Welsh Journals

MITHRAISM IN WALES. By V. E. NASH-WILLIAMS, M.A. The vital interest of the conquest of Wales by the Romans lies ultimately not in spectacle of heroic barbarism pitted hopelessly against the cold steel of civilization, not in the transformation of a land of druidism into a frontier-district of a foreign empire, but rather in the sudden dramatic swing of the main tide of continental culture towards a shore hitherto lapped only by its latest ebb. Throughout the long ages of prehistory Wales had lingered half a millennium behind the rest of Europe in the slow progress towards light and know- ledge. Now all was changed, and in a moment she finds herself thrust incontinently into the main stream of the advance. It might, of course, be urged that the change was not wholly good, that if much was gained to Wales by incorporation in the Roman Empire, much was also lost. No need, however, here to work out a profit and loss account. Suffice it for us that if the Roman conquest meant for Wales a loss in individuality, at least it meant a gain in cosmopoli- tanism. And in no department of Romano-Welsh life was this truer than in religion. The Roman invasion was as much one of gods as of legionaries. Graeco-Roman deities like Jupiter, Mercury, Minerva, and Diana, Celtic gods like Mars Ocelus, the German Mars Lenus, the Syrian Dolichenus, the Persian Mithras, besides Gnosticism, Phallism, and a whole motley horde of other fetichistic cults jostle one at every turn. And, as might be expected, it is around the greater Roman stations, and especially the legionary fortress at Caerleon, that the worships cluster thickest. Certain of the cults, indeed, occur only at Caerleon, among them that of the Persian sun-god Mithras. The presence of this deity in Wales is interesting, if only as marking how completely cosmopolitanised the Roman world had become. East is East," says Kipling, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." But the spectacle of a Persian god worshipped by Romans in Wales surely gives the lie to that statement, and challenges Kipling's compass.