Guided Pathway

On April 30, 1929, just after delivering a lecture on Mithras at the Warburg Library, Saxl wrote an epic letter to Warburg in Rome, reporting that he and Erwin Panofsky together, on the basis of material Saxl had gathered, had gone a good distance, he felt, toward interpreting the myth of Mithras as set out on extant vita reliefs, showing episodes from the deity’s life. To get beyond Cumont’s fantasies, in Saxl’s view, it was key to recognize that the Heracles myth stood as the prototype. Cumont had recognized a Greek element, but he saw the cult as essentially Persian in disguise. Saxl was persuaded that, in this time of syncretism, it was necessary to emphasize the Greek over the Oriental. Saxl’s systematic description of Mithras’ trajectory in relation to Heracles’ life furnishes the grounds for Warburg’s inclusion of a Heracles relief (#9) to accompany the vita reliefs of Mithras from Dieburg and Neuenheim (#10.2, 18). To characterize Mithras’ legend, Saxl drew contrasts to eastern narratives, Greek myth, and the Christian story. “In the cosmological religion of Mithras, the empyrean must sacrifice the moon-bull in order to complete creation. Mithras is a god of light from the Iranian world in which Evil is as divinely strong as Good: a deity who mediates between Light and Darkness. The element of light, brought down here below by Mithras, present in the seed of the bull, is eaten by the poisonous scorpion. Thus creation comprises a mix of Darkness and Light. Mithras, however, becomes the sun god and helps mortals after death to guide the elements of light (Lichtteile) upward to the all-encompassing light (Allicht).”