mate connection of the
two cults. This half religious, half scientific system which was not
peculiarly Persian nor original to Mithraism was not the reason for the
adoption of that worship by the Roman world.

Neither did the Persian mysteries win the masses by their liturgy.
Undoubtedly their secret ceremonies performed in mountain caves, or at any
rate in the darkness of the underground crypts, were calculated to inspire
awe. Participation in the liturgical meals gave rise to moral comfort and
stimulation. By submitting to a sort of baptism the votaries hoped to
expiate their sins and regain an untroubled conscience. But the sacred
feasts and purifying ablutions connected with the same spiritual hopes are
found in other Oriental cults, and the magnificent suggestive ritual of the
Egyptian clergy certainly was more impressive than that of the magi. The
mythic drama performed in the grottoes of the Persian god and culminating
in the immolation of a steer who was considered as the creator and
rejuvenator of the earth, must have seemed less important and affecting
than the suffering and joy of Isis seeking and reviving the mutilated body
of her husband, or than the moaning and jubilation of Cybele mourning over
and reviving her lover Attis.

But Persia introduced dualism as a fundamental principle in religion. It
was this that distinguished {152} Mithraism from other sects and inspired
its dogmatic theology and ethics, giving them a rigor and firmness unknown
to Roman paganism. It considered the universe from an entirely new point of
view and at the same time provided a new goal in life.

Of course, if we understand by dualism the antithesis of mind and matter,
of reason and intuition, it appeared at a considerably earlier period in
Greek philosophy,[34] where it was one of the leading ideas of
neo-Pythagoreanism and of Philo's system. But the distinguishing feature of
the doctrine of the magi is the fact that it deified the evil principle,
set it up as a rival to the supreme deity, and taught that both had to be
worshiped. This system offered an apparently simple solution to the problem
of evil, the stumbling block of theologies, and it attracted the cultured
minds as well as the masses, to whom it afforded an explanation of their
sufferings. Just as the mysteries of Mithra began to spread Plutarch wrote
of them favorably and was inclined himself to adopt them.[35] From that
time dates the appearance in literature of th