Coping with Images of Initiations in the Mithras Cult

Abstract

This paper starts with a preliminary reflection on the broader field of “mystery cults”, which are characterized by a ban on divulgation and the incommunicability of experience. The “mysteries” of Mithras present a further difficulty: their images, built within Roman contexts, lack the visual markers of the Greek “mystery cult” tradition. Moreover, the epigraphical evidence for the worshippers of Mithras does not mention “mysteries”. The second and longer section of the paper addresses the few frescoes that were interpreted as depictions of initiation rituals inside three mithraea and on an adorned krater. It first recalls the main approaches to the interpretation of these images (historiography, anthropological approach, semiotic reading), and then argues that these images intended to display to the viewers (insiders/initiates) a sense of grouping and of contrasted agencies within the groups, to different extents in each mithraeum. By focusing on a case-study from Caesarea Maritima, it proposes to identify the three different ways through which a religious group might give an image both of itself and to itself: a collective ritual (i.e. a procession), the initiation as a transmission (without a special terrifying ambiance), and a mythological narrative on the deity who protects the group.