designation. This document forms part of the contents of the great 'magical' papyrus of the Bibliothèque Nationale, written probably in the reign of Diocletian. It is beyond question that, even if the prayers and instructions imparted to the initiate may be traced to their origin in the liturgy of orthodox Mithraism, they have been appropriated by one of the tribe of sorcerers who battened on the credulity of mankind under the later Empire, and interlarded with the gibberish which was part of the stock-in-trade of such practitioners. Dieterich himself prints the closing paragraphs separately under the title Directions for the practical use of the liturgy,' which is to be employed in the séances of an Egyptian medium. The only mention of Mithras is in the opening formula, which runs as follows:

'Be gracious unto me, Providence and Fortune, to me who am writing down these the first of all traditional mysteries, and grant immortality to my only child, an initiate worthy of this mighty power, which the great God, the Sun, Mithras, bade his archangel transmit to me, that I alone, an eagle,* might tread the heavens and behold all things.'

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Clearly, it is the initiator who speaks here, his 'only child' being the novice, to whom the magic formulæ which unlock the gates of heaven are to be imparted. The first of these formulæ is a prayer in which the neophyte invokes the perfect body' fashioned for him of spirit, water, earth and fire 'God-given for the blending,' and gives utterance to his desire to be born again in the mind' and to behold with immortal eyes, though but a mortal born of a mortal womb, yet exalted by power and great might and an imperishable right hand, the immortal Æon and Lord of the fiery diadems.' After reciting this prayer, the novice is instructed to draw in breath thrice from the sun's rays, when he will feel himself uplifted into the air and behold the Gods of the pole (i.e. the planets) ascending and descending. A clap of thunder follows, and the initiate replies thus: 'Silence! I am a star that wanders with you, shining forth from the deep.' We need not pursue in detail the visions which follow-the youthful figure of the

* The word is conjecturally restored by Dieterich; cf. infra, p. 117. Vol. 221.-No. 440.

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Sun in white robe and scarlet mantle, the seven maidens with snake-faces and the seven Gods with the heads of black oxen-nor the carefully prescribed whistlings, cluckings and bellowings with which they are greeted or evoked by the neophyte. The climax is reached with the appearance of a God 'young, golden-haired, with white robe and golden crown and trousers, holding in his right hand the golden shoulder of an ox, which is the Bear that moves the heaven this way and that,' in whom we may, with Dieterich, recognise the figure of Mithras without prejudice to our final judgment on the document. The rite closes with the injunction:

'Gaze fixedly upon the God, bellow loud and long, and greet him thus: " Hail, O Lord, Master of the water! Hail, Ruler of the Earth! Hail, Dynast of the Spirit! Oh Lord, born again I die, being exalted, and having been exalted I meet my end; born of the birth which engenders life, dissolved in death, I tread the path which thou didst establish, which thou didst ordain and institute a Mystery."'

We have omitted the uncouth jargon which the sorcerer has foisted even into his final prayer, ending with the significant request 'Give me an oracle concerning such-and-such a matter.' The purposes of the black art are highly practical; and human cupidity responds readily to the offers of those who claim to unlock the secrets of the future. The question which interests us is whether the text which the writer of the papyrus has adapted for his own ends is indeed a genuine fragment of a Mithraic liturgy. This seems highly doubtful. The imagery which enriches the abstractions common to all the theosophies of later antiquity we may admit to be at least in part Mithraic, though in part also of Egyptian origin. But it is clear that we have to do with no ritual in which a congregation such as those which were gathered in the Mithrea took part. The revelation of the pathway to immortality is made privately by the initiator to his child'; and its closest analogies are to be sought

* On a Mithraic relief from Virunum we see Helios kneeling before Mithras, who lays his left hand upon his head and holds in his uplifted right an object which Dieterich may be right in identifying as an ox's shoulder.

E.g. the seven maidens with snake-faces (cf. the Hathors).

in the duologues of the Corpus Hermeticum,' which also proceed from a school of theosophy whose home was in Egypt. Stripped of their theurgic trappings, the religious ideas of the 'Mithras liturgy' are closely related to those conveyed, for example, in the thirteenth tract of the collection referred to, where the Thrice-greatest Hermes reveals to his 'child' Tat the process of rebirth by which the immortal element in the microcosm of the soul is released from its association with those which the lower senses perceive. We shall do well, therefore, to regard the text of the Paris papyrus rather as a product of syncretism-the process by which a common stock of religious notions was decked out in a robe of manycoloured symbols borrowed from various cults-than as a genuine fragment of the ritual observed by the Mithraic communities.

Such direct evidence as we have for the nature of the ceremonies of Mithraism shows that the symbols of the cult were imparted to the worshippers in a series of initiatory ceremonies which opened the door to successive grades of sacramental union. The locus classicus on this subject is contained in a letter of St Jerome, who reminds his correspondent, a Roman lady, how a kinsman of hers, on his conversion to Christianity, had destroyed the cave of Mithras with the 'monstrous idols' used in the initiation of the several grades of worshippers-the 'Crow the Hidden One,'† the Soldier,' the Lion,' the Persian the Courser of the Sun,' the Father.' The text of St Jerome receives confirmation from a series of inscriptions found at Rome in a Mithreum discovered in the Piazza S. Silvestro. In these we read how the Fathers' of the community initiated certain of its members in the higher grades. In most instances the inscriptions speak of symbols 'handed down' to the initiates-'tradiderunt hierocoracica, leontica, persica, heliaca'; but we also find the expression ostenderunt cryphios' ('revealed the hidden ones'), from which Cumont inferred, probably correctly, that in this ceremony the worshippers

* This is the fourteenth tract in the arrangement of Reitzenstein, who calls it The Initiation of a Prophet.'

†The MS. text is corrupt, but has been emended in accordance with the inscriptions mentioned in the text.

were veiled or otherwise hidden, and at a given moment revealed to the congregation. It is possible that such a ceremony may be represented on a relief from Arčer now at Sofia, which has recently been published by Kazarow* and explained by Rostowzew, where we see a kneeling figure, wearing the Phrygian' cap, partly hidden by a veil held by two other figures.

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It should be observed that no mention is made in this series of inscriptions of the Soldier,' of whom we read again in a well-known passage of Tertullian in which the analogy between the militia Christi' and the sacred warfare of the Mithraist is developed, and perhaps also in a Greek inscription from Amasia which speaks of 2 στρατιώτης εὐσεβής. This omission may perhaps be explained by the supposition that the Mithraic recruits' formed the rank-and-file in the congregation. The symbols of the Sacred Crow' were conveyed to one of the initiates mentioned in the inscriptions of S. Silvestro 'anno tricensimo acceptionis suæ'; up to that time, we must suppose, he had remained a simple miles.‡

We have a striking but inconclusive piece of monumental evidence bearing upon these questions. A relief found at Konjica in Bosnia, now in the Museum at Sarajevo (pl. II), represents what has been called the 'Mithraic Communion.' Here we see two figures reclining on a couch, one of them with a drinking-horn in his hand, in the attitudes in which, on other monuments, Mithras and Helios are represented. We may suppose that the heavenly banquet was reproduced on earth by the 'Father' and the Sun's Courser.' On either side of the couch stand two figures. Those on the left are easy to identify. One wears the mask of the 'Crow,' the other the cap of the 'Persian.' On the extreme right we see the 'Lion'; but between him and the central group is a figure, unhappily mutilated, in whom we should expect to find the Hidden One.' It must be remembered, however, that there is some evidence for the existence of other animal disguises in the Mithraic cult. Porphyry,

* Archiv für Religionswissenschaft,' 1912, Pl. I, 4.

+ Представленіе о монархической власти въ Скиѳіи и на Боспорѣ, р. 53. Cf. Mr Phythian-Adams' discussion of these points, Journal of Roman Studies,' ii, p. 53 ff. The phrase 'miles pius' occurs on two inscriptions from Wiesbaden.