In the Temple of Mithras

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 796, 22 October 1954, Page 4

In the Temple of Mithras

FEW weeks ago the remains A of a temple of Mi*ithras, built by the Romans at least 1600 years ago, were uncovered near St. Paul’s in the City of London. Interest in the Giscovery was not confined to the learned. Many thousands of people who had never heard of Mithras came to stand and stare, and further dis-coveries-including an image of the god-were received with excitement. Eventually the owners of the site, who had delayed their building plans while the excavations went forward, announced that the remains will be preserved in an open courtyard about 80 yards from where the temple was found. The transfer will be completed in two years, and the ruins will be opened to the public, free of charge.

Throughout these proceedings the dominant mood was a respect for antiquity. There were, of course, the usual music hall jokes: for men have always laughedthough sometimes a little uncertainly, with backward glances over the left shoulder-at the old, discredited gods. But people who live in an ancient city, with the monuments of their own history around them, have a feeling for the past which comes very close to reverence. The mere fact of survival is sufficiently interesting. No great effort of imagination is needed to take in the sweep of history while underground the image lay buried in what were once its sacred precincts. There have been many changes in England, and in the world, since Roman soldiers went for the last time into that small temple. They did not know then that their god was dying, or that the Roman Empire in. whichafter the collapse of Persia-he had been so widely accepted, was dying too. Yet it could be said that Mithraism did not entirely disappear. It was replaced by a higher religion, but some of its

elements were absorbed; and although in the early centuries of Christianity they sometimes led to heresy, they also helped to strengthen the orthodox faith. In a reconstructed temple of Mithras, the visitor could scarcely fail to realise the range and power of religion. Long ago the Persians believed that Ormuzd, a deity with the attributes of light and goodness, was engaged unceasingly in a war against Ahriman, the principle of darkness and evil. In this war nobody could be neutral. But those who enlisted on the side of goodness were not alone. Between Ormuzd and Ahriman was Mithras-‘"for which reason," says Plutarch, "the Persians call Mithras the Mediator." The

Roman adherents saw him as a warrior-god, powerfully supporting Ormuzd; and to him they addressed their prayers. It all happened a long time ago. Today we have different ideas about the problem of evil; but evil itself is still a fundamental fact in human experience; and if the war against it is now plainly within ourselves, it is nevertheless a war in which there can be no neutrality. In the Mithraic legend the god was born from a rock or in a cave, so that the recovery of the image in London has a symbolism which in another time would have had an element of the miraculous. But it is only a relic, exposed now to the gaze of people for whom its significance is merely historical. In one way, however, it still has power over the imagination. We can scarcely look upon such things without touching an immemorial stillness. The men who knew them have gone their way, as presently we shall go ours; and the ruins say nothing of the dread and hope that drove them. Time’s relics are purified in the concealing earth. But outside, under the changing skies, man is much the same as he used to be; and the bombers fly overhead.