The Ifs of History/Chapter 1
MITHRA instead of Jesus! The western world Zoroastrian, not Christian! The Persian Redeemer, always called the Light of the World in their scriptures; the helper of Ahura-Mazda, the Almighty, in his warfare with Ahriman, or Satan; the intercessor for men with the Creator; the Saviour of humanity; he, Mithra, might have been the central person of the dominant religion of Europe and modern times, but for certain developments in Athenian politics in the years between 490 and 480 B. C. For it is true that in the first three of four centuries of the Christian era the western world seemed to hesitate between the religion of Mithra and that of Christ; and if the Persians had completed the conquest of Greece in the fifth century B. C., Mithra might have so strengthened his hold upon Europe that the scale would have been turned forever in his direction.
What was it that enabled the Greeks, in the crucial test, the ultimate contingency, to turn back the Persians and maintain their independence? History says that it was the result of the battles of Marathon and Salamis, in which the Greeks were triumphant over the Persians. This is true only in a limited sense. The battle of Marathon, in 490 B. C., did not save Greece, for the Persians came back again more powerful than ever. At Thermopylæ, Leonidas and his band died vainly, for the hosts of Xerxes overran all Greece north of the isthmus of Corinth. They took Athens, and burned the temples on the Acropolis. They were triumphant on the land.
But at Salamis, in the narrow channel between the horseshoe-shaped island and the Attican mainland, Themistocles, on the 20th day of September, 480 B. C., adroitly led the great Persian fleet of six hundred vessels into a trap and defeated it in as heroic a fight as ever the men of the West fought against the men of the East. Seated on his "throne," or rather his silver-footed chair, on a hilltop overlooking the scene, Xerxes, the master of the world, beheld the destruction of his ships, one by one, by the leagued Greeks. When the battle was over he saw that the escape of his victorious army from the mainland was imperiled, and while there was yet time, he led his Persian horde in a wild flight across his bridge of boats over the Hellespont. The field of Platæa completed the check, and the Persian invasions of Europe were over forever.
What was it that enabled Themistocles to win this decisive victory for Greece after disastrous defeats on land? Simply his skill in the politics of Athens. Themistocles was a Hellenic imperialist. He was opposed by Aristides, who was a very just man, and an anti-imperialist and "mugwump." Greece was at that time terribly menaced by the Persian power, and threatened with "Medization," or absorption into the Persian nationality. Themistocles saw that the country's only chance lay in a union of all the Hellenes, and in the construction of a navy worth the name. Aristides was a better orator than he, and at first won against him in the Athenian elections. The Greek spirit was innately hostile to anything like centralization or imperialism. But when Ægina, which was the leading Grecian maritime state, and had some good ships, turned against Athens and defeated it on the sea, the Athenians' eyes began to open. Themistocles pushed his plan for the construction of a fleet of two hundred vessels and the addition of twenty new ships every year to this navy.
Squarely across his path stood Aristides, with his ridicule of the attempt of little Athens to become a maritime power, and his warnings against militarism. But Themistocles, by adroit politics, led the Athenians to become sick of Aristides, and persuaded them to ostracize or banish this just man. Aristides went to Ægina. Then Themistocles rushed forward his plan of naval reform, and carried it through. The two hundred ships were built, and not a moment too soon. It was this fleet, brilliantly led by Themistocles and Eurybiades at Salamis, which entangled the Persians in the narrow waters of Salamis and defeated them, and saved Europe for the Europeans. The victory saved it also for Christ, by keeping alive the worship of the half-gods of Greece and Rome until a whole-god came from Judæa. The Persians, too, had a whole-god. Idea for idea, principle for principle, tenet for tenet, dream for dream, all of later Judaism and all of medieval Christianity, except the person and story of Jesus, was in the religion of Persia. Not only the central ideas of formal Christianity, but many of its dependent and related principles, are found in Mithraism, which was the translation of the fundamental philosophic ideas of Zoroastrianism into terms of human life. The parallel is so striking that many thinkers regard Christianity merely as Mithraism bodied forth in a story invented by, or at least told to and believed by, a circle of primitive and uneducated zealots who knew nothing of the history of the doctrines they were embracing.
But notwithstanding the philosophic likeness, the acceptance of Mithraism as it was held and practiced in Persia in Darius's time, instead of Christianity, which may have been Mithraism first Judaized and afterward Romanized, would have made a vast difference with the western world. If Greece had been Persianized before the rise of Rome's power, Rome, too, would have been Persianized. The influence of Hebrew thought upon the western world would have been forestalled. Zoroastrian rites would have prevailed. Over all would have spread the mysticism of the East.
Our civilization might have risen as high as it has ever gone, in art, in the grace of life; but instead of being inspired with the eager desire of progress, by the restless Hellenic necessity of doing something better and higher, or at least something other, something new—instead of this, the spirit of peace and of satisfaction with old ideals would have permeated our systems and our life.
Lord Mithra, too, would have been primarily the sun, primarily an embodiment of the light shining down to us through the sky from that central essence which alone can say, "I am that I am," and not, as in the Lord Christ, a humble, suffering, poor and despised man lifted up into Godhead.