242 THE REV. W. ST, CLAIR TISDALL^ D.D.^ ON MITHRATSM. 



A.D. 80. Then and ever afterwards it was universally recognised 

 that Mithra was not a deified man,* not a supposed l3ivine 

 Incarnation, not any being who had ever trod the earth, hut the 

 Sungod.f This we learn from Mitln^aic inscriptions found in 

 Italy, Dacia, Gaul, Britain, but above all in Austria and 

 Germany. They date from the reigns of Trajan (a.d. 98-117) 

 and Hadrian (a.d. 117-138) onward. Among the most commonf 

 words in such inscriptions are 'HX/'o) MlOpa and Invido Soli 

 Mithrcv. About the end of the first century Mithraism began 

 to spread rapidly throughout almost the whole Eoman Empire 

 except Greece and the Hellenic world, carried with them by the 

 legions, which were largely composed of foreigners and included 

 not a few Asiatics. It was pre-eminently the religion of 

 barbarous varriors, and its uithlessness and disregard of purity 

 commended it to others besides. Its spread was lendered the 

 easier from the fact that it opposed no Pagan faith. On the 

 contrary. Western Mithraism (differing in this, as in much else, 

 from the original Persian form of the religion) was at once 

 eclectic and also syncretic§ to the utmost extent. It strove 



Euhemerism, which resolved ev^ery deity into a deceased man or 

 woman (and has been revived in our time under another name by such 

 writers as Mr. Grant Allen) does not seem to have been applied to 

 Mithraism, the facts of the case being too obviously agaiust it. Yet 

 Mr. Mallock perhaps implies something of the kind when he says 

 {Ninefeenth Century and After, September, 1905) : " The earthly career of 

 Mithra belonged to an unimaginable past."' Mithra as a dweller on earth 

 had no "earthly career" at alh Even Julian the Apostate, who speaks 

 of himself as too /3«<r/.Xeaj§ o-aco^ 'H\iov (Orat. iv, initio) and of Helios 

 as TtL-v voepu:v Otu u /ueao^ eV jnerrot^ Te7rt7/ieVo9 Kara TravTOiau /leaortj-a 

 (141, D.), identifies Helios with Mithra {d' trot /^lera rooro (paijju, w's Kot 

 Tov MiOfjriP ri/inciiev kcu u-^iofiei/ W\ac Terpaenjpi Kor<? a^/ici'a<?, kt\^ 

 (Oratio iv, Hertlein's Ed., vol. i, p. 201), though distinguishing the solar 

 disc from the Snngod himself. 



t Hermann Oldenberg, whether correct or not in what he says about 

 the Babylonian (Akkadian) origin of Sun-worship, is undoubtedly correct 

 in saying: ''Mithra, der uralte Sonnengolt, unzweifelhaft eine der 

 hervorragendsten Gestalten im populiiren Glauben der iranischen Volker 

 und auch im Kultus der Achamenidtnkonige . . ." {Die Iranische ReUgicn^ 

 p. 83 of Die Orientali^chen Reh'gionen). In late Persian Zoroastrianism, 

 Mitro as angel of the Sun's light, is distinguished from the Sun himself in 

 Bind i Mahwg \ Khirad, cap. liii, 4, 8, but identified with the Sun in 

 Sikand Gfimdnik Vijdr, cap. iv, 39. 



:|: Vide vol. ii of Cumont's Textes et Monuments relatifs aux mysteres de 

 Mithra, passim. 



§ Vide Macrobius' Saturnalia, and Proetextatus' argument there that 

 all the gods were in reality one and the same, and might all be summed 

 up under the name of the Sungod. In Lib. i, cap. xxi, it is explained 



