poses the further issue of historical depth. Even those who favour a scenario of radical reinvention of the 5 For a select bibliography, see Gordon in Clauss 2000: 185 f. The acme of Iranizing interpret- ations, both in scope and complexity, was undoubtedly Campbell 1968. See also Widengren 1966, 1980. The modern surveys, though they also do justice to eastern Mit(h)ra, on the whole treat the Western mysteries as an autonomous creation: Turcan 2000, Merkelbach 1984, Clauss 1990/2000. The last of these marks the most radical break with an Iranian past. Nevertheless, strong voices still rightly insist on substantial continuities from East to West: Boyce and Grenet 1991: 468-90; Kreyenbroek 1994; Russell 1994; most recently, Bivar 1999; Weiss 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000. 6 The other intensely problematic figure is the Mithraic lion-headed god. An indication of the frailty of the Iranizing case is that its proponents offer two mutually exclusive identities, Zurvan and Ahriman; for a summary, Beck 1984: 2087-8. 7 To choose one example out of many, see Hinnells 1975 on Iranian ideas of sacrifice in the Mithraic bull-killing. 8 Strangely, Iranizing interpretations are 