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| Villa of Mysteries- Pompeii |
Much of Roman religion was public in nature. It was all-important to the residents of the city to maintain Rome’s good relationship with the gods, and this was done through regular sacrifices and the maintenance of myriad temples dedicated to them. But behind closed doors, those seeking more intimate contact with the divine threw raucous parties, committed gruesome self-mutilation and performed ritual re-enactments. Known as ‘mystery cults’, these highly secretive societies spread through the Roman world from the East and became extremely popular.
These societies were dedicated to various gods and typically promised their devotees a happy afterlife. Mystery cults allowed the individual to participate directly in the worship service, and the ceremonies often involved ecstatic dancing and singing. These experiences were intended to be transformative, and differed greatly from the more staid rituals of public religion.
One of the earliest cults to come to Rome was that of the Magna Mater, the Great Mother. In 204 BCE, during the dark days of the war with Carthage, the Romans became aware of a prophecy they believed was the key to defeating the enemy. They had to seek out the Great Mother’s cult-image and bring this to Rome from Ida, in the kingdom of Pergamum. Her symbol was a sacred stone, which they brought back to Rome, beginning a long tradition of her worship there. Other borrowings from the East included that of Mithras from Persia. Though Persia had long been an enemy of Rome, Mithras became a popular deity among the Romans, especially with soldiers, officials and merchants of the empire.
From Egypt in the 2nd century BCE came the cult of the mother goddess Isis, who became beloved across the Roman world, and from the Greeks, the Romans learned of Dionysus, whom they called Bacchus – the god of agriculture and wine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this mystery cult’s ecstatic rites included drinking and dancing, liberating its members and inducing a trance-like state. Another celebrated cult was the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were held at Eleusis in Greece every autumn and had as their foundation the mythological abduction and recovery by Demeter, goddess of agriculture, of her daughter, Persephone. Before the religious revelry could begin, however, members of the mystery cults had to be initiated.
Initiation
At the heart of each Roman mystery religion was the mysterium, a closely kept secret rite or point of theology. To gain knowledge of this ‘mystery’, a person had to undergo the process of initiation. This was entirely voluntary; no one was compelled to join a mystery cult or take part in its ceremonies. The purpose of the initiation ritual was to bring the individual, the initiate, into direct contact with a deity through an intense and unforgettable experience. This ecstatic experience was not meant to be explained, but felt. Afterwards, they kept what had happened to them a closely guarded secret, which served to strengthen the bonds between the members of the cult.
Initiation into the Bacchanalia, the cult of Bacchus, involved joining a group of Bacchic worshipers and dancing with them in the mountains. Most of these were women, called Bacchants. Some might also have private initiation, and in this case an initiate could be forced to abstain from food for ten days. Then came a period of feasting, after which they would ritually bathe as a form of purification. Only then were they allowed to enter into a shrine of Bacchus.
For the followers of Isis, known as the Lady of the Mysteries, the initiation ritual was similar to that of Bacchus. Her initiates bathed, and thus purified, and abstained from food for ten days before embarking on several days of feasting. The wearing of ceremonial robes also featured in the initiation, as well as the viewing of sacred hieroglyphs. The promise of life after death was part of the attraction of this benevolent goddess.
For those who wished to take part in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which continued on in Greece throughout the Roman imperial period, an initiate was made to take part in the so-called Lesser Mysteries that were held each spring in Athens, which was nearby to Eleusis. This initiation process involved sacrifices, ritual purification, fasting and the singing of hymns.
The Great Mother was a figure representing the elemental feminine in its fertility aspect. Magna Mater’s male priests, the Galli, were eunuchs, and castrated themselves to be initiated into her priesthood. This extreme act was inspired by the myth that her lover, the god Attis, had done the same. Unlike the other mystery cults, Mithraism accepted only men into its mysteries.
There were seven grades of Mithras’s cult, and each of the seven corresponded to one of the known planets of the day. Each grade also had its own rites of initiation. In one, the naked and blindfolded initiate, his hands tied behind him, was made to kneel. Two other men stood beside him as part of the ceremony. A sword was pointed at him, and then he was made to lie prone on the floor. He then had to wear a crown, and lie flat on the ground. Another initiation ritual involved shooting an arrow, thereby re-enacting a story from the life of Mithras in which the god launched an arrow into a rock, causing water to flow from it.
Rites
The cult of the Magna Mater, the Great Mother, was popular all over the ancient world, and she was known by many names, including Rhea, Demeter, and especially Cybele, the great goddess of Phrygia, whose cult image the Romans brought to Rome. She was the mother of not just all of the gods, but of all humanity, too. Her rites in Rome maintained the link between the goddess and her original homeland in Asia Minor. Her sanctuary, set on the Vatican Hill, was known as the Phrygianum, and the leader of her cult was known as the Phrygian High Priest. There was an annual festival in Rome held in her honour, which ran for seven days and included races in the circus.
Rites included dancing and music, with the playing of flutes, cymbals, horns and tambourines, and priests would slash themselves with knives while performing an ecstatic dance. Their flowing blood symbolically ensured the fertility of the world.
One particularly dramatic ritual of Magna Mater that may have occurred was the taurobolium – a baptism in bull’s blood. A pit was dug and wooden planks were placed over it. Next, a man lowered himself into the pit, and a bull was led onto the planks. The animal was then impaled by a spear, and its blood was allowed to run down through the spaces between the planks, spilling onto the man below. Once the bull had been drained of its blood, the man emerged, ritually purified for 20 years by the power of the Great Mother, acting through the bull’s blood. This account comes from a Christian source and is considered anachronistic, and many historians believe that the blood was actually carefully collected into vessels instead.
The Egyptian goddess Isis shared much in common with the Great Mother, as they were seen as mistresses of life and fertility. Her rites guaranteed a blissful afterlife for participants. The theme of these ceremonies was the ritual re-enactment of the death and resurrection of her husband, Osiris. Osiris reborn also symbolised the rebirth of nature in springtime. A dead person might be summoned back to the realm of the living with the words, “Raise yourself to life: you do not die!” and “Osiris live! Stand up, unhappy one who dost lie there! I am Isis!” Just as Isis raised Osiris from the dead, so would the dead worshiper be raised again to life.
Like Magna Mater and Isis, Demeter was a mother goddess, and her mysteries at Eleusis commemorated her search for her daughter Persephone, or Kore, the maiden in Greek mythology. Carried off by Hades, Kore was held captive in the Underworld. The inconsolable Demeter roamed the Earth searching for her. Crops would not grow, and plague and death stalked the world. So bad did things become that Zeus himself was forced to intervene and secure Kore’s freedom.
But because she had eaten pomegranate seeds while in Hades’ realm, she was forced ever after to spend a third of the year there as his consort. Kore’s time in the Underworld is thus one of great sadness for her mother, and during this time, the season of winter, nothing grows upon Earth. With the arrival of spring, Demeter is reunited with her daughter and life returns to the earth.
Once an initiate had been inducted into the Lesser Mysteries, he or she was allowed to take part in the Greater Mysteries, which took place over several days of sacrifices, purification and fasting. The precise elements of the mysteries themselves are not known to historians today – they were shrouded in secrecy, after all – but they seem to have included music, dancing and a re-enactment of the abduction and recovery of Persephone. The most dramatic part of the mysteries seems to have been a vision beheld by the participant of something in the brightest of light.
Mithras was in origin a god associated with truth and a lieutenant of the primary Zoroastrian deity, Ahura Mazda. Once it came into the Roman world, Mithraism was a heavily changed religion that now viewed Mithras as a saviour god. The rites of his cult echoed the origin myth of Mithras, who was said to have been born from a rock. Ahura Mazda had created first a wild bull, and Mithras wrestled it and hauled it into a cave. The bull escaped, but Mithras tracked it down and slew it by a dagger thrust toits throat. Life then flowed from the gushing blood of the bull. Mithraists would convene their worship meetings in underground chapels, which they called caves, where they shared communal meals of wine and bread. The goal of Mithraism was to purify the immortal soul, making it ready for a return to the realm of light upon death of the individual.
Suppression
Romans did not universally approve of mystery cults, even if they undeniably achieved widespread popularity and won many adherents. Even some emperors joined the societies, not least among them Emperor Domitian (who reigned from 81-96 CE) who was initiated into the mysteries of Isis, and Emperor Gallienus (who reigned from 260-268), who became an initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
One Roman traditionalist – the 1st century BCE historian Livy – would write in horror that during Bacchic mysteries, “Matrons dressed as bacchants with their hair dishevelled, would run to the Tiber with burning torches, and plunge the torches into the water, then bring them up again still alight – as live sulphur was mixed with calcium. Men were said to be abducted by the gods, when they were tied to machines and carried out of sight into hidden caves.” Not least, Livy seems to have feared the mysteries as excuses for all sorts of sexual licence between the male and female initiates. To some extent, the intense insistence upon secrecy logically, if unintentionally, induced anxiety among the uninitiated of Roman society.
Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312 under the auspices of the Christian God led him to make Christianity a legal religion under imperial law in the next year in the Edict of Milan. Christians increased in number and power as the 4th century progressed. The legal position of paganism, which the mystery cults were part of, began to deteriorate as Christianity became the most powerful religion in the empire. Still, the practice of mystery religions did not disappear quickly. Even in the latter half of the 4th century prominent Romans would proudly acknowledge having been initiated into the mysteries of various cults. However, at the end of the century, in 391, Emperor Theodosius I forbade the worship of pagan gods in Rome as well as visits to their temples. In the following year, he outlawed the practice of all pagan religions whatsoever.
Other forces would also act to bring about the end of mystery religions. In c.395, the Goths attacked and destroyed the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis. The sanctuary was never to be repaired, bringing an end to the cult mysteries held there since at least the 6th century BCE. Paganism would hold on in diminished form for many years. There were still enough adherents that Saint Augustine saw the need to compose his City Of God to rebut the allegation, put forward by Rome’s remaining pagans, that the neglect of the old gods had led to the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. The overall trend, however, was for mystery religions to fade away as the ancient world changed and the Middle Ages began.
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Villa of the Mysteries
Buried for centuries in ash, the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii is a window on to the mystery worship of ancient times.
The mystery cult of Bacchus (Dionysus) found great favour in Rome and elsewhere in Italy. However, rare is the case where we can see how the mysteries of his cult, or that of any other god, for that matter, were celebrated by adherents.We are fortunate then to have the Villa of the Mysteries, a home that was preserved from the ravages of time, ironically, by the ravages of the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
In 79 CE, the nearby southern Italian town of Pompeii was buried completely by volcanic ash, and forgotten. It lay undisturbed until its rediscovery in the 18th century.
Within the villa is a room with painted friezes along its walls that depict the mystery worship of Bacchus in glorious colour and remarkable detail. These are arguably the most famous paintings of the Roman world still in existence. Running for about 20 metres around the room, the friezes show a number of individual figures at roughly human size of gods, men, women and mythological beings engaged in the cultic worship of Bacchus.
Interpreting the scenes is difficult, as much of their context has been lost. A damaged painting of Bacchus and his consort, Ariadne, would have been the first to be viewed when entering the room. In one scene, a plump Silenus plays a lyre; in another, a youthful Pan plays his flute. In one, a woman rests her head on the lap of another while a winged woman strikes her with a rod. Next to them both dances a woman with cymbals. It is most likely that the friezes inside the room depicted the initiation of a young woman in to the cult of Bacchus.
Written by Marc DeSantis in "All About History", UK, issue 48, 2017, excerpts pp. 81-85. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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