Pagan Roman burials feature a triclinium — a dining table — so that the living can celebrate a final meal with the dead. Christians appropriated this same ritual and renamed the triclinium an “agape table” (“love table”). Some think this is where the concept of the Christian Communion ceremony originated. In fact, Communion is a mix of several much older religious practices. In ancient Persia 2,000 years before Christ, worshippers of Mithras practiced ritual purification through baptism and a meal of wine and bread that symbolized the flesh and blood of their god. Worship of this god continued right up through Roman times, when its cult practices got rolled into several Christian rituals. In fact, many of the earliest Christian cathedrals all across Europe are founded upon ancient Mithraeums, places where the followers of Mithras performed their secret rites.