Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras

506 Pages·2008·6.322 MB·English

by  Jaime Alvar

Romanising Oriental Gods
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Religions in the
Graeco-Roman World
Editors
H.S. Versnel
D. Frankfurter
J. Hahn
VOLUME 165
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Romanising Oriental Gods
Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of
Cybele, Isis and Mithras
by
Jaime Alvar
Translator and editor
Richard Gordon
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
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The publication of this work has been made possible through a subsidy received
from the Directorate General for Books, Archives and Libraries of the Spanish
Ministry of Culture.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alvar, Jaime.
Romanising oriental Gods : myth, salvation, and ethics in the cults of Cybele, Isis, and
Mithras / by Jaime Alvar ; translator and editor Richard Gordon.
p. cm. — (Religions in the Graeco-Roman world ; 165)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-13293-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Cybele (Goddess)—Cult.
2. Attis (God)—Cult. 3. Isis (Egyptian deity)—Cult. 4. Serapis (Egyptian deity)—Cult.
5. Mithras (Zoroastrian deity)—Cult. 6. Rome—Religion. I. Alvar Ezquerra, Jaime.
I. Title. II. Series.
BL820.C8R66 2008
200.937—dc22
2008015353
ISSN 0927-7633
ISBN 978 90 04 13293 1
Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Φθέγξοµαι οἷς θέµις ἐστί, θύρας δὲ ἐπίθεσθε
βέβηλοι.
‘Orpheus’ as cited by Aristobulus ap. Eusebius,
Prae paratio evangelica 13.12.5 (vol. XII–XIII p. 312
des Places) = 247 Kern = 378 F Bernabé
Quippe cum transactis vitae temporibus iam in ipso fi nitae
lucis limine constitutos, quis tamen tuto possint magna
religionis committi silentia, numen deae soleat elicere et sua
providentia quodam modo renatos ad novae reponere rursus
salutis curricula.
The chief priest, in Apuleius, Met. 11.21
I will not say that the tragic world-view was every-
where completely destroyed by this intruding un-
Dionysian spirit: we only know that it had to fl ee from
art into the underworld as it were, in the degenerate
form of a secret cult.
Fr. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (1884) §17
To Pablo and Irene Alvar Rozas,
whose lives have given mine a new dimension
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CONTENTS
Foreword ..................................................................................... ix
Translator’s Note ........................................................................ xi
Abbreviations .............................................................................. xiii
List of Texts-Figures and Plates ................................................. xvii
Introduction ................................................................................ 1
Chapter One Religion, Cult and Mystery .............................. 17
Chapter Two Systems of Belief .............................................. 25
1. Cosmic Order and the Nature of the Divine .................. 33
a. The Egyptian Cults ...................................................... 39
i. The Myth of Isis and Osiris ................................... 39
ii. Serapis ...................................................................... 52
b. The Myth of Cybele and Attis .................................... 63
c. Mithras .......................................................................... 74
2. Humankind in the World .................................................. 106
3. The World Beyond ............................................................ 122
Chapter Three Systems of Value ............................................ 143
1. Between Utopia and Reality ............................................. 154
2. Ethics in the Phrygian Cults ............................................. 165
3. Isiac Ethics ......................................................................... 177
4. Moral Values in Mithraism ............................................... 192
Chapter Four The Ritual Systems .......................................... 205
1. Religion and Ritual ........................................................... 206
2. Rituals in the Mysteries ..................................................... 211
a. Initiation ........................................................................ 217
b. Sacrifi ce ......................................................................... 221
c. Commensality ............................................................... 227
d. Prayer ............................................................................ 231
3. Rituals in the Phrygian Cults ............................................ 240
a. Introduction .................................................................. 240
b. Emasculation ................................................................. 246
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viii contents
c. The taurobolium/criobolium .............................................. 261
d. Initiation ........................................................................ 276
e. The Megalensia and the March Festival of Attis ........... 282
4. Rituals in the Egyptian Cults ............................................ 293
a. Festivals .......................................................................... 296
b. Cultic Practice ............................................................... 305
i. Sacrifi ce and Votives ................................................ 313
ii. Prayer, Healing and Incubation .............................. 318
c. Initiation ........................................................................ 336
5. Cultic Practice in Mithraism ............................................. 344
a. The Ritual Function of the Mithraeum ..................... 349
b. Initiation and the Initiatory Grades ............................. 364
Chapter Five The Oriental Cults and Christianity ................ 383
1. The Problems ..................................................................... 384
2. The Sub-system of Belief .................................................. 393
3. The Sub-system of Ethics ................................................. 401
4. The Sub-system of Ritual ................................................. 405
5. From Reverse Borrowing to ‘Commensality’ .................... 417
Bibliography ................................................................................ 423
Plates ........................................................................................... 445
General Index ............................................................................. 461
Index of Inscriptions, Papyri and Monuments .......................... 474
Index of Passages ........................................................................ 481
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FOREWORD
This book has been a long while in the making. During that time I have
been the benefi ciary of generous support, for which it is an inadequate
repayment. The Dirección General de Investigación Científi ca y Técnica
has supported my group of researchers with grants for specifi c projects
continuously since 1990. This assistance has been essential both in the
process of actually writing the book and for the doctoral theses that
grew up around it. Other institutions have also contributed fi nancial
help towards its completion. The CSIC gave me one of its bursaries
as part of a programme of exchanges with the British Academy. A
grant from the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid allowed me to spend
several months at the Institute of Classical Studies in London and
in Cambridge in 1992. Thanks to the generosity of the Universidad
Complutense and the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia I was able
to spend time at the Centre d’Histoire Ancienne at Besançon in 1993,
and at the École Normale Supérieure in the rue d’Ulm in 1994. The
Junta de Andalucía fi nanced my visits to the Faculty of Classics in
Cambridge over the years I was a professor in Andalusia. However the
decisive impulse to fi nish the book was given by a sabbatical granted
by the University of Huelva for the academic year 1999–2000, which
I was able to spend at the Classics Faculty in Cambridge. I have been
made very welcome at the Library of the DAI in Madrid, and two
excellent libraries of the Universidad Complutense, the well-stocked
Biblioteca de Clásicas and the amazing Biblioteca de Humanidades,
have likewise been of great help.
Thanks to all this institutional generosity I have been lucky enough
to make friends with a number of fi ne historians. I must mention
here the unforgettable Pierre Lévêque, and Monique Clavel-Lévêque,
at Besançon, and Marguerite Garrido-Hory, Jacques Annequin and
Antonio Gonzales, whom I am proud to call my friends. At Cambridge
Keith Hopkins opened many doors to me; his death in 2004 has
caused me great sadness. It was there too that I met Richard Gordon,
who helped to re-direct me when I was at a loss and who has been
a source of constant stimulation thereafter. Not only did he patiently
correct the manuscript of the fi rst edition in Spanish, but he agreed to
write a Foreword to that version; and has now compounded his help
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x foreword
by undertaking to translate the entire book into English and subject it
to critical scrutiny. His generous updating of the discussion of many
topics and addition of much new bibliography have made this English
version not a mere translation of the old book, but a truly new edition.
He knows how very grateful I am to him. I would also like to express
my gratitude to Henk Versnel and his colleagues on the editorial board
of the series Religions in the Graeco-Roman World for kindly agreeing
to publish the English version as the fi rst contribution to that series on
the central topic of its predecessor, M.J. Vermaseren’s EPROER.
I am glad here also to be able to acknowledge my debts to all the
colleagues at my various universities, the Universidad Complutense in
Madrid, at Huelva, Pablo de Olavide (Seville) and Carlos III, again in
Madrid, who have contributed so much to the formation of my think-
ing and to the arguments of this book.
My fi nal thanks go to Pilar Rozas, who made it possible for me over
many years to devote so much of my time to research.
December 2007 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
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