Les dévots latinophones de Mithra disaient-ils leurs ‘mystères’—et si oui, comment ?

Abstract

Studying the epigraphic testimonies of Mithraists should be a suitable approach to our task of tracing the mysteries in Latin, because Roman worshippers of Mithras were Latin speakers in their vast majority. Moreover, a certain proportion of them had their origin in the Greek-speaking Mediterranean, where mysteria were known. And yet there is almost no lexicon of ‘mysteries’ in these texts, although a Latin lexicon was available for talking about the mysteries. A close study of the few terms that might be related to an eventual expression of the ‘mysteries’—sacratus/a, consacranus/a, fratres, syndexi—produces results less convincing than is usually thought. However, at the end of the fourth century in Rome there does seem to be a shift in the way in which the entry into each grade (traditio) is expressed. In the end, this kind of lexical analysis reveals less about the ‘mysteries’ of Mithra than it does about the profoundly Roman nature of the organization of these religious groups.