present this reproductive imperative as motivated by, or leading to, height-
ened prestige and/or power for the group or as an aspect of a generalized
steady state of constant struggle or agonistic competition with other groups,
would not, I think, be true for a cult that demonstrably stood apart from
the agonistic arena and eschewed all public display of group or individual
prestige. Mithraists displayed their secular accomplishments epigraphi-
cally within the temple; outside the temple, there is not a whisper of their
religious allegiance to reflect credit on their cult.
MITHRAISM AND CONVERSION
It would be a mistake to conclude that Mithraism’s reticence had anything
to do with lack of substance as a religion; that it did not proclaim itself
because it had nothing much to proclaim, no product worth advertising in
the public domain. That view of the cult is indeed held. On the basis of the
known profile of Mithraism’s membership and in reaction against certain
untenable theories about its creed, the cult is sometimes presented as lit-
tle more than a club for Roman “good ol’ boys.” I quote, for example, N. M.
Swerdlow (1991, 62) as an extreme proponent of this view: “a rude frater-
nal cult of soldiers on the frontier,” “perhaps not a serious religion after all.”
Likewise, although much more complex and altogether more plausible,
MacMullen’s model of Mithraism nonetheless centres on the sociability
of a backyard barbecue—with spiritual fixings:
The attraction of the cult lay rather in a broad range of feelings and
experiences: in roasting sacrificial hens and pork ribs on the sidewalk
or somewhere above ground, with one’s friends; descending into the bar-
rel-vaulted dusk of the chapel, into the very presence of the god, for a
long meal with much wine; thereafter (it may be imagined) communal
chanting of a prayer, fortifying thoughts, perhaps some special verses or
paean pronounced by the priest. When and how often the priest spoke
of the god’s gifts to men and drew worshipers in to a knowledge of the
soul’s necessary passage to a higher home, there to abide for all eternity,
we do not know. (MacMullen 1981, 124)Interesting here is the contrast between the sureness about the cult’s social
life and the uncertainty about its mysteries.
Its naïveté aside, such a view can only be maintained by ignoring or dis-
counting some part of the evidence. The archaeological, iconographic, and
even the fragmentary literary record of Mithraism reveals the outlines of
a mature cosmology, theology, and soteriology. I have argued this case else-
where in discussing the form and function of the mithraeum (Beck 1992,
4–7; 1995, 106ff.; 2000, 160–64). Archaeology amply confirms the text of Por-