PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER VII

ISIAC INITIATION

THE chief contribution of Egypt to the religion of the Roman Empire was the cult of Isis in the form of a Hellenized development of that ancient Egyptian religion. From very early times Isis and Osiris held a unique position in the religious thought of the Egyptian people. Herodotus noted in his day that "no other gods were worshiped in the same way by the whole of Egypt save only Isis and Osiris." The worship of other deities varied from place to place in different sections of the country. By comparison with these the related cults of Isis and Osiris were undiversified, and their hold on the religious loyalties of the Egyptian people remained more or less constant not only in different localities but in various ages as well. It is surely an impressive fact that in Graeco-Roman times the reformed and Hellenized cult of Isis functioned as vigorously as the antique Osirian religion had functioned in the times of the Pharaohs.

I

The various traditions gathering around the divine names of Osiris and Isis were summarized in connected form by Plutarch. In addition to Plutarch's convenient narrative, there are a number of Egyptian monuments that preserve fragments of the tragic tale. The oldest of these are a series of liturgical texts, hymns, prayers, and incantations from the walls of the pyramids of Sakhara. Quite apart from Plutarch's rendition of the story, it would be possible, from these pyramid texts, to reconstruct completely the Osirian legend. In its developed form, this tradition included many different strands. The essential elements of the tradition, however, were as follows: Osiris on earth had reigned as king over the Egyptians, "making them reform their destitute and bestial mode of living, showing them the art of cultivation, giving them laws, and teaching them how to worship the gods. Afterward he traveled over the whole earth, civilizing it." His wicked brother Set, or Typhon, plotted against him and succeeded in accomplishing his violent death. When Isis, his wife, heard of the terrible deed, she put on mourning and wandered distractedly far and wide searching for the lost body of her husband. After a long search she recovered the body and carefully embalmed it. Over the corpse she and her sister Nephtys joined in a lament that became classical--a type of the Egyptian lamentations for the deceased. With the aid of the faithful god Anubis, her son Horus, and Thoth, Isis performed certain magical rites over the body of Osiris which had the effect of revivifying the corpse and restoring her husband to life. Thereafter he was translated to the nether regions where he reigned as "Lord of the Underworld and Ruler of the Dead." Here he presided at the bar of judgment and assigned to the souls of the departed their proper reward for virtue or punishment for sin.

This brief summary of the Osirian tradition itself suggests that, in the religious thought of Egypt, Osiris was a dying and reviving god like Adonis and Attis and Dionyus, and as such a personification of the yearly vicissitudes of vegetable life in the ever recurrent struggle of life and death in nature. He was also an embodiment of the ideal Pharaoh and a personification of the righteous man who, facing the mystery of death, sought the assurances of religion regarding the future. So also Isis, like Demeter and the Magna Mater, was a mother-goddess personifying the power of life in nature and the unquenchable human hope for a final triumph in the conflict of life with death. She also embodied the beneficent influences of culture and religion; for she had taught men the arts and government and the mysteries.

Traditionally, the rites of the Osirian religion, like those of Eleusis, were established by the goddess-mother herself. Plutarch, again, was a recorder of this tradition. His account of the establishment of the Osiris calt was as follows:

"But the avenger of Osiris, his sister and wife Isis, who extinguished and put a stop to the madness and fury of Typhon, did not forget the contests and struggles she had gone through, nor yet her own wanderings, nor did she suffer oblivion and silence to envelop her many deeds of wisdom, many feats of courage, but by intermingling with the most sacred ceremonies images, hints, and representations of her sufferings of yore she consecrated at one and the same time both lessons of piety and consolation in suffering for men and women when overtaken by misfortune."

In the ancient Egyptian calendar of religious feasts, with its many celebrations in honor of a variety of gods, the rites of Osiris held a place of singular honor. When Herodotus visited Egypt, he found that next to the most important native religious festival was the one in honor of Isis held in her great temple at Busiris in the Nile delta. The Greek historian showed great reverence for these rites and was very reticent about giving any precise information concerning them. He did, however, say this much: "There, after the sacrifice, all the men and women lament in countless numbers; but it were profane for me to say who it is for whom they lament." Also in speaking of similar ceremonies at Sais, Herodotus gave but slight additional information and gave that very guardedIy.

"There is also at Sais the burial of him whose name I deem it forbidden to utter in speaking of such a matter .... and there is a lake hard by, adorned with a stone margin and wrought to a complete circle. . . . . On this lake they enact by night the story of the god's sufferings, a rite which the Egyptians call the mysteries. I could speak more exactly of these matters, for I know the truth, but I will hold my peace."

The information that Herodotus records, scanty as it is, yet is sufficient to betray the general character of these religious celebrations. They were in the nature of a passion drama and they featured lamentations in which the spectators participated. The suggestion is an obvious one that the death and resurrection of Osiris constituted the subject matter of this drama and that the lamentations were the traditional lamentations of Isis for her husband.

Herodotus' reserve about giving any detailed information concerning the Osiris festivals calls attention to a fact of some importance. Even in ancient Egypt the Osirian cult included both public rites and secret ceremonies as well. Certain things were done and certain explanations were made which were regarded as matters of great sanctity. Only privileged people were permitted to share them. Herodotus was so impressed by the sacred character of these revelations that he kept the secret conscientiously. One would hardly be justified, on this basis, in speaking of an Osirian initiation into a secret fraternity, perhaps. Nevertheless, there was a differentiation between the public and the private Osirian rites even in ancient Egypt, and this is an important distinction to keep in mind for the understanding of a significant development of Isiac ritual in Hellenistic times.

Osirian rites such as Herodotus mentioned were repeated at annual festivals at the great temples of the god in different parts of Egypt. These sacred dramas were performed for the benefit of Osiris himself, and a statue of the god formed the center of interest in the celebration. On a stela of the Twelfth Dynasty dated about 1875 B.c. a state official, Igernefert by name, recounted with some minuteness how he conducted "the ceremony of the golden chamber for the Lord of Abydos (Osiris)." Igernefert told of the preparation of various properties for the drama and of the part that he himself played in the performance. The scenes included first of all a procession of the followers of Osiris, with an attack by his enemies. The death of the god formed the second scene, to which Igernefert made allusion quite as guardedly as Herodotus. "I performed the great going-forth. I followed the god in his footsteps." Then came the resurrection and final triumph of the god. "I avenged Osiris on the day of the great battle, I overthrew his enemies upon the river of Nedit," declared Igernefert, referring to such a bloody struggle as that to which Herodotus also made allusion. Then the drama was brought to a joyful close by the return of the Lord of Abydos to his palace, i.e., the return of the image of the god to its temple.

Not only were there occasional celebritions of the Osirian drama such as this but in later times, especially, there were also daily commemorations of the passion and resurrection of the god. These were enacted in the chapels of the god and doubtless formed the secret part of the Osirian ritual. Bas-reliefs from temples and various ritual remains enable us to reconstruct the liturgical acts and recitations of these miniature passion plays. There was the search for the body of Osiris and the prolonged lament of Isis and Nephtys over the corpse. In response to their cries Horus, Anubis, and Thoth came and purified the body and prepared it for restoration to life. Next certain magical rites were performed. By means of the adze of Anubis the mouth, eyes, and ears of the corpse were opened, other members of the body were put into motion, and each organ was recalled to life separately. Then, to insure resurrection, vegetable rebirth was represented by the germination of grain, and even an animal rebirth was simulated. The priest playing the part of Anubis assumed a recumbent position under the skin of a sacrificed animal. Here he symbolized the foetus in the womb, or, more specifically, Osiris being conceived anew. Coming out from under the skin, he typified Osiris being reborn. These rites completed, Osiris was alive once more. His image was crowned and adored and offerings were made to him. In these daily rites Osiris, represented by his image, passed through a ritual rebirth.

The question at once arises, Were the benefits of these rites extended to men, as well as to the god? In the Egyptian funeral ceremonies is found the answer to this question, for the burial rites of ancient Egypt were but Osirian ceremonies repeated according to the principles of sympathetic magic. The deceased man was the dead Osiris and at his funeral the sacred drama was re-enacted. His wife and sister played the parts of Isis and Nephtys. His son was Horus and his friends were the helping gods. Professional priests assumed roles not otherwise provided for. Upon the corpse of the dead man were performed the same rites that traditionally had been enacted over the dead Osiris. His mouth, eyes, and ears were opened and the ceremonies of vegetal and animal rebirth were repeated. Just as Anubis "passed under the hide" in order to effect the rebirth of Osiris, so the presiding priest "laid himself down under the hide of a cow in the land of transformation." By the mimicking of birth when he issued from the skin it was believed that he accomplished the spiritual renaissance of the defunct. "He who renews life (after death)" was an epithet applied to the man thus favored. Such a man went to join his god on the plains of Aalu, where, if he so chose, he might himself become a god. Many a man so privileged was specifically called "Osiris" after his death. A familiar Egyptian text testifies most clearly to this future hope for one who had shared in Osirian rites; "As truly as Osiris lives," so ran the text, "he also shall live; as truly as Osiris is not dead, shall he not die; as truly as Osiris is not annihilated, shall he not be annihilated."

These Osirian funeral rites, however, were entirely in the interests of the dead, to insure them a rebirth to immortality. Was this grace ever granted to a living person, so that even before death he might be certain of the future benefits these powerful rites could assure? In the case of the Pharaoh this was done. During the Sed festival a ritual death and rebirth was enacted for the benefit of the royal personage himself. Only in later times and as a special favor were others granted this grace. Generally speaking, the advantages of ritual rebirth in Egyptian religion were conferred upon the dead and were confined to the future life.

II

Notwithstanding the clear suggestions of postmortem regeneration to be found in the Egyptian cult of Osiris, it is to a modification and further development of this ancient religion that one must turn to find clear examples of the spiritual rebirth of the individual during his lifetime. In the Hellenistic cult of Serapis and Isis, such experiences may be isolated. This new cult was but an adaptation of the venerable Egyptian religion to the spirit and needs of Hellenistic times. Hence it assumed that individualistic, universalistic character so typical of other contemporary religious movements. It welcomed to its membership non-Egyptians as well as Egyptians. Osirian religion had been a pure product of the Nile Valley. The new religion, itself a syncretism, did not know any geographical or racial distinctions. Other contrasts, more or less superficial, might be drawn which recorded in an external way the degree to which the old Egyptian religion was modified to meet the social needs of the Alexandrian age. The ancient system had centered in the god, Osiris; but in the reformed cult of Hellenistic times he was replaced to a considerable extent by a new divinity, Serapis, and popular interest was transferred to the more appealing personality of Isis. She dominated the Hellenistic cult quite as Demeter held supreme place in the Eleusinian mysteries, or the Magna Mater in those that emanated from Phrygia. In the ancient Osirian religion, the public ritual with its strong appeal to the masses was important. In the Hellenized worship of Isis, the significant ceremonials were those secret rites that had such deep meaning for the individual. These were only some of the ways in which the new cult showed adaptation to the very personal needs of individual religionists in the Hellenized world.

The inception of this significant reform has been concealed under an overgrowth of tradition and legend. These traditions, varying in detaill, were summarized by two prominent writers of Roman times, Plutarch and Tacitus. The general purport of their accounts was to the effect that Ptolemy Soter, the first of the Macedonian rulers of Egypt, had a dream in which he saw a huge statue of Pluto, located at Sinope in Pontus. The king was commanded to bring this colossus to the growing city of Alexandria and install it there as the center of a new religion. It was a magnificent piece of craftsmanship, composed of gems and precious metals, the work of Bryaxis, the companion of Scopas. By stealth and diplomacy Ptolemy accomplished his purpose, and the colossus was installed with due pomp as the god Serapis in a magnificent temple, or Serapeum, especially built to receive it. According to both renditions of the story, Ptolemy had recourse to the assistance of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, and Timotheus, "one of the race of the Eumolpidae, who was invited from Eleusis to preside over the mysteries." By the collaboration of an Egyptian priest and an Eleusinian priest--so legend affirmed--Ptolemy was enabled to institute his new religion.

Whatever of historical truth or of fable may have been repeated by Plutarch and Tacitus, two points stand out clearly from the traditional background. In the first place the projection of the new cult of Serapis was but a part of Ptolemy's plan to bring about a fusion of races in his Egyptian kingdom; and in the second place the cult itself was adapted to this purpose, for it was a combination of Egyptian and Hellenistic elements.

The political purpose of this new cult was ill-disguised. It was intended to serve as one more cultural bond uniting the inhabitants of Ptolemy's Egypt. We cannot be sure that Alexander cherished the scheme of uniting his great world empire by the bonds of religion as well as by commerce and culture. It is perfectly patent, however, that Ptolemy purposed this very thing and gave his official patronage to the cult of Serapis for this very reason. From the first the new cult was intended to furnish a common religious meeting ground for the Greek inhabitants of Egypt and the natives also.

For this purpose nothing was better adapted than a modification of Osirian rites. Through centuries of history the masses of Egyptian people had shown a decided preference for the worship of the god Osiris, so that other Egyptian divinities were forced to include him in their cults. Recognizing their own Osiris in the new god Serapis, the natives of Egypt, as a rule, were ready to give him their adherence. The Greeks, on the other hand, had long since identified Osiris with their own Dionysus and Isis with Demeter. In the rites of the Egyptian divinities and the myths that clustered about them, they found strange correspondences with their own myths and rituals. Osiris had been torn to pieces even as their own Dionysus had been. Isis had mourned for him as Aphrodite had bewailed Adonis or the Great Mother had lamented her Attis, and she had sought for his body even as the sorrowing Mother of Eleusis had sought for her lost daughter. In the finding and restoration of Osiris, the Egyptians rejoiced even as the Eleusinian devotees shared the joy of their goddess in the restoration of Persephone. The resemblances between the Graeco-Oriental mysteries and the Egyptian cult of Osiris were many and salient, and the Egyptian religion easily lent itself to the process of Hellenization.

Consequently, the new religion of Ptolemy became, roughly, a compound of the old religion of the Pharaohs and the mysteries of Greece and Asia Minor. Whether or not Manetho the Egyptian priest and Timothetis the Eumolpid collaborated in the institution of this Hellenized Egyptian religion, the cult of Serapis and Isis was such a composite as would have been produced by such men. On a foundation Osirian and Egyptian was erected the shrine of Serapis which in externals, at least, was decidedly Hellenistic in character.

III

In order to estimate the extent to which the reformed Osirian religion was influential in the Graeco-Roman world, it is necessary to trace the missionary successes of this cult during the Hellenistic and early imperial periods. It was disseminated from the Serapeum at Alexandria in somewhat the manner that the Jewish religion spread from the temple at Jerusalem. In Egypt itself the new religion of the Ptolemies was readily adopted. The Egyptians had long been familiar with the process of changing the divine government of heaven in a manner paralleling the political changes on earth. So they acceded to the Serapis of Alexandria as they had previously accepted the Amon of Thebes. Moreover, they recognized the essential identity of their beloved Osiris with the new god Serapis. In the second century A.D. there were no less thin forty-two Serapeums in the Nile Valley. Egypt, then, was an effective missionary base for the Isiacists.

Because of the political prestige of the Lagides and the extensive commerce of Alexandria, the Hellenized religion of Isis quickly spread over the eastern Mediterranean world. King Nicocreon, of Cyprus, consulted the oracle of the Serapeum and, receiving a satisfactory response, ne introduced the cult into his island. Ptolemy I (323-285 B.C.) was responsible for the establishment of the cult in Athens where a Serapeum was built beneath the Acropolis. About the same time a Serapiast brotherhood was instituted it the Piraeus. Ptolemy Euergetes (246-221 B.C.) sent a statue of Isis to Seleucus Callinicus who built a sanctuary for it in Syrian Antioch. The next two hundred years saw lsiac brotherhoods established in Asian centers, such as Smyrna, Cyzicus, and Ephesus, and on the islands of Rhodes, Delos, and Tenedos, as well as in Thessaly and Thrace. A full century before Jesus of Nazareth was born, Egyptian sailors and merchants had propagated the cult of Isis all along the coasts of Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and among the Aegean Islands. When Paul begin his missionary work in these regions, he everywhere met with Isiac establishments that were already centuries old. Here the worship of the Alexandrian deities became so firmly rooted that even the political vicissitudes that befell the Ptolemies did not seriously affect it. Even to the last days of paganism, Isis remained a power in the eastern Mediterranean world.

In the Latin west even more than in the Greek east the Alexandrian cult proved itself genuinely popular. It was probably through the Campanian ports, Puteoli in particular, that the cult of Isis made its initial appearance in Italy. A city ordinance of Puteoli dated 105 B.C. made mention of a Serapeum in that city. It was not a new foundation, and the Isiac brotherhood itself must have been in existence there at least a half century earlier. The religion of Isis, then, antedated the arrival of Paul in Puteoli by at least two centuries. Perhaps at about the same time the first Isium of Pompeii was built. It is a safe conjecture that Isis worship came to Italy early in the second century B.C., during those stirring years of religious excitement following the arrival of the Magna Mater from Pessinus, and at the time when the dignified Roman Senate was trying to hold in check the excesses of the Dionysus cult.

About the middle of the first century B.C. the immigrant religion was subjected to fierce persecution in Italy. Five times during the years between 59 and 48 the Senate ordered the destruction of Isiac shrines. Yet so popular the worship of the Egyptian goddess that in at least one instance the consul himself had to undertake the work of destruction which he was unable to find a workman to do. Even the Christian advocate Tertullian had to admit that "the altars which the Senate had thrown down were restored by popular violence." Again, after the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, there was a natural reaction against things Egyptian, and as a consequence Isis banished beyond the pomerium. In A.D. 19, because of a real or pretended scandal involving a priest of Isis, the devotees of the goddess experienced a bloody persecution and were banished wholesale to Sardinia along with the Jews. Yet Isiaism, like Christianity later, seemed to thrive on persecution, and at no time during this period did the devotion of the masses to the Egyptian goddess perceptibly weaken. On the contrary, there is every indication that the history of the Isiac cult in Italy was the story of a really popular religion that triumphed even in the face of official opposition.

Contemporary Latin literature is rich in allusions that show the great influence of the Alexandrian religion in Italy at the beginning of the Christian era. Conspicuous among the devotees of Isis were the mistresses of men of letters in the Augustan age. Tibullus, sick in Corcyra and despairing of his life, wrote to his fiancee Delia to seek the aid of the Egyptian goddess to whom she was so devoted. Propertius, on the other hand, complained bitterly of his Cynthia's loyalty to Isis rather than to himself and did not hesitate to heap up words of reproach against the goddess. "Once more those dismal rites have returned to plague us," he grumbled. "Now for ten nights Cynthia has sacrificed. A curse upon the rites which the daughters of Inachus sent from the warm Nile to the matrons of Italy!" Ovid, despairing of his lady's life, addressed his prayer directly to the goddess whom Corinna particularly adored: "O Isis .... by thy sistrums I pray thee .... turn hither thy countenance, and in one spare us both! For thou wilt give life to my lady and she to me." Seneca's nephew, Lucan, paid his respects to the worship of the Alexandrian divinities in his Pharsalia. So did Martial and Juvenal in their Satires, and though they had scant respect for the Egyptian religion, at least they witnessed to its immense popularity and the great loyalty of its adherents. Juvenal in particular described a touching scene that illustrates the devotion of a typical worshiper to the goddess Isis.

"In winter she will go down to the river of a morning, break the ice, and plunge three times into the Tiber, dipping her trembling head in its whirling waters, and crawling out thence naked and shivering, she will creep with bleeding knees right across the field of Tarquin the Proud. If the white Io shall so order, she will journey to the confines of Egypt, and fetch water from hot Meroe with which to sprinkle the Temple of Isis which stands hard by the ancient sheepfold. For she believes that the command was given by the voice of the goddess herself."

Citations such as these from first-century Latin literature bespeak a really great popularity for the Isis cult in the Roman world of that day.

With its place at Rome secure, the cult was in a strategic position to carry on its propaganda on an imperial scale. Lucan, who in his Pharsalia spoke of Isis and Osiris as enthroned in Roman temples, referred to them also as the deities of all the world. Plutarch, with his elaborate attempt to reinterpret the Isis-Osiris religion in philosophical terminology, is perhaps the most weighty witness to this wider influence of the Alexandrian cult; for Plutarch tried to do for the Egyptian gospel what Philo earlier attempted for Judaism, and what only a little later the author of the Fourth Gospel essayed to do for Christianity. He aimed to reinterpret the Egyptian religion in universal terms that should appeal to the philosophically minded.

Of the actual influence of the cult in Roman provincial areas even in the first century, there is plenty of evidence. Toutain is familiar with over a hundred different documents of various dates that attest the existence of Isiac communities scattered all over the Roman provinces. The extent of this Egyptian Diaspora in the mid-first century measures the advantage enjoyed by Isiaism over early Christianity in the matter of missionary propaganda. When Paul first conceived his stupendous scheme of world wide evangelization, he was chronologically far behind his Isiac competitors, and wherever he went in that gentile world he found that they had preceded him. In both the western and the eastern halves of the Mediterranean world, the Isis cult was widely known and genuinely popular before the Apostle to the Gentiles began his work.

IV

Among other factors that accounted for the great popularity of the Isis religion in the Graeco-Roman world was the impressiveness of its rites. In the Hellenistic development of Isiaism, as in the ancient religion of the Pharaohs, both public and private ceremonials were included in the cult. Notwithstanding their public character, the former rites were of a kind to foster a feeling of intimacy on the part of the devotee with his goddess. The public ritual included a regular daily liturgy with matins at the beginning of the day and a benediction in the afternoon. During the latter part of the forenoon and the early part of the afternoon, Isiac shrines were left open, and the images of the goddess were exposed to the silent adoration of the worshipers. Prayer, meditation, and contemplative devotion were thus encouraged. The daily liturgy was brought to a solemn but joyful close with the chanting of hymns, the dismissal of the people, and the closing of the shrine. By services such as these, regular and somewhat elaborate, the faith of the people in the Alexandrian divinities was renewed from day to day.

In addition to the daily liturgy, there were public festivals at different seasons that were conducted with an elaboration of pageantry dear alike to the south European and to the Oriental. Most solemn, most stirring, and quite the most popular of these was the November festival celebrating the passion and resurrection of Osiris. It was a festival of great antiquity, directly elaborated from the dramatic performances at Abydos and elsewhere, in which, from the Twelfth Dynasty onward, the sufferings of Osiris had been reproduced. As in the passion play at Eleusis, the worshipers themselves participated actively in the sacred drama. When Isis mourned and sought for her husband, her devotees beat their breasts and shared her sorrow with an effusive display of grief. Again when the god was found, the worshipers joined in an equally extravagant demonstration of gladness. By this alternation of extreme sorrow and joy the devotees of Isis realized a sympathetic and highly emotional communion with their deity. In this respect the psychological influence of the November passion play of Osiris was strikingly like that of the spring festival of Adonis, or of the September drama at Eleusis.

In addition to these public ceremonies, there were rites which were private in character and fostered a very individualistic type of religious experience. Membership in the Isiac community, as in the other mystery cults, was contingent upon participation in certain prescribed initiatory rites, the details of which were kept strictly secret. These private ceremonies were a direct development from the esoteric rites of ancient Egypt, where the priests of Osiris reserved certain interpretations and ceremonies, and imparted them only on promise of secrecy. This condition obtained in the worship of Isis at Abydos and elsewhere. In the Hellenization of the cult, such private rites were readily adapted to purposes of initiation and were developed along lines similar to the rites of Eleusis. Tradition implied that Timotheus the Eumolpid was in part responsible for this development.

The most valuable, and almost the only source of information concerning these important rites is Lucius Apuleius' account of his own initiation at Cenchraea. By following his narrative through it is possible to trace, step by step, the procedure in Isiac initiations. One is impressed at the outset by the genuine eagerness of Lucius for the grace of admission to the order of Isis, an eagerness tempered by a distrust of his own ability to attain it. For--to quote Lucius's own words--"I had learned by diligent inquiry that her obeisance was hard, the chastity of the priests difficult to keep, and the whole life of them . . . . to be watched and guarded very carefully." While awaiting the desired privilege, Lucius lived the life of a recluse in the cloisters of the temple, attending reverently on the regular services of worship. Such a novitiate as this was apparently expected of those who desired initiation, and rooms were provided for them in connection with the temple where they lived with the priests in a sort of monastic community. The chief priest, in a kindly manner, restrained the urgency of Lucius "as parents commonly bridle the desires of their children." He assured him that initiation was no light matter but that "the taking of such orders was like a voluntary death and a difficult recovery to health." The pontiff urged him to await a sign from the goddess herself, and at the same time gave specific directions as to the preparatory abstinences to be observed. Lucius had not long to wait. In a vision of the night time the expected sign was vouchsafed to him and Mithra, the principal priest of Isis, was assigned to him as a mystagogue.

On the following morning the formal initiation rites began. The great priest produced "out of the secret place of the temple certain books written with unknown characters .... whereby they were wholly strange and impossible to be read by profane people," and thence he interpreted to Lucius "such things as were necessary to the use and preparation of his order." At the propitious time after the impartation of this instruction, Lucius, attended by a company of initiates, was brought to the place of baptism, and there, "demanding pardon of the gods," the priest baptized him and "purified his body according to custom." Christian writers knew of this Isiac baptism and made plain that a powerful efficacy was credited to it--indeed the selfsame effect of purification from sin and spiritual regeneration that Christians attributed to their baptismal rite. In the thought of the Isiac community, the waters of baptism were identified with the life-giving waters of the sacred Nile and these in turn with the waters of the primordial ocean whence all things, even the gods, had been created. Osiris himself had been reborn, after his passion, from the waters of the Nile. So for the initiate these sacred waters had a life-giving power, and Isiac baptism was in effect regarded as a regenerative rite that meant new life to the one who experienced it.

At the afternoon benediction on the day of baptism, the chief priest imparted to Lucius certain secret instructions and commanded him to observe various abstinences for a period of ten days. The ascetic prescriptions included an abstinence from meat, wine-drinking, and other pleasures of the flesh. Strict chastity was a particular point of insistence. It was this moral requirement particularly that made Lucius hesitate to apply for admission into the Isiac order. It was this requirement of purity also that made the erotic Latin poets rail so loudly against the Egyptian goddess. Plutarch, too, stressed in particular this feature of Isiac discipline. "By means of a perpetually sober life," he affirmed, "by abstinence from many kinds of food and from sexual indulgence, Isis checks intemperance and love of pleasure, accustoming people to endure her service not enervated by luxury, but hardy and vigorous." After a ten-day period of ascetic isolation of this kind, Lucius was in an impressionable state, sensitive to the full suggestiveness of the further initiatory rites.

On the tenth day at sunset the initiation was held. After the priest had presented gifts to Lucius according to ancient custom, the laity and the uninitiated were commanded to depart. Then the great priest took the candidate by the hand and led him to "the most secret and most sacred place of the temple" where the initiation ceremony itself took place. Here the curtain falls and Lucius refrains from telling us exactly what happened. He conscientiously kept his vow of secrecy. "You would perhaps demand, studious reader, what was said and done there: truly I would tell you if it were lawful for me to tell; you would know if it were convenient for you to hear; but both your ears and my tongue should incur the like pain of rash curiosity." The curtain of secrecy, however, is but a thinly drawn veil intended to protect Apuleius and his readers from the charge of sacrilege; for he immediately proceeds to give a general impression of the ceremonies without describing a single rite or repeating a single formula. From this general characterization it is possible to get a fairly definite conception of what took place in the holy of holies of the Isiac sanctuary.

"Understand that I approached the bounds of death, I trod the threshold of Proserpine, and after that I was ravished through all the elements, I returned to my proper place; about midnight I saw the sun brightly shine; I saw likewise the gods celestial and the gods infernal, before whom I presented myself and worshiped them."

These, figurative words of Lucius, taken in conjunction with the plainer words of the priest who characterized Isiac initiations as "a voluntary death and a difficult recovery of health," make it practically certain that a ritual death and resurrection were the central features of the initiation ceremony. Since this was an Isiac initiation, the ritual could have been none other than an adaptation of the ancient Osirian rites that in Egypt from antiquity had been practiced on the living Pharaoh, on the mummies of the dead, and on the statues of the god. In remotest antiquity these rites, so the devotees believed, had been efficacious in causing the regeneration of Osiris after his passion; and now they were practiced on the initiate himself that he might realize communion with Osiris in this life and share in his immortality. In the secret of the sanctuary the initiate participated in a repetition of the ancient drama, himself the central figure, the new Osiris whom Isis, by her power, exalted to an immortal regeneration.

Back of Lucius' figurative language, it is possible to distinguish the main events in the Osirian drama. At the beginning of the ceremony, the initiate approached the bounds of death. In other words, he assumed the role of the dead Osiris over whom the vivifying funeral rites were performed. Osiris, restored to life, had not returned to his earthly kingdom, but had gone to preside over the realm of the dead. So the initiate, having been treated as the dead Osiris and restored to life, "trod the threshold of Proserpine." As Osiris he made an infernal journey and visited the realms of the departed. The admixture of solar imagery in Licius' description should not confuse us. According to contemporary cosmology, the sun each night visited the subterranean regions. In the rite of initiation, therefore, the votary as a new Osiris made both the infernal and the celestial journey like the sun. At midnight he saw the sun brightly shine in the realm of the dead, and likewise he mounted up into the heavens and saw the gods celestial as well as the gods infernal. In doing all this he was but playing the part of the dying and rising god Osiris in the salvation drama of the Isis cult.

It is superfluous to inquire just what tableaus were presented to the eyes of the initiate at this point or how the scenic effects were managed. A first-century imagination, habituated to simple stage effects, and stimulated by fasting, meditation, and special suggestion, was capable of conjuring up very vivid pictures on a comparatively simple basis. This was particularly true in the case of a pious beIiever like Lucius, with an abundance of faith and a strong predilection for mystical experience. For him the rite of initiation, however managed, had as its central significance a real death to the old mortal life, and a resurrection to a new eternal life, dramatically represented as an Osirian journey to the regions infernal and celestial.

How complete the regeneration effected by initiation was believed to be is suggested by the rites that took place on the following morning. At the conclusion of the usual morning office, Lucius was brought in "sanctified with twelve stoles." His vestments were of fine linen embroidered with flowers, and from his shoulders there hung down to the ground a precious cope, the "Olympian stole," covered with symbolical figures. In his hand a lighted torch was placed and on his head a garland of flowers "with white palm branches sprouting out on every side like rays." Thus clothed, Lucius took his stand on a pedestal in the middle of the temple before the statue of the goddess herself, and when the curtains were drawn aside and he was exposed to public view, the faithful contemplated him with the admiration and devotion due a god. This was essentially a rite of deification, and Lucius with his Olympian stole, his lighted torch, and his rayed crown was viewed as personification of the sun-god. Even without his self-identification, one could easily have guessed it from the garments and emblems he wore, the rayed crown especially. He was now treated as Osiris-Ra, and his apotheosis was a fitting climax to his experiences of the night before when "at midnight he saw the sun brightly shine and saw likewise the gods celestial and the gods infernal." Lucius was now more than man. Hitherto he had been treated as a human being. Now he was regarded as divine.

His initiation was brought to a close with a sumptuous banquet "celebrating the nativity of his holy order." The feast was a joyous one like a birthday banquet and, coming at the conclusion of the initiation ceremonies, it served to accentuate the fact that Isiac initiation was believed to effect the complete regeneration of the candidate. If we may take the initiation of Lucius as a representative lsiac initiation of the early empire--and we are certainly justified in so doing--it is clear that from start to finish the initiate was made to feel he was passing through an experience that would transform his very being and make a new man of him. At the outset the priest characterized the rites as a voluntary death and a recovery of health. He assured Lucius specifically that Isis had the power to make men new-born individuals (quodam modo renatos), and thus to set their feet in the way of salvation. The rites themselves were cast in the form of a ritual death and a resurrection culminating in a celestial journey. And finally a birthday banquet marked the conclusion of the ceremonial. Figuratively, the Isiac initiation was represented as a process of regeneration and initiates were referred to as men who had been reborn (renati). This was the regular cult formula. Actually, the rites were believed to accomplish the transformation and divinization of human nature.

V

What were the main characteristics of the new life induced by this ritual regeneration? In the first place, it was a life of present security lived under the protection of a kindly mother goddess. To her devotees Isis assured long life and happiness here on earth. The goddess said to Lucius in a vision:

"You shall live blessed in this world, you shall live glorious by my guide and protection. And if I perceive that you are obedient to my commandment and addicted to my religion, meriting by your constant chastity my divine grace, know that I alone may prolong your days above the time that the fates have appointed and ordained."

In order to know what assurance this sense of divine protection gave to the devotees of Isis, one needs only to read the pages of Apuleius or turn to Aristides' fervid encomium of Serapis. Lucius addressed his goddess as the "holy and perpetual preserver of the human race, always munificent in cherishing mortals." Similarly, Aelius Aristides, writing after the experience of a shipwreck from which he was saved, as he believed, through the intervention of Serapis, spoke of his god as the one who "purifies the soul with wisdom, and preserves the body by giving it health," the one who "is adored by kings and private persons, by the wise as by the foolish, by the great as by the small, and by those on whom he has bestowed happiness as well as those who possess him alone as a refuge from their trouble." The strong fervor of such devout religionists as these leaves no doubt that the experience of Isiac initiation gave real assurance to the devotees of the goddess as they faced the inevitable uncertainties of life.

For the future, initiation meant the certain hope of a happy immortality. Of Serapis the grateful Aristides declared that he was "the savior and leader of souls, leading them to the light and receiving them again . . . . . We can never escape his sway, but he will save us and even after death we shall be the objects of his providence." Apuleius, secure under the present protection of Isis, regarded the future also with equanimity. In his account of the vision which gave to Lucius promise of a happy life here on earth, the author represented Isis as saying to her devotee concerning the future, "When after your allotted space of life you descend to Hades, there you shall see me in that subterranean firmament shining (as you see me now) in the darkness of Ackeron, and reigning in the deep profundity of Styx, and you shall worship me as one who has been favorable to you."

Again and again on tombs of Isiac initiates this hope of a blessed immortality was recorded. The expression eupsuchei, "be of good courage," was so often iterated as to become almost a motto of the Isiac religion. In figurative language, the craving for immortality was represented as a thirst for the refreshment of a drink of cold water--a natural metaphor for people living in a hot climate like that of Egypt. "May Osiris give you fresh water," was a typical prayer which members of the Isis cult inscribed on the tombs of their loved ones. It is hardly necessary to multiply illustrations; for the most indubitable item of Isiac faith was this assurance of immortality. Reborn through the rite of initiation, the mystic believed himself born again to a superhuman life, the immortal life of the gods. Among the various assurances which the Alexandrian religion gave to seekers for salvation in the Roman world, this promise of immortality was most welcome.

PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER VI

DEATH AND NEW BIRTH IN MITHRAISM

AMONG the most ancient and most honored gods of Roman paganism was the Persian Mithra. He came to the empire out of a more remote oriental antiquity than did the Great Mother of the Gods. In the hymns of the Vedas, as in those of the Avesta, his name appeared; in the former as Mitra, in the latter as Mithra. To be sure his character was but dimly traced in the Vedas. Only a single fragment remains that was dedicated especially to him, and other references to him were quite incidental. Still, enough traits are preserved to make clear the resemblance of the Vedic deity to the Iranian Mithra. Fundamentally, he was the god of light, invoked together with Heaven under the name of Varuna, even as in the Persian system Mithra was associated with Ahura. Certain ethical qualities of his character are also distinguishable; for he was regarded as the upholder of truth and the enemy of error, even as Mithra was revered by the Persians. These traits of resemblance are sufficiently clear to make the primitive identity of the two deities quite certain and to push the origins of Mithraism far back into the unknown period when the ancestors of the Persians and the ancestors of the Hindus were living together.

I

In the Avesta the character of Mithra was depicted with special clarity, one of the longest of the yashts, the tenth, or Mihir Yasht, being dedicated to him. The qualities there ascribed to Mithra remained fairly constant through the later centuries of paganism, and are important to know for an appreciation of the ethical quality of this Persian religious system. In the Mihir Yasht, as in the Vedas, Mithra was represented as the genius of heavenly light, "who first of the heavenly gods reaches over the Hara, before the undying, swift-horsed sun; who foremost in a golden array, takes hold of the beautiful summits, and from thence looks over the abode of the Arvans with a beneficent eye!" He was not himself the sun, moon, or stars; he was more than they. He was the genius of celestial light who appeared before sunrise and at nightfall went over the earth after the setting of the sun and surveyed everything that is between the earth and the heavens. As the beneficent god of light, Mithra was the dispenser of physical blessings. His light fostered life and happiness and his heat made the earth fruitful. The usual epithet applied to him was "the lord of wide pastures," and he was the one who gave to man an abundance of material possessions, good health, and a numerous progeny.

But the Avestan thought of Mithra did not remain on the material level merely. It reached high ethical altitudes. Being the "ever waking, ever watchful" god, who with his "hundred ears and hundred eyes" constantly watched the world, Mithra naturally became the guardian of truth and the preserver of good faith. Throughout the Mihir Yasht he was referred to as the "truth-speaking, undeceived god, to whom nobody must lie." Ahura Mazda himself was represented as laying this solemn injunction on Zarathustra. "Break not the contract (mithrem), O Spitama! neither the one which you have entered into with one of the unfaithful nor the one you have entered into with one of the faithful who is one of your own faith. For Mithra stands for both the faithful and the unfaithful." To those who obeyed this injunction, and otherwise honored Mithra, the god guaranteed his protection. He was the divinity "whom the poor man, who follows the good law, when wronged and deprived of his rights invokes for help with hands uplifted .... and to him with whom Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, has been satisfied, he comes with help."'

The wrath of Mithra was as terrible as his blessings were rich and full; for he was the implacable foe of all evil who, "never sleeping wakefully maintains the creation of Mazda." He was even engaged in ceaseless combat with the spirits of evil, and to wicked men he brought endless troubles. "To whom shall I in my might impart sickness and death?" he asks. "To whom shall I impart poverty and sterility? Of whom shall I at one stroke cut off the offspring?" The response is:

"Thou bringest down terror upon the bodies of men who lie to Mithra; thou takest away the strength from their arms, being angry and all powerful; thou takest the swiftness from their feet, the eyesight from their eyes, the hearing from their ears." "On whatever side there is one who has lied unto Mithra, on that side Mithra stands forth, angry and offended, and his wrath is slow to relent."

This character of militant virtue was one of the prime attributes of Mithra.

The god's championship of righteousness and opposition to evil was not confined to this life merely. It extended to the future, and became the guaranty of safety and security to the faithful ones in the world to come. Their prayer for protection was a prayer that included the future as well as the present. "Mayest thou keep us in both worlds, O Mithra, lord of wide pastures! both in this material world and in the world of the spirit, from the fiend Death, from the fiend Aeshma, from the fiendish hordes that lift up the spear of havoc and from the onsets of Aeshma." This clear conception of Mithra, the god of light and truth and the opponent of evil, was one of Persia's best gifts to the religious life of the Roman Empire.

II

From the time of his admission to the Zoroastrian pantheon until his last fatal battle with Christianity itself, Mithra was a conquering deity. His cult from the first became increasingly popular and powerful and his own position is the object of popular devotion, once established, remained a dominating one. It is true the price he paid for admission to the Avestan system was that of submission to Ahura Mazda. Like other ancient nature divinities, he was classified as one of the creatures of Mazda, one of the Yazatas. But he quickly became the most powerful of them all and was distinguished as the intermediary between Ahura, the god of light, and Ahriman, the god of darkness. It was here that Plutarch located him in his exposition of Persian dualism. Later, however, Mithra compIetely overshadowed with his glorious and vivid personality the vague figure of Ahura himself. Proofs might be multiplied showing what a conspicuous role Mithra played in the religion of the Persian empire. He was peculiarly the god of the "great kings," their special guardian, whom they invoked on the eve of great undertakings and by whom they swore their mighty oaths. He was the one Iranian god who made a real impression on the literature of classical Greece--an eloquent testimony to the exalted position he occupied in the religious system of Persia.

With the extension of Persian power by military conquest there followed a great accession of influence to Mithraism. It was during the days of the Achaemenides that Mithra finally acquired the character of lord of armies, which remained a predominant trait throughout the rest of his history. Where Persian arms met with success, there Mithra became known. The whole great Persian empire was missionary territory for his official clergy, the Magi. In Babylon they became superior to the indigenious priests. Yet victorious Mithraism felt the effects of its Chaldean conquest and ever thereafter bore the marks of its victory. In Chaldaea Mithraism learned astrology and after that it continued as an astronomical religion. Under the early Achaemenides the Magi penetrated Asia Minor also, and there the indigenous religions paled before Mithraism. The Magi captured Pontus and Cappadocia, where Strabo knew of their sanctuaries. They penetrated Galatia and Phrygia and remained there in considerable numbers. Lydia, apparently, received its contingent of Magi, for Pausanias, writing in the period of the Antonines, told of a Mithraic sanctuary attributed to Cyrus where the descendants of these early missionaries still chanted their hymns in a barbarian tongue. While the provinces of Asia Minor were yet under the suzerainty of the "great kings," Mithraism became firmly established there.

It might be expected that a religion so closely identified with the fortunes of the Persian empire would share in the downfall of the kingdom of Darius. Exactly the opposite occurred during the Hellenistic period. The Diadochi were quite as friendly to Mithraism as ever the satraps of the great king had been. In Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia, and Commagene, dynasties were established which represented the Achaemenian tradition in opposition to the Hellenizing tendencies of the Greek kings of Pergamum and Antioch. These Anatolian rulers made Mithra the special object of their loyalty, and the very personal character of their devotion was attested by the frequency with which the name "Mithridates" occurred in their families. For the prosperity of Mithraism in Asia Minor during the Hellenistic period, however, royal patronage was not chiefly responsible. Rather it was the ready adaptation that Mithraism itself made to the new religious demands of the times. It threw off its official and markedly Persian character and began to operate as a private cult brotherhood rather than as a racial or nationalistic religion. Men were admitted to its membership, not by the fact of birth into a particular racial or national group, but by special initiation. Like the contemporary cults of Cybele and Demeter, it addressed its appeal to men as individuals. The downfall of the Persian empire could not check the growth of such a brotherhood, any more than the political misfortune of proud Athens could lessen the attractiveness of the Eleusinian mysteries. Apparently, too, under the stimulus of religious competition, the followers of Mithra began to engage in unusually vigorous propaganda on behalf of their cult.

It was during the Hellenistic period and in Asia Minor that Mithraism made its final modifications and took on the definitive form it maintained through the imperial period. In the uplands of central Asia Minor, the god entered into an alliance with Cybele that became famous in Roman times. Quite naturally, too, he was associated with Helius, the sun-god. An external but altogether notable result of the contact of Mithraism with Hellenism was the sudden tendency to represent the god in human form. Here in Asia Minor, toward the beginning of the second century B.C. Mithraism learned from a Pergamene sculptor to chisel that remarkably impressive group of "Mithra Tauroctonus," which thereafter stood like an altar-piece in the apse of the god's cave-sanctuaries. Thus the vague personification of oriental imagination came to assume a precise and definite form altogether appealing to occidental taste. The very fact of standardized representation had its influence in a more precise definition of the character of Mithra. All of these accretions of art and legend tended to make the Iranian religion of Mithra a Hellenized product. To adopt M. Cumont's vivid figure, above the Mazdean substratum and the thick sediment of Chaldean astrology and the rich alluvial deposits of beliefs local in Minor, there grew up a luxuriant vegetation of Hellenistic art that partly concealed the original nature of Mithraism. This Hellenistic overgrowth is a picturesque, if indirect, testimony to the popularity of Mithraism in Asia Minor during the three centuries preceding the Chistian era.

By the beginning of the Christian centuries the domain of Mithra extended from the Indus in the east to the Euxine on the north. In the plateau countries of Asia Minor, he was strongly intrenched. One of the great champions of Mithraism at this time was Mithridates Eupator (120-63 B.C.), a foeman worthy of the best generals Rome could send against him. The Magi were his supporters, and M. Cumont conjectures that if he had realized his ambitious schemes Mithraism would have become the official religion of his great Asian empire. It is probable, however, that his defeat by Pompey was not an unrelieved disaster for Mithraism since it opened the way for a further dissemination of the cult through the agency of refugees, slaves, and prisoners.

About this time Mithraism came prominently to Roman notice in another section of Asia Minor--in the land of Paul's birth--as the religion of the Cilician pirates. These bold freebooters dared dispute naval supremacy with the Romans and audaciously plundered the most venerable shrines around the eastern Mediterranean. In all this they may well have considered themselves the champions of the invincible god whose help, they were assured, would win them the victory. It was Pompey who forcibly suppressed the champions of Mithra (66 B.C.). In Paul's native land, however, the religion of Mithra still continued to be influential, and in Tarsus he was worshiped for centuries thereafter.

For Mithra these military disasters in Asia Minor signalized the beginning of his conquest of Italy and the Empire. According to Plutarch it was when the Cilician pirates were defeated that the Romans first became acquainted with the rites of Mithra. In speaking of the pirates and their religion, Plutarch affirmed, "The secret rites of Mithra continue to the present time, having been first instituted by them." It is altogether probable, then, that the defeat of the pirates resulted in bringing to Rome from Asia Minor slaves and prisoners who were devotees of Mithra. In this very humble manner the mysteries of the Persian god were first brought to the capital city of the Mediterranean world. The successful conclusion of the Mithridatic Wars undoubtedly brought about a similar immigration of slaves, captives, and traders, as well.

Later, when Rome began to consolidate her eastern conquests, the way was cleared for the establishment of more intimate relations between Italy and Anatolia. Under Tiberius, Cappadocia was incorporated as part of the empire. Western Pontus was added under Nero. Once these official administrative relations were established with the very provinces where Mithraism was popular, it was inevitable that Mithraic influences should increasingly be felt in Rome and Italy. By the middle of the first century A.D. the mysteries were so highly esteemed by the Romans that the emperor himself was initiated by the Magi who came with Tiridates to Rome. Plutarch, a little later, referred to the rites of Mithraism as a familiar religious phenomenon and spoke with approval of the Mithraic view of life. Thus, Mithraism, which during the Hellenistic period was little known outside the Orient, had, by the middle of the first century A.D., become familiar to Rome and Italy. A full century before Paul of Tarsus brought the Christian gospel to the imperial city, his fellow-countrymen of Cilicia had introduced the gospel of Mithra there; and by the time the Christian apostle came to Rome, the religion of the Iranian god was already well known in the city.

Just as Asia Minor in the last century B.C. sent out the emissaries who won Rome for Mithra, so in the next century Asia Minor sent out the missionaries who won many of the frontier provinces of the Empire as well. In this case the missionaries were soldiers recruited from the upland provinces of Asia Minor; from Pontus, Cappadocia, Commagene, and Lesser Amnenia--again the districts in which the cult of Mithra was well established. Even before these sections were annexed to the empire, while they were still in the position of client kingdoms, Rome made use of them as recruiting grounds. During the Parthian Wars under Claudius and Nero, large oriental contingents were added to the Roman armies, for the most part as auxiliaries, but also as legionaries. It has been suggested that the soldiers of the Third Legion who paid homage to the rising sun at the battle of Betriacum (A.D. 69) were devotees of Mithra. Thus already in the first century A.D. was begun that unique movement of religious propaganda in the ranks of the Roman army which was so significant for the later dissemination of the Persian religion.

For Mithraism soldiers were the best kind of missionaries. Mithra himself had been for long centuries the god of battles, and his cult was an exclusively masculine one. Soldiers, on the other hand, were pious to the point of being superstitious. The dangers to which they were constantly exposed caused them to seek the assurances of a religion that would guarantee safety for the present and salvation for the future. The oriental devotees of the militant god Mithra, who had found these assurances in his religion, were not in the least exclusive. They gladly welcomed and initiated their companions in arms as members of their cult brotherhoods. True to the camaraderie of soldier life, these neophytes in turn became missionaries for Mithra; and so the movement grew. Introduced into the Roman army early in the first century by semi-barbarian recruits from Asia Minor, Mithraism spread like an epidemic through the ranks of the legions. Henceforth it was the religion of the Roman army and its chief centers of influence were the garrison towns of the frontier provinces. In notable instances the founding of Mithraic shrines and other military dedications in northern centers like Aquincum and Carnuntum can be traced back directly to soldiers who came from first-century Anatolia. During the next two centuries Mithraism spread to the farthest limits of the Empire. Mithraic monuments were scattered from the Euxine Sea to the mountains of Scotland, and from the banks of the Rhine, to the Sahara Desert. Viewing a map showing this diffusion of the Mithraism, one is ready to credit the famous dictum of Renan that "if Christianity had been arrested in its growth by some mortal malady, the world itself would have become Mithraistic."

To one section of the Empire only did Mithra remain a stranger. That was to Greece. Within the confines of Hellas, a single late inscription has been found at the Piraeus and a solitary bas-relief at Patros. To the Greeks their old memories of Persian wars Mithraism was too oriental to make an appeal. Notwithstanding this failure in Greece, however, and quite apart from later success, it is important to remember that in the first century Mithraism was not only well established in Asia Minor, but it had also already begun a lively missionary campaign in the heart of Italy and in the ranks of the Roman army. Hence, in summarizing the religious influences which were significant in the Graeco-Roman world when Christianity had its initial development, considerable account must be taken of Mithraism.

III

It is therefore important to examine the practices of this cult in order to determine whether or not they were expressive of a radical type of religious experience properly characterized as a new birth, such as many other contemporary cults fostered by their initiation ceremonies. In making this search, one is much handicapped by a lack of materials with which to work. The mysteries of Mithra, like the other private cults, were strictly secret and the liturgy, which for the faithful was such an important part of their religion, has all but completely disappeared. Scarcely a trace is left of either hymn or prayer, and only scattered hints may be gathered here and there as to the character of the ceremonies included in the Mithraic rites. Most of these hints, even, come to us from prejudiced Christian sources. Mithraic monuments, however, are comparatively abundant, and from these one may derive indirect suggestions concerning the cult ritual. At least it is possible to gather from the remains of Mithraea a general impression of the effectiveness of Mithraic rites.

The sanctuaries of Mithra were eaves in the mountains or underground crypts, recalling the primeval cave in which the god performed the life-giving act of slaying the cosmic bull. These chapels were always small, and when the brotherhood grew beyond a convenient size--a hundred members at the maximum--other Mithraea were established. In small shrines such as these, the impressions made on the mind of the neophyte were bound to be very intimate and personal. It was a place, too, for mystical religious experience, where the devotee could feel himself close to divinity. In the limited nave of the chapel stood venerated images: the torch-bearers, the mysterious lion-headed Cronus, and the "Petrogenes Mithra" rising from the generative rock. In the center of the apse stood the group of "Tauroctonus Mithra," a pathetic tableau, but the central scene of a great salvation drama. Around it were grouped in small panels other scenes from the life of Mithra, from which M. Cumont has ably reconstructed various episodes in the cosmic myth of the Iranian god. The ceiling was decorated to represent the heavens, and astronomical symbols were frequent elsewhere in the decorations. The crypt as a whole was arranged like a microcosm wherein the individual neophyte had an opportunity to come close to things divine. Such were the physical surroundings amid which the candidates for initiation participated in the Mithraic sacraments. Though the sanctuaries were small, they were effectively arranged and lighted to make the initiatory rites highly impressive.

Although we know almost nothing of Mithraic initiation, one important fact is clear, it was no simple affair. There were various degrees of initiation which admitted the candidates to different grades of privilege. A text of Jerome, together with various inscriptions, preserves the number and names of the different degrees. They were seven, each one called a sacramentum, ranging from the lowest, or Raven (corax), grade to the highest grade, that of the Father (pater). Between were the degrees known as Occult (cryphius), Soldier (miles), Lion (leo), Persian (Perses), and Courier of the Sun (heliodromus). Apparently, in the process of initiation, the celebrants donned sacred masks appropriate to the particular degree conferred; the Occult wore a veil, the Persian a cap, while the Soldier, Raven, and Lion each wore disguises that can easily be imagined. Such masked figures appear now and then on Mithraic bas-reliefs. A Christian of the fourth century wrote in ridicule of these practices: "Some flap their wings like birds, imitating the cry of crows; others growl like lions; in such manner are they that are called wise basely travestied." To be understood adequately, these Mithraic disguises must be interpreted as the late survivals of very primitive religious practices. Their genesis goes back to the time when deity was conceived and represented under the form of animals typically. Then the worshiper, in order to identify himself with his god, took on the animal name and semblance of the deity; he put on the skin of his lion-god and was himself called a "Lion." So the Raven and Lion masks of Roman Mithraism were but tardy survivals of the animal skins that were donned in primitive times that the devotee might realistically charge himself with the power of his god.

Other peculiar ceremonies also were performed at each grade of initiation. For example, Tertullian told of the rite of the crown, enacted during the sacrament of the Soldier. At the sword's point a crown was offered the candidate "as though in mimicry of martyrdom," Tertullian said. But the initiate was taught to push it aside with his hand and affirm, "Mithra is my crown!" Thereafter he never wore a crown or garland, not even at banquets or at military triumphs, and whenever a crown was offered him he refused it saying, "It belongs to my god." This was taken as proof that he was a soldier of Mithra. Tertullian himself was the son of a centurion. He was quite familiar with this ceremony and spoke of it with rare appreciation. Was his father, then, a soldier of Mithra as well as of Rome?

The same author, in another passage, told of a rite of sealing which appropriately formed a part of the initiation of the Mithraic soldier. Just as the recruits to the army had a mark burned in their flesh before they were admitted to the oath, so the Mithraic initiate as a part of his sacramentum had a sign burned on his forehead. "Thus Mithra marks on the forehead his own soldiers," said Tertullian. In this way the solemn vow of the initiate as a soldier of Mithra was as indelibly impressed upon his mind is the seal was on his forehead. Of the ceremonials connected with the other grades of initiation we know almost nothing.

In addition to the rites that may be related to a particular sacramentum there were certain other ceremonials of real importance which cannot be definitely localized in the Mithraic ritual. One such group of requirements were in the nature of preliminary austerities intended to test the moral courage and physical endurance of the candidates. As early as the period of the Avesta, such preparations were prescribed for the worship of Mithra. In the Mihir Yasht it was recorded:

"Zarathustra asked him: 'O Ahura Mazda! How shall the faithfull man drink the libations cleanly prepared, which if he does and he offers them to Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, Mithra will be pleased with him and without anger?' Ahura Mazda answered: 'Let them wash their bodies three days and three nights: Let them undergo thirty strokes for the sacrifice and prayer to Mithra, the lord of wide pastures.'"

These antique prescriptions were probably the origin of the trials imposed on candidates in Roman Mithraism. Neither the number nor the precise nature of the various ordeals through which the initiates were made to pass are known, though later writers, the Christian Fathers especially, delighted to elaborate them in detail and to give their number very explicitly. Gregory of Nazianzen, for example, spoke indefinitely of "tortures" which the initiates had to endure; his commentator Nonnus, however, enlarged on the theme by telling of "eighty punishments" by water, fire, frost, hunger, thirst, and prolonged journeyings, all arranged in a series of increasing severity. According to another statement, the initiate was blindfolded, his hands were tied with the entrails of chickens, he was made to leap over a ditch filled with water and, finally, the act was brought to an end when a "liberator" appeared who cut the disgusting bonds with a sword. So far as specific detail is concerned, all this gratuitous information need not be taken seriously. Certainly the Mithraic shrines were so small and so limited in equipment that such ordeals could scarcely be more than a matter of pretence. At one point in his commentary, however, Nonnus was doubtless correct--the tests in general were intended to develop a Stoic apathy and to cultivate a steady control of the emotions.

Distinctive among the preliminary Mithraic tests was a simulated murder. Apparently, there was performed by the initiate, more likely on the initiate, the feint of a murder. The historian Lampridius in telling of the mad freaks of the emperor Commodus said that during the Mithraic ceremonies "he polluted the rites by a real murder where a certain thing was to be done for the sake of inspiring terror." Probably at the time the emperor was officiating as a Pater at one of the lower degrees of initiation, perhaps that of the Soldier, when he committed the cruel deed. Doubtless in its origin the simulated murder of Mithraism was real--if not a human sacrifice, at least a mortal combat. Later it became a less dangerous test and finally a mere liturgical fiction. The wholesale charges of murder which were made against the devotees of Mithra by late and hostile writers are as little deserving of credence as similar charges that were made against the Christians.

A simulation of death in the Mithraic mysteries, however, is perfectly intelligible. Death was the logical preliminary to a renewal of life; hence the pretence of death by the neophyte was a perfectly natural antecedent to the regenerative experiences of baptism and sacramental communion that followed in the Mithraic ritual. That this was precisely the interpretation put upon this bit of liturgical fiction is clearly suggested by a passage in Tertullian. In discussing the Mithraic rites of baptism and communion, the Christian lawyer affirmed: "Mithra there brings in the symbol of a resurrection." This striking use of the phrase imago ressurrectionis is doubly significant. It proves that a simulation of death was an integral part of Mithraic ritual, and also that it was but antecedent to an experience of regeneration.

Various ceremonies figured in the Mithraic liturgy which were calculated to induce this process of spiritual renewal. Among the most important were the ablutions which from the earliest times were prominent in the cult of Mithra. The ceremony consisted either of sprinkling as with holy water, or of complete immersion as in Isiac practice. In the grottoes of the Persian god, water was always at hand, and in certain instances, at Ostia, for example, vaults have been found which may have served the purpose of immersion. Mithraic baptism, like the later Christian rite, promised purification from guilt and the washing away of sins. Christian Fathers noted the similarity and were quick to charge the Devil with plagiarism at this point. Tertullian declared:

"The Devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the divine sacraments in the mysteries of idols. He himself baptizes some, that is to say, his believers and followers; he promises forgiveness of sins in the sacred fount, and thus initiates them into the religion of Mithra."

Again, and this time for the sake of rebuttal, the Christian lawyer stated the case for pagan baptism in the following words: "Well, but the nations, who are strangers to all understanding of spiritual powers ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy (as Christian baptism)." Then he countered with the argument, "But they cheat themselves with waters that are widowed. For washing is the channel through which they are initiated into the sacred rites of some notorious Isis or Mithra." From Tertullian's ex parte statement of the case, even, it is clear that the neophyte came out of the baptism of Mithra with his conscience lightened from the weight of previous guilt. The waters of baptism were believed to wash away the defilements of the old life, and to induce a spiritual renewal.

Provision was also made in the Mithraic ritual for nourishing the new spiritual life in a realistic manner. At initiation, honey was applied to the hands and tongue of the candidate. According to Porphyry, this was done in both the Lion and the Persian grades of initiation. As Porphyry said explicitly, honey was supposed to be a powerful preservative; hence it would serve to keep the initiate from the blemish of sin. In the Mithraic liturgy, however, it was believed to have a positive efficacy also, as its application to the tongue of the candidate suggests. Placed in the mouth of the neophyte, it was supposed to communicate to him some marvelous virtue. It was customary to put honey into the mouths of new-born children. So in Mithraism the spiritually new-born were fed with honey. So later, in primitive Christianity and among the Marcionites, the baptized were given a drink of milk mingled with honey. Furthermore, in Mithraic thought honey was a celestial substance produced under the influence of the moon where, according to their cosmic myth, the seed of the divine bull that Mithra slew at the beginning of time bad been gathered. By its origin, then, honey was a powerful agent for nourishing the new spiritual life of the initiate. It was charged with mystical properties. It was the food of the gods themselves, and its absorption by the initiate endowed him with divine powers.

Another means whereby the new divine life was nourished in the neophyte was by participation in a sacrament of eating and drinking. Mithraic theology traced this nourishment also back to the bull of their cosmic myth; for from the blood of the moribund victim of Mithra sprang the vine, which supplied the votaries of the god with the life-giving wine of their sacrament. Their communion included bread as well as wine. In the famous bas-relief from Konjica, Bosnia, there is a most interesting representation of a Mithraic communion. Before two reclinging communicants stands a tripod supporting tiny loaves of bread, each distinctly marked with a cross. One of the standing figures in the group, easily identified as a Persian, presents the communicants with a drinking cup. Other participants in this ceremony are clearly Mithraic initiates of different orders. This bas-relief shows in an unusually circumstantial manner that the Persian mystery religion, like the Christian, had its sacramental communion with its bread and wine.

The likenesses between the two rites did not fail to impress the Christian apologists who once more accused the demons of thievery. Justin Martyr, in speaking of the Christian Eucharist, asserted, "The wicked demons have imitated this in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done. For that bread and a cup of water are placed before the initiate with certain incantations in these mysteries, you either know or can learn." The similarities between the two communions, Mithraic and Christian, are indeed striking. Both were memorial services, celebrated in remembrance of the divine hero of the cult; for Mithra at the close of his redemptive career and just before his ascension to heaven, partook of a last supper with Helius and other companions of his labors. On the back of the great pivoted bas-relief at Hedderheim this original last supper was depicted. Whenever the initiates participated in the Mithraic communion, they recalled this mythical love-feast.

But it meant more to them than this. From their communion they gained assurance for the future. Supernatural effects were expected from the assimilation of the consecrated elements. From the bread and wine they gained not only vigor of body and wisdom of mind but also the power to combat evil spirits and a divine substance that assured them of the boon of immortality. Thus the sacramental collation served to nourish the new life of the neophyte in a realistic way.

The sequence of these few ritual remains--the preliminary trials and the simulated death of the candidate, the regenerative bath of baptism, and finally the nourishing of the new life by means of honey and the consecrated elements of the Mithraic communion--serves to show that the idea of death and rebirth to a new life figured prominently in the ritual of the Persian god. If additional evidence is needed, it is found in the fragments of what was probably in its original state a Mithraic liturgy now preserved in an Egyptian magical papyrus dating from about A.D. 300 Professor Albrecht Dieterich, who published this as Eine Mithrasliturgie, is of the opinion that the liturgical parts, which consist of invocations, go back to a Mithraic ritual of the final grade of initiation in use perhaps as early is the first century. The rest of the Paris papyrus is composed of magical formulas and other occult matter. Notwithstanding all this extraneous material, it is not unlikely that the author of this religio-magical cento had access to a genuine Mithraic ritual of which he made considerable use for his own purposes. The figure of the death and rebirth of the initiate comes prominently to view at several points in this liturgical text, and it becomes quite apparent that initiation into the mysteries of Mithra was comprehensively thought of in this figurative way.

The opening prayer of the liturgy begins:

"O! first genesis of my genesis! First beginning of my beginning! First spirit of the spirit that is within me! .... May it please thee to translate me, who am trammelled by the nature which underlies me, to an immortal genesis .... that I may be born again in spirit; that I may be initiated, and the sacred Spirit may breathe on me!"

At different points in the liturgy, this spiritual genesis is specifically contrasted with natural birth. "Though I was born a mortal from a mortal mother . . . . having been sanctified by sacred ceremonies I am about to gaze with immortal eyes on the immortal aeon." Again the contrast between the natural birth and the spiritual rebirth is even more clearly brought out in the words addressed to the supreme god, "I, a man . . . . begotten in mortal womb by human seed, and today begotten again by thee, a man who has been called from so many thousands to immortality according to the plan of a god wonderful in his goodness, strives and longs to adore thee according to his human ability." The concluding words of the liturgy mark a high point of ecstatic expression and form a fitting conclusion for a Mithraic ritual. "O Lord! Having been born again, I pass away, being exalted the while. Having been exalted, I die! Coming into being by life-begetting birth and freed unto death, I go the way as thou hast ordered, as thou hast established the law and ordained the sacrament."

Few if any ancient texts contain a clearer appreciation of the radical religious experience of rebirth to immortal life than does this magical papyrus with its fragments of a Mithraic liturgy. By itself alone it is startling testimony to the prominence of the idea in gentile religious circles. Taken in conjunction with the few well attested ritual acts of Mithraism which were obviously intended to symbolize and induce an experience of spiritual rebirth, this evidence becomes quite convincing. It is certain that the devotees of Mithra viewed initiation as a rebirth to immortality.

IV

Finally, it is relevant to note the quality of the new life induced by the Mithraic ritual, particularly in its ethical aspects. From its very inception the cult of Mithra was characterized by soundly moral elements. If etymology counts for anything, it would seem that from early times the conception of Mithra himself was an ethical one, for his name was related to a common noun which in the Sanskrit meant "friend" or "friendship" and in Avestan "compact." As a result of Mithra's alliance with Zoroastrianism, his ethical character became strongly accentuated and he was clearly defined as the special guardian of truth. Zoroastrianism, with its apotheosis of moral dualism, gave Mithra his permanent function as the champion of right and the leader of the forces of good against the powers of evil and darkness. Obviously, it would be an unhistorical procedure to identify the ethics of first-century Mithraism with Avestan morality. On the other hand, except in the case of Armenian Mithraism, there is no evidence that the cult's remarkable career of conquest resulted in a deterioration of its ethical quality. Mithraism was heir to the high ethics of ancient Persia and it guarded this heritage well.

Still when it comes to a discussion of the moral elements of the Mithraic life, the treatment has to be general, for sheer lack of specific evidence. There were certain "commandments" that had to be carefully observed by the initiate in order to be sure of the salvation that Mithra offered, and these were obligatory on all, the high and the lowly, the senator and the slave alike. What the specific precepts were is unknown.

Nevertheless, certain characteristic features of the Mithraic ideal stand out with clarity. Primarily, it was an ideal of perfect purity. The ritual prescribed repeated ablutions and purifications and these were intended to wash away the stains of sin. The very conformity to ritual practice at this point showed a sensitiveness to moral turpitude. The Mithraic life was also one of steady self-control and of asceticism even. Rigorous fasts and abstinences were enjoined, and continence was encouraged as a special virtue. More broadly, the resistance of all sensuality was a mark of the Mithraist. Chiefly, however, the Mithraic life was characterized by militant virtue. The good of this religion dwelt in action, and a premium was placed on the energetic virtues rather than on gentler qualities. Even its mysticism was a matter of active co-operation between Mithra and his soldiers, and this kind of mysticism discouraged dependence and stimulated individual effort. So virile and aggressive was this religion that sometimes it seemed cruel and heartless in the rigor of its discipline. In the largest terms, life for the Mithraist was a prolonged struggle, a part of the great cosmic warfare of good against evil, right against wrong.

In this war the initiate was assured of victory, for he had the help of an invincible god who was hailed in Persian as nabarze, in Greek as aniketos, and in Latin as invinctus and insuperabilis. Mithra was an unfailing help to mortals in their struggles, the protector of holiness, the defender of truth, and the intrepid antagonist of all wickedness. The very presence of the god who was eternally vigilant and forever young was the assurance of success. Just as in the physical realm he gave victory in human warfare, so in the moral realm he gave his victory over evil instincts, the spirit of falsehood, and the temptations of the flesh. So far as the present was concerned, therefore, the Mithraic life was one of assured victory in the contest with evil.

As to the future, the initiate into Mithraism was guaranteed a righteous judgment and a happy immortality. He felt secure about the judgment, for Mithra, the guardian of truth, would preside at the great assize which determined his eternal destiny. According to the picture suggested by the Emperor Julian, Mithra was also the guide who assisted the soul on its heavenly journey and, finally, like a fond father, welcomed the soul to its heavenly home. The seven grades of Mithraic initiation had a very direct relation to the future fate of the soul; for the heavens themselves were divided into seven spheres, each presided over by a different planet. Through these spheres lay the journey of the soul up to the heaven of the fixed stars. According to Celsus, this was represented in the Mithraic shrines by a sort of ladder containing eight gates, one above the other, the gates being of different metals. From the different Mithraic sacraments the initiate learned the appropriate formulas which would admit him to the various spheres. As the soul passed from one sphere to another, it cast aside various earthly impurities and desires like different garments and finally, purified of all vice, it entered the empyrean, there to enjoy eternal bliss. In addition to this general hope of immortality, more or less in character, certain Mithraic circles cherished a vivid eschatology involving a return of Mithra to the earth, a bodily resurrection of the dead, the destruction of the wicked, and the rejuvenation of the universe. Whatever the particular form of the hope, the Mithraic initiate felt a calm assurance regarding the future.

This study of Mithraism has shown that the cult of the Iranian god held out to its devotees the hope of a blessed immortality and the assurance of victory in the struggle of life, on the basis of certain initiatory rites which were viewed as marking the beginning of a new kind of existence. The preliminary tests, the simulated death, the purification of baptism, the feeding of the initiate with honey, and the participation in a sacramental communion all served to stress the idea that initiation was a rebirth to a new life. Mithraic sacraments were both the symbols and the effective causes of this spiritual regeneration.

PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER V

THE REGENERATIVE RITES OF THE GREAT MOTHER

FROM the Oriental as well as from the Hellenic world there emanated mystery religions that made their appeal and offered their satisfactions to the individual man. Like the Greek cults just described, they operated as private religious brotherhoods, though in occasional instances they were brought under state patronage and supervision. They came to the Graeco-Roman world with all the authority of a venerable past, with a theology developed in mythological forms, with a ritual, very crude perhaps, yet capable of lofty spiritual interpretation. Their appeal was primarily an emotional one, and it was addressed specifically to the individual; for all classes and all races, Greeks as well as barbarians, slaves as well as free men, were welcomed to their membership.

I

Of these Oriental mystery religions the first to invade the west was the cult of the Great Mother of the Gods, which came from central Asia Minor. The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature. This aspect of universal motherhood was the comprehensive feature of her character most frequently emphasized in the various cult titles applied to her. She was the "Great Mother" not only "of all the gods," but "of all men" as well. She was the "Mistress of All," the "All-Nourisher," and "All-Begetter," the "Mighty Mother," and the "Mother of Zeus Himself." "The winds, the sea, the earth, and the snowy seat of Olympus are hers, and when from her mountains she ascends into the great heavens, the son of Cronus himself gives way before her, and in like manner do also the other immortal blest honor the dread goddess." At Pessinus, the strongest center of her worship in Asia Minor, she was from primitive times represented by a sacred stone, said to have fallen from heaven. Indeed, the city itself, according to one legend, was named from this very circumstance (pesein, "to fall"). Here all the vital forces of mother earth were concentrated in "a stone not large, which could be carried in a man's hand without pressure--of a dusky and black color--not smooth, but having little corners standing out." This was the stone which was later carried to Rome when the worship of the Great Mother was officially introduced to the Occident. Ensconced in a silver statue where the face ought to be, it became the center of the Roman cult of the Great Mother--the whole life of nature embodied in a small, rough stone.

The Magna Mater of all living creatures was especially the goddess of the wilder aspects of nature. She was worshipped in the depths of virgin forests and on the tops of mountains, and her cult titles named her the "Mountain Mother," and the "Divinity of the Mountains," not to mention such local appellations as "Dindymene," or the "Idaean Mother." Even Cybele, the familiar literary designation of the Great Mother, was, according to Strabo and Diodorus, derived from a mountain or range of mountains. "A grove I had upon the mountains' crest, whither men brought me offerings," said the goddess herself in describing one of her favorite haunts, "a pine forest beloved for many years, dim with dusky firs and trunks of maple." Anacharsis the Scythian was a typical devotee of the Magna Mater, for he worshiped her in a place "full of trees." She was also the "Mistress of Wild Beasts, and lions were her constant companions in literature and in art. The author of the fourteenth Homeric Hymn addressed the Mother of the Gods as one who "is glad in the cry of wolves and fiery-eyed lions, and in echoing hills, and woodland haunts." Thus she appeared as the goddess of all natural life, particularly in its wild and untamed aspects.

With her was associated a hero-divinity called Attis who personified the life of the vegetable world particularly. The pine tree was peculiarly his own and played a prominent part in his annual ritual. His priests were tattooed with an ivy-leaf pattern. Statues represented him crowned with fruits and holding ears of corn in his hand. He was himself addressed as the "reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn" in the hymn of Hippolytus, and the myth of his sufferings was interpreted now as the harvesting of ripened grain or again as the fading of spring flowers. His devotees in their feasts, while they might eat the stalks and upper parts of plants, were forbidden to eat seeds and the roots of vegetables for in these the divine life of their god was especially manifested. Above all, the great festival of Attis, held at the time of the vernal equinox, took the form of a mystery drama which obviously represented the reviving of the vegetable world at that season of the year.

Around these two divinities, the Great Mother and the god of vegetation, there grew up a confused tangle of myths in explanation of their cult rites. Various writers, pagan and Christian, gave different versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. Pausanias recounted two very different renderings of the legend. One of these was repeated by the Christian writer Arnobius, on the authority of a certain Timotheus. In detail the final edition was much more elaborate than the earlier rendition by Pausanias. Diodorus also recounted the Cybele-Attis myth with one or two singular omissions, while Firmicus Maternus gave a markedly euhemeristic interpretation of the legend. The accounts by Ovid, bv the philosopher Sallust, and by the Emperor Julian were similar to each other at points, yet differed in important respects from the other renderings of the legend.

The specific variations in all these diverse statements do not concern us, for certain significant elements were common to all the various versions. In each instance the relationship of Cybele and Attis was essentially the same, and their experiences were much the same throughout. According to the myth, the goddess-mother loved the youthful, virgin-born shepherd Attis with a pure love. But Attis died, either slain by another or by his own hand. In the latter instance, he was unfaithful to the Great Mother and in a frenzy of regret he emasculated himself and died. The goddess-mother mourned her dead lover and finally affected his restoration. Thus, in the end, the mortal Attis became deified and immortal. These were the main elements in the developed myth which bulked largest in the mind of the devotee as he participated in the rites of the cult.

The whole myth was palpably transparent. Attis, the god of vegetation grown to youthful beauty, is loved by Mother Earth. But the flowers of springtime faded and the fruits of summer are harvested. Nature is despoiled of her vegetation. Attis dies. Then the Mother mourns her dead plant life and remains in sorrow during autumn and winter. But with returning springtime vegetation revives and the youthful god Attis is restored to life. These familiar natural phenomena, dramatized in the ritual of the Cybele-Attis cult, became the basis on which the devotees of the Magna Mater developed their personal religious experiences.

II

The primitive locus of this nature worship was in the uplands of Anatolia. In a general way legends agree in locating the rise of the Cybele-Attis cult in the area covered by Galatia, Phrygia, and Lydia. As M. Cumont has properly emphasized, the development of a highly emotional cult was natural in this vicinity. Here the climate went to extremes, cold and bleak in winter, hot and even scorching in summer. These climatic contrasts made themselves felt on the character of the inhabitants. Men were responsive to the varying moods of nature with the changing seasons. During the winter months they shared the sorrow of nature at the loss of her vegetation; but with the returning verdure of springtime they hailed with joy the revival of nature. Thus there developed in the uplands north of Paul's birthplace a cult distinguished for its excessive emotionalism.

Just when this religion had its inception it is impossible to state with any exactness. It is clear, however, that from the sixth century B.C. onward the worship of the Great Mother was dominant in Asia Minor. The earliest monuments of the cult, the so-called Niobe of Mount Sipylus and two reliefs from the vicinity of Prymnessus, date from the middle of the sixth century at least. Herodotus was acquainted with certain external features of this worship, and he knew the Great Mother as belonging to Sardis and enthroned on Mount Dindymon. By the beginning of the fifth century Pessinus had become a center of her cult, and a hundred years later Asia Minor generally was familiar with it. Considerably before the period of Alexander, therefore, the worship of Cybele and Attis was well established and widely spread in Asia Minor--mountains like Dindymon, Ida, and Tmolus, and cities like Cyzicus, Sardis, and Pessinus being the importaint centers of the cult.

The Great Mother early emigrated from her Asian home and travelled to Europe, first by way of the Hellesspont and later by the Aegean Islands. Pindar knew her worship at Thebes and Aristophanes ridiculed the goddess from Athens. The chorus of Euripides' Bacchae came from Mount Tmolus and sang the praises of the Great Mother as well as of Dionysus. By the end of the fourth century, the worship of the Mother existed privately in the seaport town of the Peiraeus, while the Emperor Julian had a story to tell concerning the introduction of the Great Mother's religion at Athens. Admittedly, however, the cult of the Magna Mater was not especially popular in Greece. The demand for a highly emotional type of religious experience was already well satisfied among the Hellenes. In the orgiastic rites of Dionysus, the Greeks had religious practices of strikingly similar character which gave them the desired emotional stimulation.

The coming of the Magna Mater to Rome and the west was under the most dramatic circumstances. It was in the year 204 B.C.; Hannibal was still in Italy and Rome was thoroughly exhausted. Moreover, the people had become frightened because of frequent showers of stones and other unusual phenomena. In desperation the Sibylline Books were consulted, and it was learned that the enemy could be conquered if the Idaean Mother should be brought from Pessinus to Rome. Accordingly, a delegation was sent to King Attalus of Pergamum, who conducted them to Pessinus and gave them the sacred stone which was the Mother of the Gods. On her arrival in Italy, the goddess was officially welcomed by the "best man" of the Republic and the leading matrons of Rome. Miracles attended the event, the citizens made holiday, and an annual festival was instituted in honor of the goddess. As a result--so it seemed--the crops of that year were successful and Hannibal was driven out of Italy and conquered. So the Magna Mater came in triumph to the west in 204 B.C.

Although the worship of the Great Mother was officially welcomed to Italy, it seems to have been regarded with suspicion, treated as foreign, and subjected to state regulation during the last two centuries of the Republic. Under the Empire, however, the cult came into its own. By the first century A.D. the legal restrictions of republican days were removed and the worship of the Magna Mater easily became one of the most popular and favored religions of the time. The Archigallus, or high priest of the cult, became the Attis populi Romani. During the reign of Claudius, the annual festival was elaborated with even more impressive rites than those of its native Phrygian home and it took on its final form as one of the great festivals of the Roman Empire. The literature of the first century shows the high degree of prominence attained by the cult during this period. Livy gave an account of the coming of the Great Mother to Rome. Ovid, in the Fasti, devoted much space to an explanation of the origin and significance of her rites. Vergil told how the Great Mother had protected Aeneas, the ancestral hero of the Roman race. Horace made several references to the Great Mother's rites, and Propertius recounted the story of Claudia, who led the Roman matrons in welcoming the goddess to Italy. Even Maecenas composed a poem in honor of Cybele. The satirists, on the other hand, were unsparing in making the Galli the butt of crude jokes. Thus, during the period when Pauline Christianity was barely beginning to make itself felt as a missionary movement in the Graeco-Roman world, the cult of the Great Mother of the Gods had already won a place of prominence for itself in the life of the Roman Empire. It is important, therefore, to consider the phenomena of this gentile religion in relation to the development of early Christianity itself.

III

Our clearest index to the personal religious experience of the devotees of the Great Mother is found in a study of cult ritual. Because of their public character we possess the most extensive information concerning the annual spring festival of Attis, and the Taurobolium of the Magna Mater--ceremonials that had the official sanction of the Roman state. In considering the spring festival which Claudius incorporated as a part of the established religion of the Empire, it is important to bear in mind that it most it was but in elaborition of rites that had long been practiced in Asia Minor. We are specifically informed that the Roman ritual was celebrated Phrygio more. It may reasonably be assumed, therefore, that the Roman ceremonies were not essentially different from their Asian originals.

The prelude to the annual festival began on the Ides of March. On the second festival day, which was designated Arbor intrat in the calendar of Philocalus, the guild of dendrophori, or tree bearers, were in charge of the ceremonial. It was the duty of the dendrophori to cut down a pine tree in the woods and bear it with due pomp to the temple of Cybele. The perennial pine was a natural embodiment of Attis, the spirit of vegetation. According to legend, it was under a pine tree that he had mutilated himself and died. He had himself been transmuted into a pine tree and carried in this form into the cave of Cybele where the goddess mothered her dead lover; hence the pine tree borne by the dendrophori into the temple of Cybele was regarded as the corpse of Attis dead and treated with divine honors. It was swathed with fillets of wool as the body of Attis had been. Its branches were hung with garlands of violets, the flowers that sprang from his blood. From the middle of the stem was suspended an image of young man, who was doubtless Attis himself.' The ritual fact was that the dead god was brought with funeral pomp to the temple of the Magna Mater.

The following day was one of fasting when the devotees of Attis mourned their god. It was a peculiar fast, however; Jerome called it "a gluttonous abstinence, when men ate pheasants in order not to contaminate cereals." Meats, in general, were allowed, but fruits and vegetables were forbidden. This prohibition extended to wine also. The vegetable abstinence was a natural one. As the cutting down of the pine tree symbolized that the god of vegetation was dead, so the vegetable world shared in the defunct condition of the god. To partake of vegetables and cereals at such a season would be to violate the bruised and broken body of a god. This fast probably began with the fifteenth of March, and it had its influence as a physical preparation for the excessive emotionalism of the rites which marked the climax of the festival.

These rites came on the twenty-fourth of March, a day that was called, significantly enough, the "Day of Blood." At this time the Great Mother of the Gods inspired her devotees with a frenzy surpassing that which the followers of Dionysus knew. It was a madness induced not by wine, but by the din of crashing music, the dizzy whirling of the dance, and the sight of blood. The music which accompanied these rites was wild and barbaric, made by clashing cymbals and blatant horns, shrilling flutes and rolling drums. It was maddening music, noisy and savage. Lucian vividly described the wild tumult made by the Galli on Mount Ida blowing their horns, pounding their drums, and clashing their cymbals. Music of this kind--the Anatolian prototype of modern jazz--was popularly known as Phrygian music.

To the accompaniment of these barbaric strains a dance was staged. With wagging heads and streaming hair, the devotees of the Great Mother whirled their bodies round and round in a dizzy dance, shouting and singing as they gyrated. Apuleius pictured such a dance performed in a Thessalian village by the mendicant priests of the Syrian goddess.

"They went forth with their arms naked to their shoulders, bearing with them great swords .... shouting and dancing like mad persons to the sound of the pipe ..... They began to howl all out of tune and hurl themselves hither and thither, as though they were mad. They made a thousand gests with their feet and their heads; they would bend down their necks and spin round so that their hair flew out in a circle; they would bite their own flesh; finally every one took his two-edged weapon and wounded his arms in different places."

This cruel custom of lacerating one's own flesh during the frenzied ritual was a distinctive characteristic of the Great Mother's cult. Slashing their arms with knives, or gashing their bodies, the worshipers sprinkled with their own blood the sacred tree that was Attis. When Martial was casting about for a comparison to make vivid the dangerous habits of a certain barber he could think of nothing more to the point than these bloody rites of the Great Mother. "He who desires not yet to go down to Stygian shades, let him, if he be wise, avoid barber Antiochus. White arms are mangled with knives less cruel when the frenzied throng raves to Phrygian strains," he declared. To the modern mind this sanguine rite seems cruel in the extreme. It is probable, however, that the devotees, wrought up to a very high pitch of excitement by the din of the noisy music and the frenzy of the wild dance, were largely insensible to the pain. This ghastly ritual formed a part of the mourning for the dead Attis. When the Great Mother saw the freely flowing blood of her worshipers, she could not doubt that they shared with her in her sorrow. The blood may well have been intended, also, to appease the manes of the dead Attis or to strengthen him for his resurrection. To imitate Cybele in her grief and to call Attis back to life were the purposes of this bloody rite.

But the devotees of the Great Mother did not stop with the shedding of blood merely. Keyed up to the highest pitch of religious excitement, they followed the example of Attis and emasculated themselves. With this final act of self-sacrifice and consecration, the Dies sanguinis was crowned and the devotee became one of the Galli, a eunuch-priest of the Asian goddess. This was the regular practice in Phrygia, and in Rome, even, it is probable that the custom was followed. In his account of the Syrian goddess, whose cult was strikingly like that of Cybele, Lucian gave a description of this sacerdotal initiation. It is not only a vivid depiction of the bloody scene itself but also a good piece of psychological analysis, for it shows the strange fascination of these barbaric rites and reveals their mesmeric effect upon the spectators witnessing the supreme act of consecration. In abbreviated form Lucian's account is as follows:

"During these days they are made Galli. As the Galli sing and celebrate their orgies, frenzy falls on many of them, and many who had come as mere spectators afterwards are found to have committed the great act. Any young man who has resolved on this action, strips off his clothes, and with a loud shout bursts into the midst of the crowd and picks up a sword. He takes it and emasculates himself and then runs wild through the city."

For one who had performed this irrevocable sacrifice in a moment of hot excitement a strong revulsion of feeling was later inevitable. This emotional reaction was powerfully depicted by Catullus in his famous poem bearing the name "Attis."

Undoubtedly for the devotee of Cybele the rite of self-mutilation had distinct religious values. By the very act the devotee himself became another Attis. He had done in the service of the goddess what Attis had already done. The Attis in the poem of Catullus was not the original lover of Cybele but rather one of her priests, who by the fact of priestly initiation had become identified with the god. "Methought in a dream that I had become Attis, and that the festival of the so-called Hilaria was fulfilled to me by the Great Mother," wrote Damaskios, the last of the Neoplatonists. The name Attis was actually used as a traditional title for the priesthood of the Great Mother. Just as Attis was believed to have attained the state of deity by the passion of emasculation so by the way of self-mutilation, the Gallus became a god instead of mortal.

The act that made an Attis of the votary placed him in peculiarly intimate relationship to the Mother Goddess herself. The broken instruments of his manhood were treated as an oblation to the goddess. Perhaps they were thrown into the lap of her statue, is the "Passion of St. Symphorian" suggests. In the case of a goddess of fertility, like the Magna Mater, this was a significant act. Thus the ministers of the Great Mother, who personated her divine lover, made it possible for her to exercise her beneficent function in renewing the life of nature. As a new Attis the votary assumed the role of a bridegroom to the goddess. There were "marriage chambers" in the sanctuary of the Great Mother at Lobrinon near Cyzicus. In such a chamber the newly consecrated priest, kept vigil during the night after his dedication, a bridegroom in the bridal chamber of his goddess. Indeed, a specific cult designation of the GalIus was "bridegroom." This indicates that the experiences of the Dies Sanguinus and the following night were interpreted as a process of mystical union with the Great Goddess herself, and by means of certain obscure ritual acts there was developed a sense of intimate divine communion on the part of the devotee. From another standpoint the newly consecrated priest was thought of as a male counterpart of the goddess. Hence, he was called Kubebos. By the fact of emasculation he had assimilated himself to the nature of the goddess. As an indication of this transformation he henceforth wore feminine dress and allowed his hair to grow long. At some point in the ceremony there was also a solemn enthronement and the consecrated mortal was crowned in token of his deification. Nothing less than this, in the experience of the Gallus, was the result of his act of devotion. It made him realistically and mystically one with his goddess.

The day following the "Day of Blood" brought a delirium of joy to replace the delirium of sorrow. Dead Attis had been buried and around his grave his devotees had mourned his death long into the night. Toward morning, however, a great light appeared in the darkness and the resurrection of the god was announced. Firmicus Maternus thus described the scene: "When they are satisfied with their fictitious grief a light is brought in, and the priest, having anointed their lips, whispers, 'Be of good cheer, you of the mystery. Your god is saved; for us also there shall be salvation from ills.'" Then joy took the place of sorrow, for the resurrection of the god brought with it the assurance of salvation for men, and this chiefly included the promise of a happy immortality. On the twenty-fifth of March, the first day when daylight exceeded darkness, the resurrection of the god was celebrated with universal license. The day's celebration was known as the Hilaria and was characterized by the general good cheer. Mourning was not permitted; but instead there were masquerades and banquets. Even the Galli were eased of their wounds in their joy because of the resurrection of Attis.

There followed a day of much needed rest, the Requiratio. Then the festival closed with the Lavatio, or washing of the goddess in the Almo, a rite that aroused the scorn and sarcasm of Arnobius. The silver statue of the goddess was placed in a wagon drawn by oxen and conducted in solemn procession to the Almo where it was washed in the water of the river. Amid rejoicing the statue was drawn back to its temple, showered with the flowers of springtime on its way. This was probably a rite of purification considered necessary because of the experience through which the goddess had passed on the Dies Sanguinis. After marriage, purification was deemed essential even for a goddess. Because the Magna Mater had been mystically united with her ministers, such postnuptial purification was necessary in her case.

In this, the annual spring festival of their god and goddess, the Galli found the beginning of a new life for themselves. It was a highly wrought emotional experience induced by fasting, wild music, frenzied dancing, and the sight of flowing blood. The sorrow thus aroused was interpreted as a sympathetic sharing with the Great Mother in her grief at the death of her lover. The orgiastic rite reached its climax in the irrevocable sacrifice of manhood, an act whereby the devotee physically assimilated himself to divinity. He himself became Attis, a god, mystically united,is a divine lover to the Great Goddess. In the resurrection of his god he felt himself personally participant and he found therein the assurance of a happy future life. The experience was a crudely physical one and realistic in the extreme. Yet it had a strange fascination because of its very realism, and it held out to the devotees who were willing to make the supreme sacrifice the promise of a divinization of human nature and an immediate communion with deity.

To this experience the figure of a new birth was not inappropriately applied. The pagan writer, Sallust the Philosopher, used this very terminology in describing the effect of the Attis festival on those who participated in it. He said that those who passed through this form of initiation were actually treated as new-born babes and dieted on milk for some time afterward. His exact expression was: hosper anagennomenon, "as of those who are being born again." Thus, at the annual spring festival the ministers of the Great Mother passed through a religious experience so fundamental that it seemed to them the beginning of a new life, essentially different from the life they had known before. It was a regeneration that transformed their beings, gave them a present communion with their god and goddess, and assured them of personal immortality.

IV

Another bloody rite of great importance connected with the cult of the Great Mother was the taurobolium, or sacrifice of a bull, with its variant, the criobolium, or ram sacrifice. The origin of the taurobolium and its relationship to the cult of the Magna Mater is obscure. Almost certainly, however, it was of oriental origin localized in Anatolia, and it probably had its inception in the primitive practice of washing in the blood of an animal in order to secure its vital energy. In the cult of the Great Mother, however, the primitive notions attached to the practice became transformed and spiritualized. When the rite came to prominence in Italy early in the second century A.D. two distinct motives were apparent, one official, the other personal. The taurobolium was officially performed vicariously for the safety of the emperor, the empire, or a particular community--pro salute imperatoris, pro salute imperii, pro salute urbis, etc. This was a purely official and sacerdotal celebration, with the Archigallus presiding, and during the second and third centuries this usage was especially prominent in Roman practice.

But the taurobolium might be a private ceremony also, performed by an ordinary person who bore the expense of it himself--de suo, suo sumptu, or sua pecunia. In this case the purpose was a purely personal one and the motive which actuated the celebration was the purification and regeneration of the individual. This private rite was performed on laymen as well as priests and by persons of all classes and both sexes. It was strictly an individualistic ceremony. During the third and fourth centuries, probably because of Christian competition, the private celebration of the taurobolium came forward into particular prominence. Between these two types of ceremony, however, the official and the private, there can be no doubt as to which was prior to the other. The rite in itself was essentially of a private and personal nature and its public, vicarious usage was clearly a later adaptation. The devotees of the Mother and Attis certainly experienced it for their own benefit before ever the rite was enacted for the good of the community. Centuries before the taurobolium was performed in Italy for the safety of the state, it was enacted in Asia Minor for the benefit of the individual devotee.

The ceremony itself was picturesque. In the Peristephanon by the Christian poet Prudentius there is a description of the rite which purports to be by an eyewitness. A priest is the subject of the ceremony. With a golden crown on his head and adorned with fillets, he descends into a deep trench which is covered with a platform of perforated planks. A large bull, gleaming with gold and garlanded with flowers, is led on to the platform. Here he is stabbed to death by the consecrated spear, and his blood flows out over the covering of the trench and rains down on the expectant devotee below.

"Through the thousand crevices in the wood the bloody dews run down into the pit. The priest receives the falling drops on his head, clothes and body. He leans backward to have his cheeks, his ears, his lips, and his nostrils wetted. He pours the liquid over his eyes and does not even spare his palate, for he moistens his tongue with blood and drinks it eagerly."

When the life of the bull is extinct, its body is removed and the neophyte emerges from the trench, drenched and dripping with blood. He resents himself to the expectant throng of worshipers who do obeisance to him as to a god, as to one who has been born again to a divine life.

For the one who experienced the blood bath of the taurobolium this was exactly the meaning of the rite. He came up out of the trench reborn to a new kind of existence. In effect the bath of blood was believed to purify him from the sins and evils of his old life and make him a new man, or rather a divinized human. In some cases the efficacy of the rite was supposed to last for a period of twenty years, and then the grace was renewed. In other instances, the conviction was that the effect of the rite was everlasting and that the devotee was in aeternum renatus, to quote the formula of the inscriptions. There is a strong temptation at this point to question if this startling phrase and the whole conception of the new birth experience in the cult of the Magna Mater may not be due to Christian influence. There is not, however, a shred of evidence to substantiate this contention. Against it is the purely pagan character of the rite itself, its undoubted antiquity, and the fact that it naturally lent itself to the new-birth interpretation. Held as it usually was, though not invariably, at the time of the vernal equinox on the Dies Saguinis, the resurrection of vegetation and of the god of vegetation naturally suggested the regeneration of the individual. Thus the whole ritual became a sort of passion drama in and of itself, involving three parties: the god, the neophyte, and nature in a single cycle of events. The neophyte descended into the pit; Attis died; vegetation withered. The neophyte came up out of the pit; Attis arose from the dead; vegetation revived. In this way, at the spring festival of Attis, the regeneration of the individual was made to coincide with the rebirth of nature.

V

The Cybele-Attis cult included certain strictly private rites that are quite as important for the student of personal religion as the public ceremonies we have just examined. Julian, the Emperor, in discussing the March festival, made careful distinction between two series of rites following the cutting down of the sacred pine, one secret and mysterious, the other open to the public. It is probable, therefore, that the secret rites of the cult were more or less co-ordinated with the public ceremonials. Augustine demanded to know of these esoteric rites, "What good is to be thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when those which are brought forth into light are so detestable?" This interrogation conveniently emphasizes the differentiation between the public and private rites of the Attis cult.

In the nature of the case the public rites were open to a more or less limited number of participants. The sacerdota] consecration of the Dies Sanguinis was a restricted type of initiation available only for men and to those only who felt impelled to make the supreme sacrifice. It was a masculine and priestly initiation. But the cult of the Great Mother welcomed women as well as men and included laymen as well as priests. Even the grace of the taurobolium was obtainable only by those who could bear the expense of the ceremony. The private rites of the cult, however, were accessible to a far larger group. They represented the type of initiation as contrasted with the priestly. Hence they are of more than usual importance from the point of view of personal religious experience.

Unfortunately, we know even less of these private ceremonials than of the secret rites in other mystery cults, and for much the same reason. Their secret has been too well guarded. Only a single formula has come down to us, in slightly variant forms, from the esoteric liturgy of the Attis cult. According to the version given by Clement of Alexandria the confessional of the initiate was:

I have eaten out of the drum:
I have drunk out of the cymbal:
I have carried the Kernos:
I have entered the bridal chamber.

Firmicus Maternus repeated the formula in a more brief form:

I have eaten from the drum:
I have drunk out of the cymbal:
I have become a mystic votary of Attis.

In this formula two experiential elements stand out clearly. One is union with divinity by the semblance of a mystic marriage. "I have entered the bridal chamber." The votary entering the shrine of the goddess went there as a bridegroom. In the secret chamber divinity and humanity were united in marriage, and thus the devotee attained communion with his goddess. This was the lay equivalent for the priestly experience when the Gallus, as a new Attis, became the bridegroom of Cybele.

The second important element of mystical experience emphasized in this formula was communion with the deity by the act of eating and drinking.

I have eaten from the drum:
I have drunk from the cymbal.

The similarity of this confessional to the Eleusinian password is incontestable. Just as the initiate at Eleusis drank of the mixed barley potion and ate sacred food from the chest, so the devotee of the Great Mother drank from the cymbal and ate from the drum. The instruments mentioned, the drum and the cymbal, were the favorite musical instruments of the Great Mother. It was natural, therefore, that they should be used as cup and plate in this ceremony. Just what was the sacred food which the devotees shared we have scarcely a hint. We know only that it consisted of a beverage and of solid food.

Much more important than to know these external details is to understand the psychological effect of this communion meal on the participants. Was it merely a common meal that gave the votaries fellowship with one another, binding them together in a brotherhood like that of a great family? It may have had this meaning incidentally, but certainly this was not the inclusive significance of the rite for the votary. It was a communion with divinity rather than a communion with one's fellow devotees. Firmicus Maternus, in denouncing this rite, contrasted it specifically with the Christian sacrament of the eucharist. His words show clearly that there was a genuine parallelism between the Christian rite and the pagan. Both were believed to communicate divine life to the devotee and assure him of salvation. Maternus concluded his invective against the pagan rite with the appeal, "It is another food that gives salvation and life. Seek the bread of Christ and the cup of Christ!" Apparently, therefore, the sacred meal in the Semele-Attis cult was a genuine sacrament that enabled the devotee to absorb the divine life in a realistic manner. In the liturgy of the cult, Attis himself was addressed as a "reaped ear of corn." It is not unlikely that a corn product, or some other vegetable food in which Attis was believed especially to dwell, formed a part of the sacred repast. In partaking of this meal, the devotee was enabled to share in a materialistic manner the life of his god. The common meal of the Great Mother's cult therefore was a means of attaining to a realistic type of mystical communion with divinity.

All these various rites in the cult of the Great Mother were crude enough. They were characterized by realism and naturalism. There was eating and drinking. There was a bath in blood. There was an orgy of self-induced sorrow and joy that had its climax in self mutilation. Yet these very rites with all their primitive crudity and cruelty became transmuted into vehicles for really deep religious experience. The act of eating and drinking became a sacrament of communion wherein the devotee partook of a divine substance and thus attained actual union with his deity. The semblance of a mystic marriage whereby the initiate as a divine lover was united to the goddess was another means of attaining the same end. The blood bath of the taurobolium brought with it the washing away of the sins and evils of an old life. It was a regenerating experience by which the neophyte was reborn for eternity. The passion drama depicting the death of natural life and its renovation in the springtime was an allegory of personal resurrection to eternal life. Even the act of self-mutilation became the means whereby the devotee, like Attis himself, effected his own deification and assimilated himself to the nature of the Great Mother. In the cult of the Mater Deum the communion of eating and drinking, the semblance of mystic marriage, the purification in the bath of blood, and the mortification of the flesh, all functioned as sacraments of spiritual regeneration.

VI

For the student of Christian origins a knowledge of the regenerative rites of the Great Mother is doubly important because her worship was remarkably like that in a whole group of cults with which Paul, the Christian apostle, had early familiarity and contacts that were intimate. These were the religions indigenous to the lands of Syria and Cilicia, where Paul was brought up and where he had his early missionary experience. Unfortunately, our knowledge of these gentile cults is fragmentary and chaotic. They had nothing like the solidarity of the Greek and major Oriental systems, and it would be utterly impossible to reconstruct their history or to outline their ritual in any detail. Still it is possible to distinguish among them certain common elements that show a general resemblance to the Phrygian worship of the Great Mother. Usually, the central place in the cultus was held by a mother-goddess who embodied the power of life, and a somewhat subordinate position was assigned to a youthful male deity who like Attis died and rose again.

The prototype for this diversified, yet measurably unified complex of religious systems seems to have been the Babylonian cult of Ishtar, the deified personification of motherhood. She was known to biblical writers as Ashtoreth, and to the Greeks as Astarte or Aphrodite. With her was associated a young and active deity called Tammuz, who was slain but afterward revived. As in the case of Attis, lamentations formed an important part of his worship. In Ezekiel's day this practice was adopted by Jews, even, and among the "abominations" which the prophet saw perpetrated at the very gate of the Jerusalem temple was the weeping of women for Tammuz! In Phoenicia the mother-goddess was worshiped under the name of Ashtart, and as early as the third century B.C. her cult was so pre-eminent that the kings of Sidon served her as priests. She, too, had her consort, Eshmun by name. Their houses were built together, and they were simultaneously glorified.

To the Greek world this immortal pair was familiar as Aphrodite and Adonis, the goddess of love and her impetuous young husband. "The Fourth Venus," said Cicero, "was a Syrian . . . . who is called Astarte and is said to have been married to Adonis." Greek and Latin writers delighted to retell the story of their love and of Aphrodite's loss. The tale was that of an ardent young hunter who, all too rash, was wounded to death by a boar. Thus young Adonis died; but the grief of his goddess-lover brought about his restoration to life. In the cult of these divinities, also, traditional lamentations were a conspicuous element of the ritual. Sappho more than once referred to this weeping for the god, while Bion wrote a lament for Adonis which, though a conventional literary product and not an actual cult hymn, yet gives a fairly accurate impression of the mourning songs sung at Adonis' festivals.

The annual celebrations in honor of the god were elaborated as a drama of marriage and passion. Around a ritual marriage bed the wedding of the divine pair was celebrated. There followed a lament for the dead Adonis ending in a forecast of the resurrection. Sometimes that joyous event was actually represented. At all the important centers of Adonis worship, not only in Syria and Cyprus but also in Athens and Alexandria, the festival of Adonis was one of the great events in the religious calendar. Theocritus, in one of his Idyls, described such a festival as it was conducted at the court of Ptolemy early in the Hellenistic period. The marriage song sung at this celebration began with a description of the wedding tableau and included an adequate account of the Adonis festival as a whole.

The bridal bed for Adonis spread of my own making is;
Cypris hath this for her wrapping, Adonis that for his.
Of eighteen years or nineteen, is turned the rose-limbed groom;
His pretty lip is smooth to sip, for it bears but flaxen bloom,
And now she's in her husband's arms, and so we'll say good-night;
But tomorrow we'll come with the dew, the dew, and take hands and bear him away
Where plashing wave the shore doth lave, and there with locks undight
And bosoms bare all shining fair will raise this shrilling lay:

"O sweet Adonis, none but thee of the children of gods and men
'Twixt overworld and underworld doth pass and pass again:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Adonis sweet, Adonis dear,
Be gracious for another year;
Thou'rt welcome to thine own alway,
And welcome we'll both cry today
And next Adonis-tide."

Another Syrian goddess who gained considerable prominence in the Roman world was Atargatis. Her consort was Hadad, with whom the belief in immortality was connected at an early period. In his ritual, as in that of Adonis, an elaborate show of grief was a characteristic factor, and the prophet Zechariah knew of the lamentations for Hadad. But it was the goddess who attracted the attention of the Roman world. In the eyes of the Greeks she was the "Syrian goddess," and among Latins this Dea Syria became popular as Iasura. During the latter days of the Republic her cult was notably propagated by the agency of slaves and under the Empire Syrian merchants became as her missionaries. She was especially popular with the lower classes, though some in high stations affected her cult. Marius was one of her devotees and Nero "held in contempt all religious rites except those of the Syrian Goddess"--though his esteem for her was not lasting one. The great slave uprising in Sicily in 134 was led by a slave who claimed to be inspired by the goddess herself--a revealing illustration of the loyalty she commanded for this class in society.

Her rites were such as would appeal to the proletariat and conserve religious values for them. They were realistic, picturesque, sensuous, and fascinating in their strangeness. Apulcius in an incidental account of the missionary operations of her travelling priests gave a memorable picture of their methods in actual practice among the rural population of Thessaly. The account was not a very complimentary one, and it was doubtless exaggerated. Certainly the itinerant priests of the Syrian goddess were generally actuated by more worthy motives than this particular group was represented to be. Still the description of their religious exercises was detailed by Apuleius with all the vividness of life itself, and it may be considered a true representation of the cult rites on festal occasions. Lucian, who was himself a Syrian and wrote as one wholly familiar with this religion, also described the rites in a way that parallels and confirms the account of Apuleius. The exercises were essentially the same as those that formed the climax of the Great Mother's festival and made eunuch priests of her male devotees. To the accompaniment of wild music men danced themselves into a frenzy and then lacerated and mutilated themselves unsparingly. Here again the central experience of the cult was ecstatic in character, with a cruel and crudely physical emotionalism. But it was not without its mystical content; for in this way the devotees sought to affiliate themselves with their pitiless goddess.

Altogether the cults of Cilicia and Syria may be grouped in the same class as the Anatolian worship of the Cybele. They were redemption religions, the deities of which were revered as the saviors of the individual man. In their propagandist efforts they aimed at universalism through individualism. They were still tainted with much of the grossness of primitive naturalism; yet this very fact was not a disadvantage with the humbler folk in society whom they captivated by the barbaric appeal of their ritual. They were religions of enthusiasm which aroused fear, pain, hope, joy, all culminating in ecstasy. By mortification, by stimulating music, by self-mutilation, and like means, these Syrian zealots strove to rise to a higher state than mere mortality and unite themselves with divinity. This was their rebirth to a new life and immortality.

PAGAN REGENERATION

A STUDY OF MYSTERY INITIATIONS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD

BY HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

[b. 1890 d. 1962]

Chicago., Ill., The University of Chicago Press

[1929, copyright not renewed]

CHAPTER IV

ORPHIC REFORM

HISTORICALLY the cult most nearly related to that of Dionysus was the philosophico-religious system bearing the name of Orpheus. It is not possible to pronounce with certainty whether such a man as Orpheus ever really existed or not. He may have been a purely mythical figure. If he was a real man he was a religious leader of mark and deserving of admiration: a prophet, reformer, and martyr. Whether mythical or real, Orpheus was the antitype of the flushed and maddening wine-god Dionysus. He was a sober and gentle musician who charmed savage men and beasts with his music, an exact theologian, the prophet of reform in religion, who was martyred for his efforts.

The difference between Dionysus and Orpheus was the difference between the two religious systems which bore their names. The cult of Dionysus was more simple, primitive, elemental, spontaneous, and emotional. That of Orpheus was more elaborate, developed, controlled, and intellectualistic. Still, when all is said, the two systems had much in common. Both centered in the same god, Dionysus. Both aimed at the same goal, immortality through divinity. Both sought to attain that goal by prescribed rites and ceremonies. Both made a strictly individualistic appeal and were highly developed along the lines of personal experience. But Orphism fostered an ascetic rule of life that was the exact opposite of Dionysian license, and developed an elaborate theology of a highly speculative character. In brief, Orphism represented a reformed Dionysianism, and the practices it could not or did not reform it sought to explain and justify by its mythology.

I

Our sources of information concerning the Orphic movement are unusually authoritative and accessible. They include chiefly a reputable group of classical writers together with a singular collection of Orphic tablets found in south Italy and Crete. The list of classical witnesses to the Orphic cult is headed by the name of Pindar. In his "Dirges," or choral lyrics intended to be chanted at funerals, he offered consolation to mourners by telling them of the Orplic promise of immortality. He further detailed the Orphic doctrine of reincarnation which he represented as a scheme of preliminary purgation by means of triple earthly lives, preceding the final bliss. Again he described with pleasing detail the delights of the Elysian land where the final beatification was to be realized, and in the second Olympian Ode he told of the future of the wicked as well as of the pure. Another important classical witness to Orphism was Plato. Though affecting to despise the system, he was actually much influenced by it. In Cratylus, for example, he made use of the characteristic Orphic idea of the body as a prison house of the soul (soma-sema). In the Republic he described the missionary methods of the Orphics in terms that were not complimentary, yet revealed the vigor of the movement. He told of zealous propagandists who besieged the doors of the rich and persuaded them by a parade of Orphic scriptures that they could provide deliverance and purgation from sin, both for the living and the dead, by means of initiation. Plato also made reference to the idea of the transmigration of souls and to the Orphie rule of life. The dramatist Euripides included an all-important Orphic confessional in his Cretans, and in his admirable Hippolytus he drew a character sketch of a typical and consistent Orphic. Even the comedian Aristophanes bore favorable testimony to the influence of the Orphic mysteries. He had the glorified Aeschylus, the "grand old man" of Attic tragedy, commend Orpheus for teaching mystic rites to mortal men. This torch of reverence, however, did not prevent Aristophanes from giving a lively parody of Orphanic initiation in telling of old Strepsiades' visit to Socrates' "thinking shop." These four names, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Pindar, include the bulk of classical testimonia to the Orphic mysteries.

Quite as revealing as these literary refernces, however, are the so-called Orphic tablets from tombs in southern Italy and Crete. They are eight in number and are all of very thin gold. According to a consensus of scholarly opinion, they contain the mutilated fragments of a ritual hymn composed for members of the Orphic sect is early as the fifth century B.C. In their present form they may be dated roughly from the fourth century B.C. to the second century of our era. Their purpose is self-evident. Buried with the dead they were intended to give instructions concerning conduct in the next world, formularies and confessionals to be repeated, and directions as to postmortem ceremonial observances. Their ritualistic character and the tone of conviction that pervades them give them peculiar value as sources of information concerning Orphic experience and practice. These remarkable tablets, though they are few in number, constitute our most valuable source materials for the Orphic cult.

For an expansive expression of Orphic theology, however, one must turn to the corpus of so-called Orphic literature. We know that as early as the time of the Pisistratidae there were in existence at Athens various poems attributed to Orpheus. They were quoted by Plato and later writers, but their genuineness was challenged by Aristotle and Herodotus. Under the hands of the Orphics a vast literature grew up around this nucleus, but for our purpose the hymns only are of special importance. They are of late compilation and uncertain date, although Professor Dieterich would locate their original composition between 200 B.C. and the beginning of the Christian era. In their present form they represent the developed state of Orphic theology, their general tone being that of mystical monotheism. Of the eighty and more extant hymns, all but nine carry in their headings specifications concerning the particullar perfume to be burned while they were being stung. Most of them also conclude with an invocation to the deity addressed to bless the mystics in the fulfilment of their rites:

The sacred rites benevolent attend
And grant a blameless life, a blessed end.
Propitious to thy mystics' works incline
Rejoicing come, for holy rites are thine.

So runs the slightly varied refrain at the conclusion of almost every hymn. These formulas make it practically certain that this collection of hymns was made for liturgical use in Orphic brotherhoods.

In comparison with these major sources of information, classical writers, Orphic tablets, and Orphic hymns, other sources are distinctly of less significance. For the sake of completeness, however, there should be mentioned the "Apulian" vase paintings which depict the blessed dead in the society of the gods. These paintings are particularly significant in that they show the influence of Orphic ideas in Magna Graecia, south Italy especially, during the Hellenic era. Similarly, Greek sepulchral art and grave inscriptions of the Hellenistic and Roman periods are important. There are also casual references to Orphism in later pagan writers, Strabo, Pausanias, and Plutarch, which prove the vigorous persistence of Orphic ideas and practices through the early imperial period. Later Christian notices of Orphism are distinctly secondary to these pagan sources and are chiefly valuable in showing the later persistence of Orphism in its active competition with Christianity.

II

One of these Christian sources, however, deserves specific citation because it preserves in convenient mythological form a bit of fundamental Orphic theology. The passage in question is found in the "Exhortation to the Greeks" by Clement of Alexandria, and it includes a detailed narration of the myth of Dionysus Zagreus. Undoubtedly Clement's rendering of the legend was based upon a lost Orphic poem or poems--at least in the passage itself Clement made two quotations from Orphic literature. According to his version of the myth, Persephone bore to Zeus a son "who had the form of a bull." To quote "a certain mythological poet":

The bull begets a snake, the snake a bull.

This divine son was Dionysus Zagreus, or "the hunter." He was the favorite of his father, and Zeus destined him to become the ruler of the universe. Even while he was a child, the father of gods and men entrusted him with thunderbolts and allowed him to sit on his throne. But the malignant Titans, stung by jealousy and urged on by the vengeful Hera, sought the young child's life. Though he was carefully guarded by the warlike Curetes, the Titans succeeded in luring him away with childish toys, which were carefully enumerated in a quotation from "Orpheus of Thrace, the poet of the initiation." Having gained possession of the divine child, the Titans savagely tore him to pieces, and cooked and ate the pieces. Athena, however, preserved the heart of Zagreus and carried it away to Zeus who, in his anger, blasted the savage Titans with his thunderbolts. Clement omitted one item of the myth which formed an interesting connection with the Theban legend of Dionysus. Zeus, having received the heart of Zagreus from Athena, swallowed it. So when Semele bore Dionysus to Zeus the new god was but Zagreus reborn.

The Cretan provenance of the Zagreus legend was expressly stated by Diodorus. In his account of the various forms assumed by Dionysus, he said: "They allege that the god (Zagreus) was born of Zeus and Persephone in Crete, and Orpheus in the mysteries represents him as torn to pieces by the Titans." The relationship of this legend to the Cretan rite of eating raw flesh already described in connection with the Dionysus cult is obvious. It was an aetiological myth through and through. The worshippers of Dionysus were familiar with the ritual fact that a sacrificial animal, which in a sense embodied the god, was torn to pieces and eaten. They sought the sanction of antiquity and divinity for their ritual and posited the dismemberment of their god by the ancient Titans. Shocked at the thought of the brutal murder of a god, they had the bad Titans blasted by Zeus for their wickedness. Thus from the ritual fact of a feast of raw flesh, there grew up the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, the god on whom the Orphic cult was focused.

The importance of this myth lies in the fact that in Orphic thought it was connected with a peculiar theory concerning the origin and nature of man, and so ultimately with the thought of man's eternal destiny. From the ashes of the blasted Titans, the Orphic said, man was created. But these Titans had already consumed the god Dionysus, and their ashes contained the vitality of a divine being. Hence man by his very constitution was believed to be a compound of two natures, one Dionysian and immortal, the other Titanic and mortal. His soul was divine, but while in the body it was confined in a charnel house. Plato made full use of this Orphic conception, and in his Gorgias he quoted "a certain philosopher," who said, "We are dead and the body is a tomb." Pindar earlier stressed the divine origin and nature of the human soul in contradistinction to the mortality of the human body. "While the body of all men is subject to over-mastering death, an image of life remains alive, for it alone comes from the gods," he affirmed. This sharp dualism of soul and body appears again and again in the Orphic tablets, though it is not always clear that the myth of the origin of man from the ashes of the Titans was in mind. On the Petelian tablet (south Italy, third century B.C.) the soul is represented as asserting its divine nature thus:

I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven.

Similarly, on three Cretan tablets the soul answers the challenge "Whence are you?" with a reiterated declaration of its dual origin, "I am son of Earth and of Starry Heaven." On the Compagno tablets found near Sybaris the soul makes a like affirmation to the "Pure Queen of Them Below . . . .," "I avow me that I am of your blessed race." The dualism thus fixed between body and soul was fundamental in Orphic theology. Though the body was an evil thing, the soul was divine and immortal.

In its first analysis, therefore, the Orphic process of salvation was a process of purification from bodily taint. The problem, however, was not such a simple one as these words would indicate. It was not merely from the evils of a single existence that the Orphic sought deliverance, but from the evils of a long series of bodily existences. The Orphic first, and the Pythagorean later, believed in the transmigration of souls from body to body. On leaving the corpse at death, the soul was normally doomed to inhabit the bodies of other men or of animals even, passing on through a chain of physical existences until finally purified. An Orphic fragment preserved by Proclus reads: "Therefore the soul of man changing in the cycles of time enters into various creatures; now it enters a horse, again it becomes a sheep . . . . or as one of the tribe of chill serpents creeps on the sacred ground." Reincarnation, like dualism, was an important item in Orphic theology.

What the Orphic did with the idea of transmigration was to moralize it into a cycle of purgations intended to free the soul from bodily taint and leave it in the end a pure heavenly essence. According to Pindar, the soul had to undergo three such periods of purification in as many different incarnations before the process would be complete. Only those who "thrice had been courageous in keeping their souls pure from all deeds of wrong" could pass by the highway of Zeus into the tower of Cronus where the ocean breezes blow around the Islands of the Blest." In Plato the series of three incarnations was magnified to three periods of a thousand years each, during which the process of purgation might be completed. At the close of each thousand-year period, the souls drew lots, thus choosing the manner of their next incarnation. One of the most striking scenes depicted in any of Plato's writings was the eschatological vision of Er, son of Armenius, recounted in the tenth book of the Republic. At the place of judgment, Er saw mortal souls allotted to a new cycle of life choosing their several destinies.

"He saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of woman . . . . He beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale. Birds on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men . . . . After making choice and drinking of the waters of Lethe, these souls shoot away like stars, to birth."

Empedocles announced three transmigration periods of ten thousand years each ere the soul could be considered eligible for heavenly bliss.

The technical Orphic expression for the transmigration of souls and their reappearance in human bodies was "rebirth" (palingenesia). These physical rebirths, however, were what the Orphic least desired, and to escape this weary round of reincarnation was the goal of all his endeavor. According to Proclus, the salvation offered by this system was the freeing of the spirit from the wheel of physical rebirths. In his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, he said, "This is what those who are initiated by Orpheus to Dionysus and Kore pray that they may attain:

'To cease from the wheel and breathe again from ill.'"

Undoubtedly this was an Orphic formula for the salvation process. By Simplicius it was attributed to Orpheus himself. Appropriately, therefore, the purified Orphic soul was represented on the Campagno tablets as having escaped from the cycle of necessity and attained to the seats of the hallowed. Its joyful affirmation to the "Pure Queen of Them Below" was:

I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel;
I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired.

Thus, while the view of human existence fostered by Orphism was essentially pessimistic in its dualism and its theory of successive reincarnations, it did hold out the possibility of escape to weary mortals. It posited one great spiritual rebirth at the time of death which should put an end once for all to the series of physical rebirths that were so much dreaded. The question remains, How was this great deliverance from the cycle of physical existences to be accomplished?

III

The Orphic answer to this problem was, in the first instance, by participation in certain prescribed rites of initiation. Orphism came to the seekers for salvation in the Greek world not merely as a philosophy of life but as a religious cult with divinely authenticated rites which must be fulfilled, else there, could be no guaranty of deliverance. To those only who had "by happy fortune culled the fruit of the rite that releases from toil," was there assurance of salvation, the rite in this instance being initiation into the Orphic mysteries. The mendicants who, according to Plato, harassed the rich, exhibiting scriptures by Orpheus, sought to persuade people that they might obtain purification in life and release from suffering after death by the observance of their ritual. Initiation into an Orphic cult was the first step toward deliverance.

In general the prescribed Orphic ritual was a modification of the rude Bacchic rites we have already examined. The persistent representation of Orpheus in antiquity was that of a reformer of Dionysiac rites. Diodorus affirmed that "Orpheus being a man highly gifted by nature and highly trained above all others, made many modifications in the orgiastic rites; hence they call Orphic those rites that took their rise from Dionysus." From the standpoint of ritualistic observance, therefore, there was much in common between Dionysian and Orphic practices. On the very threshold to the Orphic cult stood the omophagy, or feast of raw flesh, which was so prominent a Dionysian rite. In the remaining fragment of Euripides' Cretans an initiate tells of certain ritual acts which he performed in the process of becoming a "Bacchus" and the one he stresses particularly is the eating of raw flesh.

For the Orphic this "red and bleeding feast" had two important meanings. It was, first of all, a communion service. Already he had within himself the spark of divinity which came from the ashes of the Titans. This divine life within him, however, was weak, very weak. It needed nourishment. In the sacrificial bull his god Zagreus was ritualistically incarnate; hence, in eating the raw flesh of the torn bull, be partook of a divine substance that nourished and strengthened the immortal life within himself. Just as the life of Zagreus entered the devotee physically when he partook of the flesh of the bull, so the man's soul entered more fully into the spiritual life of Zagreus by this very physical process. In a mystical sense God and man became one by the communion.

But the feast of raw flesh was also a memorial service to the Orphics. With the legend of the divine child Zagreus in mind, they looked upon their own ritual as a re-enactment of the ancient tragedy in which their god was done to death by the Titans. Just as they tore to pieces the flesh of the sacrificial bull and ate it, so the Titans of old had dismembered the child Zagreus. According to Nonnus, it was customary for Orphic initiates to daub themselves with white clay or gypsum as the Titans did in order to conceal their identity. One of the technical expressions for the ritual act of bedaubing with clay was apomattein (literally, "to smear off"). Harpocration has the following note on this word:

"Others use it in a more special sense, as for example when they speak of putting a coat of clay or pitch on those who are being initiated. In this ceremony they were mimetically enacting the myth told by some persons, in which the Titans, when they mutilated Dionysus, wore a coating of gypsum in order not to be identified."

In this comment the mimetic character of the Orphic ritual is definately asserted.

The real inwardness of this act of daubing with gypsum, however, lay in another direction. It was an act of purification--strange as it may seem. The terms perimattein and apomattein ("to besmear" and "to smear off") were used interchangeably to mean "to purify." In the Orphic rite of initiation, just as in the Sabazian rite at which Aeschines assisted, the candidates for initiation were "purified and wiped clean with mud and pitch." They were not purified from mud and pitch but rather with mud and pitch. Since it was not a physical cleansing that was sought but rather a spiritual cleansing, clay and pitch served the purpose quite as well as water. Yet Plutarch, with all his sympathy for Orphism, protested vigorously against purifications in this manner, calling them "unclean purifications, filthy cleansings and bemirings." Orphic initiation, then, in addition to the rite of communion, featured a strange ceremonial of cleansing intended to rid the candidate of the stains inherent in his physical nature.

For the Orphic, however, mere initiation with its prescribed rites, its mysticizing of crude Dionysian ritual, its communion service, and its purifications, was not sufficient as a guaranty of salvation. Initiation, while it was the beginning of a process that eventuated in complete salvation, was but the beginning. The salvation process itself continued as an arduous self-discipline and it lasted a lifetime. The initial sacraments of communion and purgation were supplemented by the austerities of the "Orphic life"--an expression that became proverbial. So the "Bacchus of the Mailed Priests" in Euripides' Cretans ends his confession thus:

Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man's vile birth and coffined clay,
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where life has been.

In general the disciplinary prescriptions of Orphism were almost identical with those of Pythagoreanism. Herodotus characterized the Orphic way of life as at once Egyptian and Pythagorean. Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Pythagoras, has given a convenient and comprehensive statement of the main items in the Pythagorean ascesis. His list of prescriptions is as follows:

"Purification is by means of cleansings, and baths and aspersions. A man must also keep himself from funerals and marriages and every kind of physical pollution, and abstain from all food that is dead or has been killed, and from mullet, and from the fish melanurus, and from eggs, and from animals that lay eggs, and from beans, and from the other things that are forbidden for those who accomplish the holy rites of initiation."

The Orphic, like the Pythagorean, lived a life of ceremonial cleanliness and holiness. By washing and aspersions, at once symbolic and sacramental in character, he sought to purge away the taint of his bodily nature, the "ancient woe" inherited from the Titans. He kept himself rigorously from all defilement of physical contacts with human or animal bodies, from human births especially, and from dead bodies; for in a corpse the evil Titanic matter was left without any vital Dionysian element. Both in life and in death certain clothing regulations were strictly observed. In life the Orphic wore garments of pure white. In death the initiated were never buried in woolen wrappings.

Not only were rules concerning cleanliness and clothing strictly adhered to, but certain food regulations were also carefully followed. Having once partaken of the sacrament of raw flesh, the Orphic fasted forever thereafter from animal food. This was the most familiar of all the prohibitions observed by the Orphics, and Plato defined the Orphic manner of living in terms of this observance. "Orphic lives, as they are caIled," he said, "were led by those of our race who adhered to the use of all inanimate things, but abstained from every thing wherein is life." This abstinence from animal food was a main item in the discipline of the tragic Orphic Hippolytus, whose asceticism was the object of Theseus' bitter invective in Euripides' drama. In his rage the old king cried out against his own son:

Now vaunt, ay now!--set out your paltry wares
Of lifeless food: ....
.... I warn all men to shun
Such hypocrits as you.

These words, from the mouth of a sadly mistaken father, should not be taken as proof of priggishness on the part of the Orphics, but at least they serve to emphasize the rigor of the Orphic discipline in the matter of abstinence from animal foods. By fasting and purifications, the disciple of Orpheus sought to purge away the evil which he had inherited with his physical nature. Only after a whole lifetime of such purgation could he affirm, in the terminology of the Compagno and Caecilia Secundina tablets,

Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below.

The question naturally suggests itself, whether or not the Orphic ideal made any moral demands on these who were initiated. Since personal purity, even though it was of a ceremonial and ritualistic character, stood at the very center of Orphism, the way was open for the development of morality. The very will to observe its rigid prescriptions was itself a moral attitude. Moreover, there is valuable testimony among ancient writers to show that Orphism did have an elevating effect on the moral life. Pindar, for example, based his Orphic eschatology on moral conditions and assumed that knowledge of the lore of Orphism would help men lead good lives. Aristophanes, who did not hesitate to poke fun at Orphism, paid a serious tribute to in The Frogs when the tragedian Aeschylus said of the poet Orpheus: "He made known to us mystic rites, and to abstain from slaughter." Certainly this last statement had reference to something more than mere abstinence from animal food. At the very least it meant that Orpbic ritual laid stress on the necessity of purification from blood, and at most it meant that Orphism came with a gospel of abstention from murder and of peace on earth. Horace doubtless had much the same thought in mind when he declared that Orpheus not only tamed fierce animals but savage men as well. The author of the speech against Aristogeiton also spoke reverentially of Orpheus "who instituted for us the most holy mysteries and declared that Justice is seated on the throne of God watching all the actions of mankind."

At one point especially the moral influence of Orphism was clear and indubitable: that was in its protest against suicide. Since the body was the soul's place of penance a man had no right to take his own life. If he did he was a fugitive prisoner trying to escape before God had released him. Here Plato found Orphic thought peculiarly congenial to his own. In the Phaedo he represented Socrates as saying, shortly before his death, "There is a doctrine whispered in secret that a man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand. Yet I too believe that the gods are our guardians and that we are a possession of theirs." In view of all this array of literary evidence, certain moral obligations must be added to the ritualistic requirements which characterized the Orphic life.

But participation in rites of initiation and a life of ascetic observance, even, were not sufficient to guarantee full and final salvation for the Orphic. There were certain postmortem rules of conduct to be observed as well. The Orphic tablets bring this out most clearly. They chart the geography of the next world for the initiate, acquaint him with the divine beings who have the determination of future weal or woe, prescribe certain ritual acts to be observed, and instruct him in formularies and confessions to be repeated under certain circumstances.

The Petelia tablet told of a nameless well-spring situated at the left of the House of Hades. This the soul must avoid. Since it was contrasted specifically with the Well of Memory in the following verses, the forbidden spring was probably Lethe, or Forgetfulness. Because the Orphic had spent a lifetime in purification he had no need of forgetfulness. The well-spring of which he must drink was the one flowing from the Lake of Memory. This was the Orphic counterpart of the "well of water springing up unto everlasting life." The Petelia tablet also served to inform the soul what formula to use in asking for a drink from the Well of Memory. It was an avowal of divine origin: "I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven." According to the tablet, this declaration would be sufficient to gain the boon desired from the guardians of the Lake of Memory.

Of themselves they will give you to drink,
From the holy Well-spring,
And thereafter among the other Heroes,
You shall have lordship.

The Eleuthernae tablets represented much the same situation in the lively form of a dialogue between the soul and the well itself.

On the Compagno tablets, certain additional declarations were placed in the mouth of the initiate. Here the soul came as a suppliant to the holy Persephone herself, and the prescribed words were addressed to her as the "Pure Queen of Them Below." As in the other tablets, there was the assertion of divine origin. "I avow me that I am of your blessed race." In addition, however, there was the further declaration of purity attained by the observance of Orphic practices.

Out of the pure I come . . . . .
I have flown out of the sorrowful weary wheel,
I have passed with eager feet to the circle desired.

These, affirmations on the part of the soul were an "open sesame" to immortal bliss for they brought the final assurance, "Happy and Blessed One, you shall be God instead of mortal." In this climactic fashion the postmortem ritual as recorded on the Orphic tablets was completed.

On the basis of Dionysian practice and experience, therefore, Orphism built up an elaborate theological construction with refined and extended ritualistic observances. Faced by the problem of the dual constitution of man, his soul Dionysian, divine and immortal, and his body Titanic, evil and mortal, Orphism found the solution of the antimony in two very different directions. On the one hand there was the prospect of a natural process of purification through a series of physical rebirths in animal or human form. This was a gloomy prospect, however--a remedy that was worse than the disease. On the other hand there was a way of salvation provided by the Orphic cult itself, an extended process of self-discipline ending in a spiritual regeneration that would break, once for all, the chain of successive physical births. It was a long and arduous process beginning with a rite of initiation which marked the formal entrance upon a new way of living. There were prayers to be repeated and sacrifices to be fulfilled. There were sacraments of communion and purification. Following the initiatory rites was the rigid discipline of a life-long asceticism that included purgations, fastings, and freedom from bodily contamination, as well as certain elementary moral requirements. All this, even, was not deemed sufficient. It had to be supplemented by a postmortem ritual. The Orphic imagination pictured the future, charted the next world, and prescribed the formulas and confessions to be repeated under given circumstances. Thus the final goal of ultimate assimilation to deity was to be attained. Thus the initiated, having lived a life of Orphic purity, finally became "God from man."

Admittedly Orphic practice did not offer a new birth experience as a single catastrophic event to be realized in one's lifetime, unless initiation itself is considered that event in a proleptic way. But Orphism did furnish the possibility for a long regenerative process, beginning at initiation and ending after the death of the physical body--a development that eventuated in happy immortality. As an extended process, therefore, rather than as a single event, Orphism fostered the experience of regeneration.

IV

It is certainly pertinent to inquire whether or not the Orphic type of religious experience had real significance in the Graeco-Roman world at the beginning of the Christian era. Of the influence of Orphism in the Greek world during classical times, we have found ample testimony by writers of the highest repute. It is more difficult to trace the influence of Orphism as a distinct religious movement during the Hellenistic and later periods. Still the discovery of the important private Orpheum in the recently excavated Villa Item at Pompeii, leads one to anticipate similar finds elsewhere that may illustrate the distinctive functioning of the Orphic cult in first-century life. If when Pompeii was overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. an Orphic brotherhood was operating under private patronage in this charming villa, similar groups were certainly to be found elsewhere in the Roman world maintaining their peculiar cult practices. Aside from such independent functioning, however, Orphism continued to influence the world through systems other than its own. Like Pythagoreanism in this as in much else, it merged readily with other movements. Its ideas were adopted by popular philosophies and its practices were taken over by popular religions. Orphism became very influential at ancient Eleusis particularly, and with the influx of foreign gods and goddesses into the Greek world it captivated them also. In these secondary forms the Orphic view of life and the Orphic way of living continued to influence thought and action even where Orphic brotherhoods as such had ceased to exist.

There is plenty of direct literary evidence as to the power of Orphic ideas and practices, however institutionalized, during the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman periods. One of the characteres of Theophrastus, for example, was a man who every month repaired to the priests of the Orphic mysteries to partake of their rites. Usually he was accompanied by his wife. But if she was too busy, his children and their nurse went along with him. Perhaps the most notable example of a prominent man who shared the Orphic hope in the first Christian century was Plutarch. Both he and his wife were initiated into an Orphic thiasus. Though he strongly criticized certain Orphic practices, and refused to be frightened by the terrors of their Hell, and depreciated the morbid type of self-examination fostered by their manner of life, yet he and his wife found the Orphic hope a real consolation to themselves in the time of trouble. Strabo and Pausanias, as well as Plutarch, made casual reference to Orphism as a feature of contemporary religion, while Lucian, in his irresponsible manner, reflected Orphic ideas here and there. The Latin poet Statius praised the widow of a certain Lucan for not deifying him as Bacchus and consecrating to him "a deceitful thiasus"--a testimony that the Orphic practice of deifying the dead was not infrequent in the Graeco-Roman world.

Of more concrete significance is the archaeological evidence furnished by sepulchral art and grave inscriptions. According to the Orphic scheme of things, the soul entered upon the status of divinity after death. Among the monuments there are a number--quite apart from royal or imperial memorials--which actually represented the dead as gods. At Guthaeum, for example, a first-century (A.D.) statue representing a youth was found near a sarcophagus. It was obviously intended to be a portrait statue; but a panther stands by the side of the youth, a grape cluster is in his hand, and a vine crown is on his head. Here is a clear memorial of the process of apotheosizing a youth after death and of representing him as the god Dionysus.

Among the grave inscriptions there are parallels to this sculptural representation of a deceased youth as a god. A priest of Thasos dedicated an inscription to his dead wife as "an incarnate goddess," and a man by the name of Lucius consecrated a monument to his child of four years with these words: "To my sweetest child and personal God who hearkens to my prayers." More clearly reminiscent of certain characteristic Orphic ideas is a second-century (A.D.) inscription found in a Sabine village. "The soul is immortal for it came from God. The body is the garment of the soul. Honor the God in me." This was good Orphic doctrine throughout.

Here and there also among grave inscriptions are to be heard the echoes of Orphic ritual. On a tombstone in Cnidus was engraved this affirmation, "I have not drunk of the water of Lethe that ends all things." Immediately one is reminded of the Petelia tablet with its description of a nameless well-spring at the left of the House of Hades with a white cypress standing near--a well-spring by all means to be avoided. There are other inscriptions which recall the cool waters of Memory flowing from the well-spring on the right, from which the parched soul may drink and find new life for itself. Two epitaphs of the third century (A.D.) found at Rome contain prayers that are reminiscent of the Orphic tablets. "May Aidoneus, the king of the dead, give you the cold water" is the petition of one, while the second inscription repeats the same request in the first person, "May he give the cold water to my thirsting soul." Most peculiar of the Orphic inscriptions is one from Abydos, dated roughly at the beginning of our era. It stood originally on the grave of a Lycian Greek buried near the reputed tomb of Osiris. The inscription expressed the conviction that since the tomb of the god was near, the soul of the dead would escape Hades: "Hermes gathers me with the sons of the gods, and I have not drunk the water of Forgetfulness." Here the Arcadian Hermes makes his appearance in the role of Psychopompos, as in classical mythology and the Hermetic literature, and the inscription as a whole memorializes the blending on Egyptian soil of Orphism, Hermetism, the Osiris cult, and local tradition.

Altogether, therefore, the grave monuments of Graeco-Roman times strongly reinforce the literary evidences that Orphic ideas were still very influential in the life of paganism when Christianity first emerged. Hence, among the new-birth experiences of paganism contemporary with early Christianity the extended Orphic process of regeneration must not be ignored.