Mitreo del Circo Massimo

TNMM 15 ↔ CIMRM 434

When in 1932 a wing of the Palazzo dei Musei di Roma was rebuilt into a warehouse for the Teatro dell'Opera, considerable remnants of a Roman public building were discovered, a part of which was made to a Mithraeum in the second half of the third century. The finds are kept on the spot or in the Antiquario.

By a corridor one enters the sanctuary, which has been constructed in a number of adjacent rooms. First of all one reaches the paved rooms C and F, which by a door are connected with the rooms A and B. Next to C, separated from it by a wall, and connected by a door, lies room E, which served as an apparatorium. A niche beside this door probably contained a statue.

Underneath the architrave on either side of door e, which opens on the actual sanctuary, there was a small plastered niche (H. 1.09 D. 0.30), in which on a base the statues of the torchbearers must have been standing. Two small columns, which rested on a mensola with leaf-work, supported an architrave and thereby gave the niches the shape of an i>aedicola. Below them against the wall, two small votive-altars or bases, the one made of marble (H. 0.425 Br. 0.28 D. 0.27), the other of travertine (H. 0.38 Br. 0.33 D. 0.28). Near the left niche there also was a small well, which by a pipe was connected with the cloaca. Near the other niche some bones and a small bronze bell were found.

Entering the room G and H, we find only in G a bench (H. 0.72) with projecting edge (H. 0.12 Br. 0.33) and entirely covered with marble. It can be ascended via three steps on the side.

In the polychrome marble floor a capital was dug in, which must have supported a statue. Under the arched doorway d a pit was found (D. 0.65), containing a round amphora. On its bottom two tusks of a boar were found.

On either side of this archway niches have been constructed in the same shape as those at c, but here they are on floor level. On the inside they are plastered and painted red; on the outside a marble covering is made with,the aid of bronze nails. On the bottom of the r. niche a terracotta vessel (D. 0.45) with a crescent-shaped rim. At the same time a vase, entwined by a serpent, was discovered here.

Finally we enter the rooms L and M. Looking back, we see over arch d a marble console on which a bust, dressed in lorica and paludamentum (the head has got lost).

The floor-covering in these rooms is much more expensive. In the middle of a square of cippolino-marble a circle of alabaster; further polychrome marble (red, brown etc.) was used. Two small holes in the ground communicate with the cloaca.

Also the walls are decorated: in L there are twelve red circles all around and a few red and grey lines.

The slight sloping bench (H. 1.03) in this room shows a polygonal recess and is covered with white and polychrome marble. It can be ascended via three steps at the side. The other bench (in M) with a projecting edge lies under the arch of the adjoining room P. Two bases, standing on either side before the cult-niche, supported statues; in the front side of the r. one there is a hollow. In front of the l. base there is another base, triangular in shape. It supported a triangular block with a terracotta tube in the centre. Finally a fourth base, standing in front of the cult-niche, might have served as an altar.

In the back wall on either side of the cult-niche a relief was fixed; under the left one (now lost) there is a bracket for another relief.

To give the whole a cave-like appearance, the inside of the arch of the cult-niche was made in pumice. In the niche itself a semi-circular construction with a depression for a cult-statue. Before it two steps. The entire was covered with marble.

The cult-niche could also be entered from a room behind it.

The vast ancient complex was located a short distance from the short side of the Circus Maximus, where the departure cages for the chariots (carceres) were. In the 3rd century AD, on the ground floor of this complex, a mithraeum was adapted, a place of worship dedicated to the god Mithras, consisting of a series of communicating rooms, covered by barrel vaults.

In the first of these is a room interpreted as a kind of sacristy (apparitorium). The second room is accessed through a door, on the side walls of which are two niches, decorated with aedicules, only partially preserved, in which small statues must have been placed. In the third room there is a typical element of the mithraeum, the masonry podium, where the participants in the sacred banquet were seated. Another podium is also found in the last room, preceded by a large arched opening with two niches, also originally decorated with aedicules, of which the one on the right has a buried earthenware vessel. In the centre of the floor is a large alabaster tondo, set in a very simple geometric pattern and made of different types of marble.

The walls are plastered, including the back wall where there is an archway, inside which there is a semicircular brick aedicule, intended for a small statue of Mithras that has not been found. On the same wall, to the upper left, there is a shrine without a bas-relief, while to the right of the arch there is a relief depicting the killing of the cosmic bull, whose death promotes the life and fertility of the universe. The same theme is treated in a more complex way in the large slab found on the floor of the last room and later placed on the podium on the left.

The history of this valuable sculpture, which has been identified with the primitive cult image on the back wall, together with other clues, has made it possible to identify two distinct phases of the mithraeum, characterised by a refined marble decoration.

The floor was covered with marble, partly preserved, often reused. On the back wall there is an arch with the lower surface covered with pumice and there are also some bases and niches framed by aedicules. Inside the arch a small brick aedicule forms a semicircular niche covered by a semi-dome: here the statue of Mithras must have been located in a prominent position. The relief found with the tauroctonia is not clear where it was placed, and represents Mithras killing the bull, flanked by Cautes, Cautopates, Sol, Luna and the raven, while on the left we see Mithras himself carrying the slain bull on his shoulders.

A second smaller relief is located in a recess on the right wall and depicts the sacrifice of the bull. Other inscriptions and dedications have been found, all with names of freedmen.

Comments

Nik Shah

Good information