Mithras himself was an extremely ancient divinity known to the ancestors of both the Iranian and Indian peoples. In early Zoroastrianism he had no place, but later appeared as one of the inferior divinities. Under the manifold influences to which Persian Mazdaism was exposed, the position of Mithras gradually rose in importance. The details of the theology at the time the religion became known to the Romans cannot be determined, but it seems evident that the main features were these: the Mazdaists conceived of the world as a battleground in which the powers of light and of righteousness were ever fighting against the powers of darkness and of evil; at the head of the powers of light was Ahura Mazda, Oromasdes, or, to use the form more familiar to us, Ormuzd; opposed to him was Ahriman, the archfiend and adversary, lord of the world of darkness, who with his demons was thought to strive continually to spread evil in the world; midway was Mithras whose function was to help mankind and to hasten the destruction of wickedness. So far as we can judge from the sculptured monuments, Mithras in the sacred myths was not identified with the sun, yet it is clear that he was regarded by the Roman devotees as the chief divinity of light. This position was the more easily assured him by the fact that he had been originally such a god, so that the Chaldeans had identified him with Shamash, their solar divinity, just as the Greeks in Asia Minor had made him equivalent to their sun god, Helios. Later philosophy too lent its aid in that it took the sun as the supreme symbol of divinity. On Roman dedications Mithras is often called simply “The Invincible Sun,” Sol Invictus. For all its exotic character Mithraism could offer nothing essentially new in point of theology which would attract devotees, nor could it win them simply by its elaborate and distinctive ritual. The characteristic which distinguished it from the other religions of its time save Christianity was the thoroughgoing dualism to which I have just referred—I mean that dualism which divided the world into two opposing armies, the one the legions of light and righteousness, the other the forces of sin and darkness. The evil principle was deified in the same way as the principle of good. It is quite true that the Greeks and other peoples had conceived of evil powers, like the Titans for example, but nowhere was the opposition between the two made so sharp or the conflict regarded as so constant. In the cosmic struggle the Mithraist believed man shared; for he too, the microcosm, was both good and evil, so that the same battle had to be waged within him as everywhere in the world. This religion, then, was able to supply a strong moral motive for the individual: he was bound to struggle continually against the powers of sin to aid in bringing about the final victory of the powers of righteousness, and he was taught that in this struggle Mithras gave the faithful constant aid.