254 THE REV. AV. ST. CLAIE T1SDALL_, D.D., OX JJITHRAISM. 



Aphrodite,* whom he identifies with the goddess Mylitta,f of 

 whose vile worship at Babylon he gives such a fearful account.^ 

 It was not Mithra but his female associate and siste^"^ (according 

 at least to the Armenian myth), Anahita, who was really the 

 counterpart of the Nature-goddess, and was worshipped in a 

 similar way in Persia and Armenia. In later times in the 

 West, the majority at least of the female devotees of Mithra 

 were, as already stated, worshippers of Cybele,|| regarding the 

 rites of which goddess not even the greatest ingenuity of the 

 imagination of our modern mythologists has been able to invent 

 the theory that they were distinguished by the " inculcation of 

 moral purity." 



We have seen that Mithra was entitled the " World-producing 

 Bull " (o ravpo^ Brj/ncovpyo^). In Egypt, India and other lands, 

 the Bull was one of the most usual symbols of reproduction. 

 One of the most common of the bas-reliefs in Mithraic temples 

 represents Mithra kneeling upon a bull, into the throat of 

 which he is driving a daiiger. The particular form in which 

 this idea is expressed owes much to Greek artistic influence ; in 

 fact it is largely copied from a Greek statue of Xike*! slaying a 

 bull, and it is supposed to have Ijeen adapted to ^lithraism by a 

 .sculptor belonging to Pergamum. But it is well known that it 

 is usual in many cases for the animal upon which a deity is 

 seated to be but another representation of the deity itself. 

 Thus^in India the rat is the vdhana or " vehicle " of Ganesa, the 

 bull (Xandin) of Siva, etc. Hence Mithra may, from one point 

 .of view, be himself the bull. On the other hand the same thing 

 may be intended by his slaughter of the bull, it being an 

 established fact that in many forms of Xature-worship the 

 • deity and the victim offered to him are regarded as identical. 



* Ka\toi'fTi ?€ ' AcravjJioi tijv 'A0/'Of /"/yi/ MifXirra . . . YlefJaai te 

 Mi'rpau. (Herod., i, 131.) 



t M?;X/TTrt = Babylonian mucdlidat gimrisanu (omnimn eorum genetrijc\ 

 -called also Beltu mv.allidtu (Domhia Genetrix), i.e., Ishtar. 



• Herod., i, 199. 



§ The same relationship is implied, however, in the Avesta. Hence, 

 perhaps, the next-of-kin luariiages for which Peisia was iufamous. 'J hey 

 were styled in Avestic livaetcaddtha., in Pahlavi Khvetukdas, when 

 between relatives of the first degree. 



II Similarly, "the Eoman Silvanus has a niche in one Mithraeum, and 

 in another Saturn and Jupiter-, Mars, Mercury and Vemis^ are iigured, 

 beside the purely Eastern symbols of the planets and the signs of the 

 zodiac " (Dill, p. 592, referring to Donsbach, p. 17). 



H The N<V>^ TavpoK76vo<< of Athens. 



