Cresces

Cresces is known from the dedicatory inscription of the central altar of the Marino Mithraeum, discovered in 1963 near the railway station of Marino in the Alban Hills southeast of Rome.

The inscription reads:

Invicto deo Cresces actor Alfi Seberi d(onum) p(osuit).

Cresces identifies himself as actor of a certain Alfius Severus (or Seberus according to some readings). In Roman administrative terminology, actor generally designates an administrator, agent or estate manager acting on behalf of a superior. Maarten J. Vermaseren suggested that Cresces may have been a slave or dependent of Alfius Severus, possibly the pater of the Mithraic community.

The altar dedicated by Cresces stood in the centre of the nave before the cult image of Mithras. Henri Lavagne proposed that Alfius Severus may have been connected with the nearby Marino quarries and suggested that Cresces, as his trusted administrator, could have gathered around him a small Mithraic community possibly including quarry workers. This interpretation, however, remains hypothetical.

The Marino Mithraeum itself is generally dated between the later second century and the early third century CE.

Cresces has donated the main altar found in the Mithraeum of Marino. The monument mentions that he is the administrator of a certain Alfius Severus, probably his master.

—Marteen Vermaseren (1982) Mithriaca III

The altar [of the Marino Mithraeum] is dedicated to the unconquered god by a certain Crescens, who claims to be an actor (proxy) of M. Alfius Severus. The latter must have been an important person, probably at least a knight, because the function of actor necessarily implies property to manage, or an office to fulfil which requires a fidei commis. Crescens is therefore part of this bureaucracy of administrators or managers, agents of large entrepreneurs or private owners. He belonged to a category of officials in which we can place the dispensator, Yarcarius (author of the Nersae inscription) and the tabularius, who formed a milieu as active as the army for the diffusion of Roman Mithraism. We can perhaps go further and remember that the Mithraeum is opposite the Marino quarries. Can we not assume that M. Alfius Severus was somehow connected with the exploitation of the quarries and that his trusted man Crescens gathered around him a small community, including some of the workers? E. Will proposed a similar hypothesis concerning the large Mithraic relief of Mackviller (Alsace) dedicated by a knight to whom the management of the neighbouring quarry probably belonged.

—Henri Lavagne (1974) Le Mithréum de Marino.