Inscription of Vaison-la-Romaine

TNMM 516 ↔ CIMRM 887

Base from Vaison.

This inscription was found in 1639 in Vaison-la-Romaine, in Gallia Narbonensis, in a garden near an old cemetery, engraved on an altar that has now disappeared. No mithreum has been found in the ancient city, but a fragment of a statue of Mithras tauroctone unearthed in 1933 indicates that the cult was certainly practiced at one time in Vasio. The community may have been relatively large, with the dedicatee's accession to the fifth grade suggesting that the seven-grade ladder was located there, unless this accession to the Persian grade was obtained elsewhere than at Vasio, the original provenance of the missing altar being unknown. The presence of the term gradus in the dedication, unique in a Mithraic context, would ensure that the term was used by some of the adepts themselves. The adjectival form persicum is found in the inscriptions of San Silvestro in Capite.