This article tries to reveal factors which could have contributed to the successful spread of the ancient cult of the Greek god of medicine Asclepius but are difficult to grasp by traditional historiographical methods. More specifically, this article analyses which processes within the human body and mind could be advantageous for the spread of mental representations connected with the cult of Asclepius using the theoretical framework of cognitive sciences (especially Dan Sperber's epidemiology of representations and Andy Clark's concept of extended cognition). The major ritual of the cult of Asclepius is known as incubation. Patients, who visited the god's sanctuaries as supplicants, spent a night in the inner sanctuary (abaton) and it was expected that Asclepius would appear in their dreams performing an immediate cure or giving remedies for their recovery. Also, the temples of Asclepius featured iconographical artifacts (e.g. inscriptions about healing miracles) that could trigger emotional reactions and expectations about the ritual. Results from neurobiological experiments suggest that emotional arousal in combination with subsequent sleep could lead to a vivid and long lasting memory of the previous event. These memories could be therefore prioritized in the person's memory and thus be more suitable for cultural transmission than others.
This article deals with the still unresolved question of the origins of the Roman cult of Mithras. After a brief history of the scholarship dealing with this topic, individual mithraea, inscriptions, and passages in literary texts which have been dated to the earliest period of the cult's existence are evaluated. On the basis of this re-evaluation, some provisional conclusions concerning the question of Mithraic origins are made, namely that (1) the earliest evidence comes from the period 75-125 CE but remains, until the second half of the 2nd century CE, relatively negligible; (2) the geographical distribution of early evidence does not allow for a clear identification of the geographical location from which the cult started to spread, which suggests that (3) the cult made effective use of Roman military infrastructure and trade routes and (4) was transmitted, at least initially, due to the high mobility of the first propagators. However, it must be acknowledged that, at present, we can neither conclusively identify its place of origin nor the people who initiated the cult. In addition it is impossible to describe the specific historical circumstances in which these formative processes should be placed.