The Terminology of Mystery Cults in Plutarch’s Works: Platonism Religion, and Philosophical Legitimation

My paper aims at exploring the multifaceted presence of the terminology of mystery cults in Plutarch’s works. Plutarch is familiar with and quotes Herodotus' warning about mystery rites: εὔστομά μοι κείσθω, “Let me maintain a religious silence!”. Nevertheless, allusions and direct references to the mystery cults abound in his work and help delineate his theology. The most scholarly attention has been devoted to specific aspects of Plutarch’s religious thought which the mystery religions could have contributed to, e.g. the doctrine of the soul (Herington 1968, Pérez Jiménez 2010), or the characterisation of specific deities in the philosophical myths (Boulogne 2011, Jiménez San Cristóbal 2012). Plutarch has also been considered a reliable testimony for the reconstruction of the historical mystery cults of his time (e.g. Ferreira Leão 2012), whereas the terminology of mystery cults and its rhetorical and philosophical application within his works have received limited consideration.

The theme of initiation into an arcane wisdom of Orphic-Pythagorean ancestry runs through treatises such as De Iside et Osiride and the cycle of Delphic dialogues and it also calls into play the mystery cults coming from foreign (mainly Middle-Eastern) religious traditions. Philosophy itself is presented by Plutarch as a form of τελετή. Another Middle-Platonic philosopher, Numenius of Apamea, expresses the fear of having divulged the Eleusinian mysteries through his philosophy (fr. 55 Des Places, quod Eleusinia sacra interpretando vulgaverit); however, this religious scruple reveals the desire to surround his thought with an initiatory aura. Plutarch’s attitude is not only in tune with some tendencies of his time – the resort to the terminology derived from mystery cults is a recurrent issue throughout the Greek as well as the Roman literature and philosophy of the Imperial Age, from Apuleius to Porphyry. It also falls in line with Plato’s own creative employment of the terminology of mystery cults in his philosophical works (e.g. in the Symposium and the Phaedrus).

My paper aims at highlighting three main aspects of Plutarch’s contribution to the Traditionslinie der Mysterienmetaphorik (Riedweg 1987), leaving (partially) aside the influence of the historical mystery cults on his works and concentrating mainly on the terminology he employs: in this framework, first of all, I will consider Plutarch’s debt towards (and the differences from) Plato’s development of a “mystery philosophy” and I will place Plutarch’s operation in its cultural, literary and philosophical historical setting; secondly, I will deconstruct Plutarch’s strategies of legitimation of his religious philosophy through the use of the terminology of mystery cults, particularly (but not only) in the above-mentioned Pythici dialogi and in the De Iside et Osiride.