Arimanius

In the literary tradition sampled here—chiefly Plutarch—Arimanius (Areimanios) functions as the dark or evil principle opposing Oromazes (Ahura Mazda) within a dualistic cosmogony derived from Greek expositions of Persian theology. Plutarch narrates that Areimanius engendered harmful beings whose intrusion into the good creation produced present mixtures of good and evil; a future final overthrow of Areimanius and the restoration of pure good is also part of that narrative. Separately, the name appears in Roman Mithraic dedications: here it is a deity-name adopted into cult practice, but the epigraphic record does not preserve a matching Persian dualistic origin story, and modern scholars caution that the Roman cult likely reinterpreted or detached the name from its original Iranian theological content.

Classical literary sources do not present a consistent anthropomorphic description. In some Roman Mithraic material culture the name Arimanius is associated—in fragmentary and interpretive contexts—with images such as a winged figure, sometimes depicted with keys, and scholarly proposals have linked some statue bases dedicated to Arimanius to lion-headed figures found in Mithraic contexts. These iconographic associations are fragmentary, inconsistent across finds, and not uniformly labeled in the inscriptions; the literary tradition (e.g., Plutarch) does not supply a specific visible form.

In Plutarch's account Arimanius is a creative and destructive principle responsible for producing evils that oppose Oromazes—Plutarch specifically links Areimanius to pestilence and famine and to the generation of malign beings that have entered the created world. Hesychius and later glossators sometimes equate the name with Hades/Pluto, giving the figure underworld associations in some interpretive traditions. In the Roman Mithraic inscriptional record the dedications to 'Deo Areimanio' do not preserve explicit statements of malevolent deeds; scholarship summarized in the sources suggests the name in Mithraea may have been treated without the unequivocal 'evil' valence found in Plutarch.