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Nor in view of the persistent vitality and survival, even to our own day, of the Exoteric practices can there be anything improbable in the hypothesis of a late survival of the Esoteric side of the ritual. Cumont points out that the worship of Mithra was practised in the fifth century in certain remote cantons of the Alps and the Vosges i.e., at the date historically assigned to King Arthur.
Second Edition, 1878, F. Windischmann, Zoroastr. Studien, 1863. Geldner, "Zoroaster," in Encyclopædia Britannica; "Zoroastrianism," in Encyclopædia Bibl. Mills, A Study of the Five Zarathustrian Gathas, 1892-94. Lehmann, in De la Saussaye. Dadhabai Naoroji, The Parsee Religion. On Mithraism, Dieterich Eine Mithras-liturgie. Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, 1903.
See also the work of Cumont, cited at the end of chapter x. I. The Vedic Religion No contrast could well be greater than that between the German religion and that of India. In the one case we have a people full of vigour, but not yet civilised; in the other a people of high organisation and culture, but deficient in vigour; the former religion is one of action, the latter one of speculation.
The medium of transmission is very fully discussed by Cumont in both of the works referred to. The channel appears to have been three-fold. First, commercial, through the medium of Syrian merchants. As ardently religious as practically business-like, the Syrians introduced their native deities wherever they penetrated, "founding their chapels at the same time as their counting-houses."
Why, if survival of Nature cults, popular, and openly performed? A two-fold element in these cults, Exoteric, Esoteric. The Mysteries. Their influence on Christianity to be sought in the Hellenized rather than the Hellenic cults. Cumont. Rohde. Radical difference between Greek and Oriental conceptions. Lack of evidence as regards Mysteries on the whole.
Cumont believes that Mithraism did not imitate the organization of the Greek secret societies. The New Testament use of the term 'mystery' in the sense of 'esoteric doctrine' may have come from the Asian cult; the Mithraic worship was practiced in Tarsus, the native city of the Apostle Paul, in the first century of our era.
Among modern writers I must acknowledge a special debt to the researches of Dieterich, Cumont, Bousset, Wendland, and Reitzenstein.
Cumont, in his Mysteres de Mithra, thus describes him; he is "le genie de la lumiere celeste. Il n'est ni le soleil, ni la lune, ni les etoiles, mais a l'aide de ces mille oreilles, et de ces deux milles yeux, il surveille le monde."
Cumont signalizes as the most active agents of the dispersion of the cult of Mithra, Soldiers, Slaves, and Merchants. As far North as Hadrian's Dyke there has been found an inscription in verse in honour of the goddess of Hierapolis, the author a prefect, probably, Cumont remarks, the officer of a cohort of Hamii, stationed in this distant spot.
But the worship of Mithra in the form in which it spread throughout the Roman Empire, Mithra as the god of the Imperial armies, the deity beloved of the Roman legionary, was in no sense of this concrete and material type. This is how Cumont sums up the main features.
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