Sweet, the Persian savior god Mithras, the ancient god of Zoroaster, slayer of the cosmic bull, brin

Sweet, the Persian savior god Mithras, the ancient god of Zoroaster, slayer of the cosmic bull, bringer of light and rebirth, self-evangelizer who brought his worship to sudden domination of the Mediterranean in the middle of the 2nd century CE! Wait a second. How am I even so sure this guy is Mithras, and how am I even so sure that Mithras was that old? I mean, sure the guy’s name gets tossed around a lot in ancient Persia, but I’m pretty sure the Persians of the 5th century BCE didn’t sculpt their Mithras in a style mysteriously identical to Roman sculpture 700 years later. I mean, he’s wearing that hat right? That floopy hat means “East or whatever”, right? So even if he’s Roman here, he’s still…foreign… At this stage, I’d like to give a shout-out to all the historians of the late 19th century who made “Oriental” a technical term for gods like Mithras, and all the historians of the 21st century who still think that’s the best possible terminology. Back to our dude, Mithras the Unconquered and his foofy hat! That hat right there is a special hat, known as the Phrygian cap, and when you see that you know the Greeks or the Romans were depicting somebody who was not Greek and who probably lived in western Turkey or perhaps Persia. The Greeks see a hat like that and hey! they know that guy’s probably Persian. What I’m saying is Mithras might have preferred baseball caps but if Mithras wore a baseball cap the Greeks and Romans would be totally confused and they’d never be able to correctly identify him, not in a million years, not with 1500 credits towards an art history degree. Why might Mithras have preferred baseball caps? Well, for all his Phoofy caps and Persian-looking name, this dude was Greco-Roman through and through. Roman soldiers loved him, Greek philosophers loved him, and his worship popped up in the Greco-Roman world out of the blue with no forewarning. Who was Mithras the Unconquered? He was that kid in middle school who spoke in a British accent even though he was from Ohio, because he read a lot of Tolkien. -- source link

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