Notitia
Dazzling 'Temple of Colored Marbles' Honoring Roman God Discovered in Italy
The ancient Roman worshippers were likely in altered states of consciousness.
The spelaeum, the most important room in the Mithraeum of Colored Marbles, has a marble floor decorated in a variety of colors.
Owen Jarus — Live Science
13 Dec 2019
Artifacts and inscriptions found in the mithraeum suggest that the worshippers venerated both Mithras, a popular god in the Roman Empire, and other gods.
The mithraeum's 'spelaeum,' its most important room, has a stone marble floor decorated with a dazzling array of colors. Also in this room, archaeologists found a bench, a ritual well and a flower bed for some sort of sacred plant, wrote the research team leader Max Victor David, a professor of history and cultures at the University of Bologna in Italy, in a paper published in the journal Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae.
The mithraeum would have seen plenty of rituals in its heyday, including banquets, initiation ceremonies and animal sacrifices, David told Live Science. People who took part in the rituals 'were perhaps in a state of altered consciousness,' David said. In the ancient world altered consciousness was often achieved through the use of psychotropic plants.
References
Read the entire article on Live Science.