hand, that the Emperor Commodus on his initiation sullied the temple by converting a feigned into a real murder[948], and we hear from another and later source that in consequence of this only a bloody sword was shown to the candidate[949]. It seems therefore that somebody was supposed to suffer death during the ceremony, perhaps under the same circumstances as already suggested in the kindred case of the Alexandrian Mysteries[950]. We are a little better informed as to the degrees of initiation, which numbered seven. The initiate ascended from the degree of Crow (_corax_), which was the first or lowest, to that of Father (_Pater_), which was the seventh or highest, by passing successively through the intermediate degrees of Man of the Secret (_Cryphius_), Soldier (_Miles_), Lion (_Leo_), Persian (_Perses_), and Courier of the Sun (_Heliodromus_)[951]. It would seem that either he, or the initiating priests, or perhaps the other assistants, had to assume disguises consisting of masks corresponding to the animals named in the first and fourth of these degrees, and to make noises like the croaking of birds and the roaring of lions[952]. These rightly recall to M. Cumont the names of animals borne by initiates or priests in other religions in Greece and Asia Minor and may be referred to totemistic times. We also know from a chance allusion of Tertullian that on being admitted to the degree of soldier, the initiate was offered a crown or garland at the point of a sword, which he put away from him with the speech, “Mithras is my crown!”, and that never thereafter might he wear a garland even at a feast[953]. Porphyry, too, tells us that in the degree of Lion, the initiate’s hands and lips were purified with honey. It has also been said by the Fathers that before or during initiation, the candidate had to undergo certain trials or tortures, to swim rivers, plunge through fire, and to jump from apparently vast heights[954]; but it is evident from the small size of the Mithraea or chapels which have come down to us that these experiences would have demanded much more elaborate preparation than there was space for, and, if they were ever enacted, were probably as purely “make-believe” as the supposed murder just mentioned and some of the initiatory ceremonies in certain societies of the present day[955]. Lastly, there is no doubt that women were strictly excluded from all the ceremonies of the cult, thereby justifying in some sort the remark of Renan that Mithraism was a “Pagan Freemasonry[956].”