Marble statue of Cautes, found at Ostia. The head, one arm and the legs are missing. The figure wears a short tunic and raises the torch in the canonical upward gesture.
Small limestone stele, discovered at Apt in 1903. It depicts a standing torchbearer in the conventional Mithraic posture and dress, accompanied by a cock placed at his feet.
In polemical passages from the late second and early third centuries, Tertullian portrays the cult of Mithras as a demonic imitation of Christian rites and provides rare early references to Mithraic initiation and ritual symbolism.
An anonymous late-antique Christian poem, traditionally attributed to Pseudo-Paulinus of Nola (Poema 32, vv. 109–111), that ridicules pagan cults and presents Mithras, Isis, and Serapis as gods of concealment, contradiction, and unstable forms rather than light.
Late antique legendary biography of Alexander the Great (c. AD 300), where history, myth, and imperial ideology merge around figures of divine kingship and solar power.
Hmmm… Vermaseren says the figure "points the torch *downwards* with *both hands*", so that would mean Cautopates. But this one actually looks like it’s doing the opposite? Maybe the missing head (which Vermaseren doesn’t mention) makes the gesture harder to read?
Anyway, I’ll check my photo collection and see if I can find a better pic for the frame!
Pseudo-Plutarch, De fluviis. Goodwin, Ed. Plutarch. Plutarch’s Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press of John Wilson and son.
Dion Chrysostom, c. 100 A.D., a philosophical writer under the emperors Nerva and Trajan, composed a series of discourses or essays (λόγοι) on various subjects, in one of which he reports concerning the doctrines and practices of the magi.
In the eighteenth year of Diocletian’s reign, Galerius Maximianus, persuaded by the sorcerer Theoteknos, consulted demonic oracles in a cave and was urged to initiate the persecution of the Christians.
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III analyses the absence of the moon in the Mithras Liturgy. He argues that this absence reflects a deliberate cosmological framework in which lunar powers linked to genesis are excluded from the ritual of ascent.
This collective volume explores the ways ancient peoples interacted with divine powers through prayer, magic, and the interpretation of the stars. Drawing on evidence from Mesopotamia to Late Antiquity, it situates these practices within broader religious and cosmological systems.
Interview avec Fahim Ennouhi à l’occasion de la publication de son premier livre, Le culte de Mithra en Afrique du Nord antique, consacré à cette présence restée élitiste et marginale dans cette région de l’Empire.
Fritz Saxl interprets Mithraism primarily through its images, proposing the cult as a visual cosmology structured around the descent, sacrifice and re-ascent of light, developed in close dialogue with Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky.
