"Mithras" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the worship of Osiris, Serapis, and Mithras to the loathsome rites practised in the darkness of African forests, has been handed down as unquestionable truth commanding the loyalty of its disciples. What logic, what magic of holiness, could destroy a false religion if tradition is sacrosanct ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Diis manibus. Also some of the long lead pipes, with the name of the plumber, "C. Canthius Porthinus fac.," which helped to bring water from the fountain at the foot of the hill on which Baux stands. At the inner end, right hand, is a torse of Mithras of white Pharos marble, 3 ft. 2 inches high, found in 1598 on the site of the Roman Circus. Aserpent is coiled round the body, and between the coils are the signs of the Zodiac. In the opposite corner is an altar in Carrara marble to the good goddess "Bonae-Deae," found ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... head was opened by Vulcan; by which it is meant to infer that wisdom is the result of this ethereal fluid. Thus, following the same fictions, the sun, that beneficent star which has such a marked influence over the earth, became an Osiris, a Belus, a Mithras, an Adonis, an Apollo. Nature, rendered sorrowful by his periodical absence, was an Isis, an Astarte, a Venus, a Cybele. Astarte had a magnificent temple at Hieropolis served by three hundred priests, who were always employed in offering sacrifices. The priests ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... only from Him; nor do they offer divine honours to any but to Him alone. And, indeed, though they differ concerning other things, yet all agree in this: that they think there is one Supreme Being that made and governs the world, whom they call, in the language of their country, Mithras. They differ in this: that one thinks the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks that his idol is that god; but they all agree in one principle, that whoever is this Supreme Being, He is also that great essence to whose glory ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... tries to justify this magic, and to clear it not only of the crime of impiety but also of idolatry. Fire-worship prevailed among the Persians and the Chaldaeans also; it is thought that Abraham left it when he departed from Ur of the Chaldees. Mithras was the sun and he was also the God of the Persians; and according to Ovid's account horses were offered in ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... any but to Him alone. And indeed, though they differ concerning other things, yet all agree in this, that they think there is one supreme Being that made and governs the world, whom they call in the language of their country Mithras. They differ in this, that one thinks the God whom he worships is this supreme Being, and another thinks that his idol is that God; but they all agree in one principle, that whoever is this supreme Being, He is also that great Essence to ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... inscriptions in Greek, Latin and Etruscan. One is quite bewildered amongst such a profusion of Gods, Semi-Gods, Heroes. I must single out a few of the most remarkable for their workmanship. Here is a group representing the sacrifice of Mithras. On ascending a few steps at the other end of this hall, in a small octangular room, are the statue of Meleager; the famous Torso; the tomb of Scipio with bas-reliefs. On leaving the chamber you come into an octangular ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... reached my twentieth year, and—wretched I—I see no more the light! My name is Hypatus; but I pray my brother and my parents to weep for wretched ones no more." Conjecture has coupled this wail of a strange fate with the human sacrifices offered at the shrine of Mithras, and has seen in Hypatus a slave and favourite of Tiberius devoted by his master to the Eastern deity; but there is no ground whatever ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... shoe upon it! I who have dwelt at Rome, Carthage, Antioch, and Palmyra, may be allowed to despise a place like this. There are but two things that impress the beholder—the Palace of Sapor, and the Temple of Mithras, near it. These truly would be noted even in Palmyra. Not that in the building any rule or order of art is observed, but that the congregation of strange and fantastic trickery—some whereof, it cannot be gainsaid, is of rare beauty—is ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... of a god, a tendency perhaps aided by the spread of Mithraism with its symbolic bull. A god Medros leaning on a bull is represented at Haguenau, possibly a form of Mider or of Meduris, a surname of Toutatis, unless Medros is simply Mithras.[699] Echoes of the cult of the bull or cow are heard in Irish tales of these animals brought from the sid, or of magic bulls or of cows which produced enormous supplies of milk, or in saintly legends of oxen leading a saint to the site of his future church.[700] ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... corn-spirit, embodied in animal form, is sometimes supposed to reside in the tail, and that the last handful of corn is sometimes conceived as the tail of the corn-spirit. In the Mithraic religion this conception is graphically set forth in some of the numerous sculptures which represent Mithras kneeling on the back of a bull and plunging a knife into its flank; for on certain of these monuments the tail of the bull ends in three stalks of corn, and in one of them corn-stalks instead of blood are seen issuing from the wound inflicted by the knife. Such representations ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... or "signal" rather than "symbol" of the cross, referred to as theirs by the Christian writers of the second and third centuries, is said to have had a place before our era in the rites of those who worshipped Mithras, if not also of those who worshipped certain other conceptions of the Sun-God; and it should be noted that the Fathers insist upon it that a similar mark is what the prophet Ezekiel referred to as that to be placed upon the foreheads of certain men as a sign of life and salvation; the ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... at the tall warrior for a while, and in the dark soft eyes of Miramon Lluagor was a queer sort of compassion. Miramon said, "Yes, Manuel, these portents have marked your living thus far, just as they formerly distinguished the beginnings of Mithras and of Huitzilopochtli and of Tammouz ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell |
