Sunday, August 7, 2011

Arimanius

Arimanius
Arimanius (Greek: Areimanios; Latin: Arimanius) is a name for an protect deity found in a few Greek educational texts and five Latin inscriptions. In Greek texts, Areimanios, with variations, seems to decrease to the Persian Ahriman, in the context of "Zoroastrianism" as it was thought by the Greeks and Romans. The Latin inscriptions hand out in a Mithraic context that counter a redefined or brand new deity.

The greatest extent expand price in example literature on Areimanios is found in the expanse Isis and Osiris (46-47) by Plutarch, who presents him as the dark or evil circumference in a dualistic conflict with Oromazes (for Ohrmuzd or Ahura Mazda). He is whichever mentioned in other texts as an evil daimon, "the supreme spirit," or even equated with Satan as the rival. In the Mithraic context, the name seems unbelievable to decrease to an evil oppose.

THE Sell


The greatest extent recognized form of the name in its few occurrences and Greek authors is (Areimanios), presumably picture an unattested Old Persian form *ahramanyu, which, however, would chomp yielded a Mid Persian ahrmen. The name is particular as (Arimanes) by Agathias, and (Areimanes) by Hesychius, picture the Mid Persian Ahreman. Variations of the name not justifiable by specialized linguistics may be official to its comparison to Greek words meaning "hostile" (see Names and epithets of Ares).

IN PLUTARCH


According to Plutarch, Zoroaster named Areimanios as one of the two rivals who were the artificers of good and evil. In expressions of common sense aim, Oromazes was to be compared with light, and Areimanios to depression and ignorance; together with these was Mithras the Delegate. Areimanios established aid that pertained to apotropaism and grief.

In recitation a ritual to Areimanios, Plutarch says the god was invoked as Hades ("The Toward the inside One") and Fogginess. (In Greek religion, Hades was the monarch of the dead or shades, and not a god of evil, nevertheless in the common sense that death sway be planned kakon, a bad thing.) The ritual desired a ranch that Plutarch calls omomi, which was to be broken up in a shoot down and polluted with the blood of a sacrificed wolf. The pack was then carried to a place "wherever the sun never shines," and cast therein. He adds that "water-rats" belong to this god, and hence clever rat-killers are capably men.

Plutarch then gives a cosmogonical myth:


Oromazes, innate from the purest light, and Areimanius, innate from depression, are regularly at war with each other; and Oromazes produced six gods, the leading of Massive Thought, the immediate of Fairness, the third of Panache, and, of the rest, one of Wisdom, one of Sumptuousness, and one the Artificer of Be concerned with in what is Honourable. But Areimanius produced rivals, as it were, regular to these in level. As well as Oromazes bloated himself to thrice his initial majority, and idealistic himself as far held in reserve from the Sun as the Sun is held in reserve from the Alight, and bejeweled the manner with stars. One star he set dowry with all others as a defender and watchman, the Dog-star. Twenty-four other gods he produced and placed in an egg. But relatives produced by Areimanius, who were regular in level to the others, pierced downcast the egg and prepared their way inside; as a result problems are now disgusting with good. But a preordained time shall come when on earth it is decreed that Areimanius, occupied in bringing on pestilence and absence, shall by these be completely annihilated and shall disappear; and then shall the earth become a level lowland, and dowry shall be one aerate of life and one form of government for a blessed intimate who shall all speak one writing.

Mary Boyce asserted that the price shows a "ethical spot on" knowledge of basic Zoroastrianism.[10]

In his Vigor of Themistocles, Plutarch has the Persian king do magic tricks Areimanios by name, asking the god to hand over the king's enemies to measure in such a way as to hassle somewhere else their own best men. It has been doubted[11] that a Persian king would pray to the god of evil, distinctly in persons. According to Plutarch, the king then prepared a cost and got smashed, a relation replica of how Persian kings act in Plutarch, and consequently unimpressed background for actual clowning around.[12]

AS A MITHRAIC GOD


Franz Cumont was the advocate of a now-unfashionable view that Greco-Roman Mithraism had been persuaded by some beliefs of ancient Mazdaism, by ethical dualism. Upper limit scholars objection that Mithraists sealed the training of Persian magi, in spite of appeals to their command, but the name Arimanius is offensive to rip from the Persian tradition of Ahriman.[13] At the enormously time, the five skilled dedications to Arimanius found in the environs of the Roman People come to an end to counter that he was conceived of as an evil body in a Mithraic context: "the real design," it has been noted, "is emphatically that we know zilch of any influence about Western Areimanius."[14]

No background of a location for the omomi cult described by Plutarch has been found in a mithraeum, and the instruction of Mithras and an evil god has been dismissed by some scholars as inherently dodgy.[15] The mail Deo Areimanio ("to the God Areimanius") is found on a few altars to Mithras, exclusive of any categorization that would friend him with a particular iconography.[16]

ROMAN BRITAIN


A mutilated statue at York has a inconsistent in memory mail that has been read as containing the name Arimanius. The effigy seems to be entwined with a serpent, and at one time it was conjectured that it represented the lion-headed god of Mithraism[17] or a form of the Mithraic Aion. But because Arimanius can whichever be a distinctive name, it is unimpressed whether it refers in the mail to the god represented by the statue, or to the creature who prepared the votive dedication. No other Mithraic equipment were nude accessible the statue, and any leonine side are image to luxury.[18]

REFERENCES


^ Roger Beck, "Mithraism because Franz Cumont," Aufstieg und Niedergang der r"omischen Ridge II.17.4 (1984), p. 2034.

^ R.L. Gordon, "Cumont and the Creed of Mithraism," in Mithraic Studies (Manchester Academe Induce, 1975), p. 226.

^ For Array Thayer's collection of the Loeb Archetypal Documents edition at LacusCurtius, see Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 46-47.

^ Diogenes Laertius 1.8; Damascius, Dubitationes et Solutiones 125; Agathias, Historiae 2.25; Theodore of Mopsuestia apud Photius, Bibliotheca 72.81, as cited by Albert de Jong, Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Inscription (Brill, 1997), pp. 313-314.

^ Gordon, "Cumont and the Creed of Mithraism," pp. 226-227.

^ De Jong, Traditions of the Magi, pp. 312-313.

^ Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 46.

^ Salomon Reinach, Orpheus: A Main Bloodline of Religions, translated by Florence Simmonds (London: Heinemann, 1909), p. 68, gives the credentials as Pluto, the name of the Greek monarch of the underworld used greatest extent methodically in texts and inscriptions pertaining to the mystery religions and in Greek dramatists and philosophers of Athens in the Archetypal age. Robert Turcan, The Cults of the Roman People, (Blackwell, 1992, 2001 printing, originally published 1989 in French), p. 232, notes that Plutarch makes of Areimanios "a class of tenebrous Pluto." Plutarch, however, names the Greek god as Hades, not the Plouton of Eleusinian tradition. For distinctions in wear and tear together with the two names, see Pluto in the mysteries and cult and Pluto in Greek literature and philosophy.

^ Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 47, as translated by Straight Cole Babbitt for the Loeb Archetypal Documents (1936).

^ Mary Boyce and Frantz Grenet, A Bloodline of Zoroastrianism: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Sphere (Brill, 1991), pp. 458-459.

^ De Jong, Traditions of the Magi, p. 313.

^ De Jong, Traditions of the Magi, p. 314.

^ Turcan, The Cults of the Roman People, p. 232; R.L. Gordon, "Cumont and the Creed of Mithraism," in Mithraic Studies (Manchester Academe Induce, 1975), pp. 217ff.

^ Gordon, "Cumont and the Creed of Mithraism," pp. 226-227, below par the dedications as CIMRM 322 (Ostia); 369 (Rome); 833 (York); 1773; 1775 (Carnutum).

^ Gordon, "Cumont and the Creed of Mithraism," p. 227.

^ For reason, CIL III.3415, III.3480, VI.47 (exclusive of naming Mithras); A. D. H. Bivar, "Mithra and Mesopotamia", in Mithraic Studies, p. 278.

^ Turcan, The Cults of the Roman People, p. 232.

^ Beck, "Mithraism because Franz Cumont," pp. 2034-2035.

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