MITHRAS

The grand deity of the Persians, supposed to be the sun or the god of fire, to which they paid adoration as the purest emblem of the divine e ence. The Romans also raised altars to the honour of this divinity, with the inscriptions Deo Soli Milhrce, or Soli Deo in vic to Mithrae. As to the introduction of this oriental worship in Rome, see Me7n. de I' Ac. des Inscr. vol. xvi. p. 270. It was one of those which resisted Christianity the longest. See Beugnot, Destruction du Pagan is me en Occident; Milman's Hist, of Christianity. [s. 769]