phyry (Antr. nymph.6) to the effect that the mithraeum is a cavelike struc-
ture because it is intended as a “model of the universe” and because the
Mithraists there induct their initiates into the mystery of the soul’s descent
into and exit from the world of mortality (see below). The details of the cos-
mic model given by Porphyry (Antr. nymph.24) are found exemplified in the
excavated mithraea. It is far from unsophisticated. Yet both the cosmology
and, even more, the soteriological intent and function of the mithraeum are
frequently ignored. Neither L. Michael White (1990, 59) nor Manfred Clauss
(1990, 51–70), for example, mentions more than the basic datum, mith-
raeum=cave. Why the mithraeum should be so designed and how that
design was worked out in detail appear to be non-questions, despite extant
evidence, literary and archaeological, to answer both. These are strange
silences in these works, the first of which explores the sacred spaces of
ancient religions, while the second purports to offer a comprehensive
description of the cult in question.
Instead, let me touch briefly on Mithraic ethics, because they suggest
that in becoming a Mithraist one might indeed undergo a change of life,
which bears all the hallmarks of a conversion. This is as good a way as any
of showing that the cultists were involved in a profoundly religious enter-
prise. I need cite only a single text of Porphyry and two graffiti from sep-
arate mithraea.
- Porphyry tells us that the proper medium of ablution for Mithraic Lions
was honey (since honey is liquid yet fiery) and that the Lions had their
hands washed with it on initiation with the instruction to “keep them
pure from everything distressing, harmful, and loathsome” (Antr. nymph.
15, trans. Arethusa). - A well-known painted text in the Sa. Prisca Mithraeum pleads “receive,
Father, receive, Holy One, the incense-burning Lions, through whom
we offer incense and through whom we ourselves are consumed” (Ver-
maseren and Van Essen 1965, 224, lines 16f., Wall K2, lower layer). - A graffito in the Dura Europos Mithraeum invokes the “fiery breath
which for magi too is the ablution of the holy” (Rostovtzeff et al. 1939,
127, no. 865). Together, these three testimonies speak of induction into
a life of service to the deity and one’s fellow initiates, characterized by
a special purity, both ritual and moral, and sanctioned by a highly idio-
syncratic sacramental symbolism of fire, liquid, and breath. If this isn’t
conversion in the fullest sense, I don’t know what is.
Whether or not real-life Mithraists behaved any differently as a conse-
quence of their initiation, or whether they fully understood and entered
wholeheartedly into the world of their mystery, is immaterial. No doubt
On Becoming a Mithraist 179