TESTIMONY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES

It is important to note that one of the main features of Mithraism was secrecy. Unlike other religions from Ancient History which had sacred texts the public could access, Mithraism left behind no written records explaining its teachings explicitly. Consequently, direct testimony from the cult’s followers is extremely rare.

The accounts that do exist are often descriptions written by Ancient authors who were not themselves devotees but rather opponents who distorted reality. They often compared Mithraism to other religions or provided biased accounts based on their own beliefs and prejudices. The first mention of Mithras in the West comes in the Thebaid, an epic poem by Satius in 82 CE, which refers to the tauroctony. At the end of the 3rd century, in his On the Cave of the Nymphs, Porphyry of Tyr explains how Mithras is connected to the constellations and the cosmos. In the mid 4th century, Jerome of Stridon talks of the grades of initiation. The Christian author Tertullian treats worshippers as heretics and denounces barbaric practices.

The first modern accounts of the cult of Mithras come mainly from inscriptions and artistic depictions discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries. They aroused much interest among researchers and scholars such as the historian Franz Cumont, a pioneer in modern research and still the reference on this topic to this day.

More mithraea have been discovered in recent years. New sanctuaries are regularly being unearthed including in Angers in 2010 and Lucciana (Corsica) in 2017. These archaeological digs play a vital role in piecing together the cult’s beliefs and also finding out just how it spread through the Roman Empire.