mystery religion

Any of various secret cults of the Greco-Roman world.

Derived from primitive tribal ceremonies, mystery religions reached their peak of popularity in Greece in the first three centuries AD. Their members met secretly to share meals and take part in dances and ceremonies, especially initiation rites. The cult of Demeter produced the most famous of the mystery religions, the Eleusinian Mysteries, as well as the Andania mysteries. Dionysus was worshiped in festivals that included wine, choral singing, sexual activity, and mime. The Orphic cult, by contrast, based on sacred writings attributed to Orpheus, required chastity and abstinence from meat and wine. Mystery cults also attached to Attis, Isis, and Jupiter Dolichenus, among others.

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Introduction

      any of various secret cults of the Greco-Roman world that offered to individuals religious experiences (religious experience) not provided by the official public religions (Greek religion). They originated in tribal ceremonies that were performed by primitive peoples in many parts of the world. Whereas in these tribal communities almost every member of the clan or the village was initiated, initiation in Greece became a matter of personal choice. The mystery religions reached their peak of popularity in the first three centuries AD. Their origin, however, goes back to the earlier centuries of Greek history.

      Etymologically, the word mystery is derived from the Greek verb myein (“to close”), referring to the lips and the eyes. Mysteries were always secret cults into which a person had to be “initiated” (taken in). The initiate was called mystēs, the introducing person mystagōgos (leader of the mystēs). The leaders of the cults included the hierophantēs (“revealer of holy things”) and the dadouchos (“torchbearer”). The constitutive features of a mystery society were common meals, dances, and ceremonies, especially initiation rites. These common experiences strengthened the bonds of each cult.

History

Hellenic roots

Dionysiac (Bacchanalia)

 In every Greek city the god Dionysus was worshipped by fraternities and sororities and also by mixed communities. Dionysus was a god of fruitfulness and vegetation but especially of wine. The Dionysiac festivals provided an opportunity for stepping outside of the daily routine. The festivals included not only drinking wine and engaging in sexual activity but also participating in such significant features of Greek civilization as choral singing and mimes. In many cases, only the initiated could participate in the ceremonies. As almost every Greek did join in, initiation into the Dionysiac cult might be compared to tribal initiations. It seems that initiation into the Dionysiac Mysteries was accompanied by initiation into sexual life. The act of producing offspring, however, could never be wholly separated from the thought of death, so that the worshippers of Dionysus were aware of a mystic communion among the ancestors, the living generation, and the future members of the community.

Eleusinian (Eleusinian Mysteries)

 The most important sanctuary of Demeter (Ceres), the goddess of grain, and her daughter Kore ( Persephone) was in the city of Eleusis in Attica, between Athens and Megara. Famous religious agricultural (agriculture, origins of) festivals—known as the Greater and the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries—celebrating the sowing, sprouting, and reaping of the grain, were reenacted in this city. The cycle of the grain, pictured in the myth (Greek mythology) of Kore (Persephone), was thought to be parallel to the cycle of man. The myth, as told in the Homeric hymn (Homeric Hymns) to Demeter, tells how Hades (Pluto, or Pluton), god of the netherworld, wanted a wife and how he carried off Kore into the depths of the earth. Her mother, Demeter, through long days of searching, during which she came to Eleusis, refused to make the grain grow. Finally, Hades was bidden to send Kore back to earth. She came back to light as the grain maiden and gave birth to her son Plutus (Kore, “the maiden”; Pluton, “the rich one”; Plutus, “wealth,” especially in grain). But, because Kore had eaten a pomegranate seed, a symbol of death and birth, she could not be completely released, and a compromise was reached by which she spent one-third of the year with her husband, the rest with her mother. Satisfied with this, Demeter caused grain to grow again and taught the Eleusinians her rites. The entire story of Demeter and Kore was elaborately reenacted in the Eleusinian ceremony. Just as in the myth Kore was carried away to marry Hades and to give birth to Plutus, so was grain thrown into the field and buried in the earth to bring forth new life. Just as grain came up out of the ground and was reaped to yield man's bread and to be used as seed, so was a girl taken from her parents and her virginity “killed” to bring forth new offspring. And when a man died, he was buried in the earth to partake mystically in the cyclic renewal of life. This was the message of Eleusis: out of every grave new life grows—for the initiates there are “good hopes” for a glorious immortality in the afterlife.

 Although there were festivals of Demeter throughout Greece, the true Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis only. At first, the cult of Demeter was local and initiation was tribal rather than personal. By participating in the mysteries, a man became a full member of the civic body. This was changed when Eleusis was annexed to the Athenian (Athens) territory about 600 BC. Initiation lost its importance as a means of conferring civic status; it became a purely religious ceremony. Every Athenian was admitted to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and soon the mysteries were open to every Greek, so that the ceremonies received an “international” character. Whoever wished to be initiated, however, had to go to Eleusis. It was a day's journey from Athens, a longer distance from most of the other Greek cities. The mystery rite became no longer a tribal ceremony. Each person had to decide for himself whether or not he wanted to be initiated. This development was possible only because Athens had become a large city with a differentiated culture that gave the individual ample choice of a way of life, including religion.

      Both Dionysiac and Eleusinian mysteries had a wide range of meaning. Their essence was not contained in any written record but only in the festivals (feast) themselves—the holy days of the community. Many participants appreciated only the superficial level of the ceremonies and considered them as an opportunity for having a good time—good company, good food, intoxication, and sometimes (in the Dionysiac cult) sexual pleasures. The ceremonies were open to a deeper understanding, however, that was not made explicit by any theology or by any set of creeds but by the religious action itself, which contained the meaning and conveyed it to the participants without the interposition of words. Therefore, it was not possible to disclose to the noninitiated the mysteries by words, but it was treachery to reveal the secret dances.

Secular mystery communities

 A society of initiates could drop its religious connections and become merely a social club. But because secrecy, common meals, and common drinking were implied, the Greeks and Romans regarded such clubs as mystery societies; they did not differentiate between religious associations and private clubs. The role of aristocratic clubs in Athenian politics was very important. In 415 BC the famous mystery scandal occurred. Several aristocratic societies conspired to overthrow the Athenian democracy. In order to pledge all members, a common crime was committed in which each member had to participate. One night the members of the social clubs took hammers and removed the genitals of the many Hermes statues in the city. Whoever would desert the common political cause would be denounced by his former friends for having committed a crime against religion, and many witnesses against him would be at hand. The people of Athens immediately understood that a conspiracy was developing. By a series of severe trials, the conspirators were traced and exiled. The speech of the orator Andocides, one of the conspirators, delivered in his defense in 400 or 399 BC, when the old affair was again taken up in a trial, still survives. The title of the oration is “On the Mysteries.”

      The secular mystery clubs continued throughout Greek and Roman history, and it was often difficult to distinguish them from religious associations. The Romans (Roman religion) were especially distrustful of secret societies. This suspicion was justified in the case of Catiline, who led a conspiracy that attempted to overthrow the government in 63 BC. But Trajan, the Roman emperor from AD 98 to 117, did not allow the citizens of Nicomedia (modern İzmit, Turkey) to form a club that planned to provide a fire brigade, and he only reluctantly allowed the citizens of Amisus (modern Samsun, Turkey) to establish an association for charitable purposes.

Orphic (Orphic religion)

      Besides community initiations, there were ceremonies for individual persons of deeper religious longing. Such persons were called Orphics after Orpheus, the Greek hero with superhuman musical skills who was supposedly the author of sacred writings; these writings were called the Orphic rhapsodies and they dealt with such subjects as purification and the afterlife. It is possible to reconstruct a common pattern for these initiations of individuals, although an Orphic “church” never existed, and the doctrines of the many small communities of individualists varied on a broad scale.

      Many Orphics seem to have had a strong feeling of sin and guilt. They believed that there was a divine part in man—his soul—but it was wrapped up in the body, and man's task was to liberate the soul from the body. This could be achieved by living an Orphic life, which included abstinence (asceticism) from meat, wine, and sexual intercourse. After death the soul would be judged. If a man had lived a righteous life, his soul would be sent to the meadows of the blessed in Elysium; but, if he had committed misdeeds, his soul would be punished in various ways and perhaps sent to hell. Following a period of reward or punishment, the soul would be incarnated in a new body. Only a soul that had lived a pious life three times could be liberated from the cycle.

Pythagoreans (Pythagoreanism)

      The Orphic creeds were the basis of the Pythagorean brotherhood, which flourished in southern Italy beginning in the 6th century BC. The Pythagoreans were aristocratic fraternities that sometimes had a political scope. Their main achievements, however, lay in the fields of music, geometry, and astronomy. They discovered that these subjects could be explained by numbers and ratios. Combining Orphic eschatology (the study of the last things, especially death and afterlife) with their discoveries, they invested music, geometry, and astronomy with religious values. According to their doctrine, the original home of the soul was in the stars. From there it fell down to earth and associated with the body. Thus, man was a stranger on the earth, and he had to strive to liberate himself from the ties of the flesh and return to the soul's celestial home.

Platonists (Platonism)

 The philosophy of Plato (c. 428–348 or 347 BC) by no means resulted from connections with a mystery cult. Yet Plato did take up many ideas from earlier Greek religion, especially from the Pythagorean brotherhood and from the Eleusinian communities, and often described his philosophy in terms derived from the mysteries. For example, the notion of searching and finding, so important in Eleusis, became an important notion in Plato's philosophy: the philosopher should never cease or relax in his quest for truth. A value was thus attached to the very act of searching. Later mystery religions, in their turn, borrowed freely from the rich imagery of Plato's dialogues and are thus deeply tinged with Platonism.

      In the Timaeus, which is an exposition of his theory of the universe (cosmology), Plato also developed his theory of the soul. The earth is surrounded by the spheres of the seven planets; the eighth sphere is that of the fixed stars. Beyond the eighth sphere is the realm of the divine. The sphere of the fixed stars, moved by the divine, continuously turns to the right at an even speed. This clockwise rotation affects the spheres of the planets, although they have their proper movement, which runs to the left, or counterclockwise. The sphere of mortality begins with the planets. The original home of each soul is in one of the fixed stars. As a result of the movement of the spheres, the soul falls through the planetary spheres to earth, where it is united with the body. The soul must then try to liberate itself from the body and ascend to the fixed star from which it fell. In later generations this picture was vividly worked out. The soul, in the course of its fall through the planetary spheres, was thought to acquire the qualities of the planets: sloth from Saturn, combativeness from Mars, lust for power from Jupiter, voluptuousness from Venus, greed from Mercury. After death, when the soul returned to the fixed star, it discarded these qualities, just as the mystēs, in certain initiations, discarded his everyday garment before entering the sacred place.

      Many other traditional religious images were taken over by Plato, including the music of the spheres, the migration of the soul, the soul's remembrance of its celestial origin, and the idea of rewards for the righteous and punishment for the wicked. Later mystery associations adopted these concepts, which Plato had expressed so beautifully, and were deeply influenced by Plato's explanations.

The Hellenistic period

      When Alexander the Great conquered the Asiatic kingdoms as far east as the Indus River, the Greek world was extended immensely. The religious ideas in Greece itself and the western part of the Alexandrian Empire, however, changed very slowly, because the Greeks, now masters of the world, felt no need for change.

      In the Messenian town of Andania mysteries were celebrated in honour of the goddesses Demeter and Kore. A long inscription of 92 BC gives elaborate directions for the conduct of the rites, although, naturally, it gives no details of what went on during initiation. The mysteries in honour of the Cabeiri (gods of fertility) on the island of Samothrace attracted great attention in this period. These gods were thought to be helpers of the seafarers, and initiation into their mysteries was looked upon as a general safeguard against all misfortune but particularly against shipwreck. The Dionysiac Mysteries, with their revels and merriment, continued throughout the whole of Greek history. Together with most of the elements of Greek civilization, this cult was transferred to Italy. In 186 BC a scandal about the Bacchanalia—the Latin name for the Hellenistic Dionysiac Mysteries—so upset the Romans that a decree of the Senate prohibited them throughout Italy, except in certain special cases. These mysteries were celebrated in a lower middle class milieu and involved gross sex parties and violence conducted under the cover of mystery secrecy.

      The important developments in the mystery rites during the Hellenistic period took place in the Greek Orient, where elements from the Greek and Oriental religions were blended. Contact with Greek civilization completely changed life in the Orient, where the knowledge of writing had been confined to a few priests and scribes. Society first disintegrated after the conquest of Alexander and then developed along new lines. Changes in religion were inevitable, and some influence of Oriental traditions upon the Greeks was bound to follow. But the process was a slow one and became manifest only a few centuries later.

 With regard to the institution of kingship, however, syncretism worked quickly. Ancient Near Eastern kingship was originally sacral. The Syrian and Egyptian inhabitants of the newly created Greek kingdoms inevitably regarded the Greco-Macedonian kings (sacred kingship) as semidivine beings. The Greeks themselves soon submitted to this mixture of politics and religion (church and state). Such a mixture was perfectly natural to the Egyptians and Syrians, who did not perceive the structure of society (social class) as an abstraction, such as “the state” or “the nation,” but saw the unity of the body politic in the person of the king. He was the symbol of the security and help that man derives from an orderly society. Mystery rituals, called royal mysteries, were developed especially in Egypt. According to traditional Egyptian religion, the ruling pharaoh was an incarnation of Horus (the sun-god), his mother or wife an incarnation of Isis (the heavenly queen), and his deceased father an incarnation of Osiris (the god of fertility). In Hellenistic times, Osiris was commonly known by the name Serapis. These gods became equated with Greek gods: Isis with Demeter and Aphrodite; Horus with Apollo and Helios; Serapis with Zeus, Dionysus, and Hades (Pluto). Both Greek and Egyptian myths were adopted for these divinities.

      One of the suburbs of Alexandria, the newly constructed Greek capital of Egypt, was called Eleusis after the city of Demeter in Greece, and the Eleusinian Mysteries were instituted in a Greco-Egyptian adaptation. Dionysiac Mysteries were introduced on an even greater scale, so that the royal court was temporarily thrown into turmoil by the number of Bacchic ceremonies in which the king was considered to be a reincarnation of Dionysus. The Pythagorean concept of the migration of the soul was also taken over and was blended with the Egyptian belief in the reincarnation of the sun-god Horus in the reigning king.

      The cult of rulers thus introduced ideas from the Greek Orient into Greek communities. But the mixture of religion and politics was a great obstacle for the propagation of the Greco-Oriental mysteries in the Mediterranean world. Even the numerous Greeks who lived in Egypt and Syria maintained the traditional Greek concept of the separation of god and man, and it was only after the political aspect of the mysteries was discarded that the religious elements could gain a life of their own. Inscriptions discovered on the Greek island of Delos demonstrate this well. The worship of Serapis was introduced at Delos during the time the island was temporarily a naval base of the Greco-Egyptian kings. When the Egyptian influence on the island receded, the cult of Serapis not only remained but reached new heights. The Romans later used Delos as a free port for the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and from there the worship of Serapis and Isis spread to most of the harbours of the Greek world and to the cities in the Bay of Naples, whence it was brought by Italian merchants to Rome.

      The combination of mystery elements with ruler worship is also evident in the kingdom of Commagene (eastern Turkey and northern Syria). Here, the kings assigned large funds to construct throughout the country gigantic sanctuaries, where festivals of the gods and the royal ancestors were celebrated annually on the kings' anniversary days. Long inscriptions discovered in the remains of these sanctuaries bear striking similarities to the language of the mysteries. The ceremonies, however, seem to have contained little true religion.

Roman imperial times

      The great period of the mystery religions began when the Romans imposed peace upon the Mediterranean world. The Dionysiac, or Bacchic, societies flourished in the whole empire—in Greece proper, on the Greek islands, in Asia Minor, along the Danube River, and especially in Italy and at Rome. Hundreds of inscriptions attest to Bacchic Mysteries. In some circles, Orphic and Dionysiac ideas were blended, as in the community that met in the underground basilica near the Porta Maggiore (Major Gate) at Rome. There was also a blend of ideas in the community for which the Orphic hymns were written. The members of this community (probably in Asia Minor) assembled at night in a clubhouse and held their services by the light of torches. Their rite consisted of a bloodless sacrifice and included the use of incense, prayer, and hymns. In addition to the mystery cults that were familiar from earlier times, the national religions of the peoples of the Greek Orient in their Hellenized versions began to spread. A faintly exotic flavour surrounded these religions and made them particularly attractive to the Greeks and Romans. The most popular of the Oriental mysteries was the cult of Isis. It was already in vogue at Rome in the time of the emperor Augustus, at the beginning of the Christian era. The Emperor, who wanted to restore the genuine Roman religious traditions, disliked the Oriental influences. But men of reputation, such as Messalla (Messalla Corvinus, Marcus Valerius), a general and patron of writers, were strongly inclined toward the Isis Mysteries. Isis, the goddess of love, was the patroness of many of the elegant Roman courtesans. The religion (Anatolian religion) of Isis became widespread in Italy during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. To a certain extent, the expansion of Judaism and Christianity over the Roman world coincided with the expansion of the Egyptian cults.

 Far less important was the influence of cults from Asia Minor. By 200 BC the Great Mother of the Gods (Magna Mater) and her consort Attis were introduced into the Roman pantheon and were considered as Roman gods. Their cult seems to have been encouraged especially under Emperor Claudius about AD 50. The Great Mother was characterized by her universal motherhood, especially over wild nature. The mysteries symbolized, through her relationship to Attis, the relations of Mother Earth to her children and were intended to impress upon the mystēs the subjective certainty of having been united in a special way with the goddess. There was a strong element of hope for an afterlife in this cult. The Persian god Mithra (Mithras), the god of light, was introduced much later, probably not before the 2nd century. The cult of Mithra was concerned with the origin of life from a sacred bull (cattle) that was caught and then sacrificed by Mithra. According to Persian sources, the bull by its death gave birth to the sky, the planets, the earth, the animals, and the plants; thus Mithra became the creator of life. From Syria (Syrian and Palestinian religion) came the worship of several deities, of which Jupiter Heliopolitanus (the local god of Heliopolis; modern Baʿlabakk, Lebanon) and Jupiter Dolichenus (the local god of Doliche in Commagene; modern Dülük, Turkey) were the most important. Adonis (a god of vegetation) of Byblos (in modern Lebanon) had long been familiar to the Greeks and was often considered to be closely related to Osiris; the myths and rituals of the two gods were similar. Adonis' female partner was Atargatis (Astarte), whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite. At the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the latter half of the 2nd century AD, a pseudo-prophet named Alexander The Paphlagonian devised a great mystery spectacle centred around a holy snake called Glycon and had great success during his lifetime.

 The height of Syrian influence was in the 3rd century AD when Sol, the Syrian sun god, was on the verge of becoming the chief god of the Roman Empire. He was introduced into Rome by the emperor Elagabalus (Heliogabalus) in about AD 220, and by about AD 240 Pythian Games (i.e., festivals of the sun god Apollo Helios) were instituted in many cities of the empire. The emperor Aurelian (270–275) elevated Sol to the highest rank among the gods. Sanctuaries of Sol and the gods of other planets (septizonium) were constructed. Even the emperor Constantine the Great (Constantine I), some 50 years later, wavered between Sol and Christ. For some time his religious policy was devised so as to allow the coexistence of both religions. Finally, Christianity was accepted as the official religion.

      The different mystery religions were not exclusive of one another, but they appealed to different sociological groups. The middle class of the Greek and Roman cities preferred the Dionysiac societies, the festivals of which were a cult of beauty and merriment. Isis was worshipped by lower middle class people in the seaports and trading towns. The followers of the Great Mother in Italy were principally craftsmen. Mithra was the god of soldiers and of imperial officials and freedmen. There were no special societies for slaves; but they were usually admitted to the societies, and, during the time of the festival, all men were considered equal.

Beliefs and practices

Common features in Roman imperial times

      For the first three centuries of the Christian (Christianity) Era, the different mystery religions existed side-by-side in the Roman Empire. They had all developed out of local and national cults and later became cosmopolitan and international. The mystery religions would never have developed and expanded as they did, however, without the new social conditions brought about by the unification of the Mediterranean world by the Romans. In the large cities and seaports, men from the remotest parts of the empire flocked together. Many people were removed from their accustomed surroundings and suffered from loneliness. They longed for new acquaintances and for assimilation, and they needed the assurance that only the knowledge of belonging to a community can give. Economic and political conditions in the Roman Empire also accelerated the growth of the mysteries. Members of a mystery society helped one another. For a lawyer, a craftsman, or a contractor, membership in a club could be the road to success. Furthermore, there is less opportunity for private initiative in a society ruled by a monarch than in a democratic society. The individual who felt that his initiative was frustrated by the preponderance of the imperial structure might well turn to a community that offered him the hope of a better future. The mystery societies, thus, commonly satisfied both a taste for individualism and a longing for brotherhood. At least in principle, the members of the communities were considered equal: one man was the other man's brother, irrespective of his origin, social rank, or nationality.

      Because membership in each of the mystery communities was a matter of personal choice, propaganda and missionary work were inevitable. In the religions of Isis and Mithra, missionary zeal was particularly obvious. The followers of Isis and Mithra considered Rome to be the centre of their worship, and the city was called sacrosancta civitas (“sacred city”) in an Isis romance written in the 2nd century AD by the Latin author Apuleius (Apuleius, Lucius).

priesthood

      The organization of the mystery religions was rather loose. The priests of Dionysus were wealthy laymen, as the priests in Greece always were. The Roman community of the Great Mother had a large group of priests (the Galli), headed by a chief priest (the Archigallus). They were eunuchs (eunuch) who wore female garb, who kept their hair long and perfumed with ointment, and who celebrated the goddess' rites with wild music and dancing until their frenzied excitement found its culmination in self-scourging, self-laceration, or exhaustion. Besides the priests there were priestesses and many minor officials. The followers were organized according to their function in the ritual procession as bearers of the tree (dendrophori) or bearers of the reed (cannophori). The men who carried the statue in the rites of Jupiter Dolichenus were called the sedan-chair men (lecticarii).

      The higher grades of the Isis Mysteries were reserved to persons born of the priest caste of Egypt. To be born into this caste was more important than talent or skill. This limited the quality of the priests and was a serious disadvantage in the community's competition with other religions. But a second way of advancement within the religious group was devised for men of Greek or Roman origin. In Egypt, there was a group of elevated laymen—the porters of the holy shrine (pastophori). They were inferior in rank to everyone of the priest caste; but in Greek and Roman countries the rank of the pastophori became a surrogate for the native priest caste of Egypt. The pastophori were, in fact, the religious leaders of the communities.

Rites (rite of passage) and festivals

      A period of preparation preceded the initiation in each of the mysteries. In the Isis religion, for example, a period of 11 days of fasting, including abstinence from meat, wine, and sexual activity, was required before the ceremony. The candidates were segregated from the common folk in special apartments in the holy precinct of the community centre; they were called “the chastely living ones” (hagneuontes).

      In all the mystery religions the candidates swore an oath of secrecy; the oath of the Isis Mysteries is preserved on papyrus. Before initiation, a confession of sins was expected. The candidate sometimes told at length the story of the faults of his life up to the point of his Baptism, which was commonly a part of the initiation ceremony, and the community of devotees listened to the confession. It was believed that the rite of baptism would wash away all the candidate's sins, and, from that point on, his life would be changed for the better, because he had enrolled himself in the service of the saviour god.

      In the Mithraic ceremonies, there were seven degrees of initiations: Corax (Raven), Nymphus (Bridegroom), Miles (Soldier), Leo (Lion), Perses (Persian), Heliodromus (Courier of the Sun), and Pater (Father). Those in the lowest ranks, certainly the Corax, were the servants of the community during the sacred meal of bread and water that formed part of the rite.

      The initiation ceremonies usually mimed death and resurrection. This was done in the most extravagant manner. In some ceremonies, candidates were buried or shut up in a sarcophagus; they were even symbolically deprived of their entrails and mummified (an animal's belly with entrails was prepared for the ceremony). Alternatively, the candidates were symbolically drowned or decapitated. In imitation of the Orphic myth of Dionysus Zagreus, a rite was held in which the heart of a victim, supposedly a human child, was roasted and distributed among the participants to be eaten.

      The baptism could be either by water or by fire, and the rites often included actions that had an exotic flavour. Sulfur torches were used during the baptism ceremony; they were dipped into water and then—contrary to the expectations of the observers—burned when drawn out of the water. In a dark room a script would suddenly become visible on a wall that had been prepared accordingly. Instructions still exist for producing a nimbus effect (halo)—the appearance of light around the head of a priest. The priest's head was shaved and prepared with a protective ointment; then a circular metal receptacle for alcohol was fixed on his head; it was set aflame in a dark room and would shine for some seconds. In the Dionysus and Isis mysteries, the initiation was sometimes accomplished by a “sacred marriage,” a sacral copulation (sexual behaviour, human). Two cases are known in which a priest speaking from the statue of the god ordered a credulous woman to come to the temple and be the god's concubine, the part of the god being enacted by the priest.

 The initiation ceremonies were usually accompanied by music and dance and often included a large cast of actors. In the Dionysiac societies, especially elaborate provisions were made for mimic representations. The names of the sacred roles varied from place to place; among the roles were: Dionysus and Ariadne (a vegetation goddess and wife of Dionysus), Palaemon (a marine deity), Aphrodite (the goddess of love and beauty), Proteurhythmos (the inventor of elegant rhythm), the “foster-father of Dionysus,” Kore, Demeter, Asclepius (the god of medicine), Pan (the god of flocks and shepherds), Curetes (long-haired youths), nymphs (minor nature goddesses), shepherds, sileni and satyrs (creatures of the wild, part man and part beast), maenads (female attendants who shared in the nocturnal orgiastic rites of Dionysus), the “guardian of the grotto,” and centaurs (a race of beings half man and half horse).

      The ceremonies always contained a prayer for the welfare of the emperor and for the good fortune of the whole Roman Empire. In fact, the amalgamation of religion and politics (church and state) was sometimes so close that the designation “imperial mysteries” is used. The pattern of imperial mystery ceremonies could vary widely. This was especially true of the Dionysiac rites. In the clubs of the upper middle class and wealthy, for example, the festivals were chiefly social events. But the members of these communities were grateful for the security and peace and for the opportunity to make a good living that the emperor guaranteed to them. They felt loyalty toward the Roman Empire and expressed this by ceremonies of the imperial mysteries.

      Dionysus was the patron god of the important international society of actors (acting), and their reunions were celebrated in the mode of Dionysiac Mysteries. When an emperor travelled in the empire, responsibility for dignified receptions of him was handed over to the society of actors. Because his route was known beforehand, a voyage of the emperor was turned into a series of pompous festivals that were organized in a manner closely resembling mystery ceremonies.

      The meetings of the mystery clubs were often named after the common meal. The Dionysiac meetings were called stibas (“straw”) because the participants ate their dinner sitting on straw. The meals of the followers of Serapis and Attis were called klinē (“couch”), because the diners lay on couches.

Seasonal festivals

      The religions of Dionysus and Demeter and of Isis and the Great Mother had something of an ecclesiastical year. The seasonal festivals (feast) were inherited from old tribal ceremonies that had been closely associated with the sowing and reaping of corn and with the production of wine. The dates varied greatly according to the geographical conditions and the emphasis of the seasonal rites in the country in which the mysteries had originated. Dionysiac festivals were held in all four seasons; vintage and tasting of the new wine were the most important occasions. But the religion of Dionysus was closely associated with that of Demeter, and, thus, sowing and reaping were also celebrated in Dionysiac festivals. In the religion of the Great Mother, a hilarious spring festival celebrating the renewal of life was enacted in Rome.

      The festivals of the Isis religion were connected with the three Egyptian seasons (Egyptian calendar) caused by the cycle of the Nile River (inundation, sowing, and reaping). About July 19, when the whole country was almost desiccated by the heat and the drought, the high waters of the new flood miraculously arrived from Ethiopia. On that day, just before sunrise, Sirius (the Dog Star, or the star of Isis) would make its first appearance of the season on the horizon. This was the sacred New Year's Day for the Egyptians, and the festival of the Nile flood was their greatest festival. There were, in addition, the festivals of sowing and reaping. But because the Egyptian year was a solar year of 365 days without intercalation (leap years), the seasonal festivals that were fixed upon a particular date were retarded by one day every four years and complete confusion resulted. The Romans fixed the calendar of Egypt by introducing an intercalary day every fourth year. In Roman times, important Isis festivals were held on December 25, January 6, and March 5. The March festival, as it was celebrated in Corinth, is described at length in Apuleius' Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass. It was a spring festival that celebrated the beginning of the seafaring season. A ship was carried on a cart (carrus navalis) through the city. It was followed by a procession of choruses, candidates, mystai in bright clothes wearing masks, and priests carrying the insignia of the goddess. The ship was let into the sea, and the participants returned to the temple, where initiation ceremonies, banquets, and dances were held.

      In the religion of Sol, the festivals were determined by astronomy. The greatest festival was held on December 24–25, at the time of the winter solstice. Because from this date the length of the day began to increase, it was regarded as the day of the rebirth of the god and of the renovation of life.

Literature

      The mystery communities had religious hymns, but almost nothing of them has been preserved. The initial words of some hymns from the Sta. Prisca Mithraeum in Rome are known, and some Isiac poems exist. More important is a text of 40 sentences in which the goddess Isis reveals herself; it was found at four different and geographically distant places and was probably exhibited in every Isis sanctuary. Narratives of the miracles wrought by the gods were preserved in many temple libraries; examples of these narratives, on papyrus and on stone, have been found. According to a recent theory, the literary genre of the romance was developed from these narratives. The last part of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius is an Isis text and narrates in detail the initiation into the Egyptian mysteries.

 Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek name for the Egyptian god Thoth, was the reputed author of treatises that have been preserved. Thoth was the scribe of the gods, the inventor of writing, and the patron of all the arts dependent upon writing; he was sometimes thought of as an attendant of Isis and sometimes as the repository of all wisdom. These treatises are not exactly mystery texts, but they are works of revelation on occult subjects and on theology. Because the pagan mysteries had no official creed, each congregation of initiates was free to construct a theology of its own and to change it again. The Hermetic writings were attempts to provide a theology for a particular community. Although no authorized interpretation could exist for a doctrine that was in constant fluctuation and although none of the Hermetic treatises could claim to be the correct interpretation of the pagan mysteries, nevertheless, the texts give an instructive picture of spiritual life in mystery communities.

      There are some contemporary texts that shed light on the mystery communities. Plutarch, the Greek biographer, wrote the philosophical treatise “About Isis and Osiris,” which gives an interpretation of the Isis Mysteries. Arnobius (Arnobius The Elder), a 3rd-century Christian apologist, described an interesting semiphilosophical, semireligious mystery community known as the viri novi (“the new men”). Arnobius seems to have lived among them in North Africa for a time before his conversion to Christianity. They had a religious doctrine of the soul, with marked affinities to the teachings of the Neoplatonic thinkers Plotinus and Porphyry.

      Only fragments are preserved of the Chaldean Oracles, a theosophical text in verse that was composed by Julianus the Theurgist and his son late in the 2nd century AD and had great influence on the Neoplatonists. The work combined Platonic elements with Persian or Babylonian creeds and was regarded by the later Neoplatonists as their basic religious book, something of a heathen bible. The doctrine of the Chaldean Oracles was associated with esoteric fire rituals. Julianus and his followers were called theurgists—i.e., men who could perform divine operations. Their religion was partly one of meditation about the hidden and wondrous magical processes within the cosmos.

theology

      The creeds of the mystery religions were never worked out to the same extent that the Christian creeds were. Nevertheless, the doctrines of the mysteries may be called a theology. One of the central subjects in mystery writings was cosmogony—the theory of the origin or creation of the world. In the Hermetic treatises, in the Chaldean Oracles, and in the little known writings of Mithraism, the cosmogony was modelled after Plato's Timaeus, and it always dealt with the creation (creation myth) of the soul and with the soul's subsequent fate.

      The theological doctrine (doctrine and dogma) of the soul and the myth about its celestial home, its fall, and its redemption were inseparable. The sequence is beautifully told in the “Hymn of the Soul,” preserved in the Acts of Thomas, an apocryphal account of the journeys and death of the apostle. The hero of the hymn, who represents the soul of man, is born in the Eastern (the yonder) Kingdom; immediately after his birth, he is sent by his parents on a pilgrimage into the world with instructions to take a pearl from the mouth of a dragon in the sea. Instead of wearing his heavenly garment, he dresses in earthly clothes, eats earthly food, and forgets his task. Then his parents send a letter to rouse him. As soon as he has read the letter, he awakes and remembers his task, takes the pearl, and begins the homeward journey. On the way, his brother (the Redeemer) comes to accompany him and leads him back home to his father's palace in the east. This myth is a figurative representation of the theological doctrine of the soul's fall and its return to heaven.

      Many of the questions that were the subject of later Christian theological discussions were already eagerly debated in the mystery religions. In a Hermetic treatise, for example, the existence of God was proved from the evident order of the world. This argument, which had first been formulated by Zoroaster, a 7th-century Iranian prophet, was expressed in the form of questions: Who could have created the heavens and the stars, the sun and the moon, except God? Who could have made wind, water, fire, and earth (the elements), the seasons of the year, the crops, the animals, and man, except God?

      Passionate debates were held about the question of whether man was subject to blind fate. The Stoics (Stoicism) (proponents of a Greek and Roman school of philosophy holding that men should be free from passion and calmly accept all occurrences as unavoidable) had adopted the doctrine that all events are determined by the stars. Thus, for many Greeks and Romans astrology became the only sensible method of studying man's life and fortune. But for others the idea that man could achieve nothing by his own will was frightening, and they wanted to be liberated from this fear; the mystery religions promised to liberate them. The theology of the mystery religions admitted that the stars ruled the world and especially that the planets had evil influences. But the highest god of the religion (for example, Serapis in the Isis Mysteries) stood far above the stars and was their master. A man who decided to become a servant of this god stepped out of the circle of determination and entered into the sphere of liberty. The god could suspend determination, because he ruled over the stars; he could unravel the threads of the Moirai (the three spinners of fate); he could save his servant from illness and prolong his life, even against the will of fate. In the Isis Mysteries there was a theology of grace foreshadowing Christian doctrine.

      In many of the mystery cults, there was a marked tendency toward henotheism—the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods. Thus, Isis was the essence of all pagan goddesses; Serapis was the name uniting the gods Zeus, Pluto, Dionysus, Asclepius, Helios, and even the Jewish god YHWH (Yahweh). In the religion of Sol, an elaborate syncretistic theology was developed to show that all known gods of all nations were nothing but provisional names for the sun god.

Religious art and iconography

      Much of Greco-Roman art was executed for use in the mystery communities. The Dionysiac monuments are by far superior to all others in artistic quality. This is to be expected, because the worship of Dionysus often took the form of a worship of beauty. Nevertheless, the other communities also produced a great number of art objects.

Architecture

 The mystery religions developed different types of edifices for their purposes. Every Greek city had temples and precincts of Dionysus. The Isis Mysteries adopted the Greek temples (temple), frequently adding a cupola. Many Isis temples were modest in size, but the temple at Pergamum (modern Bergama, Turkey) was a great basilica with a vaulted roof and strong towers, in the fashion of the best Roman architecture. The Isis temple that the emperor Domitian erected on the Campus Martius (the Field of Mars) in Rome at the end of the 1st century AD was a stately building, and the Temple of Serapis (the Serapeum) at Alexandria was a huge construction. The subterranean basilica near Porta Maggiore in Rome (used by an Orphic or Pythagorean society) was a strong and magnificent structure hidden in a large garden. The Mithraic sanctuaries were artificial caves illuminated from above by light shafts. They were built for communities of 50 to 100 persons.

      The buildings were designed to be functional for the religious ceremonies. The Mithraeum under the church of S. Clemente at Rome contained a system of underground galleries for initiation ceremonies. Beneath the temple of the Egyptian gods at Pergamum, subterranean passages existed for the use of the priests. One of the paths led into the huge, hollow statue of the god, so that the priest could speak from the mouth of the statue. By another secret way, an officiant could climb the huge corner towers of the temple to make announcements from there. The Serapeum at Alexandria was directed toward the east; on a certain day of the year, at a certain time, sunbeams directly struck the head of the god's statue. This same temple was so arranged that those waiting to be initiated could hire rooms in an adjacent building during the time of preparation before the ceremony.

      Because the use of water was such an important element in most of the mystery rites, the location of the temples was often determined by the availability of water; Mithraic sanctuaries were always erected on the spot at which a fountain had its source. In the temples of Isis, a cistern for holy water was required; in Delos and in a house at Pompeii in Italy, a system of water basins could imitate the flood of the Nile. The Dionysiac temple at Corinth had an underground system of tubes and barrels that could be operated by buttons from the outside. The priest showed the worshippers of the god a barrel filled with water. They left the temple together, and the door was sealed from without. By pressing the buttons, the water was let out of the barrel, and wine was poured in. The following day, when the seal was removed, the spectator witnessed the Dionysiac miracle of water turned into wine.

      On the ground floor of the Mithraic sanctuaries at Ostia, mosaic pavements showed the seven grades of the initiation and their symbols together with the ladder of the seven steps that led to religious salvation. In initiation ceremonies the mosaic was perhaps used to indicate the place where the different participants were to take their places.

Statuary (sculpture)

      A great many statues were exhibited in the temples and shrines of the mystery gods. They were usually executed in the traditional Greek style. In the sanctuary of Isis and Serapis at Thessalonica (modern Thessaloníki), in northern Greece, there were statues of a whole series of Greek goddesses, each of whom was identified with Isis in one way or another to show that the Egyptian goddess was the essence and synthesis of Greek religion. In the 4th century BC the sculptor Bryaxis created a famous colossal statue of Serapis in the temple at Alexandria. It represented the god—as a combination of the Greek gods Zeus (the father of the gods), Hades, and Dionysus—seated upon a throne, with Cerberus, the three-headed monster, beside him. An interesting statuette found at Cyrene (modern Shaḥḥāt, Libya) shows a female initiate of Isis. The woman is wrapped from feet to waist like a mummy; but the upper part of her body is free, and she is wearing the crown of Isis on her head. The statue thus showed how an initiate would first die and subsequently resurrect in triumph during the ceremony. Many terra-cotta statues of Isis and her son Horus (Egyptian religion) have survived from Roman Egypt; they are similar to the later statues of the Christian Madonna and Child. Syrian statues of Jupiter Heliopolitanus represent the god in a rigid attitude, like a pillar. In the base of some of these statues are holes, into which sticks could be inserted for the purpose of carrying the statue in procession. In Mithraic sanctuaries a great number of statues, especially of the gods of the planets, were exhibited. Statues of the Mithraic time god were also frequent; they were often hollow and were constructed so that they could spit fire.

Reliefs (relief)

      The Dionysiac reliefs are numerous. They show symbols of the religion, such as the shepherd's staff, the winnow (an ancient device for separating chaff from grain), and the phallus; they depict the gay life of satyrs and maenads, shepherds and shepherdesses; and they represent the “golden age” of the gods with tame and wild animals enjoying a peace that the god had instituted. A great silver dish dating from about the 4th century AD and found at Mildenhall, England, shows the swift and elegant dance of the maenads. Dionysiac sarcophagi represented Bacchic revels and the pastime of the Erotes and Psyches in afterlife. Many reliefs of the Isis Mysteries also survive. They display the mystical cista (a receptacle for carrying sacred objects) with the snake of Horus, the priest (priesthood) carrying holy water in a procession, female attendants with a ladle, and a man in a dog's mask, who represents Anubis (the guardian god). Other Isiac reliefs show Isis riding on a dog, symbolic of her position as goddess of Sirius (the Dog Star).

      In Mithraic caverns there was always a relief depicting the god sacrificing the bull. Representations of the sacramental meal were also frequent; a relief recently discovered in Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, shows a banquet at which the initiates are wearing masks, among them a lion, a raven, a soldier, and a Persian. Two reliefs—at Rome (now at Modena, Italy) and at Housesteads, England (the best preserved fort along Hadrian's Wall)—depict the creation of the world out of an initial egg; in this case, Orphic and Mithraic ideas were amalgamated. Other episodes of Mithraic mythology that were commonly displayed include the birth of Mithra from a rock with the shepherds who welcome him and his dealings with the sun god.

 The stucco reliefs in the subterranean basilica near Porta Maggiore are of outstanding quality. In the central episode, Sappho—an early Greek poetess who supposedly killed herself in a “lover's leap” from the island of Leucas into the Ionian Sea—is shown leaping toward Apollo, the god of the sun; this symbolized the soul's transcendence into more favourable existence. Many of the reliefs in the basilica allegorize episodes from Greek mythology in the fashion of the Pythagoreans, who found a hidden religious or philosophical meaning behind the mythical tales of the Greek tradition.

painting

 There are few paintings from the temples of the mystery religions that have been preserved; nevertheless, some of these deserve comment. The superb Dionysiac frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri) at Pompeii show the initiation of a girl into the Bacchic Mysteries: in one fresco she is lifting the cover of a sacred casket; in a second scene three followers of Dionysus are practicing lecanomancy (divination by the inspection of a bowl filled with water); in a third scene the girl is unveiling an erect phallus and because of this she is being flagellated; finally, she is seen dancing in happy bliss. A number of Isiac frescoes, preserved in the temple of Isis at Pompeii, show the sacred dance of the initiates, the presentation of an urn filled with the ritual holy water to the initiates, the coffin of Osiris and his resurrection, and episodes from the cycle of Io, a Greek heroine equated with Isis. Isiac frescoes dating from the time of the emperor Caligula in the 1st century AD are also found in the ruins on the Palatine at Rome. In the Mithraeum under Sta. Prisca in Rome, two layers of frescoes were found that show the procession of the initiates toward ritual sacrifice of a bull, called Suovetaurilia, and the sacred meal of the sun god and Mithra. Sometimes a fresco replaced the relief of the sacrifice of the bull. The initiation ceremonies are shown in the Mithraic sanctuary at Capua (in western Italy): the candidate, accompanied by the mystagōgos, is blindfolded, kneels down, and lies prostrate. At Rome, in the tomb of Vincentius and Vibia, who worshipped the god Sabazius (a Thracian form of Dionysus), frescoes show how Vibia was carried away by Death, as Kore had been carried away by Hades, how she was judged and acquitted, and how she was introduced by a “good angel” to the sacred meal of the blessed.

Mosaics (mosaic)

      A mosaic at Antioch represents the phoenix—the solar bird who died and resurrected from its own ashes and who was its own father and son at the same time—with sunrays encircling its head. A Dionysus mosaic at Cologne, Germany, depicts in several panels the life of satyrs and maenads and also Bacchic symbols such as the winnow (an implement of purification) and the oyster (which has to be liberated from the shell as the soul from the body). The room evidently was used for banquets and Dionysiac merrymaking.

Mystery religions and Christianity

      Christianity originated during the time of the Roman Empire, which was also the time at which the mysteries reached their height of popularity. This was by no means an accident. The Christian theologian Origen wrote in the 3rd century that it was part of the divine plan that Christ was born under the emperor Augustus: the whole Mediterranean world was united by the Romans, and the conditions for missionary work were more favourable than ever before. The simultaneousness of the propagation of the mystery religions and of Christianity and the striking similarities between them, however, demand some explanation of their relationship. The hypothesis of a mutual dependence has been proposed by scholars—especially a dependence of Christianity upon the mysteries—but such theories have been discarded. The similarities must rather be explained by parallel developments from similar origins. In both cases, national religions of a ritualistic type were transformed, and the transformation followed similar lines: from national to ecumenical religion, from ritualistic ceremonies and taboos to spiritual doctrines set down in books, from the idea of inherited tradition to the idea of revelation. The parallel development was fostered by the new conditions prevailing in the Roman Empire, in which the old political units were dissolved, and the whole civilized world was ruled by one monarch. People were free to move from one country to another and became cosmopolitan. The ideas of Greek philosophy penetrated everywhere in this society (social class). Thus, under identical conditions, new forms of religious communities sprang from similar roots. The mystery religions and Christianity had many similar features—e.g., a time of preparation before initiation and periods of fasting; baptism and banquets; vigils and early-morning ceremonies; pilgrimages and new names for the initiates. The purity demanded in the worship of Sol and in the Chaldean fire rites was similar to Christian standards. The first Christian communities resembled the mystery communities in big cities and seaports by providing social security and the feeling of brotherhood. In the Christian congregations of the first two centuries, the variety of rites and creeds was almost as great as in the mystery communities; few of the early Christian congregations could have been called orthodox according to later standards. The date of Christmas was purposely fixed on December 25 to push into the background the great festival of the sun god, and Epiphany on January 6 to supplant an Egyptian festival of the same day. The Easter ceremonies rivalled the pagan spring festivals. The religious art (Early Christian art) of the Christians continued the pagan art of the preceding generations. The Christian representations of the Madonna and child are clearly the continuation of the representations of Isis and her son suckling her breast. The statue of the Good Shepherd carrying his lost sheep and the pastoral themes on Christian sarcophagi were also taken over from pagan craftsmanship.

      In theology the differences between early Christians, Gnostics (Gnosticism) (members—often Christian—of dualistic sects of the 2nd century AD), and pagan Hermetists were slight. In the large Gnostic library discovered at NajʿḤammādī, in upper Egypt, in 1945, Hermetic writings were found sideby-side with Christian Gnostic texts. The doctrine of the soul taught in Gnostic communities was almost identical to that taught in the mysteries: the soul emanated from the Father, fell into the body, and had to return to its former home. The Greeks interpreted the national religions of the Greek Orient chiefly in terms of Plato (Platonism)'s philosophical and religious concepts. Interpretation in Platonic concepts was also the means by which the Judeo-Christian set of creeds was thoroughly assimilated to Greek ideas by the early Christian thinkers Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Thus, the religions had a common conceptual framework. The doctrinal similarity is exemplified in the case of the pagan writer and philosopher Synesius. The people of Cyrene selected him as the most able man of the city to be their bishop, and he was able to accept the election without sacrificing his intellectual honesty. In his pagan period he wrote hymns that closely follow the fire theology of the Chaldean Oracles; later he wrote hymns to Christ. The doctrine is almost identical.

      The similarity of the religious vocabulary is also great. Greek life was characterized by such things as democratic institutions, seafaring, gymnasium and athletic games, theatre, and philosophy. The mystery religions adopted many expressions from these domains: they spoke of the assembly (ekklēsia) of the mystai; the voyage of life; the ship, the anchor, and the port of religion; and the wreath of the initiate; life was a stage and man the actor. The Christians took over the entire terminology; but many pagan words were strangely twisted in order to fit into the Christian world: the service of the state (leitourgia) became the ritual, or liturgy, of the church; the decree of the assembly and the opinions of the philosophers (dogma) became the fixed doctrine of Christianity; the correct opinion (orthē doxa) about things became orthodoxy.

      There are also great differences between Christianity and the mysteries. Mystery religions, as a rule, can be traced back to tribal origins, Christianity to a historical person. The holy stories of the mysteries were myths; the Gospels of the New Testament, however, relate historical events. The books that the mystery communities used in Roman times cannot possibly be compared to the New Testament. The essential features of Christianity were fixed once and for all in this book; the mystery doctrines, however, always remained in a much greater state of fluidity. The theology of the mysteries was developed to a far lesser degree than the Christian theology. There are no parallels in Christianity to the sexual rites in the Dionysiac (Dionysus) and Isiac religion, with the exception of a few aberrant Gnostic communities. The cult of rulers in the manner of the imperial mysteries was impossible in Jewish and Christian worship.

      The mysteries declined quickly when the emperor Constantine (Constantine I) raised Christianity to the status of the state religion. After a short period of toleration, the pagan religions were prohibited. The property of the pagan gods was confiscated, and the temples were destroyed. The precious metal used to coin Constantine's gold pieces was taken from heathen temple treasuries. To show the beginning of a new era, the capital of the empire was transferred to the new Christian city of Constantinople. The centres of pagan resistance were Rome, where the old aristocracy clung to the mysteries, and Alexandria, where the pagan Neoplatonist philosophers expounded the mystery doctrines. When Julian the Apostate (Julian), Roman emperor from AD 361 to 363, tried to reestablish pagan worship, he found allies at Rome and Alexandria. After his death, the pagan opposition to Christianity continued for one more generation. The Roman aristocrats multiplied their efforts to maintain the piety of the mysteries, and the pagan philosophers tried to refine their theology by oversubtle interpretations. In 391, however, the Serapeum at Alexandria was demolished, and in 394 the opposition of the Roman (Roman religion) aristocracy was crushed in battle at the Frigidus River (now called the Vipacco River in Italy and the Vipava in Slovenia).

      Only remnants of the mystery doctrines, amalgamated with Platonism, were transmitted by a few philosophers and individualists to the religious thinkers of the Byzantine Empire. The mystery religions exerted some influence on the thinkers of the Middle Ages and the philosophers of the Italian Renaissance.

Reinhold Merkelbach

Additional Reading

General texts include James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., 12 vol. (1911–15, reprinted 1990), also available in an abridged ed., The New Golden Bough (1959, reissued 1972), a famous and influential treatise on ancient religion, especially on Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, and Demeter; John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions (1976, reissued as Encyclopedia of Mysticism and Mystery Religions, 1982); Joscelyn Godwin, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World (1981), an illustrated, popular overview; and Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (1987), with an extensive bibliography.The Greek mysteries are explored in Erwin Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks (1925, reprinted 1987; originally published in German, 8th ed., 1921), by the first author to understand the religion of Dionysus; Louis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, 5 vol. (1896–1909, reissued 1971), a careful and conscientious collection and interpretation of the sources for Demeter and Dionysus; Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3rd ed. (1922, reprinted with a new introduction, 1991), containing original accounts about Demeter, Dionysus, and Orpheus; Martin P. Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion, 2nd ed., trans. from Swedish (1949, reprinted 1980), an excellent handbook; E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951, reissued 1973), relevant especially for Dionysiac and Orphic religion; and Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (1985), which includes a discussion of mysteries.Mysteries in the Roman Empire are considered by Franz Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism (1911, reissued 1956; originally published in French, 2nd ed. rev., 1909), an excellent general account; A.D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (1933, reprinted 1988), a well-written and original study of the relation of Oriental cults and Christianity, and Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background (1964), a learned collection of articles; Martin P. Nilsson, The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age (1957, reprinted 1985), a clear and scholarly survey of the religion of Dionysus in later times; Reinhold Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (1962), on the ancient romances as mystery texts, and Isisfeste in griechischrömischer Zeit (1963), on the Isis festivals and their relationship to Christian festivals; and Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981).Reinhold Merkelbach Ed.

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