What it was about the Mysteries of Mithras that attracted conformists
in the middle and lower echelons of the empire’s key structures, we do not
know. On the face of it, Mithraism’s popularity is strange. The Mysteries
were devoted to a foreign god of a dangerous people; indeed, one of the few
facts that the Mysteries divulged to outsiders was that they were “Per-
sian”—and unapologetic about it. Moreover, they were full of esoteric learn-
ing which one might suppose to be of little appeal to such a clientele. It may
be that we should seek the attraction of the Mysteries not so much in the
Mysteries as in the initiates themselves, in the appeal of like to like. One
joined because people one knew, respected, and trusted had joined. Simi-
larly, one invited others to join whom one knew, respected, and trusted. For
recruitment, propagation, and accretion, the network of “good ol’ boys” may
after all be a sufficient model (cf. Stark 1996, 15–21).
Even so, the appeal of the Mysteries is, finally, a rather unscientific
question, for one can never demonstrate that it was one feature rather
than another which attracted people. That people were attracted is a fact,
but as to what feature in particular drew them, they have left us no testi-
monials and are forever beyond the reach of our questionnaires (and even
if they weren’t, we would be deeply sceptical of their response—or at least
we ought to be, if we may retroject into antiquity what Stark has to say
about the unreliability of expressed, after-the-fact reasons for conversion
[1996, 15–21]). However, it is not unlikely that the “unconquered” (invic-
tus) nature of the god was attractive especially to the cult’s military clien-
tele, soldiers being professionally averse to defeat. Mithraism’s notorious
exclusion of women is impossible to factor in. On the one hand, the cult
thereby denied itself half the human race—although it never aspired to
be a universal religion and therefore cannot be judged unsuccessful on
that account. On the other hand, males working in an all-male environment
would routinely expect the exclusion of women, which might thus be seen
not merely as a strategy for success but as a necessary condition. There are
no grounds for construing Mithraism as a particular haven for misogy-
nists, although there are traces in the cult’s ideology of more than classi-
cal antiquity’s routine misogyny (see Gordon 1972a, 42–64).
ORIGINS AND SPREAD OF MITHRAISM
To appreciate that network in operation, we may look at some striking
recent evidence that has come to light in Virunum, the administrative cap-
ital of the province (formerly kingdom) of Noricum. It belongs, however,
to the stage of the cult’s maturity, its steady state rather than its initial
On Becoming a Mithraist 181