The Enigmatic End of the Mysteries of Mithras
How the last great god of the Mediterranean fell
Roman Mithraism — popularly called the Cult of Mithras or Mysteries of Mithras — remains one of the least understood religions in all of late antiquity. Known only from outside accounts and the artifacts and architecture of the mithraea temples, with any internal religious documents hidden or destroyed many centuries ago, guesswork sits at the center of all Mithraic studies. The internal mechanics of the religion — of which several hundred associated sites have been discovered — are one mystery. Its dramatic disappearance during the twilight years of the Roman Empire are another. Most often, Mithraism is depicted as an existential religious rival to the burgeoning Christian order, eventually buckling under the weight of the Christian expansion and taking the last vestiges of Roman paganism down with it. Now, however, that story is itself buckling under the weight of the evidence.
First emerging in the ranks of the Roman army as a secretive cult guiding initiates to some great religious secret, the Mithraic Mysteries soon became one of the most prominent forces in late Roman religion. Though the Romans themselves seem to have seen it as a direct import from the Zoroastrians of Parthia and their old god of light and contracts, Mithra, himself connected with the…
