to forget the fact. But the propagation of this idea, especially in the west, might have been slow and difficult without the driving force supplied by the political articles of the creed. Ahura-Mazda, it was believed, was not only the lawful ruler of the universe, but the protector of legitimate monarchy amongst men; and the token of his grace was the Hvareno, a kind of aureole or effulgence transmitted from the light invisible, which encircled the head of those kings who ruled by right divine. Now the dispenser of AhuraMazda's grace was none other than Mithras, the most glorious of his creatures and his victorious champion in the visible world-the borderland of light and darkness vainly attacked by the hosts of Ahriman. We do not know at what date this conception of the function of Mithras took shape; it may be significant that, whilst Ahura-Mazda alone appears in the inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, Mithras is coupled with him in those of Artaxerxes Mnemon and his successors. At any rate, his eminent position may be inferred from the number of Persian names-of which the most familiar is Mithradates-which betoken the worship of Mithras by their bearers, and the fact that he is the only Persian divinity named by contemporary Greek authors.† * The fall of the Empire of Darius, far from checking the progress of Mithras-worship, gave a fresh impulse to its diffusion; for amongst the mushroom dynasties which sprang from the ruins of Alexander's Empire the cult of a divinity whose favour could turn a military adventurer into a King by right divine' was naturally popular. Mithradates Eupator, the most formidable antagonist overcome by Rome in the last century of the Republic, was but one amongst many who bore that significant name; a visible token of the alliance between Mithras and the Asiatic dynasties remains to this day in the rock-sculptures of Nemrud-Dagh, where we see Antiochus I of Commagene, clad in Persian costume and wearing the tiara, clasping the right hand of Mithras, his protector and ally; and the researches of Rostowzew The word 'Hvareno' (v. supra) enters into the composition of such Persian names as that which the Greeks wrote 'Pharnabazus.' Herodotus (i, 131) makes the curious mistake of taking Mirpа as a feminine. (to which further allusion will be made) have shown that Mithraism was adopted as the official creed by the wealthy Scythian princes of the South-Russian steppe. The westward advance of Mithraism brought it into immediate contact with the Greek world. Hellas itself, as will be seen in the sequel, Mithras was never destined to conquer; and the kingdoms whose rulers professed the creed were not, like those of Antioch or Pergamon, purely or at any rate mainly Hellenic, but were based on a compromise between eastern and western civilisation, in which the former element was the stronger. In the royal line of Commagene the names of Antiochus and Mithradates alternate; but although, in the inscription of Nemrud-Dagh, Antiochus I is careful to call himself Φιλορωμαῖος καὶ Φιλέλλην, and to declare that the images which he has set up are fashioned according to the ancient tradition handed down by Persians and Greeks, the blessed root whence my race is sprung,' there can be small doubt that the Gods of his worship, although they bear the titles Zeus-Oromasdes,' 'ApolloMithras-Helios-Hermes' and 'Artagnos-Heracles-Ares,' are simply the Ahura-Mazda, Mithra, and Verethragna of the Zoroastrian religion, with nothing Greek about them but their borrowed titles. So too Mithradates the Great of Pontus, though he traced his lineage both to Alexander and Darius, and found it politically expedient to coquet with Hellenism, represents, as Mommsen pointed out, a national or rather racial reaction of Asiatics against Occidentals, which, at the time of his wars with Rome, was the moving force throughout the Near East-in Judæa and Egypt just as much as in Pontus or Cappadocia. It was not for nothing, however, that an alliance, albeit a superficial one, had been sealed between Mithras and Apollo. Whatever, in the realm of religious ideas, Persia had to give, in the field of art at least she was the borrower. The familiar Mithraic sculptures, presently to be described in greater detail with reference to the ideas which they embody, tell their tale plainly to those versed in the history of Greek Art. Mithras * Dittenberger ('Orientis Græci Inscriptiones,' No. 383) points out that in this expression, so awkwardly introduced in the text, both races are to be understood as contributing to the pedigree. the Bull-slayer-as may be seen even from a cursory inspection of the Heddernheim relief (pl. I), which is a commonplace piece of work-is the lineal descendant of the Sacrificing Victory which adorns the balustrade of the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis of Athens. His costume bears but a remote resemblance to that of the Persians-its distinctive feature is simply the 'Phrygian cap,' which, by the convention of Hellenistic art, was assigned to all Orientals; and his features, in the finer examples which alone preserve some trace of the spirit of their original, are of what archæologists are wont to call the Alexandroid' type. Cumont has observed that the exaggerated pathos of the composition, the realism with which the death-agony of the victim is portrayed, and 'the strange mixture of exaltation and remorse which distorts the features of the slayer' and gives them a kind of morbid grace, all point to the school of Pergamon as that in which the motif was first conceived and embodied in marble. ་ The faith whose monuments Greek artists were thus summoned to adorn had already received a substantial infusion of elements foreign to the orthodox Zoroastrian creed. Beside the relief already described, most Mithrea possessed a statue in human form, but with a lion's head and encircled by a serpent's coils. The type is Oriental in conception, but Greek in execution; and of its meaning there can be no doubt. It represents the Zervan Akarana (Infinite Time) of Zoroastrianism, identified by the Greeks with Kronos. We do not know precisely what part this divinity played in the mysteries of Mithras; but its importance clearly dates from the period in which Babylonian speculation set to work upon Persian ideas. The powers and elements of Nature retained their places in the creed of the later Magi; but they were overshadowed by the conception of Destiny, inspired by the study of the immemorial and changeless process of the heavenly bodies, whose movements served as the measure of unending Time.† From this conception * The type is subject to individual variations which make it impossible to assign its creation to a definite date and school. In the system to which the name of Zervanism has been given, this conception was employed in the resolution of the problem of dualism. Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman were regarded as alike the offspring of Zervan. was developed by steps which we can no longer trace, the science of astrology, which entered into a close alliance with the religion of Mithras, and shared in its triumphs throughout the Western world. The symbols of the planets and the constellations of the Zodiac by which their path was marked out, and their supposed influence on human affairs defined or modified, figure too prominently on Mithraic monuments to admit of doubt with regard to the close connexion between the two systems. Among the rock-sculptures of Antiochus I of Commagene at Nemrud-Dagh we find the horoscope of the king, who, as we have seen, was an ardent votary of Mithras; and we shall find further confirmation of the fact in studying the rites and liturgy of Mithraism. At this point we must pause to examine the religious and intellectual conditions of the world of Hellenism upon whose threshold the new creed had now set foot. We have travelled far since the days when Matthew Arnold wrote of a Paganism which was never sick or sorry'; the prattle of Gorgo and Praxinoe no longer passes for the typical expression of ancient religious sentiment. Prof. Gilbert Murray, borrowing from Prof. Bury a title for one of his lectures on the four stages of Greek religion-in some ways the most suggestive of the series-gives us as the keynote of our period 'The Failure of Nerve'; and there may be many who would regard the religious phenomena of the Græco-Roman world rather as the result of a rising tide of asthenic emotion' than as a 'necessary softening of human pride.' Neither view does justice to the complexity of a world which, the better we come to know it, seems the more strangely modern. Not for all our admiration of the glorious centuries of Hellenic freedom and their imperishable achievement must we be blind to the fact that its brilliant societies were consumed by the whiteheat of their narrow patriotism, and that its critical intellects scaled heaven only to find it empty. The 'city of Gods and men,' which took the place of the Tóλic, was peopled by a motley crowd, diverse in race and speech and traditions; and this was true as well of its heavenly as of its earthly denizens. But man can neither live nor die to himself; detachment is a luxury which only the few can afford; and in the new world brought into |