The main fresco of the Mithraeum of Santa Maria Capua Vetere portrays Mithras slaughtering a white bull.
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The New Mithraeum
11 Jul 2009
Updated on May 2026
In a brown cave-vault Mithras kills the white bull, whose tail ends in three golden-yellow ears. The god is dressed in red eastern attire with a green piping decorated and yellow ornaments. The sheath at his side and the shoes are yellow. On his head with dark curly hair, the front of which is damaged, he wears a red Phrygian cap with a green piping similar to those on the other garments. The inside of the flying cloak is adorned with seven stars on an azure firmament. The raven, represented as a dove, is perched on the rocky ledge. A brown dog leaps against the bull in order to lick the blood from the wound;…
One of Roman Italy’s most important Mithraic sanctuaries, the Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere preserves a remarkable painted cycle of initiation scenes, offering rare visual evidence for the ritual life of Roman Mithaism.
Fresco showing a mystagogus pressing down the shoulders of a kneeling myste, attended by a third figure in Phrygian cap, from the initiation sequence of the Mithraeum of Capua.