1
Aleš Chalupa 1 , Jan Fousek 2 , Tomáš Hampejs 1 a Eva Výtvarová 2 1 Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. 2 Department of Computer Systems and Communications, Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. The origins of the Roman cult of Mithras remain an unsolved puzzle. Since the Cumontian scenario (Cumont 1913), which holds that the Mithraic cult spread from ancient Persia to the Roman Empire, was abandoned due to increasing criticism, various alternative hypotheses have been presented. Some of these still assume that the formation of the cult took place in Asia Minor (e.g. Will 1978, Turcan 1993, Gordon 1978, Beck 1998). Others can be seen as a more radical departure from the Cumontian view and offer candidate regions more distant from ancient Persia, e.g. Bosporan Kingdom (Beskow 1978), Balkan Peninsula (Wikander 1951) or Rome/Ostia (Clauss 2000). However, the oldest archaeological evidence for the cultʼs existence does not unequivocally support any of these hypotheses; consequently, we cannot easily decide which of these scenarios of the origins of the Mithraic cult should be accepted as historically more likely. We argue that the analysis of the diffusion of Mithraic communities over the Mithraic network might possibly shed some light on the formation process of the Roman cult of Mithras and lead to the identification of a geographic region from where the cult probably began to spread, given its late distribution across the Roman Empire. The results of such an analysis may help scholars to evaluate competing scenarios of the Mithraic origins and to partially overcome the problem of the lack of relevant evidence. • Beck, Roger. 1998. „The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of Their Genesis.“ Journal of Roman Studies 88, 115-128. • Beskow, Per. 1978. „The Routes of Early Mithraism,“ In: Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin (ed.), Études Mithriaques: Actes du 2 e Congrès international, Téhéran, du 1 er au 8 septembre 1975, Téhéran: Bibliothèque Pahlavi, 7-18. • Clauss, Manfred. 2000. The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. • Cumont, Franz. 3 1913. Les mystères de Mithra. Bruxelles: H. Lamertin. • Gordon, Richard L. 1978. „The Date and Significance of CIMRM 593 (British Museum, Townley Collection).“ Journal of Mithraic Studies 2, 148-174. • Turcan, Robert. 2 1993. Mithra et le mithriacisme. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. • Wikander, Stig. 1951. „Études sur les mysterès de Mithra I: Introduction.“ In: Vetenskapssocieten i Lund. Årsbok 1950, Lund: H. Ohlsson, 5-46. • Will, Ernest. 1978. „Origine et nature du Mithriacisme.“ In: Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin (ed.), Études Mithriaques: Actes du 2 e Congrès international, Téhéran, du 1 er au 8 septembre 1975, Téhéran: Bibliothèque Pahlavi, 527-536. We assume that a quantitative network analysis of the spatial and temporal distribution of the archaeological and epigraphical evidence related to the Roman cult of Mithras may shed light on the process of the formation of the Roman cult of Mithras. This may lead to an identification of a geographic region from where the cult most likely started to spread. Results of such an analysis can help historians to better evaluate competing scenarios of Mithraic origins and partly “bridge“ lacunae caused by the lack of relevant evidence. The results collected through network analysis will subsequently be tested in a series of simulations in which the Roman cult of Mithras will be, under the set of discrete rules, allowed to spread on the network model of the Roman world (based on ORBIS geospatial network model) from various candidate locations. The resulting “patterns of dissemination” will be then compared against the known evidence about the spatial distribution of Mithraic communities. The project is currently in its first stage. A quantitative network analysis of Mithraic material is possible only if we have at our disposal a network consisting from geographically fixed and temporarily distinguished “nodes” of evidence. To create such a network requires a careful review of various corpora of Mithraic evidence of archaeological and epigraphic nature and coding of data in a form suitable for quantitative analysis. • In the first step it must be established what type of Mithraic material can count as an evidence attesting the presence of Mithraic community in a particular place. • The second step involves the establishing the time period during which individual Mithraic communities existed in particular localities. After the first stage is completed the network analysis will follow.
