Tag: Mithras

Images of Perseus with a phrygian hat

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Reading David Ulansey’s Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, I was struck by the following statement on p.26:

However, in two of the earliest surviving pictures of the constellation Perseus — the Salzburg Plaque and Codex Vossianus Leidensis 79 — Perseus is shown wearing a Phrygian cap, demonstrating that this was a frequent attribute of Perseus the constellation as well as of Perseus the hero.[2]

On p.129 is the note:

2. For the Salzburg plaque, see A. Rehm and E. Weiss, “Zur Salzburger Bronzescheibe mit Sternbildern,” Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 6 (1903), 39; for Codex Vossianus Leidensis 79, see Georg Thiele, Antike Himmelsbilder (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898), p. 111.

I’m not sure that two examples, one of them a medieval ms., is evidence that this is a “frequent” way to depict Perseus.*  But I am always curious to check such references.

The first volume appears here:

http://wel.archive.org/details/jahresheftedes06oste

(Isn’t it remarkable how badly Google Books handles series?)  The “Scheibe” is a disc, or platter, rather than a plaque, which leads one to wonder whether Ulansey verified his reference.  Anyway on p.39 there is this a diagram, of a zodiac.  It looks as if we have just a portion of the disc.

It’s not a particularly satisfactory image, I think.  I presume the bottom bit is the reverse of the top.  The article says that the item is of unknown provenance, and came into the Salzburg museum from two unidentified worker.  It probably came from some Roman tombs in the Salzburg area.  The item was published in the same journal, plate 5, in volume 5 (1902), apparently.  This may be found here:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WQ5aAAAAYAAJ

The image is on p.416 of the PDF, although for some reason I cannot export it.  So here are two screen grabs of the top and bottom of the page:

The actual publication is E. Maass, Salzburger Bronzetafel mit Sternbildung, p. 196-7 + Tafel V.  This tells us that the piece came to light in Salzburg, with a thick crust on it, and was sent to the museum in Vienna for cleaning by the conservation staff.  It is the fragment of a large circle, with the edges punched.  The find site was searched for further pieces but without result.

Antike Himmelsbilder can be found here:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=59wsAAAAYAAJ

It’s an interesting work, which really should have had colour images.  On p.111 we get this image:

Certainly this is an image of Perseus — the Gorgon’s head makes that clear.  The manuscript seems to contain the text of Aratus, and this is accompanied by a series of images of the constellations.  The original is in colour, of course.  The ms. is 9th century, copied from a 5th century exemplar, and various copies of it exist.

 So far, then, so good; we have depictions of Perseus without his winged hat.  I must admit, however, that Ulansey’s interpretation of this — he’s trying to show that Mithras is really Perseus — seems a little thin.

* UPDATE 29/5/15: This is a misunderstanding on my part – see the comment kindly added by David Ulansey to this post, clarifying the context – thank you.

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Ulansey on the origins of the Mithraic mysteries

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Into town bright and early, in the hope of avoiding the crowds of shoppers, and to the library to pick up David Ulansey’s Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (1989).  Slightly nervous in case there is a later edition.  The library charged me 5.40 GBP (about $8) for the use of it for 3 weeks.

I’ve not read it yet.  But I have leafed through the opening section where he discusses the history of Mithraic studies in quite sensible terms.

I’m going to read his theory, and see what it looks like.  But I can already see one problem with the book; the footnotes have been banished to the end.  What this means is that it is impossible to read the book while verifying the claims against the notes.  How I curse publishers who do this!

Ulansey’s ideas are fringe.  But he is certainly correct to say that Mithras scholars have been taking a serious interest in possible astronomical links — when all you have is depictions on stone, the presence of the zodiac inevitably suggests there may be some!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A reader kindly purchased a CD of my collection of the Fathers in English (available here).  Since this collections is something that I work on continuously, I don’t keep a stock.  So the order meant that I had to produce one.

I spent most of the morning trying to do so, and having baffling difficulties.  This was my own fault entirely.  What I did was to use Windows 7’s built-in facility to burn CDROM’s. When you pop a blank CDR disk into your drive, Windows pops up a menu asking if you want to burn data to CD.  I tried doing this, and it failed with “not enough space”.  Plainly the facility wasn’t familiar with the 700Mb CD-R format.  But …

What I did not realise was that Windows does not clean up after itself.  It leaves the files to be burned sitting in a temporary directory, and it leaves some kind of lock on the drive.

I learned this the hard way.  I realised that Windows wouldn’t serve my purpose, so I fired up the software I usually use to do this.  And the burn failed, mysteriously, wasting a blank disk.  And the next one did the same.  And then I rebooted, and, on reboot, got a message about files waiting to be burned to disk.  I cleaned these out, tried again, and … failed again.

In the end I got a fresh blank disk, and a small Word file, and did a burn using Windows 7 of that.  It worked perfectly, ran to end, and … reset whatever lock was messing up the other software.

That cost me a morning of my life.  The moral is not to use Windows to burn data CD’s.

After lunch, I came back and worked some more on proofing Ibn Abi Usaibia.  I reached page 750.  Only 200 pages remain.  I subdivided the remaining files into 40-page “projects”, as this gives a reasonable sense of achievement on a regular basis.  Anyone who sets out with a single project and 950 pages to proof is likely to give up, out of sheer exhaustion!  But break it up into smaller chunks, and the inner man is much happier.  Know thyself, as the man said.

I’m still reading Grant’s Greek and Roman authors.  It is a book that would be far better in chronological order.  But I’m still getting value out of reading it, cover to cover.  I realise from this how many classical Greek dramatic authors there are.  I learn how little I know about this literature!  But candidly, I acquired a set of the Loeb editions of the plays of the Latin dramatist Plautus, and I really couldn’t get into them at all.  Eventually I disposed of them.  I don’t have a single volume of ancient plays (or any other, come to that) on my shelves.  I just don’t care for drama, I think.

Last night I also read through Hinnells paper on Cautes and Cautopates.  It was very dry, consisting of solid statistical information.  What I did NOT see in it, however, was any reference whatsoever to the two attendants of Mithras carrying shepherd’s crooks.  This particular legend bubbles under on the web.  Vermaseren claims (in Mithras: the secret god) that some relief shows this; but I am very doubtful.  The image he gives looks dubious to me, and there is no indication of provenance.  It is entirely possible for authors to read into reliefs the things that they expect to see!  The Cumontian authors were terrible in just this respect. But I hope to acquire some PDF’s of Vermaseren’s real scholarly opus, the CIMRM, and so perhaps I can see precisely what there is to support his claims.   I suspect it is a phantom.

A bunch of  pages translated from the German of Methodius, “De Lepra”, has arrived.  This is a relief, because I had begun to wonder if that project was dead.  I’ve had no chance to look at these yet.  The translator also sent me a sample of a translation of the first chunk of embedded Greek.  I’ve passed it over to a trusted friend to check it over.  I don’t know whether the Greek is very good, tho.  My suspicions are roused because it doesn’t make that much sense in English.  The translator subcontracted that bit, and I have no idea whether the person responsible is up to the job.  We will see, in due course.

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Mithras: how scholarship really should be done

Posted on by Roger Pearse

John R. Hinnells begins his paper on Cautes and Cautopates[1] by articulating precisely what he is going to do and how he is going to do it.   It’s a massive step forward from the random theorising of the Cumont era.

Instead of starting with a mess of factoids and assembling them into a theory, Hinnells is determined to start with cold, hard, facts.  He’s not going to waste time on theories about what things might mean — too often presented as facts themselves —  but instead intends to catalogue precisely what is actually known.

Just listen to this!

This study is an attempt to apply to the study of Cautes and Cautopates principles of method in the interpretation of Mithraic iconography for which I have argued previously. I wrote: ‘the proper place to begin a study of Mithraism is with the Roman material, then and only then may one begin to consider which, if any, are the appropriate traditions with which to compare one’s data‘ (1975b: 343). Studies of Mithraism have generally proceeded from the basis of external parallels. In the case of the torchbearers, attention has been given to the search for the Iranian origins of their names. That search is ignored in this article in a deliberate attempt to analyse the Mithraic iconography with as few presuppositions as possible. To that end all previous studies of the iconography are left out of consideration. The article has a clearly defined and limited aim — to collect and analyse the Roman Mithraic iconography of the torchbearers. A subsequent article will attempt to interpret that inconography and will consider the various theories which have been advanced. Here the only subject of discussion is the iconography of the monuments.

Emphasis mine.

I have a feeling that those words could usefully appear on the wall of any scholar tasked with analysing a subject based on scanty and confusing sources.   Any paper assembled on these principles cannot avoid being of permanent value.

Cumont’s work was excellent in its day.  But the analysis of the data was always subjective, and never resolved anything, and never provided a methodology by which anything could be further examined.

By contrast Hinnells shows the way in which scholarship had developed, and had devised methods to ensure objectivity.

Distinguishing between data and deduction, basing oneself conservatively on the data, and ignoring the woolliness of older and less careful scholarship in favour of precise, measurable facts … that is what scholarship means.  Any fool can write an essay that is really merely decorated with facts.

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  1. [1]John R. Hinnells, The iconography of Cautes and Cautopates I: the data, Journal of Mithraic Studies 1 (1976), p.36-67 plus plates.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A dull Saturday morning, and I went into town and visited the local library, in search of my book order from Tuesday.  On entering my ears were assailed with music, from some device stationed on the enquiries desk, and there were stalls filling the main library area.  Apparently the library had been turned into a tatty-looking craft fair for the day.  Want to read and study?  Well, tough.

The book I ordered had arrived.  I’d ordered it online, and given my email address so that they could tell me if it had arrived, but I never got an email.  Possibly it arrived yesterday, and I simply didn’t know?

Back home with it, and I found that some spotty-faced youth had taken his pencil to it, and filled it with underlinings and marginal notes and symbols, evidently in preparation for some college essay.  But who wants their attention distracted by that when reading?  So I had to spend half an hour with the rubber.

The book, of course, is Vermaseren’s Mithras, the secret god, 1963.  It’s an interesting but infuriating book from so many points of view, because the great man didn’t feel the need for any footnotes.  Even the sources for illustrations of monuments are not identified.  The book starts as follows:

In Rome, about A.D. 400, a number of Christians, armed with axes, forced their way into a Mithraic temple on the Aventine, where they smashed the sculptures and cut gaping holes in the paintings. Once the persecuted, they were now the persecutors, and to their ever-growing numbers Mithras and his followers were regarded as deadly rivals.

What a vivid picture!

But there are no footnotes.  So … on what is this based?  Depressingly, this is fiction.  Vermaseren is talking about the Mithraeum of Santa Prica, which he excavated.  In the scholarly publication he identifies damage, and speculates that it might have been done at the fall of paganism by Christians.  Well, so indeed it might; but we have no actual evidence for this, and surely we should not state as fact that which is only a theory?  But in this popular version, the attack has become a fact.

Still, Vermaseren really did have all the data about Mithras at his fingertips, although the Cumontian theory blinded him as to its real impact.  So the book is bound to contain a great deal of hard data, interwoven with fancy like this.  I shall be reading it over the weekend, I think!

Meanwhile I still have a great deal to do.  I need to finish up a page on the works of Hero of Alexandria, and write another on the manuscript tradition of his artillery manuals.  Then I need to get back to Methodius and the Russian  version that I acquired yesterday, and translate some of that.

I’m becoming rather disappointed with progress on the translation from German of Methodius De lepra.  Since last week, only a handful of lines have been done, and those only after prompting.  Total time spent on those can only have been 10 minutes or so.  The translator is not re-reading what he writes, which means that some of the sentences are gibberish.  In some cases the gibberish reflects an Old Testament quotation, and becomes clear if you look it up in one of the online English translations of the bible.  The PDF that I gave the man signals biblical references at the foot of each page, but, although in difficulty, he doesn’t trouble to look them up — I have to do that.  When I do, and send back a file with comments, I get no response.   We’ll see.  But I think this is clearly going pear-shaped.  I’ve had to chase twice now, in a total of 6 pages, and I’m tired of it.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still proofing the OCR of the English translation of Ibn Abi Usaibia, and reached p.639 last night.

The translation of Methodius De lepra is creeping forward.  I prompted the translator last night, and another couple of (short) pages arrived this morning, and I have just annotated them and sent them back.  These pages from the German need to be completed by a translation of a Greek fragment.  The translator has subcontracted that bit out, so it will need to be checked.  It will be interesting to see what that is like.

But great joy — a draft translation of John the Lydian’s section on December arrived this morning.  And in fact I had no comments on it, so it is pretty much done, and all I shall have to do is pay for it and upload it.

The translator of John also sent me a comment on the “cline” issue for the Sol Serapis post.

He’s also been working on the Origen Homilies on Ezechiel book, which I do hope we will manage to get out of the door sometime.  Most of it is done, and I think both of us will be glad to draw a line under it.

Meanwhile I’ve heard nothing from Chicago University since I accepted their price for digitising Loviagin’s Russian version of Methodius.  It’s hard to believe that any institution takes a week to answer an email.  I hesitate to nag them!

One of those winter viruses laid its cold hand on me at the weekend, so I’ve been a little under the weather since.  This morning the sun came out, and, feeling rather more normal, I drove up to Cambridge and visited the university library.  I think I got the very last free car parking space there!

It’s been a while since I’ve been — my pass ran out in June.  They will only issue me a pass for 6 months, which is tiresome.  There’s some noodle in the library administration with the fidgets — every time I turn up and reapply for another 6 months, there is some extra demand for evidence of this or that or the other.  But I got through the assault course OK.

I went to have a look at Vermaseren’s Mithras: the secret god.  I’ve only ever seen extracts of this, and I was looking to see whether he gave any sources for some of the line-drawings of reliefs.  And … he doesn’t!  I have a copy on order by ILL from my local library, so I will look at this some more then.  Curiously Cambridge did not have the original Dutch version of the book, nor the German translation.

Another item that I went to look for was the German original of Manfred Clauss’ The Roman cult of Mithras.  This was indeed present, but I couldn’t make much of it — I think the virus was trying to make a comeback at that point and my head grew fuzzy.

But what I did find was Reinhold Merkelbach’s Mithras; and I also found next to it the two volumes of Mithraic Studies edited by John R. Hinnells, Turcan’s book, and a few other items.  I was impressed with Merkelbach’s book — it looked very sound.  He surveys the data about Persian Mithra, and then starts a new section for Roman Mithras and states plainly that the latter was a new cult, using systematically elements borrowed from the Iranian mythology.  That seems to me to hit the nail on the head.

Finally, a bit of vanity: I went to the catalogue and searched for my own name, to see if the Eusebius book had been added to the library.  And it had!  Off I went, to find it next to all the other editions and translations of Patristic literature, but sadly minus its beautiful dustjacket.  I felt quite indignant for a moment at the loss of what had cost me so much time and labour; but then they do the same with all their books.  Nice to see it there, anyway.

I think I shall spend some time on the sofa now.  It’s been a busy day!

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Notes from the preface to the 3rd edition (1913) of Cumont’s “The mysteries of Mithras”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Until this evening I was not aware that Cumont’s The mysteries of Mithras existed in a 3rd French edition, published 10 years after the English translation of the 2nd edition.  But it may be found on Archive.org, and the note to the 3rd edition on p.xiii contains a couple of interesting remarks.

In response to the wish expressed by some correspondents, we have, as in the second German edition, added some concise notes which will permit the reader to verify  quickly the evidence on which our assertions are based.  These “texts and monuments” will be found reproduced in our editiomaior.   Those which have been found or reported since 1900 have been briefly listed in the appendix, as far as they have become known to us.  This small volume will serve thus to some degree as a supplement to our Mithraic Corpus.  For the same reason we have introduced some new illustrations of statues or bas-reliefs, which have come to light recently.  The index has been brought up to date and a good number of new names have been added to it.

The lack of footnotes to some pretty bold statements is one of the frustrations of the English edition; the French version was better equipped, but it will be interesting to see how useful the 3rd edition was from this point of view.

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Finding Cumont’s “Textes et Monuments” online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

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 1: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Textes_et_monuments_figur%C3%A9s_relatifs_au.html?id=dYnXAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

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.

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How do we know that Mithras’ sidekicks were called “Cautes” and “Cautopates”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Every temple of Mithras had a bas-relief at one end depicting Mithras killing the bull.  On either side stand two figures carrying torches, one with the flame pointing up, the other with it pointing down.  Every textbook refers to these as “Cautes” and “Cautopates”, although no literary text mentions either.

So how do we know that these were their names?  And which is which?

In Cumont’s Textes et Monumentes, vol. 1, p.207 we find the following statement about the torch-bearers or dadophores.  (The reader should bear in mind that in vol. 2, for some curious reason, Cumont gave the inscriptions first, with numerals; and then the monuments, with fresh numbers; and that a relief or statue with an inscription would be listed twice).

By a happy accident we know the barbarous names that the two dadophores bore in Mithraic ritual.  Two pairs of statues accompanied with inscriptions have recently come to light, and demonstrate that the being with the raised torch is named Cautes and the one with the lowered torch is named Cautopates.[5]  Elsewhere the statues themselves have not been preserved, but the pedestals on which they stood have survived, grouped in pairs, and on one is engraved the dedication Caute or Cauti and on the other Cautipati. [6]

The footnotes:

5) Monument 248 c, discovered in 1851, which bears the inscription D. I. M. Cautopati, was supposed at this period by Dieffenbach and by Ring to indicate that the dadophor with the lowered torch was called Cautopates, but that Cautes and Cautopates were synonymous.  New discoveries permit us to rectify this mistake.  Cautes and Cautopates are the two dadophores at Sarmizegetusa: mon. 140 (inscr. 259); at Heddernheim: mon. 253 i, 2, 4 (inscr. 441 b, c).

6) Aquileia: inscr. 165 a, b; Aquincum: mon. 213 d, inscr. 329, 330 — Similarly in the temple recently discovered at Pettau by Gurlitt, an altar has been brought to light with the dedication Cauti, another with Cautopati. — Were there two dedications to Caute at Heddernheim?  Cf. Lehner, Korrespondbl. Westd. Zeitsch., XVII, no. 89, p.129 — The complete list of inscriptions mentioning these deities is given in vol. 2, p. 533, col. a. — The only forms that are encountered are Caute or Cauti or Cautopati or Kautopati.  The dative Cauto and therefore the nominative Cautus does not exist (inscr. 165 a, note). — The abbreviation C. P. for Cautopati, does not prove that we should decompose this name into two words.  Rather it serves to distinguish it from Caute, for which the abbreviation is a simple C. (inscr. 371, 434).

That is a lot of material packed into a couple of lines and a couple of footnotes; but Cumont was a great man, which is why his work in some respects has yet to be superceded, 110 years later.  Let’s look at some of these references.

Sarmizegetusa

In vol. 2, p.283-4, under monument 140 we find these images of statues of the two figures, taken from the Mithraeum at Sarmizegetusa (see.p.280 f.) or Varhély (Gréditchjé) in Hungary in 1881-3.  Happily for us, they have inscriptions on the base.

These are described as follows:

Mithraic dadophores, in the usual costume and pose.  They carry in their right hands, one a lowered torch, the other a raised torch, but both are broken … in the left hand the first carries a scorpion, the second the head of a bull.  On the bases are inscriptions 259.

The inscriptions 259 can be found on p.135 of the same volume, where they are listed as CIL III 7922.

a) Cautopati sac(rum) | Synethus adiu[t(or)] | tabul(arii)  | v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito)

b) . . . . v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito)

That identifies “Cautopates” as the object of the votive offering on the first statue-altar.

Heddernheim

Monument 253 is in vol. 2, p.372, and covers the third Mithraeum found at Heddernheim, in 1887.  There is a mistake in Cumont’s note in vol. 1; it should be item j, not i, that is referenced.  This is the stela, carved on three sides.  Cumont gives fig. 298, 290 and 291, from photographs:

Inscription 441 is vol. 2, p.155-6, transcribing the above.  On the front:

D(eo) inv(icto) Mit(hrae) | Senilius Car|antinus | c(ivis) Mediom(atricus) | v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) l(aetus) m(erito) | Sive Cracissius.

Under a representation of Mithras born from a rock are the words:

Petram g[e]ne[t]ricem.

On the right-hand side, under the torchbearer holding a torch up:

Caute.

Under the person on an urn:

Oceanus.

On the left-hand side, under the torchbearer holding a torch pointing down:

Caut(o)p(ati).

Under the eagle on a sphere:

Celum.

That seems fairly final: we have the image, and a label underneath.

An afterthought: inscription 442, Friedberg, (mon. 248) reads “D(eo) I(nvicto) M(ithrae) | Cautopati” which would seem to suggest that Cautopates (and therefore Cautes also) was an aspect of Mithras himself.

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An inscription dedicated to “Sol Serapis”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

You can learn quite a lot from looking at non-English versions of Wikipedia.

For instance the German Mithras article is quite a bit superior to the English one in several respects, handling the Mithra-Mithras dichotomy well.  It lacks the heavy referencing that I added to the English one; but since all that work did not save the article from deliberate poisoning by a troll, it has to be asked whether it was a good idea anyway.

Looking around these articles, I am struck by the number of images of tauroctonies which are language-specific.  There were some quite useful images of various sorts.

But quite accidentally, I came across something else.  We’re all familiar with “Soli Invicto Mithrae” in inscriptions — “to the unconquered sun Mithras”.  But did anyone know that Serapis is also treated as a sun-god?  This image says so:

 

Apparently (for this is Wikipedia, remember — the encyclopedia edited by anybody) this is CIL XIII, 8246.  The text is:

SOLI SERAPI
CVM SVA CLINE
IN H(onorem) D(omus) D(ivinae)
DEXTRINIA IUSTA
L(uci) DEXTRINI IUSTI
FILIA AGGRIPP(inensis) D(ono) D(edit)

To Sol Serapis
And his  throne
In honour of the imperial house,
Dextrina Justa,
Daughter of L. Dextrinus Justus, from Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne), gives (this) as a gift.

It indicates how “sol” as a descriptive term has very little distinguishing power, between one deity and another.

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