Plaque with the list of worshippers of Virunum

TNMM 375

This large bronze plaque, discovered being reused in the floor of a private dwelling, where it had been carefully placed in the ground with the inscribed face down, bears the dedication for a restoration of a Mithraeum, undertaken in 183 C.E. after it had collapsed, along with a list (album) of members of the Mithraic community at the time.

The original temple must have been constructed during the second third of the 2nd century, perhaps in the area west of the urban area of Virunum, the provincial capital of Noricum. Various pieces of evidence, among them several fragments from a panelled relief of rather beautiful workmanship that was preserved at Tanzenberg Castle until 1820, must have come from this cult site.

The plaque’s list of members, updated each year, runs from 183 to 201/202 C.E. The inscription of the Greek letter theta before the names of five of the members present at the time of the restoration indicates their deaths a little later, perhaps during a natural disaster (an epidemic?), and explains the holding of a funeral ceremony on 26 June 184 C.E.

All of the members were citizens with the exception of one Speratus, a slave. Quintilianus, the principal overseer of the restoration, never became Pater, in contrast to Trebius Alfius, who became Pater a little after 184, even though he was not listed among the community’s first 34 members.

The presence, in an inscription that dates between 198 and 209 C.E, of twenty members whose names appear in a different order suggests that the community was divided in two and that at some point another Mithraeum was established, probably in the south-eastern part of the settlement.

Outside of Virunum, the only other album of worshippers belonging to the cult of Mithras comes from Sentinum, in Umbria, in the heart of the Italian peninsula.