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Updated: June 21, 2025
It was long past midnight; he was reminded of his companions now sacrificing on the mountain, and addressed a long prayer "to the crown," "the invincible sun-god," "the great light," "the god begotten of the rock," and to many other names of Mithras; for since he had belonged to the mystics of this divinity, he had become a zealous devotee, and could fast too with extraordinary constancy.
Mithras was the sun and he was also the God of the Persians; and according to Ovid's account horses were offered in sacrifice to him, Placat equo Persis radiis Hyperiona cinctum, Ne detur celeri victima tarda Deo. But Mr. Hyde believes that they only made use of the sun and fire in their worship as symbols of the Divinity.
Phoebicius belonged to the worshippers of Mithras, and he often fasted in his honor to the point of exhaustion, while on the other hand he frequently drank with his boon companions, at the feasts of the god, till he was in a state of insensibility.
Observing that sacrifices were offered once a month in the vicinity of some of the royal tombs, they assumed that the object of the cult was the monarch himself, whereas it was no doubt really addressed either to Ormazd or to Mithras. The Persians cannot rightly be accused of the worship of dead men, a superstition from which both the Zoroastrian and the Magian systems were entirely free.
Anaxagoras briefly replied, that the mind which did not believe in divine beings, must be cold and dark indeed. "Even so," replied Artiphernes, devoutly; "blessed be Oromasdes, who sends Mithras to warm and enlighten the world! But what surprises me most is, that you Grecians import new divinities from other countries, as freely as slaves, or papyrus, or marble.
His famous reference to the Sun-God Mithras reads as follows: "The devil in the mystic rites of his idols competes even with the essential portions of the sacraments of God.
Numbers determine the contents of every existing thing; whatever is, is equal to its contents, numbers therefore are the true being, the essence of all that is." "In the name of Mithras, Darius, do leave off talking in that style, unless you want to turn my brain," interrupted Zopyrus.
Listen, my daughter: I myself, while still king of Lydia, often sacrificed in sincere devotion to the Apollo of the Greeks, without a fear that in so doing I should offend the Lydian sun-god Sandon; the Ionians pay their worship to the Asiatic Cybele, and, now that I have become a Persian, I raise my hands adoringly to Mithras, Ormuzd and the lovely Anahita.
It is at any rate clear that the cross was not our recognised symbol at that date; and that it is more likely to have been gradually adopted by us from Sun-God worshippers, than by the worshippers of Mithras and other pre-Christian conceptions of the Sun-God from us.
And so she raised her hands to the great and glorious sun, who with his golden sword-like rays was just dispersing the mists that hung over the Euphrates, and opened her lips to sing her newly-learnt hymns in praise of Mithras; but her voice failed her, instead of Mithras she could only see her own great Ra, the god she had so often worshipped in Egypt, and instead of a Magian hymn could only sing the one with which the Egyptian priests are accustomed to greet the rising sun.
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