This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience.
Find out more on how we use cookies in our privacy policy.

 
Enter
Support The New Mithraeum The New Mithraeum is an independent, non-profit project dedicated to Mithraic studies, ancient religions and classical culture. Developed and maintained independently since 2007, the site exists without advertising, paywalls or institutional funding. If you have found value in its articles, interviews, photographs or database, please consider supporting the project with a contribution. Every contribution helps keep The New Mithraeum open, free and alive. Thank you.
Support us →
Monumentum

Castor-vase of St Albans

The St Albans mithraic vase depicts fragments of three figures identified by Vermaseren as Hercules, Mercury and Mithras as an archer.
  • Mithraic castor-vase of St Albans

    Mithraic castor-vase of St Albans
    St Albans Museum via Tertullian.org

  • Mithraic castor-vase of St Albans

    Mithraic castor-vase of St Albans
    St Albans Museum via Tertullian.org

 
The New Mithraeum
20 Aug 2021
Updated on Jan 2022

TNMM 337 ↔ CIMRM 828

In the Verulamium Museum is a Castor-vase (H. 0.21) which was discovered in a public building (insula XVII) opposite the Theatre (cf. K. M. Richardson in Archaeologia, XC, 1944, 121).

On the vase with barbotine-decoration, three persons are represented:

1) The naked lower part of a man's body with a lion's-hide over his arm (Hercules).
2) The naked lower part of a man's body with winged feet (Mercurius).
3) Man walking to the right in Phrygian cap and with a bow in his r.h. Dressed in a short tunic, on which seven stars are visible at the bottom. On his breast two cross-wise belts. If the person, as assumed, would indeed represent Mithras, then it can only be an unusual representation of Mithras as an archer.

References

Back to Top