I’ve been looking at another story about Mithras originating with Franz Cumont. In the process, I find that the PDF’s I have of his master-work, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, 2 vols, 1899- are not that good where the pictures are concerned.
A Google Books search reveals nothing. But I suspect this is the well-known problem that results returned are different, depending on whether you are in the US or in the Outer Darkness.
On Archive.org, there is only volume 2, in a copy with rather poor images — the one I already have. Where I got the similarly poor volume 1 I don’t know. Both look as if they came from the Microsoft-digitised books donated to Archive.org when they decided not to go down that route after all.
In Europeana a search for “Cumont” brings up various letters to Cumont, but none of his works.
In the end, by a circuitous route, I get these links to volumes scanned at the University of Michigan in 2010:
Volume 2: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jUAKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PP5
Both are better than the images that I was trying to use on Saturday.
I’ve also been looking at his Les mystères de Mithra, whose English translation has been so fruitful in creating urban legends. This book was a separate publication of the “conclusions” which appeared in volume 1 of Textes et Monuments. This appeared in 1900. But I wasn’t aware that Cumont revised this material several times. A second edition appeared in 1902, which was translated into English by T. McCormack in 1903, and a third edition appeared in 1913.
2nd: http://books.google.com/books?id=O0LwEqKXgxsC
3rd: http://www.archive.org/details/lesmystresdemi00cumo
I suspect that consulting the various editions may prove profitable.
Roger,
You can download the two volumes of “Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra” from:
http://ignca.nic.in/asp/searchResults.asp?searchTerm=cumont&searchOption=au
Best regards, Jose
Now *that* is a useful site! And you can get other books there too! Thank you!