Flavio Barbiero
These so-called “Magi” dispersed with the expansions of the Persian Empire. This explains why Heraclitus in the 6th century BC describes the “infernal” rites of the Magi, which the Dionysiacs imitated.
By contributing to Orphism, this early Magian cult of Mithras influenced the thought of Pythagoras and finally Plato. It is likely for this reason that beginning with Aristobulus in the third century BC, , Plato was regarded as the godfather of their mysteries.
This Greco-Roman-Persian philosophy laid the basis for the theology that eventually emerged as the Mysteries. These became the basis of all the leading pagan mysteries, including Mithraism and Hermeticism, but also Gnosticism. It is here we begin to see Armenians by way of both the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, as a critical linking piece between the Hellenic and Chaldean-Persian world.
To wit, the first clear instance of the worship of Mithras was with Antiochus I of Commagene, (Armenia) where Mithras was equated with Apollo and Helios and hence Sol Invictus (in the Latin). And it is among the Armenians first too, as a nation, that took on Christianity as the logical evolution of Mithraic thought, among the Armenians that we find many artifacts commonly, if wrongly, thought of as ‘Judaica’; the wine Menorah, claims to Noah’s Ark, and a mysticism that would lend to later Gnostic and Kabbalic thought. The list of Roman emperors of Armenian origin is also as extensive as it is telling.
And yet this poses an entirely other problem, outside the scope of this foreword: others have previously noted the parallels between Plato’s conception of the philosopher-king, the ideas of Socrates and his students Plato and Xenophone, the ideas and lives of the two Marcus Aurelius’s, and the concept of the Christ.
We are told these attempts to institute Mithraism as a Christianity all failed until the rise of Constantine who simultaneously brought both Mithraism and Christianity as the state religion(s), (?!) to the nominal exclusion of all others.
As Encylopaedia Brittanica summarizes:
“The height of Syrian influence was in the 3rd century AD when Sol, the Syrian sun god, was on the verge of becoming the chief god of the Roman Empire. He was introduced into Rome by the emperor Elagabalus (Heliogabalus) in about AD 220, and by about AD 240 Pythian Games (i.e., festivals of the sun god Apollo Helios) were instituted in many cities of the empire. The emperor Aurelian (270–275) elevated Sol to the highest rank among the gods. Sanctuaries of Sol and the gods of other planets (septizonium) were constructed. Even the emperor Constantine the Great, some 50 years later, wavered between Sol and Christ. For some time his religious policy was devised so as to allow the coexistence of both religions. Finally, Christianity was accepted as the official religion.”
Thus Barbier’s essay is critical in reestablishing a discourse towards the view that the Roman deity Mithras is the Iranian deity Mithra, and not simply a derived namesake.
We furthermore are interested in how this opens up future research into the possibility that Constantine, Jesus Christ, the Mithras incarnate as (emperor) Elagabalus, Marcus Aurelius, Plato’s Philosopher King, or Julius Caesar (as Divus Julius, the Sol Invictus) are a single historical personage or archetypal persona. This is such, even while contemporary literature insists that their respective religions and cults were particular or categorically distinct, in substance, time, meaning, and geography. This insistence comes even as we are confronted with their admittance that the historical corpus on antiquity are faith-based in ostensible reproductions created during the Italian renaissance.
Among the important tasks of mankind in this century will be to resolve this question.
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