Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
It’s time. I’ve had enough. I’ve decided to dump all the Falco novels by Lindsay Davis after The Jupiter House down at the charity shop.
This series is one that I used to really enjoy. I even bought some of the hardbacks, rather than wait for the paperback. But it has got steadily less good. I suspect the author has changed editor. The results are less than inspiring.
Sorry, but I find I do not reread these later novels, so they have to go.
We all know Franz Cumont’s Textes et Monumentes, which collected all the ancient sources on Mithras known a century ago. What few realise is that a translation was made of most of the literary fragments that he published. It’s A. S. Geden, Select passages illustrating Mithraism. It was published by SPCK in 1925; and since Mr. Geden died in 1936, it should be out of copyright in the EU and probably everywhere else too.
Last night I scanned it to PDF and made it searchable. I’ve uploaded it to Archive.org, here.
I’ve been going through my own page of Mithras testimonia, and was struck by how he rendered some passages from Tertullian.
For instance in De praescriptione haereticorum 40:3-4, the ANF version reads:
… if my memory still serves me, Mithras there, (in the kingdom of Satan,) sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown. What also must we say to (Satan’s) limiting his chief priest to a single marriage? He, too, has his virgins; he, too, has his proficients in continence.
While Mr. Geden gives us:
… if my memory does not fail me marks his own soldiers with the sign of Mithra on their foreheads, commemorates an offering of bread, introduces a mock resurrection, and with the sword opens the way to the crown. Moreover has he not forbidden a second marriage to the supreme priest? He maintains also his virgins and his celibates.
Let’s see the Latin:
[4] et si adhuc memini Mithrae, signat illic in frontibus milites suos. Celebrat et panis oblationem et imaginem resurrectionis inducit et sub gladio redimit coronam. [5] Quid, quod et summum pontificem in unis nuptiis statuit? Habet et uirgines, habet et continentes.
The ANF material in brackets is the opinion of the translator, struck by the sudden switch from “the devil” to Mithras as the subject.
Now I know that “Mithrae” in this passage is thought to be a gloss itself. Some have thought that the sense demands that the subject of all these remarks is “the devil” — the devil has his chief priest, who can only marry once, the devil has sacred virgins. Both are, after all, part of ancient Roman religion. The Roman state priests had to marry only once; the vestal Virgins are well known. Nothing of either is known to be associated with Mithras; and indeed the idea of Mithraic nuns is strange, for a male-only cult. Tertullian, then, is listing a set of features of Roman paganism, from various sources, on this theory.
Maybe so. But it is curious, all the same.
Alin Suciu has the details.
Just a quick note on a piece that I have found on Laudator Temporis Acti, Montaigne’s tower. It is always good to find a blog which is a scrapbook of fascinating stuff. After reading The foundation of all Greek scholarship, I found this, invoking the spirit of the French essayist Montaigne:
Geoffrey Grigson, Montaigne’s Tower:
Was it really here, in this tiled room
In this tower that Montaigne wrote?
I hope that it was so. Never was there
A place better for recalling, I would say —
For being benign and wise, for loving
In words. I see him back a chair
Across these tiles, and stand and stretch, and then
Descend this newel stair, and going
Slowly as if arthritically outside.
He looks down, with feeling he sees again
How exceedingly sweet is this meadowed
Small valley below and how half-reddening
Vines in such a light cast straight
Black bars of shadow in row after row.
Still busy with dull stuff, but I have been revising the Wikipedia article on Areimanios.
“Who he?” I hear you cry? Well Areimanios is the Greek name for Ahriman, the Persian evil spirit, used in descriptions of Zoroastrianism in Plutarch and the like.
Except … there’s more. There are some odd traces of a non-evil Areimanios. And there are five Latin inscriptions which seem to be all to a deity associated with Mithras, saying things like “To the god Arimanius in fulfilment of a vow”.
Some of the commentary I have read has said that it is fairly unlikely that anyone would set up altars to an evil god in their temples dedicated to good gods. But I’m not so sure about this, because, in a dualist world view, you might well say that both need to exist. We’ve all heard enough smelly hippies talking about “Yin and Yang, man”. Won’t a true dualist see both as a part of the world, necessary in their own way? Rather like having a toilet in the vestry, if you like?
I can see such a person making offerings and vows to the “dark side”, when in mortal danger — “let me off this time and I’ll give you a nice altar”?
We need to remember that we do not understand how ancient religion worked. We can only guess at much of it. I claim nothing for what I have just suggested — it is pure imagination — but we must avoid being too positive about what “must not” have happened.
On the other hand, maybe the critics are right. Maybe the name of Ahriman was transferred (in its Latin form) to a different deity, the lion-headed god found in Mithraea and usually anonymous. The name “Areimanios” appears (I am told) on the foot of one such statue, although that interpretation relies on expanding abbreviations and might be a personal name of a donor, not of the god.
If so, then perhaps there is a pattern. Roman Mithras, born from a rock and killing the bull, is not really at all like Persian Mithra, although they share the same name. Rather someone took the name of the Persian god and applied it to their “export version” religion, rather like the Hari Krishna’s did for Krishna. Did that same someone take the nice, authentic Persian “Areimanios” and apply it to their own made-up lion-headed god too? Is that how the cult was created?
I happened to see this claim in an online puff for the curious theories of Acharya S:
The salvific death and resurrection at Easter of the god, the initiation as remover of sin, and the notion of becoming “born again,” are all ages-old Pagan motifs or mysteries rehashed in the later Christianity. The all-important death-and-resurrection motif is exemplified in the “Parisian magical papyrus,” a Pagan text ostensibly unaffected by Christianity:
“Lord, being born again I perish in that I am being exalted, and having been exalted I die; from a life-giving birth being born into death I was thus freed and go the way which Thou has founded, as Thou hast ordained and hast made the mystery.”
This followed remarks about Easter being celebrated in pagan Mexico (!).
It is a golden rule, when dealing with supposed quotations in twaddle, always to verify those quotations. A look in Google books shows that these two paragraphs are quoted verbatim from Acharya S, Suns of god, 2004, p.503. A reference ’18’ is given, but unfortunately the preview does not include the references.
A quick search in Betz, The Greek Magical papyri in translation, reveals no matches for “born again”. Hmm.
Searching for the words reveals a possible source: the “Pagan Background of Early Christianity”, p.244 by W. R. Halliday (London, 1925: not a headbanger source) might be the source. I’ve not been able to find this book online, tho. But in a Google books preview it seems to refer to Dieterich’s publication of the so-called “Mithras liturgy”, so the words should be at the end of this. But I can find nothing relevant in Meyer’s translation here.
UPDATE: It is indeed in Meyer:
O Lord, while being born again, I am passing away; while growing and having grown, I am dying; while being born from a life-generating birth, I am passing on, released to death– as you have founded, as you have decreed, and have established the mystery…
I’m looking at Preisendanz’ edition of the Greek magical papyri. I thought some notes on one of them, PGM IV, also known as the great magical book, or the great spell-book, might be useful. This is the codex that contains the so-called Mithras liturgy — in reality merely a spell-ritual.
The so-called “great Paris magical papyrus”, Bibl. nat. suppl. gr. 574. A papyrus book of 36 leaves, written on both sides. Foll. 1r, 3v, 16 and 36r are blank, described in the auction “Catalogue d’une collection d’antiquites egyptiennes par M. Francois Lenormant (Paris, Moulde et Renou 1857) Pap. IV” under No. 1073 as “manuscrit sur feuilles de papyrus pliees en livre, formant 33 feuillets ecrits de deux cotes.” The auction catalogue number is still written on fol. 1r, together with the Anastasi number 1073.
The manufacturer of the book had 18 double sheets, which he folded in order to make the book. The small Coptic item on page 1 may be a later addition. [The sheets have become disarranged]. The leaves vary in size between 30.5cm and 27cm high, 13 and 9.5cm wide. Margins have been left on all sides.
C. Wessely suggests that the copyist wrote during the fourth century AD, and more towards 300 than 400 AD, when the technology to make such papyrus codices was available. See also Wiener Studien 8, 1886, p.189, which suggests the period of Tertullian, an origin of Upper Egypt, in Herakleopolis. Dieterich felt the time of Diocletian was the terminus ante quem, and that the “liturgy” must belong to the period when Mithras was most in vogue. Adolf Deissmann in Light from the ancient East 217-225 placed the composition of lines 2993-3086 before the fall of Jerusalem and the reference to the emperor in 2448 as referring to Hadrian.
E. Miller published some portions of the hymns: Melanges de Litterature grecque (1868),437-458.
It would be nice to know more up-to-date information on this subject.
The revised cover design now seems OK to me. I’ve asked Ben, who is doing the revising, to make sure it’s exported to PDF precisely as Lightning Source want. Once that’s done, I’ll reupload, order a new proof, and … hopefully … we can go to print.
The process has been delayed by a fortnight because I was starting a new job, and then starting a house purchase. Neither will be of importance in the long run. But of such delays and difficulties is the stuff of life made.
On a different note, I am hoping to have John the Lydian’s chapter on the month of March from On the Roman Months book IV available and online in English soon.
