myriad private religious associations, of the traditional gods, the dendrophori
attached to the cult of Cybele, the pastophoriof Isis, offered something generically
similar. What distinguished the “universal” private cults was the degree to which they
were able to construct a distinctive – not alternative – religious identity for their
worshipers. Imaginative essays in such construction are familiar from Catullus’ Attis
poem (Carmen63) or the final book of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses(11), but we
have nothing similar for Mithras. There are no Mithraic stelaeadvertising the god’s
wonders, no aretalogies, no famous oracles. A sketch of a distinctively Mithraic
identity has to be pieced together from scraps of incoherent information. This sec-
tion, and the three following, are intended as contributions toward such a sketch.
The focus of each mithraeumwas the cult image. This image could be simple or
complex. The simple form, in relief or statuary, is the plain tauroctony: the god killing
the bull in a cave, flanked by the torchbearers Cautes and Cautopates, and with the
dog, snake, scorpion, raven, Sun, and Moon in standard places. Although an action
is taking place, the sole narrative hint is the ear(s) of grain emerging from the dying
bull’s tail. Otherwise Mithras is disengaged from the implied sequence of actions.
The simple tauroctony thus takes on the function of a theophany, making the god
available for contemplation. The complex form, by contrast, highlights narrativity.
It is divided into three main phases: (1) the birth of Mithras from the bare rock,
and its antecedents; (2) the heroic performance: the “water miracle,” the manifesta-
tion of the bull from the Moon, and its pursuit by Mithras, a hunt that turns into
a sacrifice; (3) the sequel: the enlistment of the Sun (Sol), the shared feast, Mithras
ascending to heaven over the Ocean in Sol’s chariot. This complex form is to be
understood as an elaborate commentary upon the central scene of sacrifice, partly
verbal-descriptive but mainly as the reference point of “imitative ritual.” The narrat-
ive represents the bull’s death as the First Sacrifice, followed by the First Meal, the
bull’s flesh eaten by Mithras and Sol, accompanied by unmixed wine. Mithraic ritual
meals commemorated this primal sacrifice; the charter function is dramatized by those
cult reliefs, which could be spun round on their axis to reveal the First Meal on the
reverse. The cult thus subverted the usual Greco-Roman rationale of sacrifice as a
gift for the gods. Other elements of the narrative commentary, for example the “enlist-
ment of Sol” (to which I return below), provided a charter for initiation; others,
such as Mithras carrying the bull, provided the basis for ethical self-modeling and
so one means of personal identification with the heroically steadfast god. Another
index of the density of the relation between cult image and ritual performance is
the habit of making dedications in the mithraeumto inanimate entities from the
narrative, for example Fonti perenni, to the Never-failing Stream (CIL3.15184^2 4,
10462) and Petrae genetrici, to the Generative Rock (e.g. CIL5.8657 =AE1985,
454; CIL3.4424; ILS4244), as though they were themselves divine and could
hear, like the nymphs and healing divinities to whom such dedications are more
normally made.
In addition to the inscription of ritual practice into the code of myth, the cult of
Mithras modeled the ritual lives of its initiates in a highly original manner by creat-
ing a set of hierarchically arranged grades of membership, from lowest to highest,
in Latin: Corax(Raven), Nymphus(male bride), Miles(Soldier), Leo(Lion), Perses
398 Richard Gordon