Chapter 23. The Roman Mysteries of Mithras II: Seven Grades, Soldiers, Merchants and the Politics of a Brotherhood

This chapter turns from images to people: initiation, the seven ranks, the meal, the exclusion of women, the charges of bloodshed, and who joined. The library’s sources agree that Mithraism was a small, secret, male, hierarchical brotherhood that was especially strong in the army and the imperial service. They disagree over why. Widengren sees the inheritance of Iranian warrior societies. Nock describes private religion flourishing alongside a conservative official calendar. Gordon’s 1972 article signals a sociological approach, and more speculative writers see the cult as a tool of loyalty or of male libido.

Entering the cave: oath, ordeal and brand

A Florence papyrus preserves an initiate’s oath sworn “in the name of the god, who has divided the earth from the heavens, light from darkness… life from death”. The candidate swears secrecy to “the most God-fearing Father Serapion” and his “most beloved Brethren”, and the same text requires branding on both hands. The Capua paintings show a naked, blindfolded novice pushed forward by a mystagogus, kneeling before a priest with a sword, and lying on the ground “as if dead” [Vermaseren, Mithras the Secret God, #38300, ch. 13 “Initiation into the Mysteries”]. A fourth-century polemical text quoted by Vermaseren describes initiates “thrown across pits full of water” with their hands tied by chicken guts, until a man with a sword cuts the bonds and calls himself liberator. Later accounts (Nonnus, Cosmas of Jerusalem with “eighty tests”) grow more extreme, and Vermaseren judges that their authors “had no very profound knowledge of the true nature of these proceedings” [#38300, ch. 13]. Tertullian’s summary, in Geden’s translation, says that Mithras sets “the sign of Mithra on their foreheads, commemorates an offering of bread, introduces a mock resurrection, and with the sword opens the way to the crown” [Geden, Select Passages Illustrating Mithraism, #38272, Tertullian, De praescr. 40].

At the soldier’s initiation, Tertullian says, a wreath offered on the point of a sword had to be pushed off the head “with the words that Mithras alone is his wreath. And after that he is never garlanded again”, and by this sign he “is recognised as a soldier of Mithras” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 14, quoting De corona 15]. Widengren notes that the oath, like a Roman recruit’s, was a sacramentum and the worship a sancta militia [Widengren, The Mithraic Mysteries in the Greco-Roman World, #38302, §5].

The seven grades

Jerome lists seven grades, and the Ostia mosaics and Santa Prisca paintings confirm them, each “under the protection” (tutela) of a planet. Vermaseren stresses that the ladder was steep: “The average follower of Mithras almost certainly did not advance to a higher grade”, whether for lack of dedication, education or funds [#38300, ch. 14 “The Seven Grades of Initiation”].

Porphyry divides the grades into “attendants” (the three lowest) and “participants”; Widengren reads this as “an original dual organization of high antiquity” [#38302, n. 122]. In Rome the pater patrum Nonius Victor Olympius was still initiating men in 357-362 [#38300, chs. 14-15].

The grades also had a cosmic meaning. Celsus, as quoted by Origen, describes “a ladder with seven gates and at its top an eighth gate”, of lead, tin, bronze, iron, alloy, silver and gold, assigned to Kronos, Aphrodite, Zeus, Hermes, Ares, the Moon and the Sun. Barry quotes the passage and connects it with the “Seven Deathless Lords of the Universe” of the Mithras Liturgy in Dieterich’s Paris papyrus [Barry, The Greek Qabalah, #64708, ch. on vowels and planets; Widengren, #38302, n. 124]. Vermaseren shows the same scheme in floors: the Ostia “mosaic of seven gates”, the Seven Spheres Mithraeum, Danube reliefs “with seven cypresses (sun-trees) alternating with seven daggers”, and the seven steps up to the Dura niche. Through these gates “the soul descended at birth and through which it returned after death” [#38300, ch. 15 “Constellations and the Elements”].

The sacred meal

After the ordeals came the banquet, modelled on the meal of Sol and Mithras. On the Konjic relief “the Raven and Lion, both wearing the masks of their grade, serve food and drink”. At Santa Prisca (c. AD 220) Sol and Mithras recline while a Raven offers a plate and eight Lions bring “bread and a mixing-bowl, a cock and a bundle of tapers”. At Dura “the charges for meat and wine” head the community’s accounts scratched on the walls. Justin says the elements were bread and a cup of water accompanied by formulas. Vermaseren notes that the Santa Prisca meal painting “suffered most at the hands of the Christian iconoclasts at the end of the fourth century”, because Tertullian had called it a “devilish imitation of the Eucharist” [#38300, ch. 10 §vi, pp. 99-103].

Women excluded; “hyenas”; human sacrifice

The cult was male only. Porphyry, in “an obscure passage” of De abstinentia, says initiates were called lions “and the women hyenas”, but Vermaseren warns that the text “is apparently corrupt” and that no hyena grade appears anywhere else. A tomb at Oea (near Tripoli) of Aelius Magnus leo and Aelia Arisuth lea may be the “unique example” of a woman of grade. Vermaseren links the exclusion to an old male “clan” ideal. [#38300, ch. 16 “Women and the Mithraic Cult”]. Campos Méndez traces the exclusion to Iranian warrior societies “limited exclusively to men” [Campos Méndez, El Culto del Dios Mithra, #60243, ch. III “Mithra y el estamento guerrero”]. Nock observes that the absence of women deprived the cult of “the sex more interested in religious practices of any and every kind” [Nock, The Development of Paganism in the Roman Empire, #60218, CAH XII ch. 12 §IV].

The charge of human sacrifice rests on Lampridius’ life of Commodus. Widengren quotes it in full: Sacra Mithriaca homicidio vero polluit, cum illic aliquid ad speciem timoris vel dici vel fingi soleat (“he polluted the Mithraic rites with real murder, whereas there something is customarily said or feigned to produce an appearance of terror”) [Widengren, #38302, n. 101]. Socrates the church historian, translated by Geden, says that at Alexandria “the Greeks of old used to celebrate Mithraic rites and perform human sacrifice”. Geden adds that “it is not implied of course that human sacrifice was countenanced by the Mithraic ritual” [Geden, #38272]. Vermaseren reports that Massalsky accused Julian of human sacrifice on the evidence of a bone-filled sarcophagus at the Fertőrákos Mithraeum, and describes a Saarburg skeleton with chained wrists lying on a smashed tauroctony; he explains these as later burials and a revenge killing meant to pollute the shrine. He concludes that a simulated killing “may be a relic of ritual human sacrifice, which may have taken place in the East”, and that such charges were the standard weapon against rival cults [#38300, ch. 17 “Human Sacrifice”].

Who were the initiates?

Vermaseren’s answer is the army first: “wherever the Romans planted the standards, Mithras and his cult followed”. M. Valerius Maximianus of Poetovio dedicated altars as legionary commander at Apulum and Lambaesis. “Soldiers and traders carried Mithraism to the furthest borders”. Customs officers at Poetovio, provincial governors, imperial freedmen and slaves appear on the dedications, and at Sarmizegetusa a treasury deputy, two imperial freedmen and the town augur dedicated side by side [#38300, chs. 4-5, 7]. Mitra. Il Signore delle Grotte says the followers were mostly “imperial functionaries of modest background and soldiers of the frontier zones, such as the Rhine, the Danube or Hadrian’s Wall”. Because the communities were made up largely “of imperial freedmen or soldiers”, it argues, “surveillance over what happened inside the caves was superfluous, since they exercised self-control themselves”. Two imperial freedmen dedicated a shrine around AD 200-202 “for the prosperity of the emperor and the loyal praetorian cohorts” [Mitra. Il Signore delle Grotte, #60165, ch. on the Roman mysteries]. Widengren adds merchants and slaves “of oriental origin”, notes the “remarkable exception of Greece”, and estimates no more than 5,000-10,000 Mithraists in Rome. A single congregation had at most “100 members… which would correspond exactly with the ancient Iranian principle of military organization” [#38302, §§6-7].

The politics of the brotherhood

The sources describe the cult’s political side in several ways. Vermaseren follows the imperial patronage: a sacerdos invicti Mithrae domus Augustanae at court, Commodus’ initiation, a Mithraeum in the Baths of Caracalla, and the Carnuntum altar of AD 308 to Mithras fautor imperii sui. Emperor and god shared titles: invictus, comes, conservator [#38300, ch. 5 “The Means of Propaganda”]. Widengren quotes Cumont: the militia of the mysteries is “nothing but this civic morality considered from the religious point of view. Loyalism then merged with piety”. Widengren adds that the communities reproduced “the warlike societies or feudal followings in Iran… among the Parthians” [#38302, conclusion].

Nock warns against overstatement. The official army calendar, the Feriale Duranum, lists only old Roman festivals and imperial anniversaries, and “Mithras had none”. He finds no evidence that this reflected “any official desire to see the soldiers worshipping the gods listed in it rather than other gods”. Although Mithras was “never officially received”, he enjoyed “exalted patronage and full approval”. On the evidence of soldiers’ private dedications, “if there was any wish to condition the soldiers… its success was decidedly limited”. In the fourth century troops showed “relative indifference” to religious change, and Constantine could say “My Rome is Sardica” [Nock, The Roman Army and the Roman Religious Year, #60166, §§iii-v]. In his Cambridge Ancient History chapter Nock calls the cult “always private”, “without hierarchy or quindecimviral control”, and says: “Mithras was the god who, beyond all others, mattered most to the believer” [Nock, #60218, §IV].

Writers outside the academic mainstream give sharper readings. The Book of Yew (Samhain 2016) traces the cult from the Danube to the Rhine “at Bonn and Treves”. It says that “MITHRAS was the main religion of the Roman Empire hierarchy & military”. It compares the institution to “modern Freemasonry” and proposes a “start point” for a hypothetical “Pictish-Mithraism” at a Severan-period Roman army site in Pictland [The Book of Yew, #50893]. Basil Chulev calls the tauroctony “the Mitraic most potent hidden symbolism, and the actual ‘aphrodisiac’ buildup for the male libido of every army, Roman comprised”. He ties the cult to “loyalty to the Roman empire” and derives it from the Macedonian Peninsula [Chulev, The Continuity Paradigm within the Mysteries of Mitra, #38297, nn. 23-26].

For the academic sociology, Ries’ bibliography lists R. L. Gordon, “Mithraism and Roman Society” (Religion 2, 1972), V. J. Walters, The Cult of Mithras in the Roman Provinces of Gaul (1974), and G. Ristow, Mithras im römischen Köln (1974) [Ries, Il Culto di Mithra, #38276, bibliography]. These works study the cult through the social position of its members rather than through Iranian doctrine.

Key points

• Initiation meant a secret oath (sacramentum), ordeals (Capua), branding and, for the Miles, refusing the crown, declaring “that Mithras alone is his wreath” (Tertullian, De corona 15).
• Seven grades stood under seven planets, from Corax to Pater; most followers never rose far (Vermaseren). Celsus’ seven-gate ladder links the grades to the soul’s ascent (Barry, Widengren).
• The meal, served by masked Ravens and Lions, imitated the banquet of Sol and Mithras; Christians defaced the Santa Prisca meal as a “devilish imitation” of the Eucharist.
• Women were excluded; the “hyenas” text is corrupt and the Oea tomb a possible exception. Campos Méndez traces the exclusion to male Iranian warrior bands.
• The Historia Augusta’s murder charge against Commodus and Massalsky’s against Julian are reported; Geden and Vermaseren treat ritual killing as simulated or polemical.
• Members were soldiers, imperial freedmen and slaves, officials and merchants on the Danube, Rhine and Hadrian’s Wall, in congregations of at most about 100 (Widengren).
• Political readings range from imperial loyalism (Vermaseren; Cumont via Widengren) and private cult beside a conservative army calendar (Nock) to sociology (Gordon) and speculation (Book of Yew, Chulev).