Franz Cumont. The Mysteries of Mithra. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1910.
Second Edition. (20 x 13 cm) pp. xiv, 239 + ads. Bound in crimson publisher's cloth with pictoral bust, titles in gilt on front cover and spine. Frontispeice and many in-text black and white illustrations throughout. p 35 has been historically tape repaired. Covers have shelfware that has slightly abraided fabric. End bands bumped. Overall condition, GOOD.
Franz Cumont (1868–1947) was a Belgian archaeologist, philologist, and historian, who focused on the mystery religions of Late Antiquity, above all Mithraism. He argued that Roman Mithraism descended from Iranian religion, situating it within his broader account of how Eastern mystery religions shaped the Roman Empire and Roman paganism.
Mithraism, or the Mithraic mysteries, was a Roman mystery religion centered on the god Mithras, popular especially among soldiers from the 1st to 4th centuries AD across the western empire. Initiates progressed through seven grades, met in underground temples called mithraea, and shared communal meals, with the central image everywhere being the tauroctony, Mithras slaying a bull. Almost no Mithraic scripture survives, so scholars rely on iconography, inscriptions, and graffiti, leaving the cult's actual theology and origins deeply contested—Cumont's once-dominant theory of direct descent from Iranian Mithra worship has since been challenged by scholars favoring a Roman or astrological origin. The religion faded rapidly after Christianity's rise, effectively disappearing by the end of the 4th century under Theodosius's anti-pagan decrees.