ABSTRACT
Mithraism was practised in the remotest provinces of the Roman empire and under the most diverse conditions. At the pinnacle of the divine hierarchy and at the origin of things, the Mithraic theology, the heir of that of the Zervanitic Magi, placed boundless Time. The preachers of Mithra sought to resolve the grand problem of the origin of the world by the hypothesis of a series of successive generations. The astronomical allegories concealed from the curiosity of the vulgar the real scope of the hieratic representations, and the promise of complete illumination, long withheld, fed the ardor of faith with the fascinating allurements of mystery. The astronomical method of interpretation, having been once adopted in the Mysteries, was freely extended and made to embrace all possible figures. The light bursting from the heavens, which were conceived as a solid vault, became, in the mythology of the Magi, Mithra born from the rock.
