Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 07-01-2006, 02:29 PM

Norman Davies, professor emiritus, univ of London, Europe a history p 160 1997

Quote:

Roman religious life was amazingly eclectic. Over the centuries the Romans came into contact with virtually all the gods of the Mediterranean, each of whose cults they added to their collection.......Christianity took hold at a time when the persian sun-god Mithras was increasingly cultivated, especially in the army. The gospel of love had to contend with the dualist doctrine of darkness and light whose initiates bathed in bulls blood and celebrated the birth of their god on 25 December.

It then quotes the hymn of the XXX Legion.

The Persians and Greeks had been intertwined since before Marathon, Cyrus and Darius were Persian!

Are you saying persian cults were not traded? Silk was getting from china, why not fun ideas like bathing in blood, the Romans would have loved it!

Again what is the point of this thread?

In Search of Zarathustra

Roger Pearse · 07-01-2006, 03:52 PM

Clive,

I was going to add you to my ignore list, but it is just possible that you honestly do not know why both Jeffrey and I are scratching our heads at your posts, so I will try once more.

Do you understand the idea of evidence? And why some bit of hearsay doesn't count?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Spanky · 07-01-2006, 04:01 PM

I wish some of you had the same skeptical aproach with this Jesus Christ figure as you have with this Mithras figure.

Loomis · 07-03-2006, 12:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spanky

I wish some of you had the same skeptical aproach with this Jesus Christ figure as you have with this Mithras figure.

:devil1: :devil1: :devil1: :devil1: :devil1: :devil1: :devil1:

All the best, :banghead:

Loomis

andrewcriddle · 07-04-2006, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

That what you think clinches and substatiates your claim is an extremely weak argument, based as it is on inferences from suppositions, not on actual archaeological or textual evidence, and, more importantly, that you assume what needs to be proven -- that the Romans ever recruited any soldiers from Persia, that even if they did, these Persian soldiers (centurions?) were Mithraists, and that even if the were, they contined to practice their Mithraism once they were in the army, and that the Romans actually ecourged them to do so, let alone that anyone in the army who was not Roman would have taken up Persian Mithraism and not seen it as somehow a threat to Roman values.

What is your actual evidence that any of these things actually took place?

Jeffrey Gibson

IF one takes at face value Plutarch's account in his 'Life of Pompey' the Cilician pirates whom Pompey had to deal with were early Mithraists.

It has been argued that Pompey in effect dealt with the pirate threat by recruiting the pirates to his side.

Putting these together it is possible to argue that c 60 BCE a large group of Mithraists were recruited into Roman society and this ultimately led to Mithraism as we know it.

What is particularly interesting about Roger's original post is that it may be direct evidence against this line of argument.

Andrew Criddle

jgibson000 · 07-04-2006, 12:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

IF one takes at face value Plutarch's account in his 'Life of Pompey' the Cilician pirates whom Pompey had to deal with were early Mithraists.

It has been argued that Pompey in effect dealt with the pirate threat by recruiting the pirates to his side.

Putting these together it is possible to argue that c 60 BCE a large group of Mithraists were recruited into Roman society and this ultimately led to Mithraism as we know it.

What is particularly interesting about Roger's original post is that it may be direct evidence against this line of argument.

But as you know, there's nothing in Plutarch' account of Pompey's defeat of these pirates that says he recruited them into Roman society, let alone that they were actually committed worshippers of Mithras.

Jeffrey Gibson

andrewcriddle · 07-04-2006, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

But as you know, there's nothing in Plutarch' account of Pompey's defeat of these pirates that says he recruited them into Roman society, let alone that they were actually committed worshippers of Mithras.

Jeffrey Gibson

Plutarch says of the pirates

Quote:

They also offered strange sacrifices of their own at Olympus, and celebrated there certain secret rites, among which those of Mithras continue to the present time, having been first instituted by them.

(I'm doubtful of Plutarch's reliability here but that is another matter.)

The evidence for recruitment of the pirates into Roman society is more ambiguous but Plutarch says

Quote:

Pompey received in surrender ninety which had brazen beaks. The men themselves, who were more than twenty thousand in number, he did not once think of putting to death; and yet to let them go and suffer them to disperse or band together again, poor, warlike, and numerous as they were, he thought was not well. Reflecting, therefore, that by nature man neither is nor becomes a wild or an unsocial creature, but is transformed by the unnatural practice of vice, whereas he may be softened by new customs and a change of place and life; also that even wild beasts put off their fierce and savage ways when they partake of a gentler mode of life, he determined to transfer the men from the sea to land, and let them have a taste of gentle life by being accustomed to dwell in cities and to till the ground. Some of them, therefore, were received and incorporated into the small and half-deserted cities of Cilicia, which acquired additional territory; and after restoring the city of Soli, which had lately been devastated by Tigranes, the king of Armenia, Pompey settled many there. To most of them, however, he gave as residence Dyme in Achaea, which was then bereft of men and had much good land.

Pompey probably settled some pirates in Italy. Some scholars think that Virgil Georgics 4

Quote:

An old man once I mind me to have seen-
From Corycus he came- to whom had fallen
Some few poor acres of neglected land,
And they nor fruitful' neath the plodding steer,
Meet for the grazing herd, nor good for vines.

refers to one of the pirates settled by Pompey in Italy. (Corycus, the old mans home-town, is of course in Cilicia.)

Andrew Criddle

mountainman · 07-04-2006, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

What is your actual evidence that any of these things actually took place?

Jeffrey Gibson

The earliest archeological evidence that I am aware of at the present
for Mithraists, is the purported mithreum at Dura Europa, perhaps in use
c.250 CE, but I have not researched this area whatsoever.

However, I'd point out that anyone serious in the business of research
in this particular area will need to understand the relationship between
the traditions of Mithra, and the traditions of Dionysus and Shiva, the
latter being outside the usual square of "western traditiona; scholarship".
An exception to this being Alain Daniélou's,
The Gods of Love and Ecstasy

Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

Clivedurdle · 07-05-2006, 04:44 AM

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=167032

I missed the direct connection of worshipping bulls and druidism.

Would someone kindly explain to me this assumption I am seeing that ideas like mithraism seem to spring cold out of nowhere and that seems to deny the continual mixing, co-evolution and interchange of thought and ideas that I see across Eurasia and Africa over millenia?

Quote:

The Celts were at the height of their powers the masters of Europe. Where there origins lie is still in question 'Was it in the West, in Ireland, or in Central Europe, in the Danube region?....If you could have taken an aeroplane in the Iron Age and flown from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, and from the Black sea to the West of Ireland, your whole journey would have been over Celtic occupied terrain."

premjan · 07-05-2006, 04:46 AM

Interesting, that bull (nandi) worship is very much present in Hinduism.

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07-01-2006, 03:52 PM	#22
Roger Pearse Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: N/A Posts: 4,370	Clive, I was going to add you to my ignore list, but it is just possible that you honestly do not know why both Jeffrey and I are scratching our heads at your posts, so I will try once more. Do you understand the idea of evidence? And why some bit of hearsay doesn't count? All the best, Roger Pearse

07-01-2006, 04:01 PM	#23
Spanky Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: US Posts: 1,216	I wish some of you had the same skeptical aproach with this Jesus Christ figure as you have with this Mithras figure.

07-05-2006, 04:46 AM	#30
premjan Obsessed Contributor Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: NJ Posts: 61,538	Interesting, that bull (nandi) worship is very much present in Hinduism.

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