Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

3.2
Mithras slaying the bull (Tauroctony).
From the 1st to the 4th century AD, Mithraism spread across the vast expanse
of the Roman Empire, from its borders with Parthia to Britain. Mithras tauroctonos
(‘Mithras the Bull-Slayer’) was worshipped by many segments of Roman society –
by legionnaires, sailors, slaves and the coloni (tenant farmers), the highest nobility
and even emperors such as Nero, Commodus, Diocletian, Licinius and especially
Julian (AD 361–363), who entered the history books under the nickname Julian the
Apostate – an ardent enemy of the rising forces and power of Christianity.
‘If the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady’, wrote
Ernest Renan, ‘the world would have been Mithraic.’
There was a time when Mithraism was just one step away from finally overcoming
Christianity. And yet Christianity prevailed. The reasons for this, aside from socioeconomic
ones, are to be found in the nature of the human psyche. The militant
religion of Mithras (it is no accident that one of his main epithets was invicto Mithrae
– ‘invincible Mithras’) called for eternal struggle and the destruction of evil, whereas
the religion of Christ the Messiah, by contrast, demanded endurance, the acceptance
of suffering and redemptive atonement. While Christ is a god of suffering, Mithras a
god of victory.
Indeed, the vast majority of humankind is by nature inclined to suffer and endure
hardships in a never-ending struggle against evil, rather than to overcome it. Ousted
(in favour of Christianity) but still unconquerable, Mithraism became permanently
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