The Best Evidence for the Seven Grades

Mithraism left no scripture. Nothing written by an initiate about the meaning of the cult survives, and what is known comes from images, inscriptions and the layout of the rooms, which is why a painted wall counts as a major source. At Santa Prisca a procession of figures runs along the side walls with inscriptions naming grades of initiation. That gives the sequence of seven grades, from Raven at the bottom through Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Persian and Runner of the Sun to Father, each associated with a planetary power. Without the Santa Prisca paintings and a small number of comparable finds such as the mosaic floor at Ostia, the grade system would be known only in outline.

What the grades meant is still argued. Roger Beck reads the mithraeum and its imagery as a deliberate model of the cosmos through which an initiate was understood to ascend, while other scholars are more cautious about how much doctrine can be recovered from images alone. The atlas records the grades as attested and their interpretation as debated. The cult admitted men only, was strong in the army and among imperial officials and freedmen, and disappeared within a few generations of the fourth century laws against public sacrifice, leaving its rooms to be filled in or built over.