Neither did the Persian mysteries win the masses by their liturgy. Undoubtedly their secret ceremonies performed in mountain caves, or at any rate in the darkness of the underground crypts, were calculated to inspire awe. Participation in the liturgical meals gave rise to moral comfort and stimulation. By submitting to a sort of baptism the votaries hoped to expiate their sins and regain an untroubled conscience. But the sacred feasts and purifying ablutions connected with the same spiritual hopes are found in other Oriental cults, and the magnificent suggestive ritual of the Egyptian clergy certainly was more impressive than that of the magi. The mythic drama performed in the grottoes of the Persian god and culminating in the immolation of a steer who was considered as the creator and rejuvenator of the earth, must have seemed less important and affecting than the suffering and joy of Isis seeking and reviving the mutilated body of her husband, or than the moaning and jubilation of Cybele mourning over and reviving her lover Attis. But Persia introduced dualism as a fundamental principle in religion. It was this that distinguished {152} Mithraism from other sects and inspired its dogmatic theology and ethics, giving them a rigor and firmness unknown to Roman paganism. It considered the universe from an entirely new point of view and at the same time provided a new goal in life. Of course, if we understand by dualism the antithesis of mind and matter, of reason and intuition, it appeared at a considerably earlier period in Greek philosophy,[34] where it was one of the leading ideas of neo-Pythagoreanism and of Philo's system. But the distinguishing feature of the doctrine of the magi is the fact that it deified the evil principle, set it up as a rival to the supreme deity, and taught that both had to be worshiped. This system offered an apparently simple solution to the problem of evil, the stumbling block of theologies, and it attracted the cultured minds as well as the masses, to whom it afforded an explanation of their sufferings. Just as the mysteries of Mithra began to spread Plutarch wrote of them favorably and was inclined himself to adopt them.[35] From that time dates the appearance in literature of the anti-gods ([Greek: antitheoi]),[36] under the command of the powers of darkness[37] and arrayed against the celestial spirits, messengers or "angels"[38] of divinity. They were Ahriman's _devas_ struggling with the Yazatas of Ormuzd.