Mithraic Mysteries

The Mithraic Mysteries are a mystery religion practiced in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to 4th centuries CE.

The name of the Persian god Mithra, adapted into Greek as Mithras, is linked to a new and distinctive imagery.

Romans also calle the religion Mysteries of Mithras or Mysteries of the Persians; modern historians refer to it as Mithraism, or sometimes Roman Mithraism.

The mysteries are popular in the Roman military.

Worshippers of Mithras have a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with ritual meals.

Initiates call themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake".

They meet in underground temples (called mithraeum), which survive in large numbers.

The cult appears to have had its epicenter in Rome.

[ Numerous archeological finds, including meeting places, monuments, and artifacts, have contributed to modern knowledge about Mithraism throughout the Roman Empire.The iconic scenes of Mithras show him being born from a rock, slaughtering a bull, and sharing a banquet with the god Sol (the Sun).

About 420 sites have yielded materials related to the cult.

Among the items found are about 1000 inscriptions, 700 examples of the bull-killing scene (tauroctony), and about 400 other monuments.

It has been estimated that there would have been at least 680-690 Mithraea in Rome.

No written narratives or theology from the religion survive, with limited information to be derived from the inscriptions, and only brief or passing references in Greek and Latin literature.

Interpretation of the physical evidence remains problematic and contested.

The Romans themselves regard the mysteries as having Persian or Zoroastrian sources.

Since the early 1970s, however, the dominant scholarship has cast this origin in doubt, and regarded the mysteries of Mithras as a distinct product of the Roman Imperial religious world.

In this context, Mithraism has sometimes been viewed as a rival of early Christianity.

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